> Mark Zuckerberg might have an unrealized gain of $1 billion, but he can't out-compete someone else for access to scarce resources unless he realizes that gain

> Mark Zuckerberg might have an unrealized gain of $1 billion, but he can't out-compete someone else for access to scarce resources unless he realizes that gain. When 99.99% of people don't even have 0.1% of Zuck's net worth he doesn't need to realize anywhere close to $1 billion of gain to out-compete them. The distribution is so lopsided that he could realize gains encompassing most other people's entire net worth and it would be a rounding error in his accounting. That's without even getting in to the fact that at that level your brokerage will happily give you a low-interest loan to do things like buy a house or whatever you want so realizing gains is not at all necessary to have access to funds for consumption. "Realized capital gains" does not even begin to tell the story of the disparity in access to consumption.