People always flippantly quote this without ever looking at the distribution of the actual data.
Whenever people see an uneven distribution they cite something about power laws being that natural order of things and that ends the discussion.
It turns out in many, many cases (I'm not sure if it's particular one) the observed behavior follows nothing like a power law.
A good example of this is net-worth distributions. People often say "of course there's super rich people, that's just a power law! It's not concerning income inequality, it's nature!". But if you pull up the data and do a log-log plot you see quite clearly that it is not even close to following a power-law, and does so only at the lower 90% income quantiles. Which is funny considering the fundamental argument is that unequal distribution are natural so long as they follow a power law.
People always flippantly quote this without ever looking at the distribution of the actual data.
Whenever people see an uneven distribution they cite something about power laws being that natural order of things and that ends the discussion.
It turns out in many, many cases (I'm not sure if it's particular one) the observed behavior follows nothing like a power law.
A good example of this is net-worth distributions. People often say "of course there's super rich people, that's just a power law! It's not concerning income inequality, it's nature!". But if you pull up the data and do a log-log plot you see quite clearly that it is not even close to following a power-law, and does so only at the lower 90% income quantiles. Which is funny considering the fundamental argument is that unequal distribution are natural so long as they follow a power law.