I'm not sure what you both are on about regarding entropy and cycles, but my point was that raw materials can be used in different ways, productively (converting those raw materials/labor to a more useful form) and wastefully (converting those raw materials/labor to a form that has no "durable value", even if some people make "money"/"wealth").

I didn't think "the universe has a finite capacity" to be such a controversial idea.

Look, if you use land for farming then you can't use it for something else, right? And the Earth has a finite surface, right? So once all arable land has been farmed and all other land has been allocated for other uses, then necessarily land allocation will become a zero sum game.

If wealth can just be created ex nihilo then human population should be able to grow without bounds, no? The pie is a lie, after all. We can just bake more pies. I don't see how that's possible when both space and food production capacity are bounded.