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"About the only way to make money without creating wealth is to steal it from somebody else." Well. Let's say you have a company M that creates X wealth and ha
by Hexstream 19y ago
"About the only way to make money without creating wealth is to steal it from somebody else."
Well. Let's say you have a company M that creates X wealth and has a monopoly. And then you have companies A, B, C, D, E and F that create 7x wealth but are driven out of the market by M's monopolistic practices. M indeed creates wealth, but the market is actually getting less than it would without it. It might not be called stealing, but I feel robbed.
Similarly, I'm pretty sure the value the spammer is creating for the companies they advertise for is largely offset by the value it's destroying for the masses of people they advertise to. Besides, the kind of "products" sold by "companies" via spammers is not exactly friendly neighborhood or good quality (if there's even an actual product at all).
edit: "Typically when somebody pays you for something you did, it's because they'd rather have your service or product than the cash they paid for it."
Sure, but maybe there's another service/product that could give you much more for the same money but you don't know about it because of propaganda (marketing, FUD) or simply because the company has been driven out of the market unfairly, as I said earlier.
- pchristensen 19y agoDon't confuse a net loss of wealth with wealth not being created. If everybody got an equal portion of total wealth, then monopolies and spammers would be bad, but since somebody wins (even though there are more losers), wealth is technically created. A better scenario is the "creative destruction" when one industry is displaced but society overall benefits, i.e. cars over horses, Wikipedia over Encarta over Britannica, etc.
- Hexstream 19y ago"Don't confuse a net loss of wealth with wealth not being created. If everybody got an equal portion of total wealth, then monopolies and spammers would be bad, but since somebody wins (even though there are more losers), wealth is technically created." I must have read wrong. You're saying spammers are not quite bad?... "A better scenario is the "creative destruction" when one industry is displaced but society overall benefits, i.e. cars over horses, Wikipedia over Encarta over Britannica, etc." The new industry replaces the old one because it creates more value than the old one, no? I think car factories create more value than stables... Also, in the monopoly case it's a company that hampers global progress to protect its own interests. I like to seek win-win scenarios so that doesn't resonate well with me.
- pchristensen 19y agoI meant bad in the economic sense, where no one is better off. The spammer is certainly better off for his work even if everyone else is worse off.