https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9
"For most of the modern era, most people in the rich world have been poor, just
like their parents and their children. Social mobility was more dream than
reality. Most people were born to serve, as were their children.
The ruling minority liked to imagine that the human oxen laboring in their
fields and the women who cleaned their homes and cooked their meals were happy
with their lot, and professed shock and horror whenever these hereditary
servers sought out ways to improve their station — whether that was by joining
the industrial revolution or striking out for a colonized land and the promise
of stolen estates and downtrodden servants of their own.
Though the ruling minorities were small in absolute numbers, they claimed the
vast majority of their nations’ wealth, and they wielded that wealth in the
form of political power. That power allowed elites to turn every chance at
social mobility into a mirage: factory owners and colonizers could form cartels
that suppressed wages and then command militarized police armies to smash
unions.
It took the two World Wars —a generation-long orgy of wealth-destruction — to
weaken the power of the ruling class to such a low ebb that it could no longer
drown the centuries-long dream of mobility and egalitarianism."
Via Kevin O'Brien.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
