[drorco]

Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly?

One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent.

Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

[mcntsh]

> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly?

It's simply because money is compoundable. The more money you have the more you can make, and the more you make means less other people have.

[_DeadFred_]

"U.S workers just took home their smallest share of capital since 1947"

https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/us-workers-smallest-labor-sha...

[cbolton]

I think you have the right idea, if poorly worded. The economy is not a zero sum game, but the idea works when you apply it not on wealth but on wealth increase. That's more or less the famous r > g formula of Piketty: when the rate of return of capital is larger than the growth rate of the economy, wealth gets more concentrated. Its application has been disputed but the basic principle certainly applies in many situations.

[kjshsh123]

There's a finite amount of money. There's not a finite amount of wealth.

Having lots of wealth does not mean other people have less. If that were the case, there'd be as much wealth today as there was 1000 years ago. Making a company and having it valued at whatever value, does not remove that amount of wealth from other people.

[rayiner]

Is compounding interest why Jeff Bezos is rich? Or is it because you get three Amazon deliveries a day?

[Manuel_D]

> and the more you make means less other people have

This is a false zero sum view of wealth that is unfortunately all too common.

[drorco]

OK that's one thing, but still there are many new billionaires that didn't exist a few decades ago, let alone a few years ago. Why did they become billionaires and the wealth didn't distribute over a much larger group?

[Lionga]

money (or more exact wealth) is not a null sum game.

[koe123]

> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly?

Compound interest, and as (admittedly) an armchair economist I buy into the argument that goes along the lines of:

"when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth".

In my view, r has been greater than g for some time now.

> Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

To me, it is clear that while Europe optimizes for quality of life to a large extent, Americans really drink the coo-laid and enthusiastically optimize for shareholder value. I highly encourage you to give life in Europe a go at some point. I hope you'll return (or stay) also having reached the same perspective.

[drorco]

I'm not American. I did stay for months though in the US (SF, NY) and Europe (Italy, France, Greece, PT, DE, more) at times.

I think for competitive and talented people, US in general offers much more lucrative opportunities as long as you're OK with the US specific drawbacks. For non-competitive people, living in Europe would probably be a more convenient.

I think the problem though is in the future, both the US and Europe has grave societal and economic issues but from the different angles. Europe lacks economical drive and seems to discourage change on a cultural level. The US on the other hand seems to be an extreme catalyst.

I'm not familiar enough with quantitative data to judge on the compound interest, nevertheless I think in the last few decades we have already been witness on the global level to major changes in wealth: empires like UK have shrank, giants like China have risen. This had been very different a few decades ago and is an anecdote at least that compound interest can only do so much for empires, in the face of major changes.

[kjshsh123]

This isn't a view thing though. We have the data. What you're saying is what Piketty said.

Only issue is, when you account for depreciation, you find that r>g applied to housing (so boomer NIMBYs) not billionaires.

This is not a Karl Marx thing, but a Henry George thing.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-...

[palmotea]

> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent.

Luck always plays the biggest role. Maybe the billionaires would have always been successful in some way, but not be a billionaire or even a millionaire.

Also, your argument sounds like a just-so story designed to support the status quo.

> the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent.

Is is really a good idea to be ruled by the people with the greatest "wealth attraction?"

> Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

Yes, because regardless of anything else, the wealth imbalance has been politically destabilizing. Your comment strikes me as out-of-touch quantitative thinking: making certain easily-measured numbers going up the highest goal, while ignoring other things that are harder to quantify. That's a blind spot shared by a lot of people, especially tech people.

[drorco]

I'm mostly trying to make sense of the world and so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense.

So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent.

We can try and moderate it as a system (e.g some forms of democracy, socialism, etc.) to maybe lower the amplitudes, but it would be ignorant to deny that this might be a core part of current human nature. Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie.

Now imagine, there'd be some alien government, who'd be like "whoa humans are making way too disproportionate progress compared to the other species, let's tax/prune them so they don't get too much power".

[mcny]

Not to be too glib but my mom would ask counter questions like this:

Why is it that we have to trim out nails when they grow? Why not leave it natural?

Why do we remove the weed in between the pavers in our backyard? Why not let it be natural?

The fact is the world around us needs constant work. Our capitalism is no different. It needs constant pruning or it becomes gluttonous. There was a book I think which said most people involved in illegal drug trafficking are barely getting by, most of the income is soaked up at the top. I don't remember the point the bio was trying to make but it feels like that way for any enterprise these days.

The richest people in the US have reportedly increased their net worth by over 1.5T over the course of the last year or so.

How is this sustainable?

[drorco]

Isn't this basically Entropy? Why do stars fuse and spread out their energy? Can't they just keep it all in? They are going to blow up/die out eventually, how is this sustainable?

The notion I'm getting is that these forces that drive change are bigger than all of us, and they are inherently unsustainable in the larger scale of things, pretty similar to how solar systems are not really sustainable in a scale much larger than us, but not that is still pretty small in a universal scale.

So for your perspective it might be unsustainable, but for the bigger system what you describe is smaller than a grain of sand.

[kjshsh123]

US homeowners have increased their net worth like $15 trillion since the start of the pandemic.

Besides, there's this thing called tax incidence and it's not as simple as "tax the billionaires" because it's not clear how that plays out in terms of people's wages or middle class investments.

On the other hand, land value taxes would actually be incident on landowners.

[vladvasiliu]

I think there's clearly a question of envy which doesn't seem addressed.

I'm not particularly in favour of high taxation, but I think that the argument is a bit more subtle than that. The general point is that "the ultra rich" are able to benefit from a whole host of loopholes which allow them to pay proportionally less than the plebs.

Now, this specific point seems somewhat debatable, judging by the fact that people don't seem to agree; I personally have not looked into the matter to form an opinion.

Maybe our tax code hasn't kept up with the financialization of the economy. In any case, this whole tax increase thing, at least as I see it in France, since to spill over to "regular rich people", as in engineers or similar who "just" have a relatively high salary.

Another issue, which I think is different but is rolled into complaints about rising tax rates is what the state actually does with the money. As in "I'm ok with paying tax, but not to fund this or that thing". In France, specifically, many "public service" offices have closed, having people either travel great distances or fight half-assed computer systems, while, at the same time, the number of public servants (so, cost) has increased.

[dv_dt]

Look for the Sugarscape model research studies. With uniform equally distributed starting point, fairly unbiased rules, and a set of random early wins, large disparities tend to accumulate over time without active policy to counteract it.

[jibal]

Which is why there should be active policy to counteract it.

[rawgabbit]

You could have asked the same question when slavery was legal. Why is slavery not evenly distributed. Social injustice has been the default since the beginning of known history. Social justice is something that has to be fought for.

[1718627440]

Because a tree has better access times than a list, so some amount of hierarchy results in a better performance than unstructured set of individuals. As directing people means more available work force for ones goals, and money represents ability to do something and availability to resources, some people will have more money than others.

[RGamma]

There's many shades of grey between financial laissez faire and enforced equality. This entire "taxes are theft/unnecessary" (and frankly extremist in the neutral definition of the word) thinking is destroying the US politically and socially right now.

Do you not see this? Probably because you don't feel it in your pocket (yet, let's see what happens when the USD crashes. I will feel it too, no doubt.)

There's the belief that the economy can be a mighty tool to improve our lives, but isn't it going pretty much overboard since some time? Is this materialistic growth-at-all-costs ideology really making average US lives better these days?

From the outside the US feels like a runner that is stretching its arm towards the finish line (total automation) while also falling on their ass.

[jibal]

> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed

That's not an argument, it's a completely counterfactual assertion ... or rather, the assertion that this is the cause of uneven distribution of wealth.

> Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

But of course it's not true, it's just an attempt to justify a morally bankrupt sociopathic ideology.