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 Originally Posted by Lyric
The most common error in economic thought is assuming that there is a limited amount of wealth in the world.
I firmly stand, based upon what I've learned today, that there does not exist an infinite amount of wealth in this world.
99% of the raw material for the tomatoes comes from the air. The plant uses the sun's energy to break carbon dioxide into its basic parts -- oxygen and carbon. It then builds its body and fruit from the carbon and exhausts oxygen into the atmosphere, where it is used by animals to breath.
1% of the tomato plant material comes from the soil, and that is replaced when the animals that eat the plant shit on the ground.
Or when the animals die, rot, and become ground.
The tomato is produced using the energy of the sun (at near 100% efficiency!), which is also never lost; the energy is simply transferred into the tomato plant and can be used by animals as food calories, where food is chemically burned to yield energy for muscles.
Awesome, but still means it's a zero sum game. The positive is yielded by us, the negative is shouldered by an unimaginably huge, unimaginably powerful energy generator, imaginably far way.
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