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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

I disagree that wealth is limited (we can mine an exhaustless supply of minerals for instance). But he nails everything else.

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I missed the part where he says that wealth is limited. Doesn't he says that wealth creation is a positive-sum game (I.e. 1+1=3 thanks to automation and leverage), as opposed to status which limited and its pursuit is a zero-sum game? Wouldn't that mean that wealth is unlimited?

> Most of the wealth in civilization, in fact all of it, has been created.

After re-reading your comment, I realize I think I misterpreted this sentence. He's not saying the total future value has already been created, he's saying the past value was worked for

Eventually wealth relies on some physical resource somewhere down the line, so it's also not true imo. Wealth is remote from limits but not limitless I would say.

> we can mine an exhaustless supply of minerals for instance

Humanity is headed towards shortages of many critical metals, such a copper, within this century, with consequences on price and availability already felt and predicted to be a major geo-political issue within a few decades

I disagree. We're short iridium, We're not short copper. We don't have an efficient way to extract it, from either waste or from raw materials.

That's also the other side of it: we're short better wiring materials/technologies because copper is 'good enough' at it's price point.

You think there's some mineral machine underground churning out ore indefinitely? How do you think mineral formation works?

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