> I have libertarian biases [...] But I also have a social conscious<p>Being a libertarian does not in any way imply having no social conscience. Nothing whatsoever about libertarianism implies you should not be helping those less fortunate than you - only that you shouldn't be forced to. For example, Bill Gates' philanthropic activities are entirely congruent with libertarian ideas (although I don't know Gates' political leanings).
Another opinion piece about social consciousness and privilege. Of course, there's no suggested resolution.<p>Nobody celebrates income inequality in and of itself. I agree that we shouldn't write puff pieces about founders that speak solely about their determination when there are other factors at play. But even then, that's not really a celebration of income inequality. (it's also a really small issue, compared to income inequality itself)<p>It reads like a critique of capitalism, but with several acknowledgements as to the fact that getting rid of capitalism wouldn't help anyway.<p>And I abhor the acknowledgement of privilege (which I understand is not a popular opinion) because it reads like an acknowledgement of some kind of insoluble Original Sin. Why do you feel the need to mention that you were never physically abused? How does that make you privileged? It seems to be completely unrelated to the rest of your piece.<p>Some people are dealt a really crappy hand by life. We don't live in a just world. And I agree that we should give people an equal opportunity to succeed. But without a resolution, this piece is probably no more meaningful than the latest startup puff piece. It's fairly obvious that the poor have a disadvantage. So how are we going to fix it?
> But I have also seen close up situations where tech executives (although it’s not specific to tech) have laid off large amounts of people to try and move a company close to profitability in order to quickly sell the company reaping the executive team with a large payout – again in lower taxes – while junior employees are made unemployed.<p>This only works if you manage to trick the people buying the company that that is not what you did. Buyers do "due diligence" when they buy a company, meaning they carefully look over the books. A recent large layoff is a huge red flag that the company's situation may be misrepresented.
It's much ( and I mean very much ) more difficult to actually prove that money corrupts the political process in any significant way. And it may be even <i>more</i> difficult to show that this is expressed as (or causes then) an increase in inequality.<p>I could easily be quite wrong, but most articles I read of income inequality are simply descriptions of (perceived) social ills caused by systems which follow a Pareto distribution.<p>Pareto distributions have exactly one parameter - the "alpha". US income is distributed by two Pareto distributions added together - a bimodal Pareto distribution. One has a sort of offset such that its median is around $100K.<p>If inequality is increasing, it is because the distribution representing the higher income scale is growing - its alpha is increasing.<p>Nothing else need change except that, to change inequality.<p>I understand "the map is not the territory" but I write this just as a description of the process in a shorthand form, not to imbue the distributions with powers of anything more than description. The underlying process need be no more than increasing numbers of people in a "higher energy state" of the economy. Those in the lower energy state could probably not even "feel" this except through reports, and possibly changes in the prices of certain things.
I believe this is how a majority of tech people feel and Mark just said it very succinctly. Surprised that PG who I respect as a great writer opted to go 'extremist' with his opinion instead of highlighting the nuance.