Yes, it is free and it comes from the sun. It provides our fuel and thereby our operating temperature (37 degrees C) that gets us up in the morning to do things and create value (wealth/profit) that can very often be transferred via money to and from other wealth creators. And that means all of us on Earth. The earth is so productive that we can afford to trade value residing in abstract forms as in the arts, caring professions and the bureaucracies (government).
Natural resources don't run out. The quantity of elements on earth has and will remain the same for a few billion years. Application of energy and information permits inter-conversion of their combined forms as we wish, if we're smart enough. Not a given, I admit.
The creation of global wealth over the last 20-30 years has brought millions out of poverty. This is unprecedented. And it hasn't been wealth taken from others.
if you consider the sun to be an unlimited source of energy ( which technically speaking it is not) then energy is still limited. it is limited by the amount of light we receive and our technological ability to extract energy from said light.
our technological ability to extract power from the sun is so limited we are forced to mine the earth to extract solar energy from the past (aka oil).
natural resources do run out. they are frequently converted into forms that are unuseable. in the rare event that a natural resource can be converted back to a usable form (recycling) we must further tax our energy reservoirs to perform such feat.
the wealth that was taken from the earth was not taken from anyone you know now. Perhaps your great great great grandchildren will live in a society where oil is more expensive then gold.
However even when we remove all the factors I describe above there is still wealth 'theft' taking place in our society right now. The issue is that some forms of wealth need to be extracted by many people working together. when you have these creatures called billionaires that own wealth they in no way produced all by themselves you know that wealth among these collaberative groups was distributed unevenly. This is known as wealth inequality and it happens as a direct result of extracting wealth from other humans.
Out of poverty and into what? Remember, poverty is man-made. From where I'm looking, 3 billion+ pairs of eye are staring back at me from poverty, that too is unprecedented.
You say natural resources don't run out, how about clean air and clean water? Species diversity?
Poverty is not man-made, it's what happens when wealth is not produced. Wealth is man-made. Do you suppose cavemen were wealthy by our standards? If not, was their poverty man-made then?
Natural resources don't run out. The quantity of elements on earth has and will remain the same for a few billion years. Application of energy and information permits inter-conversion of their combined forms as we wish, if we're smart enough. Not a given, I admit.
The creation of global wealth over the last 20-30 years has brought millions out of poverty. This is unprecedented. And it hasn't been wealth taken from others.