> It’s true they may create wealth but that doesn’t necessarily mean it corresponds to the actual share of the money supply they are taking. You're right. They

> It’s true they may create wealth but that doesn’t necessarily mean it corresponds to the actual share of the money supply they are taking. You're right. They only take a small fraction of the wealth that they create. > For example let’s consider a hypothetical world where I control the food supply due to some artificial monopoly and there is $100 in circulation. Sure, these are called monopoly profits. This is a well known and well understood problem that mostly doesn't apply to the billionaires of today. The billionaires of today mostly exploit a more subtle thing: network effects and returns to scale. We are still trying to figure out how exactly to regulate this form of rent extraction, and I don't think we have good answers yet, because traditionally our standard has been "consumer harm", but it's not clear that consumers are being materially harmed in this context. > So your false assumption is that everyone is using their power to create value when in reality some people leverage their power to simply get a bigger share of money. I realize that some people get rich via rent extraction, but the people being discussed in this thread are mostly tech billionaires. Those people made their money primarily by creating wealth that didn't previously exist.