I think you would enjoy reading Henry George, or indeed any account of the role of land in wealth distribution from Adam Smith, David Ricardo and JS Mill onwards.
Widening wealth inequality is in part due to policy. Private ownership of land rent is a policy decision - the state enforces exclusive title and does not socialise rent.
There are working alternatives. Most indigenous cultures have collective ownership. Some modern societies have melded the best attributes of collective ownership and private incentives.
Many of those at the top of your mountain got there by inheriting their parents' position halfway up or by the dumb luck of rising land values. Many of those at the bottom found themselves there because the state put them there at the behest of those at the top (this is called exclusive title).
Redistribution to narrow inequality is possible without dulling incentives.
Singapore has 90% home ownership and very equal opportunity by global standards. It is also one of the world's most prosperous countries despite having no natural resource endowment. It did this by socialising the growing value of urban land to pay for universal housing access and a well-functioning state while keeping taxes on productive activity low.
Good points and reading tip. My "mountain" is really a diamond and the height of the wide point between the top and the bottom is certainly subject to public policy influence. My main objective was to argue against those who obsess over the gap from top to bottom - some folks will always find a way to have nothing and, in an ever richer world, the richest will always be richer than ever before.
There need be no hand-wringing over the fact that in our globalised online economy anyone inventing, say, a new and useful platform that becomes a natural monopoly, will get staggeringly rich.
We can and probably should tax most of it off them (so long as we don't materially damage incentives for future innovators; I assume the first billion is enough of a drawcard and the billions after that don't add any incentive).
But the fact their fortune happened in the first place is, as you nicely point out, a sign of our material progress.
To put it more edgily, what if wealth is no longer a mountain, but a Sky Tower where the most money is to be made by setting fire to the elevators.
"The deros will be with us always" (to read incredibly uncharitably) is an amazing explanation for inequality, but is it inevitable that the handful of technogarchs kissing Trump's inaugural ring have as much as half of America and thereby get to further their projects of enshittifying their produccts (and thus society) simply because enshittifying is more profitable than improving?
If the wealthy are risk-takers it's in a theoretical, statistical sense rather than a material one - governments are pretty well disciplined to deliver "investor certainty" after all.
Yes I do feel better for having got that off my chest, thanks for asking.
I think you would enjoy reading Henry George, or indeed any account of the role of land in wealth distribution from Adam Smith, David Ricardo and JS Mill onwards.
Widening wealth inequality is in part due to policy. Private ownership of land rent is a policy decision - the state enforces exclusive title and does not socialise rent.
There are working alternatives. Most indigenous cultures have collective ownership. Some modern societies have melded the best attributes of collective ownership and private incentives.
Many of those at the top of your mountain got there by inheriting their parents' position halfway up or by the dumb luck of rising land values. Many of those at the bottom found themselves there because the state put them there at the behest of those at the top (this is called exclusive title).
Redistribution to narrow inequality is possible without dulling incentives.
Singapore has 90% home ownership and very equal opportunity by global standards. It is also one of the world's most prosperous countries despite having no natural resource endowment. It did this by socialising the growing value of urban land to pay for universal housing access and a well-functioning state while keeping taxes on productive activity low.
Good points and reading tip. My "mountain" is really a diamond and the height of the wide point between the top and the bottom is certainly subject to public policy influence. My main objective was to argue against those who obsess over the gap from top to bottom - some folks will always find a way to have nothing and, in an ever richer world, the richest will always be richer than ever before.
That's a very good point.
There need be no hand-wringing over the fact that in our globalised online economy anyone inventing, say, a new and useful platform that becomes a natural monopoly, will get staggeringly rich.
We can and probably should tax most of it off them (so long as we don't materially damage incentives for future innovators; I assume the first billion is enough of a drawcard and the billions after that don't add any incentive).
But the fact their fortune happened in the first place is, as you nicely point out, a sign of our material progress.
To put it more edgily, what if wealth is no longer a mountain, but a Sky Tower where the most money is to be made by setting fire to the elevators.
"The deros will be with us always" (to read incredibly uncharitably) is an amazing explanation for inequality, but is it inevitable that the handful of technogarchs kissing Trump's inaugural ring have as much as half of America and thereby get to further their projects of enshittifying their produccts (and thus society) simply because enshittifying is more profitable than improving?
If the wealthy are risk-takers it's in a theoretical, statistical sense rather than a material one - governments are pretty well disciplined to deliver "investor certainty" after all.
Yes I do feel better for having got that off my chest, thanks for asking.