> then your worth is very much linked to your productivity

Also coincidentally it’s highly correlated with who your parents happen to be. But its likely spurious…

The people who have lost the lottery by both by being not born into wealth and also being destined to suffer from physical or mental disabilities, well I guess tough luck..

> the people creating the enormous surplus are in practice worth quite a bit more

Wouldn’t phrase it exactly like that but yes you are right. However it’s very hard to figure out who those people are and to measure their contributions.

It so happens that being paid a lot for your labor doesn’t automatically means that you aren’t a net negative to the society . There are loads of people working in inherently parasitical or exploitative industries who make massive amounts of money but when you add it at all up they contribute significantly less than those people living from charity. Much of the economy is still effectively zero-sum.