I think it's bad if runs rampantly forever as eventually someone nefarious (which is more people than you might think) accumulates too much power and turns large swathes of society into a machine that benefits only them to everyone's detriment.

But at the same time it seems the pursuit of wealth engenders risk taking that brings about benefits for large swathes of society and turns society into a machine that constantly improves itself.

I like the game as it is, but perhaps a healthy modification would be to add a reset button where every couple of hundred years the slate is wiped clean and it all just starts again.

Tbh, I think that happens naturally though usually after a society has destroyed itself due to the first problem.

It'll happen to this one too eventually, so I don't see the need specifically to try to structure things in a way that will never go wrong or end badly. I don't think you can actually accomplish that with any one structure. It seems to be a game where some people win until it's game over and everyone loses.

Just my 2c.

>I think it's bad if runs rampantly forever as eventually someone nefarious (which is more people than you might think) accumulates too much power and turns large swathes of society into a machine that benefits only them to everyone's detriment.

It's bad longe before it gets to that point, just less obvious.

> But at the same time it seems the pursuit of wealth engenders risk taking that brings about benefits for large swathes of society and turns society into a machine that constantly improves itself.

Putting a cap on inheritance would not impede that in the least. Quite the opposite: inequality prevents a lot of risk taking and improvement from happening.

> I like the game as it is, but perhaps a healthy modification would be to add a reset button where every couple of hundred years the slate is wiped clean and it all just starts again.

That doesn't sound healthy at all because it represents an unneccessarily huge disruption.

>That doesn't sound healthy at all because it represents an unneccessarily huge disruption

It's no different than you or I dying, just on a much bigger scale. It's a huge disruption, sure, but that's sort of the point. Civilizations come and go, as do the people in them. There are just too many variables for things to be able to persist in a stable state in perpetuity.

Well, that almost looks a classic conflict of interests of a society versus interests of an individual, but only at the first glance. Because when you dig in, you realise that it's the most successful and capable individuals that are most interested in building something for their children and next generations of their family — and that's the most marginalised and useless ones that have to get the most by redistribution. And the more you enact redistribution policies in one country or another, the more those types of individuals self-select. The ones who're most able to build and create something will always be able to leave. Ones who complain about disadvantages, on the other hand — those you're stuck with, I'm afraid.

And if you dig in a little deeper, you realize that that's a bunch of social Darwinist bullshit perpetrated by those already rich who stand to gain the most from inequality - No different from the concept of nobility in centuries past.

Very telling are those "ands" and what's left out: "successful and capable (implied: rich)". "marginalised and useless (implied: poor)". Those traits don't go together automatically at all unless you use circular logic to define them in the first place.

> that's a bunch of social Darwinist bullshit

I perfectly understand why this stance makes people angry, but you haven't provided a single argument on why is it false.

You've overlooked the fact that I wrote more than one sentence, perhaps?