[polotics]

Repugnant it may be, but you're leaving better sells on the table: it is extremely wasteful of human capital, both because the winners after having taken all, tend to spin out and add only negative value to societies. Also the many pre-determined losers, having to waste so much of their energy on survival, mostly cannot contribute positively either, sometimes also drifting into serious negative value generation.

So yes: as a system, "wealth" is demonstrably extremely wasteful of capital, in wouldn't take much on both edges to improve it significantly.