By sheer luck and mere coincidence I ended up the other day in Al-Safwa lounge at HIA and accidentally saw some really rich people. Now, I want to share this very interesting op-ed by an economic historian who studies the rich and wealthy globally:
In the past century, in the West, the rich were keen to pay for a welfare state to maintain its legitimacy and avoid a revolution in times of need and crisis. And they succeeded in ensuring that no Western European or North American country had a communist revolution. They could loudly proclaim Marx was wrong and so on. But all of that is in the dustbin of history now.
Since the dotcom bubble of the 1990s, a new trend is visible in the US and beyond. The rich have seemingly escaped nation states to form a global club. They fly around to Davos and Dubai, eating rich people food, speaking in politically correct terms about climate change and women's rights, and consume various brands from cosmetics and clothes to universities and whole countries. The behavior of the rich world-wide is highly understudied because access is hard.
However, it is a puzzle why any sense of accountability to or fraternity with one's fellow citizens would disappear in a ggeneration. How does the rest of society respond? Do they seek to emulate Trump and Co? Or do they unionize as in the past to ask for a living wage? In the US, both trends seem very visible. If Trump and de Santis are prominent, so too are Sanders and AOC. As I mentioned before, any honest reckoning would require us to embrace contradictory and incongruent realities, including some that we really don't like. In other words, it involves embracing the messy complexities of the offline world and giving up the safety of remaining secure in virtual echo chambers and the emerging metaverse.
@pursuit_of_truth
In the past century, in the West, the rich were keen to pay for a welfare state to maintain its legitimacy and avoid a revolution in times of need and crisis. And they succeeded in ensuring that no Western European or North American country had a communist revolution. They could loudly proclaim Marx was wrong and so on. But all of that is in the dustbin of history now.
Since the dotcom bubble of the 1990s, a new trend is visible in the US and beyond. The rich have seemingly escaped nation states to form a global club. They fly around to Davos and Dubai, eating rich people food, speaking in politically correct terms about climate change and women's rights, and consume various brands from cosmetics and clothes to universities and whole countries. The behavior of the rich world-wide is highly understudied because access is hard.
However, it is a puzzle why any sense of accountability to or fraternity with one's fellow citizens would disappear in a ggeneration. How does the rest of society respond? Do they seek to emulate Trump and Co? Or do they unionize as in the past to ask for a living wage? In the US, both trends seem very visible. If Trump and de Santis are prominent, so too are Sanders and AOC. As I mentioned before, any honest reckoning would require us to embrace contradictory and incongruent realities, including some that we really don't like. In other words, it involves embracing the messy complexities of the offline world and giving up the safety of remaining secure in virtual echo chambers and the emerging metaverse.
@pursuit_of_truth