Why growing inequality is not fate, but a choice
„You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not gonna help that nurse in Queens. I promise you.“ Those were the words of Jeff Bezos—broadcasting live from his private rocket base on Merritt Island, Florida. In the background: rockets destined for outer space. In the foreground: advice for the nurse in Queens.
And yet he’s right—he just doesn’t understand what it means for him personally: that it will one day cost him everything.
Who Actually Decides
Elites have been influencing politics for years. That much is obvious. What’s less obvious is just how far that influence has grown—to the point where elected representatives can barely make independent decisions.
Alongside this operates what can be called structural power continuity—agencies, intelligence services, ministries, and private-sector networks that outlast election cycles, accumulate power, and pursue convergent interests. They don’t need to coordinate. Their goals align structurally. Their influence is not conspiratorial — it is systemic. (Hall & Deardorff, American Political Science Review, 2006; Sklair, Annals of the American Academy, 2002)
The result is an order in which background and capital matter more than merit or political participation. Policy decisions increasingly favor these powerful groups. Gilens and Page demonstrated in a widely cited study that the policy preferences of the average American have virtually no impact on actual policy outcomes. What matters is what elites and organized interest groups want. Politics becomes theater—a performance of freedom for the masses. (Gilens & Page, Perspectives on Politics, 2014; Acemoglu & Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 2012)
Who Foots the Bill
The tax burden falls on ordinary citizens, while elites and large corporations optimize their contributions. Companies shift operations to tax havens, relocate profits, and fabricate expenses. Industry lobbies exert massive pressure on tax legislation—in their own favor. (Cobham, Tax Justice Network, 2020; Tørsløv, Wier & Zucman, NBER, 2018)
The wealthiest one percent in the United States hold over 35 percent of household wealth. In Europe, the top one percent own more than 20 percent. The establishment dismisses criticism of this—the current arrangement suits them just fine. Bezos himself paid an effective federal tax rate of around one percent between 2006 and 2018, during which his wealth grew by an estimated 127 billion dollars. In 2007 and 2011, he paid no federal income tax at all. (ProPublica, 2021)
What This Does to the Rest of Us
When public funds flow toward the lobby, they flow away from everyone else. Education, social services, and infrastructure become secondary priorities—obstacles to economic interests. These are precisely the areas targeted for cuts while budgets run deficits. Yet funds to bail out symbolically important corporations or expand military spending appear almost immediately. (Campos & Giovannoni, Public Choice, 2007; Gilens, Public Opinion Quarterly, 2005)
The middle class loses influence. Those at the bottom fall further behind. Declining educational quality, shrinking social support, deteriorating living conditions. Democratic institutions lose their relevance—justifiably so, because they increasingly serve only a narrow slice of the population. Calls for strong authority grow louder. Anti-democratic attitudes become more popular. Demagogues like Trump, Orbán, and Le Pen exploit this environment and the anxieties of ordinary people with precision. (Norris & Inglehart, Cultural Backlash, 2019; Foa & Mounk, Journal of Democracy, 2016)
The result: elites lose faith in the masses, while the masses lose faith in institutions. Democracy erodes: Democratic systems are in decline worldwide. (EIU, Democracy Index 2024)
The Prisoner’s Dilemma of the Elites
This is where the real absurdity lies. Whoever opts out of lobbying cedes political ground. Whoever refuses tax avoidance loses out competitively. The system rewards defection and punishes cooperation. Every individual elite actor behaves rationally. The collective outcome is self-destructive—a textbook prisoner’s dilemma. In the end, everyone loses.
Society is the foundation on which elite wealth rests. Social order. Rule of law. Consumer spending power. Public infrastructure. Trust in institutions. None of this is a given—it is the product of functioning democracies. Those who systematically hollow it out are sawing off the branch they’re sitting on.
Elites don’t see this. Not because they lack intelligence, but because short-term rationality overrides long-term self-interest. Decades of immersion in networks where tax optimization is normal, political influence is just another resource, and redistribution is a naive idea shapes how people think. Add to this the solidarity erosion that comes with social fragmentation: empathy erosion, status normalization, moral decoupling. The model applies to everyone — including those who believe they stand above the system.
The result: elites consolidate power and make decisions that ultimately threaten their own position. And no one stops them — because the system was built precisely to work this way.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Citizens shaped by the capitalist order tend to look upward with admiration. The success of the establishment and its elites leads people to view their ideologies as the right path forward. They receive disproportionate weight in political discourse—what Gramsci called cultural hegemony. Whenever proposals emerge to require the wealthy to contribute more through higher taxes, the same supposedly compelling objections follow: the elites will flee. As if people who have spent decades embedding themselves in a society would suddenly pack up and leave. Large-scale studies confirm: tax-driven emigration of the wealthy is statistically negligible. (Enste & Hülskamp, IW-Trends, 2006)
Instead, a disengaged majority gets steered toward side issues—immigration, national identity, so-called „welfare cheats“—while a politically active elite quietly advances its economic and political agenda. Garrett Hardin identified the underlying principle back in 1968: „The Tragedy of the Commons“—when individual rationality overrides collective interest, the outcome destroys the very foundation everyone depends on. (Hardin, Science, 1968; Gilens, Public Opinion Quarterly, 2005)
This Is Not a Conspiracy. It Is a Mechanism.
Bezos is right: doubling his taxes won’t help the teacher in Queens—not as long as the political system systematically ignores her interests. But he identifies the symptom while concealing the cause. Because he is part of the mechanism that keeps things exactly as they are. The same mechanism that will one day pull him down with it.
That is the real problem. Not malicious elites. A system that shapes everyone—and that will destroy itself as long as it remains misunderstood.
Those who want to understand more—about politicians, lobbyists, and the motivations of elites, about the psychological mechanisms that cloud citizens‘ judgment, about the structures that hollow out democracies from within—will find the framework in Distorted Reality -> Order here
