Real life has feedback loops too that help preserve and grow the wealth of the rich so it is worse than the sim. It also has feedback loops the other way like tax. This makes tax very important!
With 100 people, there are only 100 configurations where one person has all of the money. But there is also only one single configuration where everyone has the same amount of money. There are a small number of configurations where everyone has almost the same amount of money.
The vast majority of the configuration space consists of configurations that on a macro level fall under the umbrella category "unequal". This is not because they are more likely states, but just because there are so many of the states we would label "unequal".
Blah blah, jargon. Mostly thinking out loud here.
Basically, you're making the astute observation that the majority of configurations fill all wealth brackets... I think? The maxentropy distribution involves maximizing over products of combinations, and I'm just gut feeling at the moment.
How does this jibe with the supposedly empirical observation that wealth tends to follow a Pareto distribution?
Very cool. Thanks for kicking off the this conceptual avalanche!
In our capitalist system, wealth begets more wealth, thus heavy tails.
For my part, I keep repeating (reposting) this refrain:
"Inequity is just math, not a moral statement. It's inevitable without some kind of proactive redistribution."
(Any feedback on my phrasing? I always appreciate better word smithing.)
It takes a long time for these kinds or counterintuitive notions to percolate thru society. But eventually they stick.
FWIW, Scott Galloway is really good at honing and refining his talking points over time.
That stuck with me. Sometimes, all it takes is time and a bit of randomness for imbalance to emerge on its own. Inequality does not always come from someone doing something wrong. It can simply be the long-term result of randomness playing out. So the real question is, once we understand that, what do we do with it?