I disagree, and furthermore I think the entire article is basically wrong - in a way. Specifically, the expected average wealth of both the collective and an in

I disagree, and furthermore I think the entire article is basically wrong - in a way. Specifically, the expected average wealth of both the collective and an individual will increase every round. However the median wealth will fall. The reason for this is that the very rare outliers will accumulate truly enormous wealth, while the rest of the players will never lose more than they start off with. You can see this in the first graph after say 250 rounds - the richest player has around 10,000x his initial wealth, even as the other 1000(or so) have very little - so on average they have 10x what they started with. And the reason no one is rich after 1000 rounds is simply that there were not enough samples. If there were say a billion samples, you might expect one to come in with say a trillion times its starting wealth, overcompensating for the other 999,999,999 losers - on average.