We live in a capitalist society, so we encourage making as much as possible, but should governments actively try and keep the wealth gap at an average rate or should they take a complete hands off approach? How could the government even go about lowering the wealth gap effectively? This post rides along a fine line of what you believe politically and what you believe economically, which only further makes things more difficult.

Indeed, these things can be difficult because people often have a preconceived notion based on whatever fits together their political beliefs.

I'll declare myself as a complete voluntary anarchist, but I hope that's the wagon behind the horse and that I'd change if someone showed me reason to do so.

I think the way the government could lower the wealth gap would be to roll back all the things it does that cause the wealth gap in the first place.

I notice (not in your post at all, just in general) that people often have this dichotomy in their head where they accept the foundations of the economic system as the way that it is and then assume taxes is the only way to bridge the gap. Even putting aside moral etc disagreements with taxation, that seems like attacking a problem with a squirt gun. It's nothing compared to the underlying things that cause the gap. (And of course in practice, to actually tax enough to correct it in a meaningful way, it gets messy as the mega-rich would just hide wealth and leave the country and get buddy-buddy with the political class at a higher rate.)

In a natural laissez-faire state, to me it seems like most businesses would be run by people who are intimately in touch with the local clientele. It would be a competition of passion. But minimum wage laws and licensing requirements and complicated tax and legal codes warp it into like a careful game of numbers with really thin margins for profit, so it's won by major groups who have enough money to invest in the proper strategy. And in turn so much of the economy is top-heavy.

And of course there are entire industries like the banking sector (and their cousin, the war sector) that wouldn't exist without government monetary policy. And a lot of the rich emerge from these areas.

In general, like if you just think of an island of 200 people, it'll be pretty tough for anyone to be drastically better off than someone else. One might work harder, be a little stronger, etc. It won't be completely even, but one person isn't exponentially better than others by nature. But if one person has a gun and is allowed to make rules (about where you can build, when you can pick coconuts, how and etc), those who are friends with this power source have an avenue to riches that's way disproportionate to what they'd have without it.

And US law, littered with protectionist policies, is I think an extension of this concept, and over time bound to result in a top-heavy distribution.

Since I'm not rich hehe, I personally have no visceral dislike for taxing the rich. But I just don't think it's actually the way that this would get corrected. It would be like getting stabbed and putting a bandaid on it. I appreciate your post and just want to share this perspective, I think the roots of the imbalance is really important and sometimes ignored by people who are interested in this.