Stuff That Interests Me

There are just three ways, I once heard someone say, to create real wealth:* You make stuff* You mine stuff* You grow stuffEverything else is just redistribution - pushing what is already there around. We can argue about whether offering a service is “making stuff”. I would say, generally, it is. I’ve always loved that as a maxim by which to view things. Pretty much all wealth creation comes under one of those three categories. You are bringing something new into the world that did not previously exist. It’s why I have issues with forex. The foreign exchange markets are the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world. They are more than 25 times larger in daily turnover than all of the world's stock markets combined. Forex has made many people supremely rich. But is forex trading actually creating new wealth or is it another illusory consequence of fiat, and just pushing existing wealth around? It’s a question for another time because it’s item two on that list - mining - that I want to talk about