> In his book Oligarchy, the political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters surveys eras in human history from the classical period to the 20th century, and documents w

> In his book Oligarchy, the political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters surveys eras in human history from the classical period to the 20th century, and documents what becomes of societies that concentrate income and wealth in a narrow elite. In almost every instance, the dismantling of such inequality has been accompanied by societal collapse, such as military defeat (as in the Roman empire) or revolution (as in France and Russia). If societal collapse is inevitable, maybe we're better off accepting that inequality because it's better to have inequality and a functioning society than to have societal collapse that leaves everyone more equal but leaving almost all qualitatively and quantitatively worse off than they were prior to the societal collapse. The more I study history, the more inevitable it looks that any system eventually ends up with an ossified oligarchy running it. Even every attempt at socialist/communist states whose goal was equality end up with an ossified oligarchy. No system humanity has created has ever avoided this fate. With that in mind, maybe the best course of action is to figure out which system, once it ends up with an ossified oligarchy, does the best job at achieving a steady rate of improvement in the quality of life for all constituents of that system.