[nostrademons]

The reason for the accumulation of wealth is because most profitable markets (i.e. ones where profits are not competed away) involve owning an asset that others a.) value and b.) cannot easily replicate. Very often these days, that asset is simply the purchasing habits of a large number of consumers. Building machinery is easy, but changing peoples' minds is hard.

The good news - from an economic mobility standpoint - is that technological change is rapid enough that peoples' purchasing habits change all the time. The bad news is that it's often pretty unpredictable which product or service they will land on.

[foldr]

That seems like a non-sequitur. The existence of such assets does not entail massive wealth inequality. It obviously cannot, since such assets have always existed whereas wealth inequality has increased enormously. Purchasing habits are not really an asset, by the way, since a company does not own the purchasing habits of its customers.