> wages grow linearly at best.

This isn't true at all.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-real-gdp-per-capi...

gdp per capita is not a good proxy for wages.

Labor share of GDP went from 64% in 1950 to 58% today. That means wages grew slightly slower than GDP per capita, that’s certainly not enough to mean wages grew sub-exponentially.

For wages to grow linearly, labor share of GDP would have to fall exponentially towards zero.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/estimating-the-us-...

Analyses like this show why we need to teach statistics in place of calculus in high school.

not really. the key mistake here is treating gdp is a proxy for wages when there is no direct connection between the two. in a pathological case, you could have a $1T GDP and have zero wages paid. the question of whether mean or median figures are more appropriate when talking about wages (what I assume you are alluding to with your statistics quip) is a side issue. no amount of statistics knowledge will help someone who insists on comparing apples to oranges.

I have strong doubts given the amount of churn among both the ultra rich and our biggest companies. No one seems to stay in the top 10 for more than a few decades.

Lending at interest only leads to unlimited aggregation if the risk of lending is zero. Zero interest rate policy and government backed securities is indeed as close to zero risk as possible in the real world.

> will inevitably in aggregate lead to a tiny minority owning virtually everything.

I’m not convinced. Perhaps this is the case with a permissive central bank encouraging consumer credit.

it may be true, but it's not obvious without making some unstated assumptions. inflation-adjusted returns on loans are not necessarily positive (though they usually are). interest compounds geometrically by definition, but subexponential wage growth is an observation that may depend on how you calculate inflation.

How do you run the economy without interest?

I've read some non-mainstream theories that economies based on cash accounts and equity-only investments are possible. Some would argue that equity-only investment arrangements are better for society, as they align interests between capital and production in a way that recourse interest lending cannot.

You can already see some fintech startups attempting equity-based home "loans", in which the "lender"'s lien is on a percentage of the future sale value of the home, not a fixed dollar amount. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

I'm not sure how financing on consumer debt like credit cards and non-commercial vehicles would work, though. Perhaps discouraging consumer profligacy would be a feature, however, not necessarily a bug.

In utopian reality, you could run a state owned bank that was run not-for-profit and only charged interest enough to cover losses and expenses.

In real reality, Danish banks are charging 0% interest for mortgages and making their money off of closing fees[1]. Also the natural rate of interest is zero[2].

Just because you've been raised from birth to believe usury is necessary for the payment system (not the economy!) to function doesn't make it so.

[1] https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/danish-bank-introduces-new...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16414199 http://www.moslereconomics.com/wp-content/graphs/2009/07/nat... (link is broken in the HN post)

By barter? By producing something valuable and exchange it through fair trade, and using sound money (not worthless currency)