Hi John, thanks for the comments. I don’t know if you’ve read, but you may find a book named Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell of interest. It captures brilliantly how people like Bill Gates and the like actually gained their wealth, when you hear the real story, it changes the picture because what you see is that their wealth actually resulted from them being given an opportunity that others nowhere else could have gotten at that time, rather than specifically the types of things you have listed.

Of course, they had to have those as well, but the problem we have created by centralising opportunities, is inevitably, centralised wealth. That means people like Bill Gates et cetera, gained their wealth by being in the centre at the right time, which further empowered the centre, further limiting opportunities elsewhere.

That means if you aren’t born in the centre, you can have all those listed qualities, even more, yet you will not have a chance. That is not a meritocracy, that is oppressive inequality, and the path to a world of oligarchy.

Meritocracy exists only when you have a system that provides opportunity across the board, and as such allows opportunities across the board. Right now, due to everything being centralised, there are nowhere near enough opportunities to utilise skill, talent, anything, to challenge those in the centre, unless you are in the centre.

That means right now, you could have 10 times the ability of people like Gates and Buffett, yet if you’re born in the wrong place, you would never have a chance of getting near their success. In fact, you could find yourself struggling to even get to middle class.

That’s what we need to change, that’s what we need to fix, we need to create more opportunities across the board, to allow more talent across the board the chance to rise. Because the more talent arises, the more growth there is, the more growth there is, the better society becomes for everyone.

But if the only place talent can rise is the centre, like now, there is never going to be much talent rising because the centre will never be a big place because it can’t be. In the end, this is why a Harvard degree counts for so much, it is seen as the centre.

Hope this makes sense, thanks for the comment, John!