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Published Online: 28 March 2017
Accepted: February 2017

Wealth inequality: The physics basis

Journal of Applied Physics 121, 124903 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4977962
A. Bejan1 and M. R. Errera2
more...View Affiliations
  • 1Duke University, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Durham, North Carolina 27708-0300, USA
  • 2Federal University of Paraná, Department of Environmental Engineering, Curitiba, Parana, 81531-980, Brazil
ABSTRACT
“Inequality” is a common observation about us, as members of society. In this article, we unify physics with economics by showing that the distribution of wealth is related proportionally to the movement of all the streams of a live society. The hierarchical distribution of wealth on the earth happens naturally. Hierarchy is unavoidable, with staying power, and difficult to efface. We illustrate this with two architectures, river basins and the movement of freight. The physical flow architecture that emerges is hierarchical on the surface of the earth and in everything that flows inside the live human bodies, the movement of humans and their belongings, and the engines that drive the movement. The nonuniform distribution of wealth becomes more accentuated as the economy becomes more developed, i.e., as its flow architecture becomes more complex for the purpose of covering smaller and smaller interstices of the overall (fixed) territory. It takes a relatively modest complexity for the nonuniformity in the distribution of wealth to be evident. This theory also predicts the Lorenz-type distribution of income inequality, which was adopted empirically for a century.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Professor Bejan's work was supported by the U. S. National Science Foundation. Professor Errera's work was sponsored by the Federal University of Parana, Brazil.

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  1. Published by AIP Publishing.

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