Income Gap?

Jerry Bowyer, writing in Tech Central Station, looks at the income gap:

This is the way the world works. At one time in the past the richest man in the world had a couple of cows and a couple of wives. The poorest guy had nothing. The Old York Times was, no doubt, pleased by the small gap in wealth. At one time in the future, some guy will own a whole planet (like Rod McBain in the Cordwainer Smith novel, Nostrillia) and some other poor schlub will be working in a Romulan salt mine. The gap will be huge, and the New New York Times will scream bloody murder about the impact of Federation policy on the trillions of people at the bottom of the curve.

It's not just sheer raw numbers, though: it's also participation in the system. Get more people into a game and make the rules fairer and the bell curve widens even more. It's showing up now in the current Texas Hold 'em poker craze: When more people play poker, we have a better chance of finding a truly great player. As the rules get fairer and more transparent, the next truly great player has a better and better chance of getting to the top. The better he gets, the more inequality there will be.

This works with wealth creation, too. If Bill Gates had lived in Czarist Russia, he would've been a schoolteacher. Warren Buffett, a traveling merchant. No great fortunes. No great inequality. No DOS, no Windows.