In the case of natural resource boons, where what is happening, in an economic sense, is the benefit of hundreds of millions to billions of years of natural capital appreciation extracted with no realised economic cost. This is a vast unbooked. cost, but still a real one. Separation taxes reimpose this in part.

Most other cases of competitive advantage lack this element, though network-based superiority resembles it in parts (comms, transport, trade, urbanisation, IT, banking, military & political power).