I'm not sure who wrote this orginally, but:
Start quote:
I have a dumb question about econophysics.
If the native or raw ability to acquire wealth is distributed randomly, we ought to see a bell curve of abilities, whether of individuals or groups.
End quote.
The 'bell curve' is simply *a* statistical distribution. Randomly distributed things do not have to fall in a bell curve distribution. The normal distribution has a lot of nice properties, and so people doing statistics (over)use it a lot. It's also the only one which sticks in the minds of people who've had a single statistics course.
Barry