These people are our future

[a500lbgorilla]

Correct. More people living together can grow exponentially more wealthy via trade and exchange of information and technology, but a solitary man can still create wealth alone on an island.

I like this sentence. I wish I understood it more deeply.

The solitary man is easy to understand.

But as you add more people, the problem of where this wealth came from becomes obvious. Unless you can trace back all this wealth to renewable (in human terms) springs or infinite (in human terms) resources, I don't follow how more people living together can grow exponentially more wealthy.

[Lyric]

I like this sentence. I wish I understood it more deeply.

The solitary man is easy to understand.

But as you add more people, the problem of where this wealth came from becomes obvious. Unless you can trace back all this wealth to renewable (in human terms) springs or infinite (in human terms) resources, I don't follow how more people living together can grow exponentially more wealthy.

You can see it with two and three men. At first the man perfects cheese making. He's not very good at wine or anything else. He is alone with good cheese and mediocre wine and veggies.

Man number two arrives and develops a method for making great wine. He's not so good at cheese. They trade. Now both men have great wine and great cheese.

Man three comes along and focuses on making tomatoes. Now all three exchange and all three of them have cheese, wine, and tomatoes that were better than they ever could have had living alone, and they do no more additional work. The added wealth and quality of life improvements come by trading the fruits of their labor with other people.

When you get to 6 billion people you get what we have today. Imagine how high we could climb without gangs of men (governments) coming together to ban us from trading with each other.