Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by coralreef 3561 days ago
I haven't studied this deeply at all, but the nature of capitalism posits that there could be checks and balances to incentivize against this?
1 comments

Not exactly. The question is whether a capitalist society has a stable equilibrium growth path. Mainstream economics assumes a stable equilibrium, because that makes the math work nicely.

Physicists have known for a long time that many systems have unstable equilibria, where a random deviation knocking the system from equilibrium can result in catastrophe. This is the general field of nonlinear dynamics and chaos. The economists, the most famous ones at least, reject the idea without discussion, that the economy could be a chaotic system or even have manifolds where it might enter a chaotic regime.

But there exists an equilibrium: one company has all the money :)
Not even that. The company might make a bad investment, then poof no wealth anywhere.