What I read recently made the case for "relative poverty" being more psychologically damaging than "absolute poverty". e.g. if everyone one in your society is the same poor then it isn't as bad as being poor in a society of wealth. This made a lot of sense to me as I tasted relative poverty a few times, and there seemed to be a feeling of shame around it. Not that anyone tried to shame the (relatively) poor but it just felt shameful. I never wanted to invite my millionaire family classmates over to my tiny, run down house for example, as it was too embarrassing. I eventually moved back to a place where we had similar levels of income and there was only a single millionaire and it felt a lot better.
For something to be human nature, I think it needs more time. And if peasants knew that comparing themselves to the king just does not make sense, maybe we can learn to have the same attitude towards Jeff Bezos.
The fact that Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt have won so many medals without (hopefully) juicing or bribing officials is great, and maybe even a cause for celebration for the human race, but it absolutely does not mean that anyone can do those things.
But if significantly more people tried to do those things, I'm sure some of them would beat those champions.
A plumber in West Virginia is not unhappy because Bezos is so rich. He is unhappy because his welder brother-in-law just got paid after a better paying contract job (or is heavily in debt) and bought a used Audi.
Technology has generally always created inequality.
We should choose a system that gives one guy a billion dollars and everyone else a million, if the alternative is one that gives everyone 100k.
This is an analogy for lifestyle, the actual implications of supply demand are being ignored here.
If you're looking for validation and happiness based on what you see in social media, quality of life is the least of your concerns.
Instead of accepting this as a matter of fact, why don't you look inward at the culture and ask yourself if this is a productive attitude to have, rather than trying to coerce the world to fit your view on human nature.
Wealth, and power carry a social momentum. Antipodal to that is the high amount of frictional cost associated with change at scale. Those properties of our current economy effect what change is possible and when.
The modern economy exists in this unequal hodgepodge for the same reason some animal look alien to you, because it was not planned. Unfortunately for us, unlike animal evolution, the rate of change of the economy, tech progress, political winds, and all the social tendrils that stem from that unholy amalgam grow rapidly and defy organization.
You can call it the expected end result of human nature if it eases you. But. to me, it looks like a problem looking for some good engineering.
One sweet day when everyone is guaranteed the most basic of human necessities, maybe then we'll start caring about the anxiety a (small-minded) percentage of us feel when our neighbor has two Teslas and we only have a Leaf.
I strongly disagree with this and I think it runs counter to human nature. You're looking at quality of life as if there were some kind of absolute measure of it, but it really doesn't work like that. Quality of life is always measured relative to the people around us or to whom we are exposed in media or social media.
If you look at modern Americans they have fabulously lavish quality of life in comparison to 19th century factory workers or 11th century peasants. Even people in the poorest quintile have access to safety, food, housing and entertainment that would have made people from centuries past gasp in awe. Antibiotics! Virtual reality! Same day shipping!
But what really counts is how we perceive we are doing versus people we can compare ourselves to. That's where the suffering comes from. You have running hot water but your neighbor has a spa tub. You have the iPhone 6 but a friend just got the 12. You have a safe job that pays your bills but a classmate vacations in Portugal. I've been in other countries where the average quality of life was much lower than the US, and no one knew the difference or had any shame or sadness in their smaller cars, smaller bathrooms or lower square footage.
If there were trillionaires but they all lived on Mars or some faraway continent and we knew nothing about them then they wouldn't cause us social suffering.