What would be the economic consequences of prohibiting all economic activities which do not generate wealth? For example, you cant have an economy full of hairdressers, because they dont produce anything, so why would it be so bad to ban them?
similarly, as various financial markets do not create wealth, but instead merely transfer it, what would be the consequences of banning these markets?
You're going to have to offer a pretty descriptive (and restrictive) defintion of "wealth".
That would be making a religion out of tangible wealth.
The point of economic interaction is for people to get what they want. If they want their hair dressed, so be it. If they want to pay people for transferring money around, why not?
If someone thinks they are being foolish, that they will be sorry some day for frittering away their time and money on trifles, then of course that someone is entitled to their opinion, but why are they entitled to impose it on others?
The problems we have now are there not because we have allowed hairdressing and financial services, but because we have prohibited everything else. Taxes and regulations and unions have made it difficult to impossible for someone to open and run a business that produces tangible things. Why do you think we buy it all from China?
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It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
The economy would cease to exist because of the fact that wealth is subjective as is the act of creation as creation doesn't actually happen in our world, only the transferring of material objects into a new state of affairs.