...I was talking about social cohesion. War isn't evidence of a lack of social cohesion? You'd have to have a very peculiar definition of inequality to say th

...I was talking about social cohesion. War isn't evidence of a lack of social cohesion? You'd have to have a very peculiar definition of inequality to say that it has gone up. Measuring inequality by the ratio of the richest to the poorest doesn't seem like such a peculiar metric. More importantly, there is much more equality in terms of political power and ability to influence change... Is there? Less than 1% of the world's population holds more wealth than the bottom 50%. With that wealth comes not only economic power, but political power. You seem very fixated on the idea that the existence of a middle class automatically means there is equality. But if that "middle class" steadily falls behind the wealthy, how long before it becomes just another tier of the lower class? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-american-middle-class-is-stable-in-size-but-losing-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america... Your argument seems to be that oppression by a small elite is the only possible form of social order, a rather pessimistic and dystopian view. In that case, I guess we can look forward to a long period of peace, because inequality is rising rapidly around the world. The upper class is leaving the middle class in the dust. But perhaps you're wrong. Maybe revolutions happen when the economic distance between the upper class and the middle class threatens to become too great, when the middle begins to feel insecure.