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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

> I'm talking about predictors of wealth for a new person.

That's almost a tautology then. If you only know one thing about someone, that's also necessarily the best predictor for anything about them. However, it doesn't tell us much about whether wealth does concentrate over time.

> Really.... ? Why?

Because regimes change all the time despite rulers being alive. The death of a ruler by old age rarely triggers regime change, they just get succeeded by someone else. It's usually another event that triggers regime change (peaceful and violent revolutions, war, etc.). Immortal rulers wouldn't be immune to those events.

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> If you only know one thing about someone

You can know a great deal about someone at birth, such as race, gender, country of origin, eye color etc. Yet you can accurately predict someone’s wealth at age 60 by looking at their parent’s wealth even though a babies income is generally 0.

Further wait until someone’s 10 and you can measure IQ, grades, etc and parents wealth is still #1. Wait even longer and high school GPA still isn’t nearly as useful.

The biggest cause of regime change seems to be the succession of power and the fears around change occurring during succession of power. A ruler dying through old age is a common source of regime change in history as people with varying interests start vying for that position and ensuring the new ruler holds their same interests.

It's the exception rather than the norm. Rulers are typically just replaced by their successors.

I mean, I gave you multiple examples of some of the most powerful people that ever lived, none of which fall into this category you call the 'norm'. You just completely ignored that and continued with your baseless fantasy.

Upon his death, Genghis Khan was succeeded by his son. Mao was succeeded by Hua Guofeng, vice chairman of the CCP. Stalin was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

And the power was less centralized after each of these deaths.

> That's almost a tautology then.

No... it's not? Do you know what tautology means?

> If you only know one thing about someone, that's also necessarily the best predictor for anything about them.

Except it's not the only thing you know about them... so your point is kinda meaningless.

> However, it doesn't tell us much about whether wealth does concentrate over time.

There are soooo many studies supporting this, like the two I linked above, not to mention common sense.

It's like the most basic game theory + common sense - you have X people competing with each other, you give (0.001 * X) of those people massive advantages - who do you think is going to be winning?

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