Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Economic Inequality
by
brian_23452
on 18/11/2014, 07:43:36 UTC
Lets face it, there's a colossal gap between the rich and the poor, and that gap is certainly getting wider. But whose to blame in this economic inequality? Is it the government that favors capitalist who contributed large amount during their campaign periods? Is it our constitution that institutionalized the practice of contractualization and other forms of labor flexibilization, hence undermining job security? Like a joke from my previous job, "If you are not a regular employee, you are casual. And after 5 or 6 months, your employer says TY (Thank You) to you which makes you a casualTY. Can we blame capitalist that hoard as much wealth as possible leaving only a thin slice of the .pie for the average guy to share among themselves?

Well, we know  that the economic inequality has existed since the beginning of civilization so we can rule out all possible reasons listed here, as they are much newer than civilization.  There is clearly something intrinsic about civilization itself which leads to this result.  

Obviously, as the people who are rich are historically the people who make the rules, it stands to reason that they would establish rules that maintain and increase their wealth; this is true regardless of political or economic systems in place.  Further, it is also clear they it is critical to their wealth that they main a lower class (basically everyone else).  Even if there were an abundance of wealth to go around such that we could all be "rich", it is not in their best interests to facilitate this.  After all, I can't hire another billionaire to do my work for me, it requires someone who has no choice but to do my work for me.

“Civilization” began with the ability to “store” (read: withhold to an unnatural degree) value. Prior that, Homo sapiens had to meander about with the animals they hunted—enduring egalitarianism.

Precisely.  If I can't store excess, it makes little sense to extract more than I can immediately consume, especially if the excess comes at your expense (and since we are all equal, even if I wanted to do this everyone else would hate me for it and punish me).  If I *can* store the excess though, and use that excess to do things like, pay someone else to work for me, than that is what I will do.  I can further use this excess to essentially bribe other people to see things my way (especially given that historically, the rate of return on capital vastly exceeds inflation, if my family was rich in say 1800 they are even richer now barring some catastrophic event).  As the ability to store excess is intrinsic to civilization, all these people who think bitcoin is going to magically solve a problem that is older than money itself are simply fooling themselves.