Do you consume more than you produce?

Why? What is keeping you from producing more than you consume? Jay Wesley Richards writes,

In free markets characterized by the rule of law and limited government, output per capita goes up over time, which means that the productivity of our labor increases. Our labor is enhanced by “labor saving devices.” That’s why Spanish scholastic philosopher Luis Molina referred to human productivity as the “fruit of our ingenuity.”

Even more fascinating: if you follow the history of technological progress, you discover that over time, we substitute more and more of the matter in a resource not with labor per se, but with the unique resource of mind, called information. Information, unlike the water in Lake Superior and the air in your lungs, is not a finite quantity.

People in free and virtuous societies can grow up to produce more resources than they consume. Some societies, in other words, better enable human beings to be fruitful and multiply, rather than merely to consume. If they did not, market economies would shrink. Instead, over the long run, they grow. In such contexts, the more people you have, the more potential producers you have as well.