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>An individual micro-economic transaction on that day may be zero sum, but the whole economy overall isn't unless there's no growth. As I said, the economy is
by slg 3y ago
>An individual micro-economic transaction on that day may be zero sum, but the whole economy overall isn't unless there's no growth.
As I said, the economy is neither zero-sum nor completely not zero-sum. It exists somewhere in between. If you can recognize that individual microeconomic situations can be zero-sum, you should be able to recognize that some macroeconomic situations are zero-sum.
I'm not arguing that these guys didn't create any wealth. I am arguing that their wealth is not equal to the value they created. Some of their wealth is wealth they captured from other people. I think it is pretty obvious that stockholders of other automakers would have more wealth in a world without Tesla. Musk now captures that wealth for Tesla stockholders.
The same situation plays out for other people in Musk's orbit. The rest of the automakers are now producing fewer cars due to the presence of Tesla, therefore they are employing fewer people. Musk is extremely anti-union while many of his competitors have a unionized workforce. This allows him to treat his employees worse off. His wealth is therefore effectively coming from workers who are now in a worse situation than they were if Tesla didn't exist and those employees were working for another automakers.