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?
This is a tricky subject because Marxist-style analysis would claim that capital owners are fleecing the workers who actually create value and so pretty much all wealth resulting from investment is "stolen". If we start to discuss this seriously, we'll need to begin with the basics -- who has the original rights to created value and how are they established?
Is it actually Viliam's point? [that a larger fraction of the world's economic inequality arises from taking by force or fraud than from creating value]
I believe this, at least in long turn; i.e. that even if once in a while some genius creates a lot of wealth and succeeds to capture a significant amount of it, sooner or later most of that money will pass into hands of people who are experts on taking value from others.
No Marxism here, merely an assumption that people who specialize at X will become good at X, especially when X can be simply measured. H...
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