![]() Something called the law of accumulation, which we’ll discuss later, tells us that over time, profits will slowly but steadily accrue to those who already have the most wealth, a physical reality that causes all democracies to increasingly become plutocracies (governance by the rich), unless we intervene by political means. Unfortunately, social capitalist democracy has a couple of structural problems that must be actively managed to keep it working. Most are in the middle class, and an educated, productive middle class keep the rich accountable to public interests. They depend on an educated, productive, and well-cared for middle class, which must gain the largest share of social wealth. In diamond-shaped societies, only a small percentage of the citizens (5%?) live near the poverty line, and must be subsidized by society in order to survive. We’ve fallen quite far from that desirable state of affairs in the last three generations, and will have to build back up to it again in coming years.ĭemocracies are an incredible social advance, and we’ve had them for only a tiny fraction of our existence. Most recently in US history, our grandparents can recall the the post-war US from the 1940s to the 1960s, when an average family enjoyed the highest wages and social benefits, and the fairest tax structure in recent memory. ![]() We’ve had about 250 years of this great new form of government, social capitalist democracy. With the Enlightenment, circa 1600-1800 CE, we turned the Feudal Pyramid into the Democratic Diamond, a society with a large and healthy middle class in our most progressive states. Feudalism entrenched this inequality into the laws and norms of society. Wealth always accrues the fastest to the holders of capital, and never has it been built faster for corporations and the top 1% than in our modern post-1960 era of globalization.Īs the futurist David Brin has said, for almost all of the last six thousand years, human culture lived under a pyramidal structure, where feudal lords denied power, property, and information to the lower rungs of the pyramid. ![]() Plutocracy, with its counterinnovative monopolies, corporate welfare, crony capitalism, corruption, and the erosion the social and educational contract for the middle class, including good jobs, affordable housing, education and health care, and a democracy based on evidence-based thinking, is a predictable development of the great wealth generated by technology and globalization, in successive waves since the Industrial Revolution. ![]() We are speaking now of the great growth in economic inequality and the consequent plutocracythat has emerged in modern industrial nations since the mid-20 th century. In any introduction to foresight we would be remiss if we didn’t include discussion of perhaps the greatest single negative socioeconomic development of the modern era. ![]()
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