> Sigh, that statement makes no sense already because finance generates massive value.
I think it's not clear what I meant by value generation, and that's on me as I'm sure there's an established meaning that differs from mine. In my eyes, moving money from one person to another is not value generation. Only work that improves the net quality of life is generating value.
As an example, someone who spends all day digging holes and filling them in for money has destroyed value, because their work helps no one and the money transfer is almost neutral overall. Being a facilitator of mutually beneficial trade has value, but work that only extracts wealth destroys value by using labor to no net benefit --they could have been enjoying their time instead.
It's not something you can easily measure, but through this lens you can see how much of what we allocate human effort to is a waste.
>In my eyes, moving money from one person to another is not value generation. Only work that improves the net quality of life is generating value.
Right, and that’s naive at best. There isn’t an unlimited supply of money. Choosing where to place money can result in massive value creation or destruction.
Labor (or physical work by anything) and value have no implicit or explicit relationship. That line of thinking has been discredited so many times (even in your own ditch digging example) that it’s not really worth getting into here.
I think it's not clear what I meant by value generation, and that's on me as I'm sure there's an established meaning that differs from mine. In my eyes, moving money from one person to another is not value generation. Only work that improves the net quality of life is generating value.
As an example, someone who spends all day digging holes and filling them in for money has destroyed value, because their work helps no one and the money transfer is almost neutral overall. Being a facilitator of mutually beneficial trade has value, but work that only extracts wealth destroys value by using labor to no net benefit --they could have been enjoying their time instead.
It's not something you can easily measure, but through this lens you can see how much of what we allocate human effort to is a waste.