More on the pioneer society as it morphs into an aristocratic society:
In a pioneer society there is much opportunity but inadequate capital. People end up creating capital through the hard work of clearing forests for farms. If one chooses some other way of life, then labor is very much in demand for digging mines, laying rail tracks, stringing telegraph or telephone lines, herding cattle from grazing areas to rail heads, and of course mining and logging. Entrepreneurial opportunities abound from saloons to banks. Life can go well if one takes care of oneself (OK, avoid the whore house, don't gamble away your money, and don't mess up your liver with excessive booze), and even as a laborer you might end up living like a capitalist.
So it was on the western frontier, whether in the Mohawk Valley just west of Schenectady or in central Nebraska or the Texas Panhandle. Farming gave way to ranching, of course, where the rain was unreliable unless one harvested a river (itself a pioneering activity).
Inheritance meant little, as there was little to inherit until the frontier had been settled to some extent.
Inherited wealth allows an economic order more aristocratic in character to appear. Such happens slowly, but steadily. Bureaucracies arise, and the cynic in me suggests that such reflects the desire of elites that smart people not toy with radical ideals such as left-wing populism or Henry George's Single Tax, let alone Marxism. Real wages plummet as capital deepens. Bureaucracies are good at controlling assets and processes, but they don't create wealth. As capitalism matures, it allows more luxuries to produce, and these become competitors for thrift.
It's hard to tell if we are in late-stage capitalism, but it is easy to see what a depraved capitalist order looks like because we live in one. Economic inequality intensifies, and monopolistic control of opportunity and living space ensure that economic elites get more. Consumer choice seems to broaden, even into the realm of vice. The definitive late-capitalist society is one rich in brothels and casinos (OK, maybe amusement parks and game arcades for people who pretend to have some moral compass), but in which intellectual activity is frowned upon unless it churns out something marketable, like entertainment. The more mindless the entertainment, the better it serves the economic elites who want no competition in thought. Political life gravitates to what the moneyed elites can foist, the optimum for those elites being those reliable lackeys who believe as those elites do, that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such churn a profit. The favored religiosity that those elites support (for the poor, and certainly not their hyper-hedonistic selves!) offers "pie in the sky when you die" in return for demanding little and being thankful to one's exploiters (and somehow God) for what one gets. Overall, the economy seems dedicated to no small extent at taking what assets the middle class still has.
This is not a happy time.
In a pioneer society there is much opportunity but inadequate capital. People end up creating capital through the hard work of clearing forests for farms. If one chooses some other way of life, then labor is very much in demand for digging mines, laying rail tracks, stringing telegraph or telephone lines, herding cattle from grazing areas to rail heads, and of course mining and logging. Entrepreneurial opportunities abound from saloons to banks. Life can go well if one takes care of oneself (OK, avoid the whore house, don't gamble away your money, and don't mess up your liver with excessive booze), and even as a laborer you might end up living like a capitalist.
So it was on the western frontier, whether in the Mohawk Valley just west of Schenectady or in central Nebraska or the Texas Panhandle. Farming gave way to ranching, of course, where the rain was unreliable unless one harvested a river (itself a pioneering activity).
Inheritance meant little, as there was little to inherit until the frontier had been settled to some extent.
Inherited wealth allows an economic order more aristocratic in character to appear. Such happens slowly, but steadily. Bureaucracies arise, and the cynic in me suggests that such reflects the desire of elites that smart people not toy with radical ideals such as left-wing populism or Henry George's Single Tax, let alone Marxism. Real wages plummet as capital deepens. Bureaucracies are good at controlling assets and processes, but they don't create wealth. As capitalism matures, it allows more luxuries to produce, and these become competitors for thrift.
It's hard to tell if we are in late-stage capitalism, but it is easy to see what a depraved capitalist order looks like because we live in one. Economic inequality intensifies, and monopolistic control of opportunity and living space ensure that economic elites get more. Consumer choice seems to broaden, even into the realm of vice. The definitive late-capitalist society is one rich in brothels and casinos (OK, maybe amusement parks and game arcades for people who pretend to have some moral compass), but in which intellectual activity is frowned upon unless it churns out something marketable, like entertainment. The more mindless the entertainment, the better it serves the economic elites who want no competition in thought. Political life gravitates to what the moneyed elites can foist, the optimum for those elites being those reliable lackeys who believe as those elites do, that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such churn a profit. The favored religiosity that those elites support (for the poor, and certainly not their hyper-hedonistic selves!) offers "pie in the sky when you die" in return for demanding little and being thankful to one's exploiters (and somehow God) for what one gets. Overall, the economy seems dedicated to no small extent at taking what assets the middle class still has.
This is not a happy time.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.