Very interesting thread.. lots of topics worth further discussion and learning.
Now.. this thing is one of the 2 big concerns I have about Bitcoins:
The Shamir paper makes it clear that early adopters went to significant lengths to hide the true extent of their hoarding of Bitcoins. frankly the more you look into the history of Bitcoin, its origins, and the actions of the early players, the more it seems like a big trojan horse.
Why create something targeted at instant transactions (like a Paypal) or to be used as a currency (like the USD) but design it to have the economic behaviour of stock market? That makes no sense. What we see here is that the effort needed to get 10-15 coins today is pretty much the same level of effort and risk that 1 year ago would give you hundred of thousands.
The main problem here is not the fact that early adopters have more, this is fine. The main problem is the sheer scale of the disproportion. We talk about million times more for a comparable risk. People entering the Bitcoin world now risk as much than people entering 1 or 2 years ago.
In one or two years time those 10-15 Bitcoins could be worth the same as what those thousands are worth today. Then there will be more people complaining about the disproportion and unfairness because they didn't get the chance to get in on it earlier.