Wealth is power. Power decides what we use our collective time and resources on. The more concentrated power is, the less we use that time and resources on things that improves the life of the average person, and more on things that matter to the few with wealth.
I’m going to assume that this is just some edgy post, but you should read up on the relationship between wealth inequality and corruption, social mobility, and similar factors.
Not trolling. It has served me better than most heuristics.
If there is something subjective and if you cannot find a critique of it, it’s usually a super power to assume the opposite is true barring obvious exceptions.
I would say if there is a decline in society, the normies are wrong. And if there's steady improvement in quality of life, then the normie zeitgeist is correct. But there's always a delay in these things, at least a generation.
I don't think that applies when the normies lack power; which is precisely the problem with wealth concentration. That would be like blaming the serfs for the failures of feudalist governments.
There's a reason we don't have feudalist governments. It's a "solved" problem.
The normies may have much less power, but it's never zero. Wealth isn't the only form of power. There's law/politics and there's military power. Whenever a group oversteps, you get the Magna Carta, you get secularism, you get civil wars and your Second Amendment. This is why the French Revolution and The Civil War(s) are in the textbooks.
When Venezuela's economy collapsed, a South American friend said that they deserved it. Every other South American country fought corruption and died for independence.
We never want violence, but it is there as an option. Laws and economic policies are there to make sure the violence is never the best option. Non-democratic capitalism doesn't work because it puts the law and the wealth in the hands of a few and leaves force as the only option. The world didn't suddenly convert into communism because Marx and Lenin were handsome demon lords; they converted because capitalism pushed them into a corner.
When you have this decline, it's because a society had weak and corrupt lawyers, statesmen, and economists. These may not be your normies, but they're pretty close to the middle class.
But you don't get to praise capitalism for the cheap air conditioning and then criticize it when low costs push production overseas. You can't negotiate for the high salaries then blame greedy CEOs when you get replaced by someone cheaper. You don't get to charge "as high as possible" and then wonder why your doctor is charging your life savings to save your life. The normies built a culture around winning and lopsided power, then are shocked when power is used against them.
> simply because opposite of this is the prevailing normie zeitgeist
We'd love to be able to have reasoned discussions about economics and the pros and cons of wealth concentration vs redistribution here. But this is not the way to do it, and the comment led to an entirely predictable flamewar. Please don't do this on HN, and please make an effort to observe the guidelines, as you've been asked to do before.
Man it's hard to read stuff like this on the internet. When has wealth concentration ever been a good thing? Wealth is power and power leads to abuse almost universally.
You underestimate the resources the subset of society who it actually benefits can, will, and do use to distort views on how wide that benefit actually is.
Like all of the startup founders and all of the folks here working at tech companies and investing in their 401ks, happily cashing out RSUs, and such right?