[WalterBright]

Wealth in a free market is not concentrated, it is created. It does not "flow", either, as free trades are an exchange of value, not a flow of value.

Wealth disparity comes from people creating different amounts of value.

[zelphirkalt]

Only until your business is targetted by big corp and goes bust/bankrupt.

Or acquired. Then the wealth flows upwards, employees are cut, to make things more profitable, and the people who originally created something great are not getting much for it. Instead, if they are not let go, they are under new lords, who take a big chunk of the profits.

Or a competitor gets VC funded and by means of marketting and sales, instead of actually making a better product and your business' product's adoption is dwarfed.

I think there are many reasons why some business can fail, and most of them are not about the amount of created value. The free market is not a rationally acting person.

[WalterBright]

The reason businesses fail is they cost more to operate than the value they produce.

[cxr]

You haven't responded (clearly) here to anything I actually said. You just posted two short, dismissive comments consisting of glib non-specifics.

If you want to dispute what I'm saying, how about starting with the example I gave (an employee figures out how to automate part of their job, enabling them to either 1. deliver the same amount of value to their employer at a fraction of the effort, or 2. deliver something like 2x–10x or more value, owing to the fact that they've been able to automate it)?

[WalterBright]

If you automate part of your job resulting in a 2x improvement of your productivity, you have demonstrated a skill that you can sell for more money. That's how you realize the value you created.

The wealth didn't "flow" to you. You created it.

[cxr]

> The wealth didn't "flow" to you. You created it.

Er, right. The "flow" here refers to what happens to the wealth after creation.

If after you create it you or your employer then undertake some change to the work arrangement (e.g. imposing a higher quota on productivity—thus allowing your employer to capture the additional value that you created while keeping your net wealth constant, along with the day-to-day toil you the worker are subjected to, probably—or maybe even increasing it), that would be an example of wealth flowing upward.

You created outsized value relative to needs of the employer. Your (wealthier) employer captured it and enriched themselves. That's wealth concentration.

[nickpp]

When buying lunch are you paying the (fixed) price asked by its creator or are you sharing (some of) the future value that hamburger is providing you in nourishment and work energy for the rest of the afternoon?

[cxr]

What?

[timmb]

I think it’s more complex than that. Wealth is often created by monopolising things (e.g. enclosures) instead of by creating them.

[WalterBright]

There are 33 million businesses in the US. Are they monopolies?

[RichEO]

On what do you base these statements?

[WalterBright]

Listening to and reading books by economists. If you think about it, you'll see it in action all the time. After all, consider yourself. Does wealth "flow" to you? Or do you create value at your job, and exchange that value for your paycheck?

[reddit_clone]

Some Iyn Rand novel would be my guess.