RE: What Do the Games We Enjoy Tell Us About Income Inequality?
The games where the rich didn't get richer are solo games.
Given any system, there will be people who are better at it.
The Pareto Principal.
And thank Goddess! Because those 20% of people who are allowed to accel create 80% of the abundance.
But even if we look at poor farmers and middle class farmers in India. What's the difference? One weeds their farm and the other doesn't. Weeding is something anyone can do (unless you can't do nothing) and increase crop production by 20%.
So, we restart at zero, and most of the poor will be poor again, and most of the rich will be rich again.
I see this in MMOs all the time.
There are people who have tons of money in the bank
and people who are borrowing money to buy food, and other basics.
And these people get about the same amount of gold per time in game from hunting monsters.
So, any game that tries for income equality just fails. Because, there is no way for the player to get ahead. No success = no enjoyment.
I don't always agree with your points (or the way you make them), but this one rings true for me:
The irony is, in our attempt to create "fairness" we end up creating something with unequal rules (top-down management) trying to benefit one group over another in the name of equality which ends up failing entirely.