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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Your attempt to recast what I wrote is misleading. If we reverse engineer wealth creation, we see patterns. From my reviews there are correlations between those who have created wealth from "ideas" and major benefits to mankind as measured by standard of living improvements. In order for "ideas" to have an impact, synergy has to be created - where the total is greater than the sum of the parts - this affect in an economic perspective is the creation of wealth. These "ideas" leading to the creation of synergy comes from a place I don't understand - and I called it nothing. Perhaps it is something, I don't understand it. If you do, explain it please.
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You seem to take a metaphysical—and possibly superstitious—view of how wealth is created. An idea is a great thing. I value ideas. I think ideas are among the greatest things about humanity. However, you seem to take a reverent view of them, as though they exist independent from reality as some self-contained entity. And somehow it comes into being to bring along with it all this lovely wealth. And that we should thank the idea and the one who birthed it for creating all this lovely wealth. The problem is either a) you are not being comprehensive enough in explaining how ideas fit into the puzzle of wealth creation, or b) you have an antiseptic view of ideas and wealth.
If the problem is b, then all I can say at this point is that you should probably read an introduction to macroeconomics. I won't go as far as to say to read the
Wealth of Nations, but reading summaries of it wouldn't hurt.
Ideas don't create wealth from nothing. They create it from a "synergy"—a word you seem to like—between production (i.e. labour + capital), demand (i.e. a consumer), supply (inventory/service availability), and a market (a place of exchange, usually using cash or credit).
• Idea + "Synergy" = Wealth
• Where "Synergy" = supply + demand + production + market
If you take anything out of the equation, wealth cannot be generated in a capitalist economy. This is why I said that Bill Gates didn't generate all the wealth he did on his own. He may have been the catalyst, but he couldn't have done it on his own.
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Is it your position, that "man" has never had an original idea? Your statement is confusing to me.
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Yes. As much as I hate to quote the Bible, King Solomon said that there is nothing new under the sun. Ideas don't spring from nothing. They're based on a synthesis of experience and speculation, often brought about by a problem or an opportunity. You can take any idea imaginable and trace it back to another source. It's not like the Big Bang every time someone comes up with something.
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There was no need to read. There was no real opportunity to read. It was a time when time was consumed by more pressing (pardon the pun) needs, like avoiding starvation. However, given the synergy created from the invention of the printing press, reading began to have value and allowed for increased productivity. This lead to material standard of living increases for the populations with access to the new technology.
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To tie this into what I was saying, movable type was created out of an innovation in the process of bookmaking, which was a laborious thing until then. The idea didn't come from nowhere; it came from thinking about the process of bookmaking and how to use technology to make the process easier. A hell of a lot of reading came afterward, but reading wasn't invented by Gutenberg.
Gutenberg didn't invent language. He didn't invent reading. He didn't invent paper. He didn't invent books. He didn't even invent engraving or printing. He invented a process as an innovation based on existing elements.