This Paul Graham's essay is hands down the best argument for libertarianism I have ever read. Yet, even if there are 3 orders of magnitude differences in produc

This Paul Graham's essay is hands down the best argument for libertarianism I have ever read. Yet, even if there are 3 orders of magnitude differences in productivity among different people (and I doubt that), this doesn't entirely account for some 7 or so magnitudes of wealth and income disparities we see in the real world. The problem is, in modern society, almost nobody deserves to be paid for the work they do (I don't know about you, but my life would be exactly the same without Steve Jobs and random American athletes). We have automated almost everything, and the biggest chunk of productivity is due to capital (and innovations of our ancestors). So the question, how is this capital controlled and distributed, becomes central. (That's why many people here so oppose intellectual property - essentially the privatization of public information, which is analogous to land enclosures during 18th century.) So I think, if someone genuinely thinks that people should be paid based on value which they personally bring to society, he shoots himself to the foot. This value is probably too small for a living wage. That doesn't mean the improvements are not useful; it's just all the low hanging fruits have already been harvested.