> power laws basically spoil it because it gives a hard worker an exponential advantage

s/hard worker/person with more capital/

I can make 500 euros from a day of consulting as a software engineer. That's a typical day, working remotely, 9AM to 5PM, with a nice long lunch break.

Minimum wage in Bangladesh is around $133 per month. Many workers in the Bangladesh garment industry work 12 hour days. I look at what they do, and think "wow that's really hard I could never do that, glad I don't have to work that hard to live".

Yet somehow, I have exponentially more money than they do. And, thanks to the beauty of our current system, I can go ahead and invest that in the stock market, and get even richer while basically doing nothing.

It would be nice if we lived in a word that rewarded hard work, but as far as I can tell, we don't, and never have.

Look at the institution of slavery. For literally thousands of years, there was "those who worked", and "those who had".

The system rewards decision making, not hard work.

Now, if you're a young tech worker working on an important project at a big company, yes, choosing to work hard, IN THAT SPECIFIC CASE is a good decision, and it'll be rewarded.

But if you're a child laborer in a Third World sweatshop? No, your extra hour at the office probably won't get you anything extra.

If you're a Roman Senator in the year 30BC, you don't get rewarded for your work, you get rewarded for deciding to have your slaves spend more time farming grapes for wine and less farming wheat because wine sells for a higher price, which means that with your good decision making, you can now hire more slaves, to farm more grapes, to make more wine, which you can make for more money.

And if you look at rich people today, what they have is probably closer to the Roman Senator than the Third World sweatshop laborer - they find a thing that people like to buy, and invest lots of resources (their money, other people's labor) into making that thing and selling it, and are rewarded with money.