This has been an enlightening conversation. Here are the two concepts I’m still struggling with. First, how to define oligarchy when the total value of an economy is unbounded (i.e. does defining it as the ratio of everyone’s “stuff” even make sense as the amount of “stuff” available goes to infinity); and second, along the lines of “all models are wrong, some are useful”, how to capture the intuition that economic transactions are not zero sum in the model, because if transactions really are zero sum, then as jhritz points out no rational actor would have an incentive to undertake them. So I’m not convinced this model applies to the economy that closely (i.e., when I pay for lunch, it really is with the belief that both myself and the restaurant are better off than if I did not).
