These people are our future

[Lyric]

Since this is moving nowhere, let's try another angle.

ISF, your basic argument and philosophy is that the only thing the system should strive for is creating value for its individuals, and any values or morals upheld by its individuals will automatically ensue. The well-being or direction of progress of the society as a whole, or of any nonfunctional individuals (those that choose against their own values) are either non-consequential or acceptable losses.

The functioning of the system rests on 2 basic assumptions:

1) the system is non-zero-sum, that is, the gain of one is not automatically the loss of another
2) the value generated by the system for each of its individuals accurately represents the value they provide for it

Before I say anything else, please correct any mistakes, omissions or misrepresentations I made.

I only have one question: what is the goal of this system?

If two men are on an island and one makes 10 wheels of cheese and the other makes 10 gallons of wine. They trade 5 wheels for 5 gallons so that each has wine and cheese. Who lost? How is the exchange making anyone worse off?

If you go into a forest and build a house from the trees, mud, and rocks and then you have created wealth and no one has lost any wealth. If one man builds a home and another trades 1,000 gallons of wine for the home, who lost?

A man's wealth is directly related to what he brings into the world. If he builds a home from trees he has created a home that did not exist before, and if he trades that home for cheese and wine (that didn't exist until the men that made them brought them into the world), he now has cheese and wine that is directly proportional to the value (wealth) that he brought into the world when he made his house.

Point one is the number one reason that people cannot understand economics -- they continue to think that the only way to be rich is at the expense of another person. The reality is that valued things can be created from raw materials, which brings more and more valued things into the world through work and intelligent organization of materials that end as a more valued product.

A car is worth much more than the metal is was built from, and a home is worth much more than its raw materials as well. In this way new wealth is created and no one on earth is hurt when one man become wealthy -- it is the opposite. When a man makes cheese and trades it for wine, both of them are better off (richer) because they have both products and neither of them has harmed the other and both have been creating food and wine for selfish reasons. Organized cooperation to divide labor and specialization is not needed to create a healthy and wealthy society.