Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

The definitions for "distribution" rather than "distribute" only weaken your narrow view further. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/distribution

Definitions include "An apportionment by law (of funds, property)" and critically "The apportionment of income or wealth in a population" with the example usage "The wealth distribution became extremely skewed in the kleptocracy." I.e. becoming extremely skewed didn't mean it was no longer a "distribution" in virtue of being concentrated.

And especially in a space where lots of people have a technical background, we're very likely to be thinking of the wealth distribution explicitly as a probability distribution (also listed as a separate definition), _especially_ we've already used the concept of quantiles on that distribution. Englishing flexibly, I think it's totally reasonable for "distribution" to refer to either the function assigning probability mass, _or_ to the act or process of making such a function true.

People in this thread are mostly using this word in a reasonable way. You're the one seeking to redefine words by insisting that only an entropy-increasing change is a "distribution".

In other words, a billionaire-controlled foundation.

But also: "Warren Buffett is donating about $870 million to four family-run foundations" "the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which is named after his wife" "three charities run by his children" "Last year, he donated about $750 million to the same foundations. He’s been making the same donations yearly since 2006." https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/22/business/warren-buffett-thank...

1/10 = Inherited fortune but not working to increase it

10/10 = Self-made who not only grew up poor but also overcame significant obstacles

Here's some clearer example of what may lead to confusion.

- Forbes gives Elon a self made score of 8/10. That's high, for this list considering what 10 means but 8 also is large with "middle-class or upper-middle-class background" (including Zuck and Bezos). Certainly Elon is significantly self-made (his family certainly weren't billionaires) but there is ambiguity about what class he grew up in. According to his dad[0], he paid for Elon's trip to Canada and his education (also discussing the sale of a private aircraft) while Elon claims he grew up poor and came to the Americas with only with $2.5k to his name and ended with $100k in student debt ($100k 1987 = $187k 2023). Certainly there is animosity between father and son and I'm willing to believe Elon believes he's telling the truth (not synonymous with being the truth). But Elon claims a 10/10 self-made score while the dad is saying something closer to a 7 (which is still quite privileged by the average person's standards: "got head start from wealthy family"). Elon's net worth is (Forbes) estimated $245bn and rank #1.

- Forbes equally ranks Bezos and the wiki page is kinda wild[1]. At birth his mom was a high school senior and father was a uni-cyclist but he also attended a Montessori school at age 2. At 4 his mom remarried and his step dad (Mark Bezos) worked for Exxon as an engineer. But Jeff also says Amazon was a family effort and it looks like his parents loaned him $245k ($480k 2023) and they're also billionaires now due to "early investment." I think it is safe to say most will consider Bezos much more self-made than Musk especially considering his dad (Mike) was a Cuban refuge refuge and still a student when his parents married. Without a doubt the average person would call Bezos self made and even believe he struggled and his success is highly conditioned on his work and ability to take advantage of ample opportunities at the time. Bezos's net worth is estimated $170bn and rank 3.

- Now one spot up (9/10) we have Sergei Brin[2] (link for history, you're on HN, you know who Sergei is...). Born in Soviet Russia to a math professor father and engineer mother. The wiki article discusses job loss, troubles getting out of Poland, and let's be honest, professors and NASA engineers are not the wealthiest of people, but neither are they poor (he also attended a Montessori School. I'm not shilling, I'm mentioning because private schools are expensive so puts some objective signal on family wealth). I think the average person would without a doubt not just think Sergei is self made but went through significant struggle, no matter where on the spectrum of "middle class" he grew up on (prof + engineer is reasonably upper middle). Sergei's estimated net worth is $110bn and rank 10.

- At 10/10 is George Soros[3], born in 1930 Budapest to (non-observing) Jewish parents I think we all know what happened. They didn't leave Hungry till post war (1947). There is mention that his family was themselves a bit antisemitic at the time and in 1944 were able to pose as Christians. No matter the personal beliefs I think it would be __difficult__ to claim that Soros is highly self-made and __without a doubt__ had struggles that few others can relate to in terms of severity (this history likely explains his passion for politics). Soros's net worth is estimated $6.7bn and ranked 396

Assuming all this is reasonably true, there's a crazy amount of difference between ranks 7 and 10. I honestly think most people would think a Forbes 7 is a 2 or 3 out of 10 and would interpret a 7 as vastly self made.

Edit: also kind crazy we live in a time where this can all be found and compiled in ~30 minutes. That's definitely a privileged environment, at least to my personal belief.

[0] https://www.the-sun.com/news/8014711/elon-musk-dad-errol-cha...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros

Etymology is not the sole determiner of meaning. We can call an area on the moon a "mare", and know this comes from the Latin for "sea", but "mare" in the context no longer means "sea".