> any reasonable definition of "wealth" is going to be dependent on utility metrics that vary from person to person

Yes any reasonable definition of "wealth" will depend on utility metrics that vary from person to person. Despite these differences there is ample evidence that societies are able to measure wealth just fine using conventional currency units such as dollars, shekels, euros, ... These units can be exchanged back for things that depend on utility metrics that vary from person to person. It is these utility differences that drive the modern economy. If two parties have the same value for a good or service why would they transact with each other? Always there must a difference in value for a voluntary transaction to happen.

>That the government (or the Fed under the direction of the government) intentionally pushed down interest rates with a policy of QE? That lowering rates increased the price of existing assets, generating a profit for the owners? Or that this was just inflation, not wealth creation?

By design currencies lose value and they are meant for short term holding. When a ruler shirks all the measurements using that ruler are larger was there wealth created? Obviously not. Wealth is "stuff": factories, power plants, roads, cars, houses, farms, ... The amount of currency may double and prices of everything double but wealth can be unchanged.

> In any case, when rates dropped, first thing I did was buy a house, which almost immediately went up by 30% (based on comps). So apparently the reasoning at least had some predictive power.

A lotto winner shares their "system" with you, do you believe "its predictive power"? So let's consider your logic: When zoning restrictions or lots of immigration causes a housing shortage so a few houses sell for double the price does that mean the wealth in all houses has doubled? What do you think will happen to cost of housing if populations decline? Are populations due to decline anywhere? What happened to price of oil when there was too much of it during COVID?

> I also made some large stock gains going 100% into the market, but was too timid to use margin to multiply that.

So next time maybe you and certainly others like you will be tempted to use leverage causing valuations to climb ever higher pulling in others to do the same thing and how do you think this will end when the price bubble pops? Do you think price bubbles create wealth? They create the illusion of wealth because people think the paper wealth is wealth but paper wealth is not wealth. When Telsa stock price doubles in a day it is unlikely that the amount of Tesla stuff has doubled in a day. What happened is a few shareholders changed how they feel about Tesla and stock prices represent those feelings rather than wealth. This is true about all bubbles including housing.

> Profit, as in dollars in minus dollars out, is much easier to calculate, but only tangentially relates to wealth.

Surplus value can also be measured in heads of cattle, pork bellies, bushels of wheat, gallons of oil, units of energy, hours of labor, ... all of which convert to universal currency units based on supply / demand for these goods.

> The original comment that you quoted and responded to was criticizing the article for implying that profit generating activity is all that matters (and hence the metric to measure instead of e.g. network deployment), ignoring non-profit activity which is arguably more important.

Yes, I asked "Can an activity be sustainable without involving profit or depending on profitable activities? Please share examples."

Notice so far I have yet to get any examples.

I also said that "When transactions are informed and voluntary and there is profit in a competitive market that is wealth created."

So what is the purpose of those who deploy communications networks? Create wealth? Spend wealth? If spending wealth is the purpose then profits do not matter. If wealth creation is the purpose, how else to judge success if not by whether the benefit is more than costs (aka there is a profit)? Why do it otherwise?