[dlss]

> Analysis of the famines in Bangladesh and the role of speculation in them has been done by Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen

Then, assuming he agrees with your above summary, I encourage both you and Amartya to locate the foundational assumption. It really would be big news to a lot of people.

> Regarding economics as a science, it is widely accepted by economists that it is not a precise science, and has no inviolable axioms like math

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_economics would be a good starting point if you are wondering at economic axioms, etc. The Austrian School generally did a good job building models worth thinking about, rather than devolving into econometric-style silliness.

> Any "just" and "fair" system could only begin by returning this wealth back to society.

A lot of us disagree.

[wz1000]

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_economics

Like I said, mathematical models of economics are a simplification, and this fact is widely accepted by most economists. This is not by any means a dismissal, as it provides valuable insight into the behavior of human society, but viewing it as the beginning and end of economics will place massive limitations on any analysis.

In particular, as I mentioned, the study of sociological conditions and human psychology provide valuable insights. Take a look at behavioral economics and the work of people like Daniel Kahneman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics

> A lot of us disagree.

It is a simple conclusion that follows from three premises, the first of which you seemed to accept earlier, the second is self evident, and the third of which follows from simple economic principles

1. A lot of the wealth today has been created through illegitimate and unfair means.

2. Wealth gives its owner power over society and the direction it takes.

3. People who have power/wealth will do anything in their abilities to maintain and further increase it.

[dlss]

(Going meta for a second: I'm sorry this took me so long to notice, but I think this might have become a political discussion. I had believed we were principally discussing mathematical fairness as it applies to markets, with maybe some colorful/relaxed examples to keep thing interesting, but that the examples were all relating back to mathematical fairness. Sorry for being dense :/)

> This is not by any means a dismissal, as it provides valuable insight into the behavior of human society, but viewing it as the beginning and end of economics will place massive limitations on any analysis.

My personal interest in economics has roughly nothing to do with understanding human behavior -- I'm interested in incentive structures/mechanism design, mathematical fairness, agency, decision theory, optimal play, optimally exploitative play, cooperation/coordination/defection in partial information games, etc. This is to say that, for me, economics becomes uninteresting as soon as you worry if human behavior matches the model. Econs are so much cooler than humans! It's much more fun to ask what they would do, and what can be done to improve their outcomes.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics

Yes, I am familiar, especially as it relates to faulty decision making in professional life (base rate neglect, availability bias, etc). I don't think he's considered to be part of the field, but I've also found George Polya's How to Solve it to be related here. He explicitly discusses heuristic search for math proofs, and how this can amount to a blind spot.

> It is a simple conclusion that follows from three premises

(This was what made me realize what had happened). My disagreement is with respect to the question of "can a fair game be created within an unfair game, even in a context where you can't correct historical unfairness?" -- to that I say yes (with my earlier caveats about physical limits of fairness in our world).

Perhaps now that I've explained more about my background and perspective, you can consider this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13442034) again from the perspective of "Will capitalism survive the robot revolution?" -- the econs I love will (I hope/expect) finally be a reasonable model of economic behavior. Therefore I hope capitalism will survive, since that would ensure I got to live in a good/fair world. If you are aware of some way in which a capitalist system, when populated by robots/econs, could be improved with respect to fairness, I'm skeptical but quite interested.

Re: the political question you asked. If there were a way to say for sure if wealth was unearned I'd absolutely support confiscating it, if not I'm skittish and afraid of causing more harm than good.