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Thomas Piketty's 2013 unexpected bestseller (a 750 page economics book translated from French!) *Capital in the 21st Century*, offers a very convincing explanation of our political decay, and it continues to serve this purpose as the decay undergoes alarming acceleration:

memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24…

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/02/18/pik…

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A Gilded Age editorial cartoon of a frowning Uncle Sam giving a blood transfusion to a gargantuan business-man whose waistcoat is labeled 'protected monopolies.' The businessman's head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background has been replaced with a halftoned EU flag whose blue field is covered in circuit-board traceries. The floor beneath the figures is an abstract, pinkish pattern. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- EFF https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century – Cory Doctorow's MEMEX

memex.craphound.com
in reply to Cory Doctorow

mizblueprint
mastodon - Link to source
mizblueprint
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In 1968, Will and Ariel Durant published a small book entitled "The Lessons of History", 102 pages after their multi-volume opus "The History of Civilization". The brief chapter on economics concluded that concentration of wealth was inevitable unless a re-distributive system (confiscation or taxation) is developed. Re-distribution may be violent or peaceable, but inevitably occurs.
Page 57 of "The Lessons of History", 1968, by Will & Ariel Durant.
in reply to mizblueprint

Weasel
mastodon - Link to source
Weasel
• •

Wealth concentration is an inherent property of a capitalistic system.

The wealthier participant in a transaction has an inherent advantage in risk-tolerance and greater ability to hold out for a better deal. This leads to a positive feedback loop of wealth accumulation and concentration.

To make capitalism sustainable requires coupling it with sufficient downward wealth redistribution, such as progressive taxation and UBI.

scientificamerican.com/article…


Is Inequality Inevitable?

Wealth naturally trickles up in free-market economies, model suggests
Bruce M. Boghosian (Scientific American)
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