Solely moving assets within the system does not create growth of the entire system. No new assets have been created in the exchange.
One group digs the holes and the other fills them, and it can appear that productivity for both is good while the system doesn't particularly make any headway.
I don't care for peanuts (in fact, I'm allergic to them). The subjective value that I assign to them is zero (or negative)
Same thing, you don't care for shellfish (religious reasons).
Suppose we move around existing assets -- trade peanuts for shellfish.
All of a sudden both of us have something we can use, of non-zero subjective value (the only kind of value that exists, btw).
To say that no value has been created in the transaction is quite simply to ignore the basic universal motivation for trade.
Every voluntary transaction happens only because both parties believe that they're getting the better part of the deal (I'd rather have shellfish than peanuts).
That's not the sort of activity the article was taking aim at; the author's example of regulators and compliance officers was appropriate, I think. The agents may have come to act in a manner where much of the labour that each engages in is justified by the actions of the other, and so the bulk of their combined labour cancels itself out and we have little increased utility on the whole. Whereas your trade of shellfish and peanuts don't behave in this manner.
The quote I pulled was the guy complaining about real estate agents who do nothing but facilitate ownership transfers. The peanuts/shellfish trade is precisely analogous.
> Solely moving assets within the system does not create growth of the entire system.
This is completely false. As I've pointed out elsewhere, the possibility of trading existing assets means that one entity (say, a farm) can produce more of a good (say, rice) than it can directly consume. Without exchanging goods, this would make no sense, specialization of labor would be lost, and the production of all types of goods would crater.
That's still a micro perspective; and besides, the farm is creating goods, rather than operating in a zero-sum manner, it is adding product to the system. Whereas the labour of individuals does not operate in this manner, and it is possible for a system of individuals to be working feverishly without meaningful change occurring. The author used the example of regulators and compliance officers as a sort of off-hand way of expressing the kind of relationship where the bulk of the labour within the system cancels itself out because it arises from agents having to respond to the actions of one another, and doesn't necessarily increase overall utility.
One group digs the holes and the other fills them, and it can appear that productivity for both is good while the system doesn't particularly make any headway.