Combine financialization, neoliberalism and moral bankruptcy, and you end up with self-serving parasitic elites. When did our financial and political elites become self-serving parasites? Some will answer that elites have always been self-serving parasites; as tempting as it may be to offer a blanket denunciation of elites, this overlooks the eras in which elites rose to meet existential crises. Following in Ancient Rome’s Footsteps: Moral Decay, Rising Wealth Inequality(September 30, 2015) As historian Peter Turchin explained in his book War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, the value of sacrifice was a core characteristic of the early Republic’s elite: “Unlike the selfish elites of the later periods, the aristocracy of the early Republic did not spare its blood or treasure in the service of the common interest. When 50,000 Romans, a staggering one fifth of Rome’s total manpower, perished in the battle of Cannae, as mentioned previously, the senate lost almost one third of its membership. This suggests that the senatorial aristocracy was more likely to be killed in wars than the average citizen….
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Do you see any similarities with the present-day realities depicted in these charts?
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US Pre-Tax Income Share |
Correspondent Jim B. summarized historian Arnold Toynbee’s study of the rise and fall of civilizations: “Civilizations fail when their elites change from an admired dynamic creative class to a despised Establishment of corrupt rentiers, an entrenched governing class unfit to govern.”
I would trace the slide into self-serving parasites to three dynamics: financialization, neoliberalism and moral bankruptcy. While definitions of financialization vary, mine is:
Financialization is the mass commodification of debt and debt-based financial instruments collaterized by previously low-risk assets, a pyramiding of risk and speculative gains that is only possible in a massive expansion of low-cost credit and leverage.
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Share of Nation's Income |
Another way to describe the same dynamics is: financialization results when leverage and information asymmetry replace innovation and productive investment as the source of wealth creation.
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Lifecycle of Fonancialization |
The moral bankruptcy of our financial and political elites is self-evident. Combine financialization, neoliberalism and moral bankruptcy, and you end up with self-serving parasitic elites.Join me in offering solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
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