A lot of people probably already knew this, but it’s useful to have studies like this to shove in the face of the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” crowd. It’s frustrating because we can change this, we don’t have to accept a society that simply revolves around “Whoever makes the most money gets to make the rules”.
I, personally, would like a society that cherishes camaraderie and compassion while also rewarding innovation and talent. There are too many people who believe in this zero-sum game that seems to pit everyone against everyone in this race to gather the most wealth; this is why we’re all struggling, because rich people have gathered the most wealth, and they are trying to protect it at all costs by using the wealth to control the rules that control how they gained the wealth to begin with. It’s all awful and we need to change it now.
I would challenge that any society which has any significant amount of wealth disparity wouldn’t eventually devolve into “whoever makes the most money gets to make the rules”. Money is an abstraction of human value, so if one person has significantly more abstract-value than most people, their power and influence will always be more than people who have less even if it isn’t as direct as our system via eg lobbying. On top of that, any economic system which has even the slightest asymptotic behavior towards wealth consolidation will eventually have wealth disparity.
Personally I like economic systems that use money as a price signal because of how decentralized it can be, but I’m not sure how you would avoid these tendencies without some major overhaul in the fundamental principles. Market socialism is at least better, since no one solely owns the means of production so it’s harder to accumulate wealth but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it isn’t possible at all.
Maybe a change in ethos like you said, competition can inspire innovation but it can also lead to tremendous waste as competitors reinvent their own wheels. Encouraging cooperation in tandem with competition could produce a more well-rounded society, but there will always be sociopaths who want power for its own sake and will naturally rise to the top and ruin whatever good thing we have going on. Maybe something like radical anarchism, which rejects (unjustified) hierarchy and makes it exceptionally difficult for anyone to gain coercive power? Fat chance ever implementing something like that, though.
We could get by with our current system we have, simply change the tax system to tax profit way more, so that it’s impossible to become a billionaire. And all that money is used to keep everyone housed, fed, and healthy. The people that want to abuse people for profit won’t have anyone to abuse anymore because people won’t be forced to work in unfair jobs with unfair wages. Wages will rise to natural level to meet what people think those jobs are worth doing. Some companies will find this unsustainable and will go away, and good riddance.
