> concede that processes which disrupt/regulate social networks produce, at best, power-laws in a theoretical limit I'm going to interpret that as acknowledgin

> concede that processes which disrupt/regulate social networks produce, at best, power-laws in a theoretical limit I'm going to interpret that as acknowledging that the bulk of the distribution is not Pareto with Pareto fitting well only at the end of the right tail. This fits with a mostly multiplicative dNW/dt but in a random walk rather than monotonic increase, or a sublinear PA, but with increasing linearity at the very high end. Not that we actually need to model this blindly, dNW/dt is to a significant extent just Y, income, and we can and do measure income, at least. A lot more accurately than wealth, even. More importantly, there is enough data with both for the same individuals that we can examine the relationship between the two. Certainly, there is a positive correlation, but overall it seems R ~ 0.33 across many countries, which is fairly low, really, and if you want to eyeball the graph you can probably see the data points clustered tighter near the top. Now, I can't tell you what distribution @linschn might target as desired or if there are things beyond mere distribution that they would wish to address. My reading of their comment would be that they wish to focus on ensuring non-NW effects >> NW effects, i.e. high mobility, not necessarily high equality (does raise an interesting question here, would a combination of mobility and inequality also tend to increase zero-sum vs positive-sum competition?) Still, given that the correlation, although low, does exist, any actions increase to mobility does seem likely to reduce final inequality as a side effect. This does not necessarily shift the shape of the distribution (rather than spread) significantly, but there is no reason why it should need to. > How on earth do you propose to hault 22222... vs. 0.0011.0011.0001* ... ? By what means are most individuals on the planet coordinated so that the labours of one do not multiply benefit themselves, but "divisionally benefit" everyone? What process to the general benefit of society could be imagined where net wealth grows without inequality? I don't see why anyone should care for growth of total NW over Y. Wealth isn't real, there is not literally a warehouse full of stuff and services that wealthy people can draw upon, so it can only be a claim on future Y plus or minus inflation. I entirely agree with @linschn in this respect, seeing growth in wealth being higher than growth in income as a good thing is complete and utter madness, and yet those are the scenarios where the PA or PA-like effects relatively dominate. If during relative stagnation it's a choice between infinite paper growth (plus increasing concentration) and the apocalypse, let's have the apocalypse. At least the apocalypse is honest about what it is. In a way, it's the Greek sense of the word.