> That's called "theft". In a free market, transactions are mutually agreed upon. Equal wealth for equal wealth.

It's also called a Transaction with asymmetric information, or being in a position in an economic system where you cannot accumulate assets because the system is stacked against you.

I also think you're confusing wealth with value. Wealth is what you have; value is what you have is worth. You may have 50 billion in stock, but its value is what you can get away with Borrowing, spending, and dying.

> Your statement presumes that "value" is some construct independent of the market. The only "value" in commerce is what someone is willing to pay for it. There is no other useful definition of value.

But it is independent of the market. A company's stock is worth all of its assets divided by the number of shares. Anything else, such as anticipation of future earnings or expected losses, is a projection into the future. They don't exist until that moment arrives when the numbers have changed.

I learned a long time ago that the money's not real until the customer's check clears. We should be applying the same logic to valuing stocks and other financial instruments.

> As for how wealth is created, I buy a canvas and some paint for $50, and paint a masterpiece that Ritchie Rich buys from me for $10,000. I created that wealth. Taylor Swift figured out how to turn her song skillz into a billion dollars. She created that wealth. Musk figured out how to turn hunks of metal into rockets that are quite profitable. He created that wealth. And so on.

Elon Musk learned how to scam investors by selling them fantasies, projections, and wishes to raise money. But here's another way to create wealth. You ask for a loan. I give you the money and charge you interest. I did nothing, I made nothing, I just put an entry in a ledger, and all of a sudden, poof, wealth has appeared.

> Now that is a complex topic. But I'll make a simple take on it. When there is more cash than things to buy, then the value of the cash diminishes. We call that "inflation". Wealth creation does not cause inflation.

When too much money is chasing too few assets, and there is anxiety about the future, asset prices rise independent of fundamentals. Traders make increasingly poor decisions and take riskier bets to increase their portfolios' value. I've heard finance people describe this as the PE ratio as too high.

> As for private equity, nobody is making you invest in it.

If you have a pension, pension funds are one of the bigger investors in private equity, and you have no choice but to ride along with the fund's choices. The private equity industry is drooling at the thought of making a similar forced choice regarding employee 401 (k) plans.