Were it only so simple. Personally, I think that there are other causes, and that the oligarchy is as much a symptom of the disease as its cause. I saw a pithy comment on another post recently that the United States is the largest PvPvP… MMO in history. That is, we are a hyper-individualistic society, and we don’t do social connections and group solidarity well, if at all. Even our government social safety net is mostly holes, and designed to wear down and humiliate people who need it. Each person, or family, is on their own, sink or swim, and that’s a huge cause of the anxiety that grips, not only the poor, but everybody who’s not super-rich.

It also means that there’s nobody to extend a hand to people who are struggling, either to lift them up when they’re hurting, or restrain them when they might threaten the community. “Not my problem, Jack. 'Sides, I ain’t got time, got my own grist to grind.” Americans tend to regard fellow humans by default as a threat. You see it in the discussions of 15 minute cities, when people say that they hate other people and don’t want to live near them, or that public transit means getting stabbed, robbed, or raped. And, hell, there’s a whole U.S. political party whose only organizing principle is hate and fear of other people.

We lack the cohesiveness to create a society that benefits all of us, and that has allowed the oligarchy to arise and grow. Of course, they exploit this dynamic to stay in control, but I think that, like mildew, if we just scrubbed them from existence and didn’t address the environment that allowed them to flourish, they’d be right back in no time.