So maybe it's only 99.99% rather than 99.9999%. I don't think this really affects Viliam's point, which is that if a substantial fraction of the world's economic inequality arises from cause 2 (taking by force or fraud) more than from cause 1 (creating value), and Paul Graham writes and acts as if it's almost all cause 1, then maybe Paul Graham is doing the same thing he complains about other people doing and ignoring inconvenient bits of reality.
Note that PG could well be doing that even if when working on cause 1 he takes some measures to reduce the impact of cause 2 on it. It's not like PG completely denies that some people get rich by exploiting or robbing others; Viliam's suggesting only that he may be closing his eyes to how much of the world's economic inequality arises that way.
If you have a world full of evil then don't you want to do both of (1) fight the evil and (2) build enclaves of not-evil?
Viliam's point, which is that if a substantial fraction of the world's economic inequality arises from cause 2 (taking by force or fraud) more than from cause 1 (creating value)
That may have been implied, but wasn't stated. Is it actually Viliam's point? I am not sure how true it is -- consider e.g. Soviet Russia. A lot of value was taken by force, but economic inequality was very low. Or consider the massive growth of wealth in China over the last 20 years. Where did this wealth come from -- did the Chinese create it or did they steal it from someone?
T...
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