The attraction between wealth and power is no mere
infatuation or passing fancy. It is as perennial
and as inexorable as gravity. Each seeks
to aggrandize itself, and to acquire the other.
The drive to acquire wealth and power has very understandable roots; that being the desire to meet comfort, security, and/or ego needs. But beyond some point, further accumulations of wealth and power
serve no human purpose—taking on a life of their own, perpetuating themselves under their own inertia—consuming and controlling the possessor, even as they exploit others.
As with gravity, the more massive an accumulation of wealth
or power, the greater the force it exerts to draw in and accumulate even more. Like a hyper-massive celestial object, it
warps the very fabric of reality to achieve this end. In the absence of a strong countervailing
force, the inevitably result is a total consolidation of wealth
and power within a single monopolistic/monarchical entity – a black hole which absorbs all nearby matter and energy,
and from which not even light or truth can escape.
The legal and regulatory institutions of government must be
this countervailing force, balancing the drive toward plutocratic consolidation—like
cosmic ‘dark energy’, (to strain the metaphor a bit)—promoting a just, sustainable
socio-economic cosmos. If it fails in
this role, it loses its main raison d’être, and exists simply as an inert entity. Worse, if these institutions become mere
agents for the leviathan—promoting and accelerating
the process of consolidation—it is worse than no government at all, and societal collapse cannot be averted.
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Governments are made by men and thus not much better then they are. In this government, the pursuit of happiness was an intentional down play of the protection of "property" as a goal of government. We changed a lot since then. I believe that there is a danger it property and wealth being the focus rather than civility. Most men when obtaining so much control of property, wealth and/or power begin to believe that only they, or men like themselves, should control that power.
ReplyDeleteReligion once played a roll in countering that corrupting influence. But even that is under attack. Where are the great men that can step away from power? (Washington). Or view property to be a "creature of society" and thus, believed that it should be taxed as a way to finance civil society? (Benjamin Franklin)
If societal collapse cannot be averted it will be because individual moral collapse happened first.