You can have high production of lots of low cost stuff, but it's not exactly what most people would understand as "wealth" even though it may create lots of fiat money aka IOU claims over wealth. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
So, while obviously markets create nothing, they are effective institutions to permit the decentralization of the creation process.
And going concerns are not restricted to the formal "productive" sector ... all modern industrial economies involve a mix of productive activity by privately directed going concerns and by publicly directed going concerns.
And of course, while we imagine that industrialization as a linear process of abstraction of production from the household sector, with the decline of household subsistence production ... there are certain zones where we have become accustomed to finishing the production process after buying the product ...
... and it seems likely that the average share of subsistence production in the household sector will begin to rise again over the century ahead. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
You can create wealth just by being aggressively leverage-ish enough.
The current cult of wealth is a feudal cult of leverage. The associated numbers are a misdirection.
Wealth is a synonym of permissable leverage
"Wealth" in the financial press is a position in the interstices of the system that allows the person in that position to extract a toll from the going concerns that generate actual wealth in return for permission for to be allowed to generate that wealth.
"A lovely little productive enterprise you got 'ere, guv'na, shame if somefink was to 'appen to it..." I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
