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Nonsense. If I'm moving from the UK to the US, and someone else is moving from the US to the UK, then I really need USD and that person really needs GBP. We c
by hntrader 6y ago
Nonsense.
If I'm moving from the UK to the US, and someone else is moving from the US to the UK, then I really need USD and that person really needs GBP.
We can then trade USD for GBP and both be better off as a result.
The transaction was demonstrably positive sum in utility terms.
- neonological 6y agoNot Nonsense at all. Cash is an abstraction of product so let's talk in terms of trading the product that the USD and GBP actually represents. The "products" that were traded in your example above represents an exchange in energy because all products must be created from energy. Entropy is removed from raw materials and transferred to energy increasing the entropy of the energy and decreasing the entropy of the raw materials into usable product. High entropy energy is unusable. Usable Energy is therefore limited and as a result in order for those products to even exist usable energy must be sourced from a limited supply. When you take from a limited supply someone else loses. Hence zero sum. Even utility costs energy no matter how much you try to inflate it's worth with your imagination. You have much more "utility" living in a high energy economy then you do in say a human powered tribal economy in the amazon rain forest.