Yep (and sorry for snipping so heavily). I would add "political capital" to "energy" here.
Ever since the 2008 financial crisis made everyone angry, there's been head-scratching at why the voters more often (but not always!) turned right than left in response. Part of the reason is that voters, to their credit, are more angry about the unjust things people have done to get entrench their wealth than about the wealth itself.
It's always tempting for the left to equate the mere existence of rich people with injustice. But most people don't buy that, and if the right provides some more concrete story of injustice -- even a dodgy Trumpist story -- then that will sway people more.
Right, the Just World Hypothesis seems to be pretty instinctual. (Though that may be because folks who don't believe it might not survive their attempts to "fix" things...)
I believe there is plenty of room for us make improvements, and that we have a responsibility to do so.
You may have missed a change I made to my comment, also. We aren't completely beholden to the Pareto principle. We can work against it to a certain degree, if we choose, which would lessen inequality, with tolerable side effects.
Regardless, I like your suggested approach.
Honestly, I'm perplexed at your comment as almost every issue you mention is actually examined carefully in the paper. I mean, I see where you're coming from and had some similar opinions to yours, but this paper addresses those issues in a far more rigorous way.
That being said, there are significant anachronistic, unjust human causes for inequality. Corruption, cultural/racial bias, skewed market incentives, externalities, etc.
That is where we should focus our energy. There is much good that can and should be done there.
And we can work to broadly lift the floor of human experience for all, even if such endeavors don't eliminate all relative inequality.
A perfectly equal system would be static, unchanging, fixed in place. There would be no vibrance or life. Dynamic processes that bring about change do not provide the same result to all pieces of a system, and require non-uniformity to continue occurring. Think of the heat death of the universe -- everything everywhere is the same temperature, and no interesting changes can ever happen again.
But this is certainly no excuse to not make the valuable and necessary improvements that we are capable of doing.
Lastly, it is certainly possible that the "natural" dynamics driving inequality are not at ideal levels right now, and that we should enact policy changes or other measures that counteract such dynamics and increase equality (higher taxes, social programs, etc). I think this is likely the case, and support such efforts.
Edit: Getting some downvotes. I hope no one think I'm implying regressive action, as I have no desire for that. I'd love to hear people's take on things. My main reason for posting is that I often see discussions that don't recognize what seem to me certain fundamental dynamics. If my understanding is off, please share how. Thanks.