> It’s clear from the zeitgeist that the ultra-rich and powerful—past or present—aren’t working a million percent harder or smarter; their positions are more accurately explained by structural advantages.
Millions of people had an equal or better starting condition than Mark Zuckerberg so we aren't really lacking privileged people, but vanishingly few of those do become ultra wealthy.
> otherwise people born wealthy would dominate the startup world. Instead its people born to upper-middle class families that dominates it.
Those are just two different points on the "wealthy" scale. If you zoom out on a global level, they are not very far apart.
The kind of upper-middle class family that produces startup founders tends to be from the rich countries.
It makes perfect sense that it's the pretty wealthy and not the super-wealthy. There's more of the UMC, and they only need a certain amount of social/economic capital to roll the dice.
I broadly agree with your point, but you’re overlooking a critical dimension: once someone successfully identifies and exploits a niche (through a combination of skill and luck), the subsequent growth >can< often become largely independent of further skill or luck. At that stage, wealth through some basic intelligence compounds itself, regulatory capture can then occur, monopolistic behaviors can emerge—none of which are necessarily admirable traits in a society. But we're talking about different parts of an elephant and I don't think we disagree, but stepping back what we may disagree about is my opinion that ultra wealth (I'm not talking about millionaires or low level billionaires) but the wealth of Musk/Bezos/Zuck is a bug of the system, not a feature.
Humorous analogy: Imagine you’re playing a video game where, through a mix of skill and luck, you stumble upon an incredibly overpowered weapon. With even minimal competence, this weapon lets you easily acquire even more powerful gear, initiating a self-reinforcing loop that rapidly propels you to dominance. Soon enough, your advantage reshapes the entire game—limiting access to similar weapons for other players. The game stops being fun, or as some might put it, it becomes fundamentally unfair.
This is a basic feature of capitalism and every other acquisitive social system.
Without forced redistribution of wealth/power that set hard limits you're going to get a runaway, and the whole thing melts down.
This won't happen if the people with wealth/power care about consequences and have the wisdom to model outcomes accurately. But the kinds of people who care about consequences in capitalism are unlikely to be chasing huge wealth in the first place.
The system cannot work. It's fundamentally manic depressive, alternating between irrationally exuberant booms and catastrophic crashes, and consuming talent and raw materials for self-defeating ends.
It’s not just about starting condition but also the level of psychotic desire to profit at any cost.
I'm not going to get into the role of luck, but more curious -- how many ultra-rich individuals do you think can exist on the planet earth?