I've always been rather suspicious of that essay. He says: Making wealth is not the only way to get rich. For most of human history it has not even been the m

I've always been rather suspicious of that essay. He says: Making wealth is not the only way to get rich. For most of human history it has not even been the most common. Until a few centuries ago, the main sources of wealth were mines, slaves and serfs, land, and cattle, and the only ways to acquire these rapidly were by inheritance, marriage, conquest, or confiscation. Naturally wealth had a bad reputation. Strongly implying that in the modern world most large fortunes come from making wealth, but presenting no actual evidence. From observation, most large fortunes come from trickery: either in markets or by being hired as a CEO and negotiating high, non-measured compensation by abusing conflicts of interest. I haven't studied the question carefully, though. Has anyone? He also strawmans the pure-pie model. The real pie model looks something like this. A very large group of people collaborate to create something of value (even in software, there are library authors, hardware makers, ISP maintainers...). Some are part of the same company. Some are tied in via contracts, shaped by negotiators. Once the good is made, the wealth is divided up among the team. (Simultaneously, the team works on the next hunk of wealth -- it's a pipeline, not an alternator.) It is meaningful to look at the distribution phase in isolation, with the caveat that how the distribution phase impacts the production phase is a factor in how good the distribution model is.