> doubling the supply of cabbage on the market, which we would expect to more or less halve the price, leading to ... a zero sum game ;)
No. Noooo. This stuff is all connected. At a minimum, leading to consumers of cabbage spending less money in the market for foodstuffs, instead being free to spend the money elsewhere, leading to an increase in their personal well-being and economic growth in other sectors.
(And that's assuming that there is no change in the number of entrants into the home-cabbage-farming sector.)
From the perspective of the farmer it's still worse than zero-sum because they've paid to become educated while still bringing home the same amount of income. This scenario also assumed that education brought real productivity gains vs. being a signal.
It's actually negative-sum, because it presumably costs some amount of money/work/resources to produce more cabbages. So while cost-per-cabbage increases, sales price decreases.
Compare and contrast to the arguments about "highest worker productivity in history" while wages stagnate.
No. Noooo. This stuff is all connected. At a minimum, leading to consumers of cabbage spending less money in the market for foodstuffs, instead being free to spend the money elsewhere, leading to an increase in their personal well-being and economic growth in other sectors.
(And that's assuming that there is no change in the number of entrants into the home-cabbage-farming sector.)