For money that's true (and of course being a millionaire is about money), but for "success" it isn't. Success is a relative term, which does seem to act a lot like a 0-sum game. That is, I'm only successful if other people around me aren't.

While we might all become richer collectively, we will never feel more successful unless we have someone to compare ourselves to.

It depends on how you define "success." By your definition, it necessitates seeing someone else fail in order to feel successful. But I think that's a narrow view of it, and fewer things are zero-sum than people often assume (though plenty of things still are, yes).

A few examples come to mind. One is the craft beer scene. Microbreweries often adopt a collaborative business model with other breweries in their area, rather than being cutthroat and trying to run each other out of town. When a town becomes known for having a thriving beer scene, it attracts more customers in total, to the benefit of all the breweries there. It widens the proverbial pie. Thus, by association with that scene, all the individual businesses become more successful than they would have been otherwise. And in that case I'd say success is about more than money - name and quality recognition, and building a dedicated fan base would probably factor into it as well.

Of course there are limits to that model, such as a local market becoming too saturated, but I think it's a good example of success being a more nebulous term than only being dependent on defeating others.

Disagree. Success isn't really transferred. If I help you do something I know and you help me do something you know we are both more successful. Wealth on the other hand can't really be shared without losing it.

> unless we have someone to compare ourselves to.

Couldn't that someone be one's ancestors, or even one's past self?

There is absolutely a limit to the amount of unique ideas/efforts which make a return across a large percent of the population. That population has an upper limit on spend and time spent adopting said product. They don't have an unlimited amount of time and that's exactly what companies have been hammering on to extract more of. Facebook, for example.

It's time we stop pushing this STUPID narrative that software can make you rich if you are just willing to throw your user's interests out the window and "work harder". That is not how this works.

Wealth is finite at any given moment and it so happens that growth does not affect everyone equally.

On top of that developed economies tend to grow slower - we may all be millionaires by early 70s standards with our fast cars and air travel, but I don't think in 50 years we will be millionaires by today's standards - there simply won't be that much growth in the future.

> Wealth is finite at any given moment

Investment supposes this is not true because wealth is not an evaluation of liquidity. The hardest thing to realize is that that's poor people thinking and you're already behind if that's how you operate (ie the vast majority of the world, including me).

Investment is a promise, or actually a hope - it only gives a perception of value. It's not actual wealth.

To illustrate my point: can you imagine everyone living off passive income today?

I always found the whole idea to be contradictory. They say that the pie isn't fixed, then go on to explain all the risky things you need to do get a larger piece of the expanding pie. Which does in fact mean the pie is finite, just not definite. Because outside of these texts online, success rate is a real limiting factor.