Yes there is risk...but so much investment is made by those that can afford to risk it..that is the risk of losing the investment is not losing your home and car or being thrown to the street. If risk is defined by surplus money alone then yes, investors take risks, but if you define risk as the chance of losing your livelihood and basic needs? Typing on a keyboard entails more risk.
When the poor takes an investment risk of $1000 they risk more than some elite putting up $1000.
No, it's the money itself which is risked. Everything else is adjacent. How much the specific individual holding the money actually values it is irrelevant. It's how much that you value the money that's relevant.
What is $1,000 worth to you? Now, that question has a wide range of answers. In some places, that's literally worth multiple lives. Or it could be beyond insignificant.
Obviously very few can or should take a personal investment risk of 100% or more of their net worth.
You are arbitrarily limiting the scope of risk to a unit of account without regard to what those units of account do or do not afford one in the world. That is too limited a definition to be useful IRL.
What I was trying to get at is that the value of money is both absolutely consistent (unit of account) but also completely situational ($10 can save a life). At the same time, the IRR of investing on public markets, like an index fund tracking the S&P 500, is exactly the same for everyone, and anyone can invest 10% of their net worth, whether that is $1,000 or $10,000,000.
The original comment was that holding money generates nothing, you have to risk it, and I completely agree. You can risk 20% of your net worth and you're not risking your livelihood, and odds are in ~8 years your investment will have doubled, and your net worth increased by 20%. For some people that's a thousand dollars, others it's ten million. If you want to double your net worth in less than 30 years, you're going to have to risk a lot more. Everyone has access to the same returns on the public market (and we restrict access to private markets for very good reasons).
So it's a literal definition of risk, and as a percentage of net worth it works well. The problem of massive wealth inequality to me is completely adjacent to risking capital in return for investment returns.
In truth my original comment was to point out that the holding money comment was misunderstood to mean keeping money under a pillow when I took it as it takes money to make money, and those that have money risk little in terms of their physical welfare.
When the poor takes an investment risk of $1000 they risk more than some elite putting up $1000.