"Whenever you make any product there's a thermodynamic limit to the efficiency with which you can make that product. There's a thermodynamic limit to the efficiency with which you can provide a service." -- Of course there is a theoretical and practical limit to the efficiency of any process: the first law of thermodynamics guarantees that. Fortunately for us, this fact has literally _nothing_ to do with whether or not the economy is a zero-sum game. You have missed the point entirely.Let me give you a simple example to demonstrate my point.I am a gardener and produce vegetables. I want to eat fish with my dinner. My neighbor is a fisherman and wants to eat vegetables with his fish. We work out a barter whereby I trade part of my crop for part of my neighbor's catch. An economic transaction has occurred. I am better off, because I desired the fish I received more than the vegetables I parted with. Importantly, my neighbor is also better off, because he wanted the vegetables more than the fish. My gain is not my neighbor's loss: we have both profited from the exchange.My example uses fish and vegetables, but you can substitute any goods or services you want and add any number of participants, and the result stays the same.If I may make a guess (and I admit it's just a guess), it seems to me like you are making the mistaken assumption that the value of any good or service is measured by the amount of amount of labor or material that went into making it. Many people make this assumption, but it is not borne out by observation of the real world. The value of a good or service is determined by how much people desire it and how difficult it is to obtain it, in other words supply and demand."The idea of regulation is to smooth out the bumps." -- Sure, that's the _idea_. Whether or not the results match the intent is another conversation entirely.