Greg G. wrote:
Doug Miller said:

In article ,
wrote:

Hmm... Create wealth. I don't believe you can "create" such a
thing, but you can certainly move the existing wealth around until
you have accumulated much of it.

Hmmm... to be logically consistent, then, you must believe that the
sum of wealth in the world is constant: that there is exactly as
much wealth in the world now as there was, say, three thousand
years
ago.

It's all relative. "Creating" wealth is called counterfeiting. ;-)

No, that's creating money. Money is not wealth, money is just a
counter.

Otherwise it's just the changing fortunes of time. Currency (and
it's
paperwork equivalents) have no intrinsic value anyhow. It only
represents current perceived wealth. We have nothing of lasting
value
to back the money supply in circulation. The (private) Federal
Reserve
Banks and markets excel at smoke and mirrors. For instance, should
the
system collapse, food, water, and ammunition will be worth far more
that valueless, baseless paper money.

Yes, food, water, and ammunition would be "wealth". And it could be
bought in exchange for some other good or service. But since the
person with the food, water, or ammunition might not need that good or
service right now, he takes an IOU instead (from someone he trusts).
Then one day he needs something from someone else who needs whatever
good or service that IOU is for, so he gives them the IOU. And after
a while people are trading IOUs back and forth and by golly there's
"money".

Even if it's backed by gold it doesn't have any intrinsic value beyond
the industrial value of the gold. The Spanish learned that they hard
way--they kept bringing mountains of gold from the New World but they
were never any wealthier for it--they just glutted the market. The
sad thing is that they melted down works of art that might have had
very significant value so as to make the gold they contained more
transportable.

I'm sorta pulling your leg, but the point was that a business can
only
take money from others to "grow" wealth, it cannot create or devalue
money - that's what the Feds do - well, them and various disasters.

No, a business can't "create" money. But business in the collective
can devalue it by reducing the quantity of goods and services
available so that a given unit of money can buy less, which is the
other end of the government devaluing it by increasing the amount in
circulation to a degree disproportionate to the increase in goods and
services.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)