Not sure why wealth inequality is mixed anywhere near the rest of the topics.

I couldn't care less about it, if some people live to make money, let them, as long as they do it legally.

On the other hand hacker culture is very lacking and the fact that we don't really own our devices is part of the issue.p

Wealth inequality is a problem because it deprives median citizens of limited ressources; consider urban housing as an example. There are two factors at play:

- Average people have to compete on price with the wealthy (which becomes harder as inequality rises)

- Wealthy people are incentivized to use their wealth to acquire things and extract rent, which drives up total costs and makes inequality worse

A lot of the resulting problems stay negligible or hidden or as long as there is enough overall growth, but as soon as that growth slows down these kinds of problems become very apparent.

Inequality necessarily reduces living standards for those at the bottom of the heap.

When the person at the top has more than they can spend on necessities and luxuries, they put their money to work. That means buying assets and driving up their prices.

Some assets are fairly divorced from the "real" economy, but enough filter through to extract wealth from the masses who have to work for a living as eg. spiralling rents, inflated credentialism etc.