See it this way:
In the old world, people produces actual product to get rich, the landlord, the factory owners etc. It worked out fine overall so the world accepted this game mode as an option, in addition to the old lord/emperor mode.
Then, some smart gamblers discovered that they can gamble on promises and expectations to get rich too, and it worked out good overall so the world again accepted it as a new game mode as an option too.
The wealth divide always exists, and historically can largely/only be destroyed by time and/or large scale disasters. But in the new gambler game mode, most people ain't in it (as in "It's a big club and you ain't in it" from George Carlin) and don't have the power to play it. It's a system don't reward honor, loyalty or labor. That's why most people are left out while the riches steams far ahead (then jets far ahead, then rockets far ahead, you get the idea).
Which doesn't make him wrong about the AI boom being a huge risk in making the wealth divide (already beyond gilded age levels) much worse.
Of course, because he is who he is the only solution he talks about is getting people to "invest in stocks", which, yeah that makes a ton of sense if you already have wealth since the current ruling class have shown that they will not, under any circumstances, let number go down even if none of the economics make sense (sure, they'll orchestrate a little dip here and there so they can profit massively off the insider information, but hey crime is legal bro).
But it does nothing for the many people who are really going to get squeezed here who are already living paycheck to paycheck and watching the water rise up to about their necks at this point.
And if you dont want to read, here is the hourlong audio: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry...
Those looking for a deep explanation, this isnt as much about AI as it is about societal participation in prosperity.
All this new fangled talk about ABUNDANCE yadda yadda I find quite silly. We already live in abundance, most jobs for instance already pay very livable wages for example. It's just not livable because of mainly housing (& more broadly renting & land prices)
I agree housing is an issue but we are not at the stage where they can say everyone have a house and take a holiday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
Unfortunately, it’s been the outcome of every system we’ve yet tried - wealth always accumulates. It has, so far, only been redistributed through violence - either direct action by the proletariat, or their mass slaughter in war, allowing redistribution amidst the survivors.
I’d love to imagine that this time we can find a different path, but ten millennia of precedent is a hard trend to buck.
Our species has been on the planet for what, roughly 300,000 years? 290,000 of which was spent mostly on chasing our food. By comparison our modern fumble-fucking around with political systems designed by and for a notional elite class is a blink of the eye. We've beaten worse odds.
Immigrant families save a higher percentage than Americans even when they make less money. Americans notoriously overconsume and are not big on saving.
1. By giving you something worth more than money to you.
2. By promising that giving money to me will make you richer, earning you more than you gave me. (A loan, a business investment, etc.)
The richer you are, the fewer things there in category 1 that I could plausibly deliver. I probably can't get away with lying to you in category 2 for long, so going that way may save me today, but it will make you richer.
Without redistribution of some sort, wealth concentrates, and wealth concentration probably even accelerates. No AI needed. That's just the interesting flavor it takes these days.
An employer, too, isn't going to employ someone in the long run unless they make more money on them than they pay them. Jobs, Zuck's etc. investors succeeded (well, on average) in getting back more money than they gave out. But Jobs, Zuck etc. got rich by convincing a lot of others -- their employees -- to take the same kind of deal: make me richer than I make you.
From Neuromancer and Snow Crash to Altered Carbon the theme is that technology is not salvation but as another axis of inequality.
People will downvote you for talking about fiction, meanwhile we're sleepwalking straight into the worst societies that fiction authors predicted
Large institutional investors own < 1% of single family homes and < 3% of single family rentals.
20% of US single family homes are investor owned at all, and 85% of those are held by mom‑and‑pop with <= 5 properties.
It’s retail investors that are pushing up the market for other retail buyers.
https://thedailyrecord.com/2025/07/08/investor-homebuying-hi...
https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/institutional-i...
While I'm obviously biased here, imo Blackstone is much better still because you don't see Steve Schwarzman go around pontificating while using the voting rights of passive investors to force certain behaviors upon the boards of nearly every company.
