> I think your point is less about wealth creation, and more about access to capital and how that influences who can fund what work. It's a subtle distinction, but I think an important one - and yes you're right access to capital and how capital is allocated is zero sum and this influences what work is done.
I agree; I'm talking about the allocation of capital in a capitalist society; I'm effectively arguing that inequality and wealth distorts the markets such that
capital is allocated to be invested in products which those who are richer care more about - to put it in a more reductive way the fitness function is a
simple maximum rather than, for example, having a scaling factor per person.
A liberal democracy is intended to be the latter, but as we've seen, enough wealth and lobbying implies that you can indeed, influence
enough of your fellow populace to vote how you want them to.
> I think this is best structure for society to efficiently allocate resources/capital in a way that encourages the most wealth creation and growth
With all due respect, this is similar to the argument laid out by Leibniz when asked about the existence of God; that is that "We live in the best
of all possible worlds" - and in that case the rebuttal is the same, given that the proposition is such a strong one the burden of proof is on the
proposer. After all, Mercantilism was thought to be the best system during the Rennaisance and Feudalism in the Middle ages to give two examples
of economic systems which were later discarded.
> The way to fix this is with incentives that encourage people to go into areas society thinks are more worthwhile
Capitalism only has a single answer to this question; the areas which have more capital are by definition the areas which
society thinks are more worthwhile! Which, is why it is an incredible system - it manages to make people who by and
large are self-interested and self-organize and as you say has been the biggest driver for human wealth and
prosperity for over a century without the need for some benevolent dictator.
To my mind, there are several really big problems which we have to face in the coming years. You alluded to it here
tangentially;
> people like Las Vegas
I think with adtech industry and social media, it's incredibly easy to influence what people desire and want - if you
can control what people want; can we still really say that capitalism makes people more prosperous, if the very
reason that they were poor because we induced artificial needs and desires in them?
On a more practical level, I agree with you; people should be incentivised to start companies because it's good for
society. But where we disagree, possibly, is that money is the only driver which causes people to start companies.
The IBD banker in your example, would start the company regardless of whether the payout was lower, but
by implementing a wealth tax, maybe the we could give the opportunity to the teacher with the great idea about
educational technology to create _their_ business and enrich society.