alt Hacker NewsPolitical movements influenced how abundance was shared. They did not create that abundance.
Production and consumption are directly linked: societies can consume only what they produce. When individuals become more productive, society has more to consume. And indeed there is more. So much more. What you call a "fairy tale" is, thankfully, the world we live in.
When considering prosperity, it's important to emphasise what's real. So what if Warren Buffett owns a massive number of shares in notionally highly valued corporations? There are plenty of carrots available in the supermarket, and at an extraordinarily low prices by historical standards. Warren Buffett is not personally consuming some grotesquely disproportionate share of the carrots ... or pretty much any commodity which constitutes real material prosperity.
Political movements we are talking about were result of rapidly worsening living conditions for large groups of people. They did not necessary followed technological progress, technological progress was not necessary condition for their existence.
Nor were they result of a new abundance.
> When considering prosperity, it's important to emphasise what's real.
Yes. And what did actually happened in the past.
> So what if Warren Buffett owns a massive number of shares in notionally highly valued corporations?
Meanwhile, Warren Buffett : "There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."
The accumulation of power and money by smaller group of people means loss of power by the rest people. Those with power then use it to their own benefit while rest of us dont have that option. This result in the small group having even more power, while needs and wants of the rest of us are ignored. In turn, it means worsening conditions for the people on the loosing side.
And you see this process happening as we speak here. You see it at political decisions being made by the administration, at climate change approach, at unaccountability of the Epstein group of friends, at wars for oil, at decay of the democracy.
Materially you see K shaped economy, in us being unable to buy RAM and electronics, loosing rights, loosing control of devices to the corporations, basic necessities getting more expensive and so on.