On the contrary, there is only so much wealth, because monetary wealth represents the distribution of natural resources.
Natural resources are the root of where all wealth comes from, even services like software. You can follow the chain all the way down: a human types some code in a computer, which was made out of metals and minerals mined from the earth. Oil is used to power the machinery that mines those metals, and the human typing out the code eats food grown in farms and fished from oceans.
There is quite literally a finite amount of wealth to go around, and billionaires keep an extreme amount of that wealth for themselves. When they build a $50 million mansion using bookmatched marble and burn insane amounts of oil for their $200 million yachts, they're taking resources that could have been used by someone else, and those resources are not renewable.
When you look at the most wealthy nations per capita, they all have one thing in common: natural resources, especially oil and gas.
Let's say it's 1999 and I'm a worker and I make $50,000 a year. I bought a new computer that comes with Microsoft Windows 98, and $50-100 of my purchase went directly to Microsoft for the license. Would that price have been lower if there were more alternatives available on the market, if Microsoft software wasn't a baseline requirement for conducting digital business for most companies and individuals?
We actually know the answer to that question, because eventually the Microsoft OS monopoly was broken, and now we see that the most popular operating systems (Linux for servers and Android for smartphones) are provided for free or very little cost, and they even include their source code.
That license money I gave Microsoft is a natural resource I'll never get back.
Natural resources are the root of where all wealth comes from, even services like software. You can follow the chain all the way down: a human types some code in a computer, which was made out of metals and minerals mined from the earth. Oil is used to power the machinery that mines those metals, and the human typing out the code eats food grown in farms and fished from oceans.
There is quite literally a finite amount of wealth to go around, and billionaires keep an extreme amount of that wealth for themselves. When they build a $50 million mansion using bookmatched marble and burn insane amounts of oil for their $200 million yachts, they're taking resources that could have been used by someone else, and those resources are not renewable.
When you look at the most wealthy nations per capita, they all have one thing in common: natural resources, especially oil and gas.
Let's say it's 1999 and I'm a worker and I make $50,000 a year. I bought a new computer that comes with Microsoft Windows 98, and $50-100 of my purchase went directly to Microsoft for the license. Would that price have been lower if there were more alternatives available on the market, if Microsoft software wasn't a baseline requirement for conducting digital business for most companies and individuals?
We actually know the answer to that question, because eventually the Microsoft OS monopoly was broken, and now we see that the most popular operating systems (Linux for servers and Android for smartphones) are provided for free or very little cost, and they even include their source code.
That license money I gave Microsoft is a natural resource I'll never get back.