Billionaires exist because any system where people are given different opportunities when starting out end in vastly different outcomes. However, if you look a

Billionaires exist because any system where people are given different opportunities when starting out end in vastly different outcomes. However, if you look at the historical record, there are many groups who are seriously disadvantaged who succeed, while other groups are advantaged or neglected and yet stay poor. One of the key differentiators is cultural isolation. Groups can remain culturally distinct, but still enter into the mainstream of cultural and economic life. These groups generally prosper. (Call these participation communities.) Other groups remain culturally and economically isolated, often through the machinations of their own elites, and they remain poor, often developing in-group militancy. (Call these isolation communities.) German immigrant groups throughout history are interesting in this regard, as some German emigrant groups were participation communities that prospered, while others were isolation communities who fell behind economically. Chinese immigrant groups also contradict the "different opportunities" narrative by arriving on new shores poorer than the poor of the new country, yet pulling themselves up into the middle class in several generations. (So success isn't genetic. It seems to be carried by culture and it's transmissible.) Bill Gates isn't 100 billion times smarter than the top software people he worked with at IBM. Yet, he is worth that much more than them. That is how Pareto distributions work. Shakira isn't orders of magnitude more talented than other performers who have remained obscure. Effects akin to Network Effects accrue to lucky individuals who were in the right place at the right time who had implemented "GYST" and made the right moves. Income inequality destroys the social fabric of a community. No disagreement there. Crime is correlated with relative poverty. Everyone does need to feel they are full participants, and have pride as such in the community. Then again, the historical record shows that trying to scale egalitarian/communal societies past a relatively small size tends to result in decaying and destroyed social fabrics as well.