There appears to be an either-or fallacy here, that somehow addressing economic inequality means people are trying to eliminate it and will only accept perfecti

There appears to be an either-or fallacy here, that somehow addressing economic inequality means people are trying to eliminate it and will only accept perfection. Like most things in politics, action happens in the grey area,and I don't think trying to argue against extremes poses much benefit. Technology is increasing returns to capital vs labor. One day, robots, 3d printing, and AI services (e.g. self driving everything), may put the majority of human beings out of a job. How can entrepreneurs or capitalists even get rich if the majority of people's work has no surplus value? In such an end state, the concept of regular folks working is practically extinct and there should be a basic income, so that the massive returns to automation continue to benefit everyone and provide income for people to spend. Think of it as an extreme version of social security: Instead of 1 worker supporting 10 retirees, you have 1 robot, or 1 AI supporting hundreds of "retirees" (from birth) using "wages" that are no longer paid to the robot (labor), but to the capitalist. Hans Moravec in _Mind Children_ outlined a version of this 20 years in how increasing productivity from automation will gradually produce a society that looks more like a hunter gather society and less than an industrial one, in that the basic needs of the population will literally "grow" on trees (robotic manufacturing bush robots) My point is, if you want to look at extremes, then extreme unchecked technology and inequality will produce a degenerate broken economy in the long run, so quite clearly, there must be mitigating factors to keep the capitalist system going. I like PG's framing of the issues, but dislike his conclusions, which are unsubstantiated and basically fall to a kind of nativist/natural fallacy, that because something is a natural driving force, it should not be opposed, or else bad things will happen. History is replete with humans changing their natural physical or economic environment, and we will continue to do so. I think one can address economic inequality and it would not prevent startups or "big winners". Moreover, I'd argue that living in a society where failure doesn't mean abject poverty, possibly a life long impact, encourages people to take more risks, and that overall, if we have in place a safety net, and fix issues with racial inequality especially, it'll be a boon for the startup economy, not a negative one. That's an unsubstantiated claim as well, but if you comparatively look at other countries, you can't really find a tight correspondence between the level of social welfare and failure of startup culture. But you can see improved social mobility, and having superior mobility and racial/cultural diversity I'd argue helps in building companies which scale globally.