Thomas Picketty predicted this in Le Capital au XXI e siècle / Capital in the 21st Century (2013), as the nearly inevitable outcome of neoliberal economic behaviour, based onvast statistical evidence gathered by governments and expert organisations over more than a century. About the only thing he got wrong was, like even the meteorological experts, underestimating the speed at which climate chaos was going to overwhelm the world’s societies and abet the billionaires’ takeover.
I really, REALLY recommend that book, if you have the capacity to slog through dense academic prose (in translation, yet!). To make it easier to lift the book, which would otherwise have been maybe 5,000 pages, give or take a couple of complicated graphs, , Picketty put all the footnotes and appendices online. They do reward reading/examining, at least where you want to see the evidence in very fine detail.
In fairness to Picketty, he did think we could avoid neo-feudalism if ordinary people set aside their competitive and selfish natures to focus on the co-operation that is at the heart of our success as a species. Funnily enough, Mike Berners-Lee wrote the same thing at the end of There is No Planet B (a book I do wish more of the billionaire tech bros had read).
Thomas Picketty predicted this in Le Capital au XXI e siècle / Capital in the 21st Century (2013), as the nearly inevitable outcome of neoliberal economic behaviour, based onvast statistical evidence gathered by governments and expert organisations over more than a century. About the only thing he got wrong was, like even the meteorological experts, underestimating the speed at which climate chaos was going to overwhelm the world’s societies and abet the billionaires’ takeover.
I really, REALLY recommend that book, if you have the capacity to slog through dense academic prose (in translation, yet!). To make it easier to lift the book, which would otherwise have been maybe 5,000 pages, give or take a couple of complicated graphs, , Picketty put all the footnotes and appendices online. They do reward reading/examining, at least where you want to see the evidence in very fine detail.
Or, get an economics geek to translate for you.
I studied economics
Tldr: we’re big fucked
In fairness to Picketty, he did think we could avoid neo-feudalism if ordinary people set aside their competitive and selfish natures to focus on the co-operation that is at the heart of our success as a species. Funnily enough, Mike Berners-Lee wrote the same thing at the end of There is No Planet B (a book I do wish more of the billionaire tech bros had read).
So, yeah: we’re big fucked.