power curves so while collecting data for the previous two posts, i came across something interesting. i found some net worth numbers on the internet. and log plotted them by percentile. it makes a nice straight line. that's kinda exciting to a science person. it usually means there's some sort of fundamental underlying principle at work. basically, when you double your money, you move up N percentile points. which is kinda cool. it means that whatever forces are at work are pretty consistent across this entire range. ie fair. so no one in this range should be complaining about anyone else also in this range. i did the same thing for the top 1% by .01 percentiles. and i found another power curve. which is kinda cool. just like before. the thing that's not cool is the exponent is very different. in other words. the world of the 1% is also very fair within itself. but the fundamental rules of the rich and the non-rich are not the same when compared to each other. the rules are not equal. which isn't fair. by pretty much any definition. the dividing line between rich and non-rich is where your wealth is more productive than your labor. which really, should never be the case in a functioning utopia. otherwise, you have a class of people who don't work. lay folks would call this freeloading. economists call this class the rentiers. which is functionally indistinguishable from royalty. if you think that's perfectly okay, timmer for king.  ¶ 8:00 AM