in order for someone to make money, they are taking value from somebody else and collecting it for themselves.

Sadly, yes. It invariably ends up as a zero-sum game. For every winner, there's an equal and opposite loser.

Providing actual value — as in taking an unused resource, turning it into something usable, marketing it in a way where people GAIN from having its utility while the maker GAINS from production — is unsettlingly rare. At best things tend to be no more than value added, and even that feels like the exception, rather than the norm.

I approach things with a great deal of caution and cynicism. As an entrepreneurial sort, my first thought tends to be "how is someone ELSE with better resources going to copy this and leave me hanging... again?"

Society seems to have placed increasing emphasis on copying, shortcuts and exploitation, rather than original thought and creativity. But maybe that is more about human nature than about a current cultural trend.

=^..^=