The Biggest Myth Created By The Left

Yesterday I’ve had an interesting discussion with one who has fallen for the biggest myth that the Left has ever created.
It is THE foundation of the whole rotten, stinking ideology of the Left, an ideology that has been packaged and repackaged under different names and in different variants, all built on the same premise.
This premise is the myth of wealth distribution as a zero-sum game. In other words: the wealth one gains has to be taken from someone else. If one becomes rich someone else has to become poor.
This argument is so pervasive and yet it is so easy to shoot down.
I brought up the mother of all counter-arguments which my interlocutor could not refute.
Let’s go back in time 10,000 years. Our ancestors were hunters, gatherers and scavengers. By today’s standards they lived in abject poverty. Health care was virtually non-existent. Live expectancy was perhaps 30 to 40 years. Housing was primitive at best. Life was an uncertain constant struggle against nature. The possessions of the average person were very few. Even chiefs of tribes or kings were hardly better off than today’s average worker.
Then a technological revolution happened. Agriculture was invented.
At one point in time the persons who invented or constantly improved agriculture were able to produce more food than they themselves consumed.
This surplus made the stock breeders and farmers wealthier than the hunters and gatherers without making the hunters and gatherers poorer.
Not only didn’t the hunters and gatherers become poorer, they became RICHER because of agriculture.
Because of the food surplus produced by agriculture some people could devote all their time and energy to doing highly specialized work, producing things such as pottery, weapons, tools, clothing etc.
These specialists traded the goods they produced for food.
The hunters and gatherers traded some of their food and other things they produced for better, more effective weapons, traps and other tools.
This in turn allowed them to hunt more efficiently, enabling them to produce more food and INCREASE their wealth.
Thus was all of our civilization born.
Bottom line: Increasing your wealth by producing something that other people need or other people want increases the wealth for ALL.