Adam Smith and Inequality (2014)
&gt;&gt;Moreover, employers enjoy a bargaining advantage over workers and can coerce them to accept worse terms, because they need individual workers less than individual workers need employment.<p>Where does Smith argue this? What&#x27;s striking in Smith&#x27;s writings is how strongly he opposed high taxes on any group, including the rich, and any sort of infringement on contract liberty. With respect to the latter, in every prescription in the Wealth of Nations where he mentions regulations, he argues that such restrictions are immoral, irrespective of the intention behind them.<p>As for Smith&#x27;s claim that abnormally high profits are a pathology stemming from curtailments of market freedom, it has been validated by economic analyses that show profit margins correlated with the degree of regulatory restrictions in an industry. Occupations that provide a pay premium, above what is expected from the skills and education level of the worker, are also concentrated in highly regulated sectors:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;research&#x2F;make-elites-compete-why-the-1-earn-so-much-and-what-to-do-about-it&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;research&#x2F;make-elites-compete-why-t...</a><p>This same trend in seen in housing, with increases in regulatory restrictions in property development contributing to income inequality:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;obamawhitehouse.archives.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;whitehouse.gov&#x2F;files&#x2F;images&#x2F;Housing_Development_Toolkit%20f.2.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;obamawhitehouse.archives.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;whitehouse.gov&#x2F;fi...</a><p>What I&#x27;ve witnessed in the cryptocurrency market is the same: token sales once gave access to lucrative early stage investment opportunities, like Ethereum which launched with a permissionless crowdsale open to anyone in the world with BTC.<p>This study confirms that:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;link.springer.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.1007&#x2F;s11408-020-00366-0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;link.springer.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.1007&#x2F;s11408-020-00366-0</a><p><i>&quot;The average ICO has almost 4700 contributors. The median contributor invests a relatively small amount. The ICO market appears to have successfully given access to the financing of innovation to a new class of investors, which is a long-standing public policy issue&quot;</i><p>In 2017, the SEC effectively shut down programmatic token sales, bases on its ideological tenet that centralized regulatory gatkeeping provides &quot;investor protection&quot;, and since then, the huge opportunities have been fully monopolized by venture capital firms. Some have seen 1000X returns on investment by being alone in funding pre-launch projects.<p>The most valuable smart contract platforms launched since 2017 almost all have token distributions where at least a third or half of tokens went to a small group of venture capitalists who were able to bid on the first release of tokens without any competition from ordinary retail investors:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.ibb.co&#x2F;sHNb5gL&#x2F;E-Js-Ln9-Vc-AI5-F14.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.ibb.co&#x2F;sHNb5gL&#x2F;E-Js-Ln9-Vc-AI5-F14.png</a>