Imagine you are in the 20th century, broke, with no house of your own, no health insurance, and $100 in your bank account, afraid to start a family because you believe you cannot afford it. Then you see a rich capitalistic dude on social media flexing his Rolls-Royce, and you realize capitalism is shit. You ask your homeboy, and they claim the same. But what if capitalism is not the main problem here?
The existing system might be a bitch, but you gotta give it some credit. Look around you. The economy has grown, people keep inventing new shit, and technology has gone fucking insane. This made me eager, so I started researching, and look what I found out. Capitalism, I mean, rich dude ripping off poor dude, has been happening for centuries, but massive wealth inequality increased dramatically during the 19th century and reached extremely high levels in parts of the world during the 20th century. Interestingly, this period also saw some of the greatest scientific and technological advancements in human history. So, what happened? Globalization happened. A thing that most dudes wouldn’t even bother to look at.
Obviously, other factors also play a role, like industrialization, financial systems, technological change, and government policies. I am not saying globalization walked into the economy and personally fucked everything up. Wealth inequality has a lot of causes. But globalization changed how capital, companies, and money move around the world, and that shit matters.
Before modern globalization really took off, countries traded with each other, but not on anything close to the scale we see today. Say I am a king and my buddies are starving. Why negotiate with other countries? I gather an army, beat them, loot them, and take whatever the fuck I want. But this kind of bestial behavior started to decline during the 19th century. Instead of constantly fighting each other, countries increasingly started to cooperate and trade with each other.
Back then, corporations tended to have small dick energy. They operated locally within the country. But now, because of globalization, they have multiple operations across countries, optimizing production, labour, and taxation globally. Being “global” is no longer optional. It’s a sign of sigma energy.
To understand how this changes the economy, you gotta understand how the economy is balanced.
The economy is balanced by two alpha forces. One is our big boy government, and another is our small boy capitalism. Until the 19th century, since corporations were mostly local, our big boy government had more control over taxation and policy. But after globalization, since corporations can move capital so easily, the government is no longer the big boy. Corporations are.
Corporations and rich dudes can move money between countries to reduce their tax burden. Large corporations especially hire nerdy accountant dudes, lawyers, and tax specialists to do this shit for them. Capital naturally flows toward wherever it gets the best tax deal, better policies, and higher returns. Money doesn’t care about equality. It goes wherever the conditions are better.
Before, say governments wanted to tax rich corporations and individuals. They could tax them more aggressively because all a rich dude could do was complain and cry about it. They couldn’t move their capital and business across borders that easily. But now the scenario is different. If the government taxes them significantly more than competing countries, rich dudes and corporations have more opportunities to move their money, investments, or even parts of their business elsewhere. This can reduce investment, weaken capital inflows, and in some cases affect employment.
I mean, governments do have control, but with a lot of restrictions. Countries across the globe compete with each other over who can pleasure the rich more. All this is another way of corporations and governments calling the poor, “Fuck off, bitches.”
This might annoy someone, but gotta say, the concept of nationalism is the biggest bitch here. Countries are divided politically, yet they cooperate with each other when it comes to capital and trade. Rich dudes often talk about nationality and patriotism, but many of them operate across borders and have access to opportunities that ordinary people simply don’t have. Meanwhile, poor people believe in these national divisions and suffocate.
This doesn’t mean nationalism itself is the sole cause of inequality. The bigger problem is that capital has become increasingly global while taxation and redistribution are still largely organized at the national level. Rich individuals and corporations can often operate across borders much more easily than ordinary workers can.
That creates an obvious structural imbalance.
If countries all across the globe came together, not just for trade, and decided, “Let’s fuck the rich,” they could do several things. They could establish minimum tax rates for corporations and high-net-worth individuals, reducing tax arbitrage. But this is highly difficult to achieve because some economies benefit heavily from attracting foreign capital and businesses through lower taxes.
Homeboys in the OECD are already working toward such frameworks, but there is still a long way to go.
At the end, I gotta say, capitalism might sound bad, but it is a necessary framework for the economy. It motivates people to innovate and promote growth. The problem is that the wealth created by capitalism does not automatically distribute itself fairly.
Government, on the other hand, should not fail its duty to tax the rich and maintain a fair economic environment. Capitalism should create the wealth, and government should make sure that wealth does not become concentrated in the hands of a few dudes simply because they have better access to global capital.
Because yeah, when capital can cross borders in seconds while ordinary people are stuck negotiating with their landlord every fucking month, something is probably a little fucked up.
That is the real problem. Capitalism creates wealth. Globalization determines how that wealth moves. And government has to figure out how to stop the whole thing from becoming a game where the rich keep getting richer while everyone else is told to “work harder.”
