bacon, can you please address how there is no zero-sum element to wealth in a world with scarce, finite resources?
Going back to a previous post of yours
You implied (i think) that because there are finite resources that eventually it's a matter of who has what and what one has the other does not. In your 3rd point you made a statement that seemed to me to mix micro and macro principles (market pricing and inflation) which was a bit clunky, but I think the gist of what you said was that eventually, with finite resources, things are zero sum or somewhat zero sum
Firstly I'd say, all resources are scarce. Scarcity is a relative term. Diamonds are more scarce than copper and both are more scarce than water, but water is scarce, just not relative to those other things.
I'm kind of talking off the cuff here, so forgive me if i'm missing something obvious, but with the exception of extinct animals or something like that, there are no resources where we've even approached what I believe is technically coined, Peak Production (due to scarcity), which means we produced the most we're ever going to because there is no more. People talk about peak oil all the time, but we've never been and aren't close to peak oil, at least due to the fact that we aren't going to/can't find any more. So with regards to that pretty much any resource, as it has gotten scarce, there has always been another way to get more or find alternatives, it's just that other way might be very expensive and not something people would tolerate until they had to.
So while scarce resources are pretty much the cornerstone of economic theory, in modern times we've never demanded a resource that we truly couldn't get more of or an alternative to (and you can thank capitalism for that). I know that doesn't exactly answer you question, but in short, because of innovation, we've never dealt with truly finite resources so it's hard to say exactly what would happen.
I suppose if we truly did find ourselves at the limits of a resource that we couldn't get more of and couldn't find an alternative to, then it would stifle economic growth and not be great for the world as a whole, but even then at some price the market will clear, meaning the person who most values the resource will pay the most for it and that, in of itself, is not a zero sum game as the seller values the money more and the buyer values the resource more so they are both better off. (otherwise the buyer wouldn't buy and seller wouldn't sell). The market price for that resource would encourage it's exchange and trading by two rational actors that have the same info should, by definition create wealth
As something becomes more scarce, it's pure supply and demand. In the real world, due to imperfect actors and information, it might not be a smooth curve, but over time it plays our very reliably. It's
kind of like thermodynamics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If something becomes more dear, that puts upward pressure on price, but also as soon as that happens, there is also downward pressure in the form of people looking for cheaper substitutes (decreases demand) or more of the something (increases supply).
Also, with regards to running out, or finding the true limit of resources, there is pretty sound economic theory that suggest it's impossible to run out of resources (presuming there are efficient markets in place)
In any econ 101 class there is always some question like this
If there are 1 trillion barrels of oil in the world and we use 10 billion a year, when will we run out of oil
The sucker answer is 100 years, but the real answer is never.