An extraordinary irony occurred to me this morning. I was puttering around Quora where I combat socialist bots who might actually be people. It’s hard to tell. Turing stupidity? Anyway one of their favorite hobby horses is inequality. Here is my famous (9.6k views, 106 likes) answer:

Here is the last answer you ever have to hear about social inequality.

Think about your brother or your sister. You were raised in the same city, in the same community, in the same house. You had the same parents. You ate food out of the same cabinets. You went to the same church, schools. If you were like me, you literally wore the same clothes. Played the same games, used the same toilet, watched the same TV.

But are you equal? No.

How can you possibly expect equality across a society if you cannot even do it in one house?

More recently I defended the existence of the excellent Bugatti Veyron built by Volkswagen as an example of the sort of inequality free market capitalism creates. If you didn’t know, it’s a 250mph $1.7 million car with a W16 engine. That would be two V8s smushed together and turbocharged. The transmission alone costs $150,000.

My interlocutor says that the wealthy are much more likely to do rent seeking than they do excellence. Actually, the point is well-taken. After all, you can only seek rent on those commodities that are useful to the masses. You cannot seek rent on speculation or innovation. Investors don’t pay rent. Consumers pay rent.

Consumers want healthcare that is low cost, reliable and safe. Consumers want housing that is low cost, reliable and safe. Consumers want college education that is low cost, reliable and safe. Consumers want environmentally sustainable products that are (everybody now)… So it comes as no surprise that such products and services are to be commoditized, regulated and distributed evenly. And socialists want whom to pay for it? Taxes collected by the government, especially from capitalists. So let me repeat myself.

You cannot seek rent on speculation or innovation. Investors don’t pay rent. Consumers pay rent.

So who is the rent seeker? The rent seeker is the one with the resources to rent to the consumer. To deliver what? Commodity products and services that are not risky, innovative or state of the art. Isn’t that ironic? If capitalists rent ordinary products and services, like streaming media, they are boring commodities and potentially AI generated slop that defy excellence. They are evil rent seekers. But if the government seeks to raise taxes to provide boring commodities that are slop, at least they are politically correct slop. How is raising taxes not rent seeking?

Inequality is built into the structure of the universe. There is inequality everywhere. Every element in the periodic table is unequal. Every chemical compound is even more unequal. Their valuable qualities exist because of their particular inequalities.