[nixon_why69]

I think there's likely a steel man version of "solving inequality" that's a little less radical than "establish a commune".

Something like "arrest the trend towards upward accumulation which also reduces incentives to excel", maybe.

[WalterBright]

If we did that, we wouldn't have SpaceX, Nvidia, AI, etc.

[croon]

There are points in history where the productivity increases were more equitably spread, and we still got lasers, microwaves, MRI, mRNA, microchips, the internet, etc, etc, from national funding no less.

[WalterBright]

People are paid according to the value they produce - equity has nothing to do with it.

[tsunamifury]

This is painfully naive. People are paid by the value they produce minus the maximum extraction ownership can get.

[Terr_]

A milder version would be: People are paid based on the marginal cost of replacing them. But still, either of those is a far cry from claiming it's "the value they create".

It's not hard to show either. Imagine you're on an island and have been gored in the stomach by a wild animal, and a skilled surgeon can save your life. Most people would instantly agree that continued existence is of immense "value".

However after making that decision, you discover that you're on an island where almost everyone is a surgeon and the going-rate is much lower than you expected. Are we supposed to believe that your new knowledge somehow reaches backwards in time and retroactively changes the "value" of Not Dying? No, that'd be crazy. Valuation is never the same as price-point.

[WalterBright]

The value of something is what the buyer is willing to pay for it and the seller is willing to sell at.

There is no other meaningful definition of the value of an item or service.

> either of those is a far cry from claiming it's "the value they create".

Nobody is going to hire someone who produces less value than their pay.

[WalterBright]

> the maximum extraction ownership can get

And people demand the maximum pay they can get. It's the Law of Supply and Demand.

Consider this. You hire Bob for $10/hr, and he produces $100/hr in value. What's going to happen? Your competitor hires him away from for $20/hr. Then another competitor hires Bob away for $30/hr. This proceeds until Bob gets paid about $85/hr. The ROI of hiring Bob is somewhere around 15%.

There's a good reason why the vast bulk of the American workforce is paid much more than minimum wage.

[croon]

This is true in a friction-less market with total information symmetry. No such market has ever existed.