And what would the S&P500 companies do with 20% less capital? How many people laid off? How many factories shut down?

Probably go bankrupt and/or lay off a lot of employees in a globally consequential way. I'm not arguing it would be a good idea, I'm arguing that it does in fact matter who controls that capital, as evidenced by what would happen if you redistributed a fifth of it in the dumbest way possible.

my guess would be inflation

>although I have no idea whether it would be world war 3 or a utopia

I suspect it would look more like the current economic craziness. The vast majority of the newly-wealthy would spend all of their new-found money on stupid shit and within 2 years a new upper-class will have formed.

Maybe the members of the hierarchy gets shuffled around a bit, but the system itself will find a way back.

You sure about that? It's giving roughly $1000USD worth of shares to people in countries like Somalia, with a GNI per capita of $310USD, e.g. probably about 3x the average yearly wage over there. It's also only a 20% dilution, so it's not like the existing upper class would go anywhere.

>You sure about that?

I was just making a pithy and cynical statement about how wealth distribution in general will just "shuffle the cards" and not change the fact that there are an entire class of people who refuse to acquire genuine wealth.

>It's giving roughly $1000USD worth of shares to people in countries like Somalia, with a GNI per capita of $310USD, e.g. probably about 3x the average yearly wage over there.

Yeah, that could start a war. According to Google the average cost of an AK over there is about US$100.

If you give someone $1000 worth of shares then they have nothing, because who would buy those shares when you might confiscate them again? Shares aren't worth anything in a world of confiscation.