Increasing our effectiveness removing natural resources doesn’t increase the amount on earth, so again, fixed. We will eventually run out.

Desalination assumes that the ocean is clean water. Micro plastics would like to have a word with you.

We're so far off using anywhere near all of even the easily available natural resources on Earth that considering it as a limited quantity is fatuous. By the time we legitimately run out of materials on Earth we'll be able to colonize other planets or just create whatever we need through fusion and chemical synthesis.

Desalination for potable water includes filtration which removes microplastics along with everything else.

How am I moving the goal posts? I literally started out saying it's a fixed resource and the only way to increase is to colonize space. Your response is "but we can use more of it than we're using today" - sure, but it's STILL a fixed resource. We can move portions of it from one place to another. We can come up with creative solutions to utilize more of it than we are today. NONE of that changes the fact it's a fixed resource, and if/when we happen to use or destroy it all, it isn't magically going to create more on its own.

>We're so far off using anywhere near all of even the easily available natural resources on Earth that considering it as a limited quantity is fatuous.

*In your lifetime. If you look at the rate of development and destruction caused by humans, to claim we'll NEVER do it is RIDICULOUS. We'll never destroy the rainforest. We'll never take down all of the california redwoods. We'll never kill all of the bison roaming the plains of the midwest. We'll never... Sorry that I'm concerned for my great grandkids (if I happen to have any) and the generations beyond those, not to mention the entire human race. My purview of the world doesn't begin and end with me.

>Desalination for potable water includes filtration which removes microplastics along with everything else.

Uhh, no. The current method of removing microplastics from seawater includes using chemicals that are deadly to humans. Potable desalinated drinking water includes our tiny friends.

That's missing the point completely. No one is going to argue that a Helium, or Cadmium, or Carbon shortage will be the death of us all, and reducing this planet's natural resources to just its constituent chemical elements is depressingly naive.

When people talk about natural resources, they mean the functional elements of our planet's ecosystem that keeps this planet habitable for us. They mean forests, that regulate temperature and humidity. They mean insects, that pollinate our crops for us. They mean the glaciers, that create an abundant supply of fresh water.

We're nowhere near the level of engineering that we can replace the natural systems we're destroying with artificial machines. Not at scale, at least.

It is possible to create wealth. If I can do something that you can't and you can do something that I can not, then if we exchange services we can create wealth from nothing. I have more than at the start, you have more than at the start and nobody else is affected.

The maximum possible wealth I think is also not limited. There is always potential to take something and create something with more worth. Good, pure example is art. Painter takes resources that are relatively cheap and plentiful (paints, canvas, his time) and can create something of huge value to some people. Intel might take a bunch of sand and other resources and create processors from it.

There is also "intellectual property" which is not tied to any natural resources. Anybody can create something new (derive new chemical formula or write a book) that would be an example of creating wealth from nothing.