Even under &quot;homo economicus&quot; rules, that&#x27;s not true, because the marginal utility gain for that one person will be much less than the 999,999 people. Without diminishing utility gains, you have nothing like economics. I don&#x27;t mean that rhetorically; none of the math works if the billionth dollar is exactly as valuable to a person as the first one, or the billionth orange is exactly as valuable to a person as the first one. There is <i>no economics</i> if what you say is true.<p>There&#x27;s a kernel of truth there, but you have to open the gap <i>much</i> wider, many orders of magnitude wider, to the point it becomes more a philosophy question than one of economics, because the amount of money you&#x27;d actually have to give to one person to equal 999,999 very poor people getting $1,000 exceeds the amount of wealth in the world comfortably. (I don&#x27;t even have to run the math; the exponential decay of utility makes this a done deal.)<p>I agree that it is a common error to mistake economics as being &quot;about&quot; money, one I think even at times PhDs in economics make, but it isn&#x27;t about money. Money is merely one slightly special and easy-to-measure token in an economy, but it isn&#x27;t really what economics is <i>about</i>.