this kind of efficiency argument as the root of inequality is quite popular and appealing to technologists it seems, as variations of it show up here every day. maybe we secretly feel clever for being ahead of this particular tidal wave of progress? maybe we feel we can bandaid over it by advocating for technical solutions like universal basic income to pay for our driverless cars and robotic overlords?

in any case, the last 50 years have been a slow but relentless imbalancing of the playing field against labor and in favor of capital, rather than a relentless march toward perfect productivity.

technology certainly has aided and abetted this shift, by helping to speed up the world beyond the comprehensive agility of humans. and it has done so largely for wielders of capital, of financiers and bankers and investors and lawyers and consultants and executives, so that information can be hoarded and honed and aimed precisely. knowledge is power indeed.

as our greed led us to hoard money, and as capital concentrated, it wasn't enough to be well off. some of us really had an urge to be richer than our neighbors and out-compete them. our sense of self depended on it. we needed to influence the political system and even exert influence on foreign nations so that incremental advantages could be won over time. economists advocated unmitigated globalism and reagan cut taxes for the wealthy so they could "create jobs" and the benefits could "trickle down".

instead, money flowed to things like real estate, a relatively greenfield investment opportunity, where the mortgage interest deduction, combined with bailed out government guarantors (freddie and fannie) and tax shelters like 1031 exchanges, allowed speculators to make enormous sums on the spread between their cost of capital and the inflated interest rates of the times. and they could easily sell off the loans, recover their capital, and do it all over again in a matter of months, while the lone home owner often needed to wait years to realize gains (not that i'm necessarily advocating homes be investment vehicles).

money flowed to education, where regulations placed a choke hold on borrowers, basically giving lenders a risk-free investment backed again by government guarantees and the force of government to compel students to pay (bailouts are not for students of course).

executives and their investors, not to be outplayed, exploited tax shields to create private equity opportunities by essentially buying companies on loan, dressing them up, and flipping them. executives simultaneously complained about the lack of talent and the inability to compete with third-world labor, to get further concessions like a cut in the capital gains tax and tax holidays on foreign earnings that went straight past labor and into their piggy banks.

politicians on both sides of the aisle got fat on the largess all these regulatory advantages bestowed to them. the supreme court further obliged with citizen's united, and have so far allowed egregious gerrymandering.

we bailed out the banking industry not once, but twice, as well as the auto industry. we subsidize oil & gas and transportation, and give huge unaccounted-for sums to the military-industrial complex. all this money seems to somehow end up benefitting capital much more than labor. the US spends 3-4 times on infrastructure projects than most other countries; the same with education and healthcare. all with no perceivable societal benefit. we seem to be in collective love with giving tax-payer money to capital holders for free.

and so it goes. but that's not even the tip of the iceberg, that's a few droplets of water melting down off the side. the ground is swelling with anger over the continued blind eye of government and capital at all of this unfairness. we are social animals, and deep down, we expect that the group will care for each other, treat each other fairly, even protect each other, but greed has overwhelmed us. and technology-driven efficiency gains are only incidental to all this.