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When you boil it all down, the economy mostly is about ownership and use of resources, and those are naturally limited. So if we're talking about doing well in terms of having greater claims to the world's resources, then it essentially is zero sum.


The primary sector is only a very small part of the economy though. Prices for raw materials are low because it's easy to mine etc vast quantities nowadays and there is a lot of competition in global commodities. Most minerals are found in a LOT of places all over the world.


Land. Total value of it is about 25 trillion in the US alone I believe. If I'm not wrong, globally stock markets are around 100 trillion (and that will include a lot of assets in the form of land).


25 trillion is just 1 year worth of GDP. With interest rates of 5%, that's only further evidence for my point.

Edit: as an exercise, consider the land value of a typical office, and compare to the annual income of the part of the company based there, and the personal income of the employees who work there.




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