Since 2015, the richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet. We’ve come to the point that eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world.
What's fascinating is that it hasn't always been this way. It's a cumulative process with a steadily widening gap that’s happening right under our nose, as we speak.
In 2020 and 2021 alone, the wealthiest 1% of the world’s population accumulated nearly two-thirds of all new wealth.
It’s difficult to really understand these numbers. This means that the top 2,600 billionaires gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90%. During a global pandemic.
If you're like me, you're likely feeling quite shocked, and extremely upset.
But that's the only way it can function, when you rely on a society model based on free market.
It's called the Pareto principle. If all the world's money were redistributed equally tomorrow, resetting everyone's accounts to, for example, 10 dollars, within 15 hours the distribution would quickly revert back to the initial, highly unequal distribution pattern:
Sure, the extremely wealthy individuals at the top would probably change... but the distribution would remain the same.
It's crystal clear that a system designed like this is riddled with colossal bugs. Even if you're indifferent to the condition of your fellow humans or even your own, concentrating so much capital on a few individuals inherently breeds a host of other serious issues: centralization of power, political instability and corruption, economic stagnation, and, in the long run, the very loss of the free market itself.
Could this suggest that it might be time to consider alternatives to the libertarian model? Not so fast.
It's undeniable that even as the divide between the rich and the poor widens, the share of the population living in extreme poverty is continually decreasing, from over 80% in 1800 to under 20% by 2015. The decrease is even more significant now, as over the past twenty years the percentage has dropped from 43% to 21% — with the exception of Africa, of course.
Completely overhauling the model would be, on one hand, impossible, and on the other, a plunge into the deepest unknown.
More pragmatically, what we need is a brand of liberalism that is able to correct the tragic flaws and extremes of pure capitalism:
We need strong government oversight to protect workers’ rights, consumers’ rights, environmental protection, and free competition.
We need to continually redistribute extreme income and wealth via taxation.
We need to restrict free enterprise in areas like banking and energy, because whoever controls banking and finance controls everything else.
I'm not pulling a rabbit out of a hat here: it's called social liberalism, or market-based social democracy, and even billionaires like Buffet have been telling us for a decade how ridiculously in their favor the current system is.
It's time to end this farce, and to collectively land some solid punches on the bullies actively trying to worsen the situation.
