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Economic inequality is harmful when it results in centralization of power, where decisions are increasingly top-down and made by a smaller number of people who
by ranprieur 11y ago
Economic inequality is harmful when it results in centralization of power, where decisions are increasingly top-down and made by a smaller number of people who are more out of touch because they're more insulated by wealth. This leads to bad decisions, and unhappiness among the increasing number of people who sense that they have no meaningful participation in society.
"Can you have a healthy society with great variation in wealth?" Only if there is no great variation in power, and this would require redefining wealth as something disconnected from power, like consumption of luxuries.
- nhaehnle 11y agoYeah, this is the part of the essay where I really did a double-take. He actually writes: "Can you have a healthy society with great variation in wealth? What would it look like? Notice how novel it feels to think about that." That is not novel at all. The connection between economic power and political power is a very old subject. Complaints about the influence of money in politics and hence about the influence of inequality in politics are probably only slightly younger than politics itself. I have been saying for years that one of the most important reasons for being critical of (excessive) economic inequality is that it destabilizes democracy, since the market is fundamentally one-dollar-one-vote rather than one-person-one-vote.