02-03-2020, 12:33 PM
(02-02-2020, 11:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(02-02-2020, 01:31 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(02-02-2020, 11:00 AM)sbarrera Wrote: I also agree with the growing issue of inequality and the attendant economic anxiety.
Inequality is not growing. It maxed out around 2000, and had remained at a high level since. Economic anxiety is growing as people realize it's a long term state of affairs.
But history shows that inequality has a cyclical character. It is at its weakest when a community is just getting out of 'survival mode' at the end of a Crisis, remains relatively low in a High that finally sees mom-and-pop businesses start to flourish for the first time and offers plenty of opportunity to young workers, intensifies some as an Awakening brings enterprise and hierarchy under question, and goes out of control in an Unraveling when community is ravaged in an every-man-for-himself mode and those in power abuse power to enrich themselves at others' expense. Finally the system collapses as a speculative boom that did more to devour wealth than to create wealth leads to a financial panic. People already poor have little to lose, but paper profits vanish. What had been wealth commanding the poor is gone. People focus on survival.
You're right about the cyclicality, and your description is within reason for end of the Crisis, the High, and the Awakening. Inequality does continue to increase during the unraveling, but because it's a result of a competitive free market that makes the poor better off too - just not as fast as the rich - there's little resentment against it.
Before the system collapses, however, there's a crisis period where competition ceases to operate because the biggest players have become big enough to control the markets through oligopoly and monopoly. That's what happened in the 1850s and 1930s, and that's where we are in now. Inequality stops growing because the big players can't get any bigger; their markets are saturated. However, resentment against the high levels of inequality that have built up does start growing because, without competition, the poor have stagnated rather than seeing improvements.
Quote:Quote:Tearing down institutions may help, but the problem won't be resolved until the largest private institutions, like Google and Facebook, are broken up or crippled enough to permit competition. Historically, that has not happened through political action alone.
But what about the internet retailer Amazon.com? It is difficult for a small-business owner in a retail store to compete.
Amazon is absolutely part of the problem too; I was just giving examples, but in fact monopolists are starting to dominate everywhere - even outside of tech.
My point is that historically, the institutional changes that happen during the Unraveling and Crisis are not sufficient to break up the monopolies. It would be great if, say, antitrust lawsuits would break up all the monopolies, but historically, that's not what happens; it takes a war to destroy enough of them to allow the pieces to be picked up.