Are vastly unequal distributions of global wealth ineradicable?
We don’t have a better system of encouraging people to be productive in ways that are useful for others. In theory, if you were to sketch out, as people did in the nineteenth century, utopian blueprints of how our society should function, then obviously you would have a more equal distribution of wealth. But insofar as we’ve ever tried those things, they don’t work. I don’t think you can criticize people for being rich if what they have done is effectively produce things that people want or produce them more cheaply than other people have done. Those are good things to do. I don’t see the problem with getting rich in the first place. I see a problem with getting rich and not seeing that as an opportunity to do an immense amount of good in the world. There’s always going to be relative poverty. I don’t think we’re going to get rid of that, due to the nature of the system of production that we have. But I don’t think there has to be this constant state where there are a billion people li
