> If you want to convincingly argue that markets are positive sum you have to demonstrate that markets produce more than they consume in terms of something besi

> If you want to convincingly argue that markets are positive sum you have to demonstrate that markets produce more than they consume in terms of something besides money. E.g. when some of the factory workers quit to go be day traders, the factory ends up producing more while consuming the same or less due to the positive effects of the investments enabled by the increased trading activity. Price discovery would be the function of the markets that allows this. If the markets find out that iron ore production is going to crash because of a flood or something, they create demand for futures of that iron production, raising the price of iron and encouraging stability in the supply of iron via more companies mining it. These futures then provide stability of supply and price (somewhat) to the factory. Conversely, they provide stability of demand and price to the mine, who can sell their production ahead of time. I would not be surprised if most factories do employ investors, even if indirectly via a third-party supplier. Knowing that the price of iron was going to go up would be tremendously useful, and they would be able to produce their goods cheaper than everyone else if they stocked up on materials at lower prices. They're traded in dollars, but the same would be true in a barter system. Liquidity would be incredibly important in any non-monetary system; people would pay a pretty penny to be able to exchange payment in goods they don't want to something they did want. > Money gets created when people take out loans which creates debt which is then traded in the markets. That's not money flowing into the markets, that's just the markets doing their own internal bookkeeping (much like D&D uses HP for internal bookkeeping about character health). That is meant to reflect the new value being created by all of the entities in the market. If you don't add currency to account for growth, the currency increases in value equal to demand for it, making the currency itself a very attractive investment. Those loans have interest rates, so the borrowers need to be doing something with the cash to generate value in excess of the interest rate, which in turn creates value on the market. Loans backed by actual currency are dramatically more expensive to service because of opportunity costs. The borrower's interest rate would be higher than what the loan offerer thought they could get in return for safer investments. Current loan rates for practically everything are far below that. The factory benefits by having access to extra cash for cheap. They don't have to stockpile cash for a decade to open a new factory, they can borrow money and do it now at an interest rate that still allows them to keep most of the value.