People don’t care if A, B, or C billionaires are such as long as they worked their butts off making their fortunes, competed, provided something valuable, and won.
The above is not like a romantic or uncritical view of capitalism or something like that. It is practically impossible to find a purely saintly person, let alone billionaires, politicians, Cantillon insiders, or any kind of agent for that matter.
Division of labour and specialization are defined by agency, and agency inexorably leads to cheating.
What I mean is part of a concept of “justice vs revanchism” I am developing: People, or social animals in general for that matter, accept asymmetries up to a certain extent provided there is justification.
Symmetry is very costly in nature. Animals would spend too much energy fighting. Therefore, asymmetry is welcome to reduce costs and increase fit.
This is why hierarchies exist.
To pass from symmetry to asymmetry in competitive situations animals evolved different strategies. For example, who got to the resource first is a way of creating an asymmetry that the loser accepts to reduce violence, thus evolutionary costs. Who urinated first on a tree to mark territory is another example.
We could be in the streets every day in Seattle looking for billionaires to guillotine, but as long as there is a justification in our minds for our asymmetry with them, we are going to opt to not do that, and get on with our lives.
The fact that we would have to travel there is also a physical asymmetry breaking device. Walls as well.
For example, a mental justification for Jeff Bezos may be something like:
• Built a useful service
• Worked for three decades to build it
• Depends on technology and a political environment that anyone has access to as well
• Seemingly did everything legally
• If anyone were to guillotine him, they would go to prison for life
When I say “up to a certain extent” means that, obviously, given certain extremes, certain abuses and corruption will not be tolerated by anyone. This is why mass guillotining actually happens from time to time!
Code Is Law
