The Good in Aristocracy
and applying it to the existing economy
Today, people don’t generally think of aristocracy as having had any parts that could be of use to us now. Not only was it undemocratic, but classist almost to the point of being a caste system. Disparities in income/wealth were celebrated — the bigger the better. So what could aristocracy possibly contain, that we should give it a single thought these days?
For one thing, aristocracy explicitly recognized a link between economic power in the form of income/wealth and political power. Yes, in that approach to governing society that was seen as a positive, but recognizing that a link exists between income/wealth and political power is definitely pertinent to the world of today.
Of more value for us today is that aristocracy not only recognized, but was grounded upon the existence of limits. In aristocracy, power — economic and political — flowed from land. Land is finite. There is therefore a given limit as to how much of it, and the power it conveys, a person could have.
The development of Modern capitalism changed all that. Money replaced land as the primary component of the economy, and an economic system was developed that could provide amounts of money that would be limited only by conditions in the economy itself. Corporate stocks became a form of property with no fixed limit on how much of it could be created. Also, those stocks can endlessly absorb money and thereby increase wealth via ‘asset inflation’ without adversely affecting the economy as a whole the way increases in the price of real estate inexorably do (by increasing costs for both businesses and individuals throughout the economy).
An era of income/wealth without limits had arrived. While that economic power no longer translates directly into political power, it does indirectly.
People on the political left have seen injustice in that. They have sought to curb those injustices through the political process, pitting themselves against the supporters of the economic status quo in a struggle over the outcomes for society of the economy.
Rather than a fight over outcomes, it would be better to — as Robert Nozick suggested, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia — change the process. Nozick made the point that arbitrarily imposed limits on income/wealth are an injustice — as is redistribution for the sake of ‘justice’.
Aristocracy actually suggests a just approach. There is a way that we could keep the existing economic system but reintroduce the concept of ultimate, non-arbitrary limits (while eliminating poverty).
In short, demographics could replace land as the ultimate limiting factor for the functioning of the economy. That would bring the good in aristocracy into the governance of society — without compromising in any way, but for that matter enhancing the democratic political process.
The paradigm I developed to make the existing economy more just would end poverty without redistributing anything while making demographics the ultimate limiting factor within the economy. If curious: “A Most Beneficial Economic Change” is a “2 min read” here in Medium with links to several articles about the proposed paradigm from various angles within economics — with (for the benefit of ‘guest readers’) nothing I publish here behind the paywall.