[cornholio]

The primary mechanism for wealth redistribution in capitalism to which I was referring to in the original post was quality and productivity improvements and the resulting lower prices and exponential increase in the quality of life of the poor. The exploited workers of China have access to healthcare, communication, education and transportation that dwarf anything a king could have dreamed of 400 years ago. And these developments are strongly related to market incentives and the free flow of capital.

That's not to say the income distribution aspect is not important, it's another side of the same issue of class relations. But I don't think a claim can be made that capitalism itself is a strong factor of income redistribution. And in the short run, distribution is the only thing that maters to workers.

Crucially, capitalist redistribution, to the degree it works without state intervention, is strongly related to the value of the human capital each person is born with or can acquire in life - it's no coincidence that massive public investments in education were strongly related to increasing equality. Once human capital becomes relatively devalued by thinking machines that can do more and more complex things ever cheaper and faster, we will pass biological limit when workers no longer have anything to bring to the negotiating table: they need the products of capitalism but can no longer capture a meaningful fraction of the income in relation to capital, nor can they amass significant capital due to diseconomies of scale.

The feudal model is thus appropriate: all-powerful lords waging war over turf, a cast of mercenaries fighting the war (knowledge workers and specialized professionals) and a vast mass of peons.