"The exchange of money in an exchange might be beneficial to society to as a whole but is functionally zero sum for the participants" is apparently such a hard thing to understand, but if it wasn't true then no one would go broke and theft (being a 100% transfer) would be amazing for society.

Pretending to not understand this is what happens when you go pure economics brain, but it's very simple. If I can exchange 1 money (X) for 1 widget (Y), then Less X = Less Y. So if I spent all of my money on your Funko pops yesterday and have less X today for widgets, I get less widgets. It might be good for society that I paid for you to give me Funko pops, but I now have less money. My wealth literally and directly drained in response to increasing yours for the Funko's.

We all understand this, you have to understand this unless you're an idiot who just gives money away and never keeps a budget because you believe that it'll just magically generate for you.