BS. Say I’m a chemical engineer, and and and I create a new method to process those vaunted ores . . . have I created wealth, or not?
If you invent a new process which is more productive over existing methods, then you ARE CREATING additional wealth.
That falls under the 4th item in my list of wealth creators.
In summary ANYTHING which increases productivity is a wealth creator.
I spent many years (23 to be exact) in an outfit which designed and manufactured heavy machinery. My contribution was to computerize many engineering activities and computerize manufacturing processes, which were all done manually before. The productivity jumped by orders of magnitude, especially in manufacturing. In the engineering area, my computer programs generated enough details to purchase long delivery items such as forgings, castings and steel plates 3-4 weeks sooner, which helped my company promise delivery of machines 3-4 weeks sooner, which was a competitive advantage over competitors when customers needed the machines ASAP..
I assume the new method is more efficient and hence would process the same amount of ore with less capital investment therby freeing up capital to use for other purposes. Or process more ore etc.
In turn that freed up capital could be used to discover a still more efficient process and the cycle continued. Wealth has been created by the mixture of capital and human intelligence.