| I think there's another point to be made here that isn't often discussed. Even in a system where people that work hardest/smartest directly translates to the most successful - doesn't mean you have a good system. Consider an environment where a million engineers are all working on their own startups. 99% of them fail and reward the work put into them with nothing. Some subset of the remainder makes barely enough to survive; a smaller subset makes enough to have a successful business; a smaller subset makes millions, and a smaller subset makes the vast majority of the money available. If the effort put into the thing follows a mostly linear line, but the reward is exponential, is this really a good system? Do the people at the top of this structure deserve the wealth they gain, even if they genuinely the best at what they do? More and more systems today are winner-take-all. Entertainment is notorious for a tiny number of multi-millionaire artists/actors/comedians/etc., while the vast majority of people that try to make it end up with a succession of part-time jobs that never ends. Even if there's no nepotism or corruption, is a system where the people at the top get everything and the bottom gets nothing a good one? There's something disturbing about PG's take to me - as if only the most successful are deserving, or worthy - that this warped reward structure isn't inherently unjust. It feels like the kind of justifications nobility and royalty relied on, but for modern times - "I worked hard, I found the market, I did everything right, so naturally I deserve more wealth than a human can use in a thousand lifetimes." So to be honest, I find almost every single one of PG's points worthless. I don't care how easy it is to start a startup if the chance of real money from it is one in a million. I don't care about how much faster growth is when its billions of dollars for a few dozen people. I don't care if the new wealth is genuinely new instead of inherited, if all we get from it is yet another tiny group of obscenely wealthy people - meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And I especially dislike the idea that the "far left" should be happy that "labor has won". Having a system that picks a few hundred of the "most worthy" each year and adds them to the capital class is by no means what I could consider labor winning. |