Where did the other dollar go, Jeff?
&gt; Money and labor are both more abstract than fruit, so there is a little bit of leeway to interpret employment transactions as being non-zero-sum.<p>This paragraph gets into something i&#x27;ve been pondering about GDP&#x2F;societal wealth. Imagine we have a carpenter and a plumber both sitting idle and who needs eachothers&#x27; services. If they cannot agree upon an exchange or price then the system loses out on the potential productivity. The system as a whole is made poorer by actors being disagreeable.<p>I have often wondered how rich life could be if we were more agreeable to give to the other the gifts of our marginally unused productivity (rather than giving it to netflix, facebook, instagram, and tik-tok...)?<p>Would poverty be erased, or other desirable things be achievable?<p>Now look at the ideas of a minimum wage or of being frugal. Both are a kind of refusal to participate in the economy leaving behind marginal potential value creation. If we refuse to spend our money it doesnt fund development of projects, if we refuse to work at a certain rate we lose out on the goods that could have been built.<p>Anyways that&#x27;s a musing I was reminded of by this piece.