"You, yes, you can reinvest the proceeds of your earlier investments!" You may not beat the market like Warren Buffett. But if you think about a whole civilization practicing that rule, we do better nowadays than historical societies with no banks or stock markets.

By the way -- (only very tangentially related to the topic of this post, I'll admit, but hopefully just enough to pass muster) -- does anybody happen to know a good introduction to the theory behind this statement? Are there any introductory textbooks (microecon? macroecon?) that make the case, for example? Think of me as a very naive reader, who would be tempted to ask "clearly it is people doing actual work who create wealth, how does everybody reinvesting get people to do more / more useful work" and would like to hear the actual answer that convinced you in the first place.

Thanks! :-)