Among most of the criticisms of capitalism, rising inequality and wealth concentration tend to be the most cited. These forms of criticism are not ill

Things to Blame Before Capitalism - Integrity Talk

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2024-04-01 22:00:06

Among most of the criticisms of capitalism, rising inequality and wealth concentration tend to be the most cited. These forms of criticism are not illegitimate, as some of them are grounded in an existing and substantial body of empirical research. Thomas Piketty has probably made the most significant contribution to raising awareness of income inequality after his work was popularized in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which clearly highlights a consistent trend of rising inequality across the world since 1975. The following question is generally related to the moral aspect of unequal income distribution, where some authors have advanced their views by assembling evidence suggesting that income inequality is significantly associated with a number of undesirable societal outcomes. In The Spirit Level, Richard G. Wilkinson presented his extensive work on the effects of inequality through a large number of correlations showing how the most unequal societies are more likely to have higher levels of crime, poorer health, and other social problems.

The work of Piketty and Wilkinson has probably influenced the way people think critically about capitalism and, by the same token, fueled an existing anti-capitalist sentiment that revolves around a vision of capitalism that fosters income inequality. As Piketty would probably suggest, inequality is not an accident, but rather a feature of capitalism. One of the concerns with these views is that mediation can easily be mistaken for causation, leading to an exaggerated and oversimplified explanation of how capitalism works. The main factor that explains why societies are unequal stems from evolutionary pressures that forced humans to compete for access to resources that were essential for survival. As human tribes had to grow in complexity, the adoption of hierarchical structures was presumably the most efficient way to organize groups. Evolutionary theory provides the strongest explanation for why humans operate within hierarchical structures and have an innate disposition toward rivalry. The way humans compete has also changed to emphasize the pursuit of status rather than the possession of material goods, although materialism is used as a proxy for signaling status.