Wealth and income are important, but power trumps. What matters is control, and control is even more concentrated than wealth. This study found that control was about ten times more concentrated, in fact. (PDF)
Most of the companies on the list are financial companies.
Why? Because financial companies can create money. It’s hard to make more money than people who can make money. The only folks who come close control bottleneck resources like oil, or have what amounts to oligopoly control over something people need (pharma, for example.) Money is permission: you can’t do squat in a market economy without it. Those who can create it, or who have excessive profits, control what other people can do.
It is for this reason that Jefferson said that banks were more dangerous to democracy than even standing armies.
Money making and differential profits lead to differential power. Over time, if your rate of return is higher than everyone else’s you will gain so much more money than them that you can buy them out, or out-bid them. The first thing you will do, if you have any sense, is take control of government, because government, which controls the rules of the game (legislation) and violence, is the only other power which can destroy you. Once they are under control (and the bailouts proved Western governments are under the control of financial institutions), the only remaining threats are your own ability to drive yourself off a cliff, and the very small chance of revolution, which is likely to happen only after you’ve destroyed yourself in any case.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
