Empathy awaits

3) For Plato, any state characterized by excessive inequality should absolutely start marching toward greater equality. But it's a process, involving laws (rather than executive fiat), cultural and educational reforms, and patience for the long game.

2) Plato suggests that tyrants don't even intend to follow up with egalitarian measures. They just want the poor to think they're on their side, so they can go about enhancing their own power and personal wealth.

The love of ease, to secure rents, the temptation to predation, pleonexia ... these human foibles don't disappear just because there are also positive-sum pathways to wealth. And this is especially true with inherited wealth.

Is inequality functional...is it really important for the proper alignment of incentives in society (with no attempted quantification of the optimal levels)?

That is my favorite Panglossian response.

Positively dystopian

Thank you -- hope you enjoy it!

Does not seem to care about that, so far as I can discern.

I mean, it's right there in the Manifesto! You don't have to read Capital to know this.

I've drafted a response making this and several other points. Deciding whether it's worth posting somewhere.

Hah, precisely!

Preview: You will definitely find reference to "zero-sum" thinking in it!

Hah!

Got a response piece from Cafe Hayek: cafehayek.com/2026/01/open...

Yup!