[orangeboats]

IPv4 - first come first served, with a 24 karat FU to the 3rd world countries. It is their fault that they are poor.

IPv6 - still the same, but the space is large enough that any first-mover advantage is minuscule.

[labcomputer]

I think that's a bit uncharitable.

32 bits seemed practically infinite at the time IPv4 was created, and the whole thing started as a way for the American military-industrial-research complex to communicate with itself anyway. Why would you even want to assign addresses on your defense network to foreign adversaries?

Now that it's a commercial thing, a more equitable distribution would have, with hindsight, been a good thing.