Would you really rather have everyone make the same amount of income regardless of what they do?
Startups are good because they create value (although that particular value is highly subjective depending on what the startup is actually doing; a startup that finds a cure for cancer is creating objective value, but a startup that brings the sharing economy to lawn maintenance is much more subjective, as any value it creates for the sharing economy comes at the cost of value destroyed in traditional lawn care services).
Startups also create income inequality. This is not an intrinsically good thing. It is just accepted as the normal way to reward people for taking a risk on a startup.
Given that, the only reason to argue against reducing income inequality generated by startups is if this reduction actually decreases the overall objective value created by startups (if fewer startups are created, but more of them create either more value or value that is more objectively valuable, is that a bad thing?)
Don't forget as well that there are plenty of ways to create value, and to create companies, that don't involve startups. Most businesses in this country aren't startups.
> Would you really rather have everyone make the same amount of income regardless of what they do?
Literally nobody is arguing for that. That's a humongous straw man, it's the same straw man pg used in his original article, and it's complete nonsense. "Reduce income inequality" does not mean eliminate all income inequality.
So you seem to agree that income inequality can be a good thing. If you didn't, you'd want everyone to have the same income. Maybe I misunderstood PG's essay, but the main takeaway I got was that income inequality CAN be a good thing for a society, and that the income inequality caused by successful startups are not an important enough problem (if it is even a problem) to society for us to try to focus on it.
But it should be pretty obvious that extreme income inequality is bad for everyone (or at least, for everyone who doesn't actually possess the extreme wealth that is causing the problem, although even there they might benefit more from having a healthy society than they do from possessing such extreme wealth). How exactly you define "extreme" is debatable, but it's simply absurd to take the position that any argument in favor of reducing income inequality is equivalent to an argument in favor of having zero income inequality across the board.