Technology and wealth inequality

Sam Altman:

Thanks to technology, people can create more wealth now than ever before, and in twenty years they'll be able to create more wealth than they can today. Even though this leads to more total wealth, it skews it toward fewer people. This disparity has probably been growing since the beginning of technology, in the broadest sense of the word.

Technology makes wealth inequality worse by giving people leverage and compounding differences in ability and amount of work. It also often replaces human jobs with machines. A long time ago, differences in ability and work ethic had a linear effect on wealth; now it's exponential. [1] Technology leads to increasing wealth inequality for lots of other reasons, too--for example, it makes it much easier to reach large audiences all at once, and a great product can be sold immediately worldwide instead of in just one area.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at February 1, 2014 12:38 AM
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