> The worlds is grim because billionaires have a large part of the cake and the rest has to fight over the crumbs.

et tu hn?

I am tired of seeing this nonsense on social media (it's particularly bad on reddit, where /r/antiwork and it's offshoots keep hitting the front page)

- Wealth is not a zero-sum game

- Yes, billionaires shouldn't exist because they're a symptom of a broken system

- And they don't exist on a long enough timescale, there's a reason why oil barons and railroad tycoon families are a shadow of their former selves, and why the richest people are all in tech/oil

- Billionaires and increasing income inequality are a symptom of a bigger problem. Musk wouldn't have as much money if his publicly traded stock wasn't as popular... among the public.

- Modern day securities are broken because they're poorly regulated because the public doesn't vote for people that would do the regulation.

Most people are only able to vote for candidates that are chosen and campaigned by the monied interests. We can blame the people for not seeing how the system works sooner… but really that’s not who is acting out of line…

>- Wealth is not a zero-sum game

It literally is, though. For one's wealth to grow, the wealth of others must shrink. You could print more money, but that'd just result in inflation reducing everyone's wealth.

If you intend to say value is not a zero-sum game, I agree.

I think your explanation of inflation is a little simplistic. It appears that governments can print some amount of money, relative to total supply and gdp, without causing inflation. On the first level, thats because some money is destroyed every year (or buried under mattresses). On a second level, its because they actually target some small amount of inflation, to avoid forementioned mattress-hoarding). However, even beyond that, the amount they need to print to achieve the same level of inflation can be vastly different depending on circumstance and country. That is usually relating to demand for money, which isn't fixed (but also to some degree by trust in government by the financial system). Inflation can also heavily based on vibes - events like ukraine war and covid can become self-fulfilling prophecies, with business leaders expecting inflation, so they raise their prices to get ahead of it. Everyone independently does this, and pat themselves on the back for their powers of prediction as they observe prices rise.

Just look at the wealth distribution.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Distribution_...

> Modern day securities are broken because they're poorly regulated because the public doesn't vote for people that would do the regulation

And Billionaires and their media power has nothing to do with it