I think I'm very late at the party, but anyway I'm hoping that someone educate me. I still can't agree with PG in that wealth is something that can be created.

I think I'm very late at the party, but anyway I'm hoping that someone educate me. I still can't agree with PG in that wealth is something that can be created. When a woodworker makes a chair to get money, he's merely trading his skill and time with money. The net wealth of the world hasn't increased. The perceived "win-win" situation only exists because there's a partiality in different types of resources: some people only have time, some people only have food, and some others only have iron, etc. If the world gets truly homogeneous, there's no way to create value. In reality, people are not homogeneous, so they keep trading, but still the total wealth isn't increasing. i.e. the economy is almost always a zero-sum game. It's not a zero-sum game only in two cases: 1. When we take resources from the outside world. This typically happens when we mine a natural resource. Or 2. When we do unfair trading with people who somehow we don't deem as proper "human". This is pretty much a form of slavery or extortion. i.e. the economy is not a zero-sum game when exploitation happens. I don't think PG is advocating the second type of the economy, so I don't understand how he can think we're still creating wealth.