| mrstickball said:
A zero-sum game assumes that there is a finite amount of materials available for production and consumption, therefore currency based on said goods. Since there is not a finite sum of resources, goods or services available (or at least for the next ~1 billion years), then it isn't zero sum. For example, a construction company takes input goods such as wood, mortar and other products to construct a house. If the company sells the house for money and creates another house, more products are created. Since the wood and other materials are replacable, then further goods can be produced. Therefore, you can continue to create wealth and money by the production of more goods, or services. If it were a zero sum game, then there would only be a set number of houses available to be purchased, and populations would shift among them as availability dictated. There would be only so many Nintendo Wii's available for play in the world, and so many copies of Super Mario Galaxy. Since that isn't the case, and more can be produced, such products and wealth are not zero sum. |
But the more you produce the less valuable money becomes.
Inflation.
Think about most currencies in the world. When the Nintendo 3DS came out it cost $250 in the U.S. In Japan, the thing cost ¥25,000.
Listen to how that sounds. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Twenty five thousand yen.
At one time the yen was equivalent to a dollar. Then 1873 happened & more importantly World War II happened & the yen seriously lost its equivalence with the dollar to say the least. Reminds me of most currencies in the world where you have to have a ridiculous amount just to buy simple things. Always some unwieldy number that sounds like a lot until you check the exchange rate. "I'm a millionaire! I got 1,000,000 Mexican pesos!" That won't even buy a house in California.
Here's a quick Wikipedia history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_yen#Fixed_value_of_the_yen_to_the_US_dollar
"The yen was therefore basically a dollar unit, like all dollars, descended from the Spanish Pieces of eight, and up until the year 1873, all the dollars in the world had more or less the same value...
...Following the silver devaluation of 1873, the yen devalued against the US dollar and the Canadian dollar units since they adhered to a gold standard, and by the year 1897 the yen was worth only about US$0.50...
...The yen lost most of its value during and after World War II. After a period of instability, in 1949, the value of the yen was fixed at ¥360 per US$1 through a United States plan, which was part of the Bretton Woods System, to stabilize prices in the Japanese economy."
You gotta think ratios. Print all the money in the world but if the same people own the same ratio of that money, nothing has changed. Instead of a U.S. where rich folks get $99 out of every $100, with the new printing the rich get $990 out of every $1,000. More money is produced but the ratio remains the same.
That's why it's not as simple as just printing more money. It's the ownership proportions of the money.
If the non-rich who used to have $1 out of every $100, then $10 out of every $1,000, had ratios change to having $5 out of every $100 or $50 out of every $1,000, then the rich would become logically less rich. Pump that up to $10 out of every $100 or even $50 out of every $100 & the rich become even less richer.
That's why I insist that money is by design a ZERO-SUM GAME. Somebody has to be poor for somebody else to be rich or money loses its value. It is directly responsible for economic segregation which naturally leads into social segregation. This is why we have economic classes & different behaviors according to what class you belong to. And by setting access to power based on how many money pieces you control, this is why you have essentially different rules for the rich & the poor. The rich write the rules in the first place to control the poor ones. To control them to protect their greater ratio of money ownership, power ownership.
And speaking of land, there ARE a finite amount of houses that can be built. The Planet Earth has limits. It has a certain size, certain livable land masses. Rich buy up a lot of land to have the least dense amount of population living in that vast land. Mansions & estates where only a small handful of people live. While in poorer neighborhoods population density is greater because of more people living in that lesser sized land. You notice that the rich always find their way to the best land in the area? The poor live under polluting factories, noisy railways & airports.
I laugh at Al Gore & his ridiculous carbon footprint crap. This rich bastard probably uses more energy in a day then a whole neighborhood uses in a week! THAT'S an inconvenient truth. His mansion, his private jet, his cars, his yacht, all of that uses vast amounts of energy everyday. And uses this vast energy for less people at a time. It's only for him & his family. The same energy he uses can supply multiple families (plural!) of a neighborhood or even neighborhoods.
Oh & your analogy with Wii & the games. Don't you know that for used game value the rarer the game in demand the higher the price will be? Super Mario Galaxy is a masterpiece so it will be in demand but because it's plentiful that offsets the ability to charge a premium for it. Can't find one, you're sure to find another. How much did that rarely produced Nintendo World Championships 1990 cartridge cost? Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_World_Championships#Collectible_value
"The Nintendo World Championships 1990 game cartridge is considered to be the rarest and most valuable NES cartridge released.[5] Because fewer gold cartridges were manufactured, they are rarer and command a higher price than the gray cartridges. The gold version is often described as the "holy grail" of console game collecting[6], similar to items from other collectible hobbies, such as the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card, or the Action Comics #1 comic book.[7][8][9]
On March 18, 2007 a listing appeared on Myebid.com in which a cartridge appeared to have been inadvertently included in a bereavement sale of 24 NES games. According to the auction, a father was selling the possessions of his deceased son. The auction ended at $21,400,[10] though collectors have speculated that neither the listing nor the bids were legitimate.[11][12]
[13] In 2008, a cartridge went for $15,000,[14] and the next copy to surface sold in June 2009 for $17,500.[15] Most recently, in December 2009, JJGames presented a copy on eBay as part of a charity auction for World Vision; the auction ended with a winning bid of $13,600.[16] The high bidder failed to pay and the cartridge sold privately for $18,000.[17] "
Think you'll ever be able to fetch 5 digits for Super Mario Galaxy as long as it's so plentiful?
Our enjoyment of games like Super Mario Galaxy are not rooted in the money. We're enjoying what that game provides for us in entertainment, more importantly what that game provides for our inherent human needs.
And that underlines my previous declaration that money is only valuable by proxy, by association with the things of real value. It's only a middleman, a velvet rope, a club bouncer inbetween that which we truly value.
You can never figure out income inequality until you come to terms with what money REALLY means.
You won't get far until you recognize in your heart of hearts how FAKE it really is.
John Lucas
Words from the Official VGChartz Idiot
WE ARE THE NATION...OF DOMINATION!
