New persons are born every day and financial resources are a bookkeeping tool. If I make something new and you make something new then we can trade our products and we both gained without anyone losing out. It is not true to say the world is zero-sum.
The Federal Reserve who controls the M1 supply would like a word with you.:-)
There is a limited amount of goods and services you can sell to the inhabitants of a planet with a population of 7.7 Billion.
What if the planet would have only a population of 7? Each person owning one of the 7 continents? Let's say the persons owning Africa and the person owning North America, due to some meteorological disaster, and unfortunate investments,
had to sell their respective continents to the hotshot owning Europe?
If the money supply is infinite, then has no value. Now from the finite money supply in the world who is going to gain the most?
But you fail to note the creation of a market happens by destroying another.
Amazon vs Book Shops, Uber vs Taxis, Cars vs Faster Horses, Netflix vs Theater Industry and DVD Rentals.[2]
There is a limit of resources and economic output per year, the ones
owning the more productive processes will get a progressive bigger share of the
output. More and more, lots of activities are zero-sum and the long term is a complete zero-sum. [3]
It's not a view from mainstream economists, because many do not want to be seen as heirs to Karl Marx ( an Economist let's not forget, not a politician).
It's also a discourse popular from a certain political current, that spouses the "we can all benefit mantra".
I prefer to use Constrain Theory [1], and be reminded that if somebody creates a more efficient Amazon, faster, cheaper, better then Amazon will not prosper. If somebody opens a new service, or creates a new product, there will less disposable income from the customers of this product to shop at Amazon.
Reminds me of a story, normally told with several variations so my details are not exact. When Henry Ford II toured some factory, he taunted some workers with the fact increased Robotic Automation would make Ford less dependent on the workers. The workers replied asking Ford how many cars he was expecting the Robots would buy?
> you fail to note the creation of a market happens by destroying another
This isn’t true. If you go back to the origin of human civilization, economic “output” was limited to survival - food/shelter. Today survival represents an ever-smaller fraction of economic activity. Where did this additional activity come from if it was limited to replace preceding activity?
Similarly real gdp per capita has been increasing since the beginning of time. How can this be possible if the economy is zero sum?
