Just how unequal is EVE's hyper-capitalistic universe? Apparently, not so unequal than our own.
I remember a while a go, someone calculated the average income of a surface dweller in EVE based the on the price of a dinner meal in one of the official EVE chronicles. The figure came out to be 4 million ISK (Interstellar Kredits) per year.
Well, here are some back of the napkin calculations. To put the 'average' income into perspective, the income of a capsuler, an EVE pilot, is a good 20 million ISK, per hour. Let's take the U.S. as a basis of comparison. The average U.S. income is $33,000 per year. That means, for the U.S. to reach that level of wealth disparity, there needs to be people who are earning $165,000 per hour, or, $1,446,225,000 a year.
According to Forbes, there are 793 identified billionaires in the world with an average net worth of $3 billion each. The yearly income of a capsuler in EVE is half the networth of the average richest people on a 2009 basis.
Consider that the "lifespan" (average subscription month) in EVE is 8 month, the networth of the richest people in EVE are in the same range as the richest people on Earth. Since the average number of EVE capsuler residents is 50K (I use this because EVE recently reached this peak number, with room for future growth) against a background of untold billions on the surface of planets. I have to assume that ratio is not so different from 793 out of 7 billion people. Looking at it that way, the stratification of the richest people in EVE are similar to the wealth divide of this era.
