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> Something is wrong and broken with "modern capitalism" if a mere 90,000 people have more wealth than 90% of the planet. Honestly, I don't think so. I believe

by jcfrei 11y ago

> Something is wrong and broken with "modern capitalism" if a mere 90,000 people have more wealth than 90% of the planet. Honestly, I don't think so. I believe we are merely returning to a state of the world that we've always been in - with the exception of the last 70 years or so. The existence of a large middle class is a distinct phenomenon of the 20th century, and specifically of the western countries. If I'm not mistaken then such a thing as a large middle class did never exist before anywhere else. It was always this heavily skewed distribution where 99% of the people own next to nothing compared to the 1%. I dont wan't to advocate for either of these two distributions here, just stating the historical context.

mdorazio 11y ago
This is actually a good point that I never considered. I'm trying to think of a historical counterpoint, but the best I can come up with is the pseudo-middle class of ancient Greece. All the other long-term civilizations seem to have been composed of a royalty-level class and everyone else, from ancient Egypt through Rome and the Middle Ages.
nugget 11y ago
One of my favorite Professors once made the point that in Soviet Russia you could replace ''political power'' with ''wealth'' and it became a very similar system to the West. By law no Russians owned any personal property but the 1% ruling class (and really the 1% of the 1%) had more political power than everyone else combined. It was a capitalist system that used political power as its currency instead of dollars, which meant it was much less efficient (and personally cruel in many cases), but still tended towards extreme inequality. As far as America today, aren't we ever just one election away from massive wealth redistribution? As the ranks of the ''educated poor'' swell at the expense of the middle class, and we transition from an ownership economy to a sharing economy (wherein the average person now rents a condo forever and uses on-demand transpo and other services and owns very few material possessions), and access to the polls is increased as voter suppression is decreased and the impact of social media is fully realized (inevitable at some point), then we are in for some interesting times.

by jcfrei 11y ago

mdorazio 11y ago

This is actually a good point that I never considered. I'm trying to think of a historical counterpoint, but the best I can come up with is the pseudo-middle class of ancient Greece. All the other long-term civilizations seem to have been composed of a royalty-level class and everyone else, from ancient Egypt through Rome and the Middle Ages.

nugget 11y ago

One of my favorite Professors once made the point that in Soviet Russia you could replace ''political power'' with ''wealth'' and it became a very similar system to the West. By law no Russians owned any personal property but the 1% ruling class (and really the 1% of the 1%) had more political power than everyone else combined. It was a capitalist system that used political power as its currency instead of dollars, which meant it was much less efficient (and personally cruel in many cases), but still tended towards extreme inequality. As far as America today, aren't we ever just one election away from massive wealth redistribution? As the ranks of the ''educated poor'' swell at the expense of the middle class, and we transition from an ownership economy to a sharing economy (wherein the average person now rents a condo forever and uses on-demand transpo and other services and owns very few material possessions), and access to the polls is increased as voter suppression is decreased and the impact of social media is fully realized (inevitable at some point), then we are in for some interesting times.