Growth

The concept of 'growth' is a dastardly illusion and behaves like a sliding door's leading and trailing edges. They move together as one, but if you only see the leading edge it appears like a curtain being drawn. Take your eye off the trailing edge of the door and the appearance is one of the curtain extending. Growing in size. The fixed width defines no change, but this also defines the principle of the carrot on a stick: the carrot leads at an exact and unchanging distance ahead of the (out of sight) end of the stick. The carrot encourages continued pursuit of a perceived reward that can never be attained. Moving towards the apparent end of the rainbow will always result in the rainbow appearing to move away from the viewer. It's relative to the viewer's position. If the one moves, then so will the other. It's how the illusion works.

Without growth there would be no inflation. Without inflation there would be no growth. An illusory and very cyclical argument. It leads nowhere and nobody wins.

Except the money lenders

There is no gain, but the illusion of gain suggests some kind of growth. Even a living organism cannot grow without nourishment. All costs go up in proportion to 'growth' and so the gain is... zero. Share values increase, but true value remains stagnant. Any interest in savings appears to suggest profit, but increasing costs (in general) ensure that at best the original value input remains unchanged. At it's most depressing, the 'value' moves to the few. The so-called middle-rich are in delusion, truly believing that personal wealth is on the increase. Take your eye off the ball and you will lose sight of it. It can disappear without (ever) being seen.

If the number of shares in a business increases then the worth appears to increase though shares must be bought. To acquire more, more must be spent. Moving wealth. Buying involves spending. But where does it go? Share values go down. They are bound to eventually. Taking the average 'across the board' view of the pool of shares, the illusion is easy to perpetuate. Some shares climb (and occasionally fall a little and then climb again), so on average there is a continual rise in value. Somewhere else and seemingly unconnected, losses will even out any change by falling. Balancing and evenness as a global average, will be impossible to monitor. Values are more likely to diminish as the illusory 'growth' is at the expense of death elsewhere. Winners and losers: winners cannot exist without losers and how many are in the 'race' (to where?) when there can only be one 'winner'. Everyone who is not that ONE 'winner' is a 'loser' by definition.

No real nett improvement. It just seems so. The illusion. To acquire wealth has a cost effect. The money has to come from somewhere as it cannot be created. It is not obvious who will pay: someone or some group will pay. Shareholders will accept the burden in the belief that an investment can grow. Something lives so something somewhere must die.

Ideas can be created and then converted to material wealth, but as soon as the idea is manipulated, the true value is lost. Only the idea itself, the intellectual property, has a non-material value, which is then exploited to become the product for sale.