"The wealth another man has or controls is irrelevant if his posession of such does not prevent me from generating enough wealth to meet my needs."

It's called political campaign donations. It's called monopoly and cartels. It's called comparative advantage. It's called out-bidding. It's called privately funded education and private tutoring. It's called back room deals. It's called buying advertising. It's called getting lots of tries to get it right. It's called keeping the others desperately poor so they have no choice but to deal on your terms and be cheap labor.

From:
    "The Mythology of Wealth"
    http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402 [conceptualguerilla.com]
""" ... First of all, "hard work" is only a small piece of the equation. In reality, success in the market is about market position. It isn't about what you do, but about what you control. The hardest work is actually done by people whose market position makes their daily wage minimal. The person who profits most from their labor is the person who owns the factory they work in. While there are certainly examples of factory owners who started with nothing and rose to be "captains of industry", for the most part our captains of industry started out a lot further ahead of the game.
    This is the difference between say, George W. Bush and you. Dubya went to prep school. You went to the public high school. Dubya went to Yale - ahead of someone with better credentials because he had family connections. Dubya had wealthy friends, through family, "skull and bones", etc, who bankrolled his oil drilling business. Ask some of his friends to bankroll your oil business. Let me know if they stop laughing before their bodyguards throw you out. Even if you managed to persuade an investor to bankroll some enterprise, you're going to have exactly one shot. If you lose, you won't be getting a second chance. Dubya, on the other hand, went broke, and then his friends bankrolled him again, before finally getting him a one percent share of the Texas Rangers.
    See how it works? People with money help each other out. They don't help out people who don't have any. Many cheap-labor conservatives don't want to help out the destitute at all. They say government assistance to people will make them "dependent". They say it breeds "inefficiency" and "laziness". They say that a harsh "got mine, get yours" social environment breeds "market discipline" by rewarding the most resourceful and competitive. Some extreme cheap-labor conservatives don't even believe in public education. They say it is the family's responsibility. If your family can't afford to send you to school, well, that's not their problem.
    Of course, wealthy elites shower their own with benefits - and enjoy a plethora of government benefits and services. They know the value of education, that's why they keep expensive private schools like Andover in business. In fact, they do everything they can to give their own children every advantage money can buy, because they absolutely understand the value of a "head start" in the fiercely competitive social jungle they have created. They talk about "competition", but they actually fear it, and do what they can to make the playing field as unequal as they can. Then they tell the wage earner that his position is "his fault", and that he just needs to work harder - in their factory. He needs to more "disciplined" and "thrifty" if we wants to "get ahead".
"""

There are always exceptions to these general trends. Steve Jobs, for example, is something of an exception. He got lucky (even though he is also, like Bill Gates, hard working and talented). But you can be sure Steve Jobs has been doing his best for a long time to make sure a lot of other potential Steve Jobs' In never get their chance to run the next Apple. It's a crazy way to run an advanced technological society where war over economic issues could quickly lead to Armegeddon. See Alfie Kohn:
    http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm [share-international.org]
"""
    "We need competition in order to survive."
    "Life is boring without competition."
    "It is competition that gives us meaning in life."
    These words written by American college students capture a sentiment that runs through the heart of the USA and appears to be spreading throughout the world. To these students, competition is not simply something one does, it is the very essence of existence. When asked to imagine a world without competition, they can foresee only rising prices, declining productivity and a general collapse of the moral order. Some truly believe we would cease to exist were it not for competition.
    Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will be an invaluable resource.
    Kohn defines competition as any situation where one person's success is dependent upon another's failure. Put another way, in competition two or more parties are pursuing a goal that cannot be attained by all. He calls this 'mutually exclusive goal attainment' (MEGA). ...
    One place where competition cannot exist, according to Kohn, is within oneself. Such striving to better one's own standing is an individual, not interactive matter; it does not involve MEGA. Of course some people cannot imagine pushing themselves without the possibility of 'winning' or the threat of 'losing', but this by no means implies that all motivation is dependent upon competitive frameworks. Throughout history countless large and small accomplishments have been achieved simply out of an individual's desire to do better without any thought of beating others. Such striving for mastery cannot be confused with competition.
"""

So, ask yourself, are you celebrating "mastery" or "competition" with your defense of the status quo?

There are many things great about the market, but there are problems with it too, from externalities like pollution and systemic risks. A market cannot function humanely without the wealth spread around fairly evenly. Economic "demand" is only a measure of demand by people with money; otherwise people are left to starve, as billions are at risk globally of starvation despite their being plenty of food and plenty of economic capacity to make abundance for all, because the market does not need them for labor, and even if it did, there is so much competition for a declining number of jobs, that the wages can go lower and lower in real terms. US productivity has risen 20% since 2001, but real wages have dropped 3% or so. How do you explain that? Where is that trend going?