Because money circulates and is only withdrawn when it becomes unrecognisable in numerical value, it seems to some that wealth circulates in the same way, that is that it circulates without loss. However this is false since money indicates a flow of resources, in part notional or potential or in title only, in part real, and these resources are consumed and exhausted as waste, while while money flows on undiminished.

For example, money passes from taxpayer to government and from government to service providers, and the service is provided to the taxpayer, and the money flows on from the service provider to their own suppliers. It might appear that no loss has taken place, adn that all are benefitting. However, the resource flows involve consumption and exhaustion as waste at every stage. The tax collectors must be housed, fed and transported and otherwise supported, for example through health care, all involving the absolute consumption of resources. The civil service in the various departments administering the service or regulating activities, must be similarly catered for, all implying losses as waste. The service providers likewise. Furthermore, the service itself is obviously consumption.

The question, then, is why should we tolerate the waste of resources implicit in and certain in the intermediate and unnecessary stages of tax collection and state administration, let alone that destroyed by the inefficiency of state commissioning of services where poor bargains will be struck and the services themselves poorly targeted because they are commissioned by uninterested parties.