Comment by slt2021
the zero sum will always be true because of the fundamental law of physics: Law of preservation of energy / Law of preservation of matter.
Everything in the economy thats worth producing/consuming costs energy and labor. Energy and labor is not free.
Any free lunch one can have in the economy is only possible in nominal terms, when your economy/market grows, but your sovereign debt and fiscal deficit also grows and in real terms, after inflation there is no real growth.
if you look at the core, the bottom of the economics it is just pure physics: The flow and exchange of energy and materials, labor and capital. The fight is over a distribution of the flows between various factions
Aren’t we so, so, so far from physical limits though? To the point that we speak of likely energy reserves in terms of centuries of consumption at current levels, even if we only get around to proving the next couple decades’ worth at a time?
If Musk et al get their wishes, and we become “spacefaring civilization” or whatever—aren’t the conceivable physical limits of known reality so far away as to be irrelevant?
And isn’t the story of the industrial era one of compounding productivity per unit of labor?