>If you're creating value, the wealth society has given you is probably a bargain for society
If you're creating value, you're creating it, it isn't being given to you (nor is it being taken from someone else). For example, if I (as a great painter!) take $5 worth of art supplies and create a painting worth $1,000,000, I have gained a million dollars in wealth without taking it from society.
In a free market, people can and do create great wealth without deleting someone else's wealth.
Well said. I found the sentence you quoted fundamentally broken to the point of offensiveness. As though society has graciously allowed people to create value. Nobody asked for your permission; don't claim to grant permission for something everyone has the fundamental right to do anyway.
Do you believe that everyone who becomes wealthy by definition must have created value? And that everyone who creates value by definition becomes wealthy?
If so, then yes, we hopelessly disagree.
If not, then you're agreeing that wealth can accumulate to some people who don't create value and/or can fail to accumulate to some people who do. I'd hope you would also agree that that's a problem, and that we'd be better off if we figured out how to fix it?
> Do you believe that everyone who becomes wealthy by definition must have created value? And that everyone who creates value by definition becomes wealthy?
The latter, sadly, does not inherently hold true; many times people create value but do not manage to get any value for themselves. That situation has improved drastically, but I'd certainly love to see it improved even further.
For the former: ignoring theft and fraud, by definition they created value for someone, or they wouldn't have gotten paid. We can argue over whether we would prefer them to have created value in another way, but we don't get to choose that; that remains between them and whoever chose to give them money.
If you want to improve that situation to create value in ways you'd prefer, then I'd suggest working to ensure that good mechanisms exist to help people get value from activities you'd prefer to see rewarded, and try to get people to take advantage of them. For example, crowdfunding programs like Kickstarter enabled many creative people to benefit directly from the value they create. We could use a hundred more ideas as novel and useful as crowdfunding; that would help greatly.
Or, to put it another way, coming up with such an idea and implementing it would greatly amplify your own ability to create value, and in doing so it would allow you to create the kind of value you'd prefer.
If you're creating value, you're creating it, it isn't being given to you (nor is it being taken from someone else). For example, if I (as a great painter!) take $5 worth of art supplies and create a painting worth $1,000,000, I have gained a million dollars in wealth without taking it from society.
In a free market, people can and do create great wealth without deleting someone else's wealth.