Made money? Maybe you are just lucky

In classic economics, the market returns from any endeavor converges to zero over time, provided there is a free entry of participants. In order to extract profits, an entity should persistently over time have an advantage, that is hard to replicate. In an ideal world that would be the delivery of a better product or service through innovation, quality or customer service etc. Most importantly, the buyer should receive a value equal to or greater than what they paid for. However,in today's world (or through history) this is clearly false. There are many factors in the external world totally detached from market economics.The biggest buyer in today's economy is the government. If an unscruplous contractor bribes a government official and then uses substandard materials to fulfill a government contract, he and the official become rich but we get a very poor return on our tax funds.Multiply this by zillion x and you get the picture. Getting paid for delivering questionable value is not limited to corrupt contractors and officials.One could lump Mckinsey DEI consultants too perhaps, if you have ever worked for, or worked with or observed the setting of a large company (barring a choice few perhaps) you would know that the vast majority do not produce anything of note or value, people who climb the hierarchy are often the best politicians and not the ones with ideas or talent.(They like to call it EQ however)

In a market economy, you can get away with producing nothing only if your wares have an artificial or distribution driven moat that is very hard to bypass. A side effect of having this protection is that overtime you collect huge amounts of rent, and pay some of it to people who are very good at "seeming" knowledgeable. You also, have little to no incentive to innovate.