At the end of the day, it's power that stratifies life experience. Wealth is just the most obvious summary of power in capitalist societies. Controlling the m

At the end of the day, it's power that stratifies life experience. Wealth is just the most obvious summary of power in capitalist societies. Controlling the means of production (or, say, housing) is also power. Historically, the worst excesses were prevented by labor having its own inherent power: farms didn't get harvested without labor. As we've moved further away from inherent power in every human (i.e. to industrialization, then knowledge work), that leaves a lot of people with little to no power. And when you have none, people can exploit the hell out of you. Personally, that's why I think UBI is going to be a required bandaid on the system -- you're going to have to afford people some level of "I will not willfully enslave myself to you, even if I don't have any skills / education." Otherwise Amazon warehouses are going to seem free and quaint.