Firstly, please remove your links from your response. I do not want people to go from my article to yours. I want them to continue to read my articles which I take time writing, and which are the sole source of my income.

No, I haven't missed anything.

Let's go back to basics - barter.

One man farms goats and the other man farms cows.

Cows and goats both have meat when slaughtered and both provide milk when they breed.

A goat can give birth to two goats while a cow will give birth to one calf.

So here's the thing. If one wants to maintain the same level of wealth for everybody in the community, one cow would probably be bartered for two or three goats, because that would mean the same amount of meat, milk, hide, etc.

If one wanted inequality to develop, then either the goat owner would insist that it is only one goat per one cow, or the cow owner would insist on six goats for his one cow.

This is not a growth of wealth. This is a slow road to inequality.

The neoliberalism mantra of charging what the market will bear is robbing people and creating vast inequalities. If, for instance, someone is dying of thirst, they would be prepared to pay their entire salary to get water - even though water was cheap. What the market will bear, as opposed to 'cost plus' (the old model) meant that goods became cheaper. Charging what the market will bear does not make good cheaper.

Apple for instance sells far fewer items than the other tech guys, but the profit margin is far higher. In addition, Apple service is hell, their products break down more frequently, but if you're an Apple owner, you don't know that, because you've bought into the hype that you're superior because you bought a superior product.

None of this is beneficial to society. Nor does it create wealth for all

Wealth for all is created when everybody, and I mean everybody, has what they need in order to live a good life.

Society ha benefited from technology, and you, along with many others, confuse the outcome of the Englightenment with the advent of capitalism. I'm not going to go into that now, but briefly, we have been able to devleop tech and science because the Enlightenment created the scientific method and the church eventually stopped killing scientists because they said something against the bible.

After that, it was a matter of building on the shoulders of the knowledge that was supplied by the generation before hand.

Again, please remove your links from your comment. Thank you.