Speaking of particians or other wealthy "investors": It is not necessarily optimal that technology development decisions depend on their needs, inclinations and understanding. In particular, they tend to be more greedy than the society norm - which is not a fortunate aspect regarding concerns of this diary.
Two questions. When you say "optimal", what are you optimising? And what would be an "optimal" mechanism for allocation of surplus wealth? "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
Immediate holders of surplus wealth would of course prefer to keep it to themselves. Whatever social agreements or deals are proposed, there will be some better off without the agreements (in the sense of game theory models). They may even use their power to prevent new agreements, or weaken exsisting ones. (As it happens now, with the global initiative from Washington DC.) They may use measure like propaganda to keep control. On the other hand, the rest of society players may decide that it is unfair to them to have no distribution. In extreme cases, they may have enough power to impose or persuade any distribution whatsoever. Of course, harmonious agreements are preferable. The "optimal" situation is perhaps when the power balance is in favour of the majority seeking a redistribution, and they persuade surplus wealth holders to apply multidimensional individual optimization, along the lines: is it the sum of your ambitions to grasp as much wealth as possible for this moment? Don't you want to be sure that this wonderful society will keep functioning happily in this marvelous environment for indefinitely long time?
