We are witnessing a few interrelated trends that have to do with economic globalization, the lack of transnational governance, rapid economic growth and technological advancement. These factors taken together create a more complex picture. Let’s take a look:
The overall economic inequality of the world is falling, with the global Gini coefficient reaching a peak around the year 2000 (the most unequal distribution of income). It has since begun to decrease somewhat, largely due to the impressive economic growth of countries like China, India and Brazil where large new middle classes have emerged. Inequality within these countries has also increased as not all members of society have been successfully included. Still, if we are to believe the forecasts of an influential 2008 Goldman Sachs report, two billion more people should have joined the global middle class by 2030, and thus far, at the time of writing, the numbers have not disappointed. [51]
The economic inequality within rich countries, such as the US or the European countries, has been rising. This is largely due to the pressures of globalization where many jobs have been outsourced to low-income countries and immigration from poorer countries have created downward pressures on low-paying jobs. This means the middle and working classes of these societies have become more pressured since they are competing within a much larger world economy. Many jobs have also been automated, and countries have been less able to maintain generous welfare spending and high taxation as many corporations have become more transnational and thereby been able to move their profits and activities to countries with lower taxes. Taken together, this means the general experience of “normal people” in rich countries is that inequality is growing. As these populations still largely dominate the global discourse, “the normal Westerners”, this has become the leading narrative.
Absolute poverty (living on less than two dollars a day) has been falling sharply due to economic growth around the world. An important aspect here is also that technological advancements have made it possible to get more value for less money. For instance, getting a smartphone, which contains many empowering technologies, is much less expensive than getting a camera, a computer, a telephone, and a GPS. Writing an email is less expensive than mailing a letter, reading Wikipedia is less expensive than buying books or newspapers, and so forth. Internet trade and large retail warehouses like Walmart have also increased the efficiency of distribution and thereby made many consumer goods much cheaper. The world at large is becoming richer at an astounding pace.
And yes, Doctor Piketty, a small proportion of the global population has been amassing a growing share of the wealth. This is the result of two fundamental factors: globalization and technological progress. Globalization (increasing trade, communication and foreign direct investments) connects all of us into one bustling economy of seven going on eight billion people. In a smaller world, say a tribe of 150 people, you can never really get much richer than anyone else. But when there are billions of interacting people, those who gain the most central positions in the economy can become very, very rich. This is due to what network theorists like Albert-László Barabási call “non-random networks”, i.e. that the central positions always have more connections to make use of. Add to this some central technologies that are difficult to create, but many people want or need, and you have setup a cocktail for small groups to become incredibly wealthy. This is reinforced by the dynamics of the digital economy and its large platforms which tie millions of market agents to the same central nodes, which grants the advantages of “big data” to the central agents.
Thus, the interconnected world market is creating a situation where global inequality is decreasing, poverty is decreasing, but inequality is increasing within countries, and small transnational elites are becoming much, much richer than the rest of us.
You can see it all summed up in this one graph, taken from Our World in Data : [52]
You can see how, in 1970, there were a rich world and a poor one (the two bumps on the 1970 distribution). By 2000, however, this had changed into one large, even global, pyramid with more people at the top and fewer at the very bottom. The rich countries no longer offer the same “buffer” against inequality within their borders—now we are all part of the same competitive mega-structure that is the global market. [53]
Which conclusions can be drawn from this analysis? An obvious one is that inequality is increasingly a global issue, and thus more of a transnational concern than a national one. This means that economic inequality—for all its importance and for all of its harmful effects—cannot readily be tackled by means of classical Left economics of redistribution within the singular state. If you raise the taxes and redistribute wealth too vigorously within one country, this does not only necessitate the exclusion of foreigners, but it also scares away global capital. Hence, we need effective global systems of redistribution. In order to reach a point where serious global redistribution is possible, we would require a larger systemic shift towards global governance.
And to get there we need significant proportions of postmodern and metamodern people around the world. And these people only show up in significant numbers within the postindustrial strata of the world economy, which makes any prospect of establishing such a world order unachievable for the foreseeable future as it won’t be possible without vital economies such as China and India.
This is not to say that income redistribution is futile: Stronger economies with functional institutions can still perform relatively extensive such measures. But redistribution by means of taxes and social security is just not sufficient to counter the extremely powerful trends that drive the world economy: globalization, non-random network effects, technological advancements and unregulated transnational markets. However, as we shall now discuss, there are other ways to decrease the viscerally felt inequality between human beings. In fact, I would argue, that an exaggerated focus on economic inequality leaves us with an impoverished vision of what equality really is.
SOCIAL INEQUALITY
I have a younger relative who lives with schizophrenia (unfortunately not the first or only case in the family). If he doesn’t take heavy medications he can hear voices, hallucinate and easily get overwhelmed. His medication makes him tired and leaves him with a short attention span, so it’s difficult for him to work within an advanced economy. Living in a welfare state, he gets all he needs in terms of food, shelter, medical attention; even a little money to go to punk concerts twice a year and have a few beers now and then. Yet his life can only be described as a very difficult one. His main problem? Loneliness.
Besides his closest family, this lonely rider doesn’t have any friends, let alone romantic partners. This isn’t because he’s not a nice person. He is quite friendly and rather intelligent, has some style going on, a somewhat rugged guy with tattoos who sometimes draws female attention. He lives on considerably more resources and money than most people during their student years, but he lacks something else: to be considered as a social equal and to be recognized as a friend.
By the look of it, this shouldn’t be very difficult to fix. Can’t he join a club and make some friends there? Can’t he go on online dating and find a partner? But no, he cannot. All of his old friends have subtly abandoned him. They sometimes say they will call or come visit when in town, but when push comes to shove, they never do. It’s just him, and his dog—every day, each day of the year, for years on end. And sometimes dinner at his mother’s house, but she won’t be there forever. Loneliness.
If this doesn’t qualify as a severe form of inequality, I don’t know what would. If this guy goes to the local pub and musters the courage to sit down with a party of strangers, he will very soon be asked “what he does”. And if he doesn’t want to spend his evening with odd evading answers or unsustainable lies, he will need to say he doesn’t have a job. The next question that presents itself is �
��why”. And that’s even more difficult to answer: “I have schizophrenia”. But that’s not the end of it. If it comes out, or is intuited, that this is a lonely man with no friends, he will evoke no interest or sympathy in his interlocutors. They will physically turn their backs on him—literally speaking—and find reasons to end the conversation shortly. Rejection, rejection, rejection.
And this isn’t about money. If he had the same apartment, the same financial means, even being unemployed—but had lots of friends, contacts, fun stories about what he has going on and interesting things to say, then he would be welcomed. His illness has put him in a position where he has low social capital . From this position he has no references to make in any new social situation he finds himself; and in this manner, his social poverty reproduces itself and isolates him from his fellow human beings.
This is of course only one example of a wider and deeper phenomenon of social inequality . Social capital comes in many complex forms: number of friends, in turn how well connected and popular these friends are, the depth and stability of those friendships, personal charm, good family relations, professional contacts, socio-economic status, being “cool”, enjoying the trust and admiration of people, having sexual appeal, being respected for one’s achievements, having many good stories to tell, being able to make fun and interesting events happen, and so forth.
Social capital of this kind can describe both a person and a society. A person who has higher social capital is one who always gets invited, who is welcome, for who doors are always open, and who can count on the support of others. A society with higher social capital can boast greater interpersonal trust, higher levels of solidarity and greater propensity to help strangers, trust in institutions and lower corruption, greater voter turnout, more cooperation and lesser destructive competition—and generally fewer people who are lonely and left to fend for themselves.
Social inequality exists not only in the human world, but can readily be observed in the animal kingdom. Different primates organize in groups where social status varies according to their species and environments, some animals being more egalitarian than others. In humans, if economic inequality doesn’t show up to significant degrees in small tribes of a 150 people, social inequality certainly does. And it is, of course, very painful for the deprived.
In larger human societies, social inequality can have very numerous and more complex causes. It interacts, unsurprisingly, with economic inequality. If you have more contacts who trust, respect or even admire you, it becomes much easier to earn money as well. And if you earn money, it becomes easier to be an interesting friend, romantic partner and so forth. But beyond economics, social inequality also follows the larger dominator hierarchies and stratifications of society, such as ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, class, social stigma (like disabilities) and what the sociologist Bourdieu famously called habitus , i.e. how you subtly express your standing in society through gestures, taste, language use and so forth. It’s just easier to be a cool white male New Yorker in flashy clothes than to be a black disabled woman in a small town wearing Walmart clothes.
So this is what social inequality looks like; here’s a “sociogram” of 63 Chinese children in a class of 6th graders. They can nominate other kids as friends (arrow). [54]
All kids nominate at least two friends, but not all kids are nominated. Far from all children who are nominated by someone nominate them back. As you can see, there is a clear pecking order where some kids are at the center and even enjoy the prestige of being friends with the popular ones, while others are sidelined all but completely. They are also at the longest distance from the most popular ones.
Such spontaneous processes self-organize automatically throughout society based on the ongoing interactions of people. And then they crystalize and reinforce themselves: The people at the center of the social clusters have innumerable advantages over those at the peripheries. What a cruel world!
It is insufficient to focus only on economic inequality when said processes of social stratification remain present. Social inequality is just as cynical and harmful—and viscerally felt—as its economic counterpart. It is not difficult to see, moreover, that social inequalities also can have far-reaching economic consequences.
In modern societies, such social inequality comes in two related but distinct flavors: the socio-economic status dominant in adult life, and the micro-social status or “coolness” or “popularity ” dominant in adolescent life and youth culture. The first is of course tied to such things as professional status, success and achievement, while the second is tied to personal expression, taste, fashion and lifestyle, and it remains an important factor for social and mating success throughout one’s lifespan.
Within the creative classes and other fresh, fly and funky bastions of society, coolness in terms of aesthetics, education and taste are closely tied to economic success. In postindustrial societies, “coolness” tends to become yet more pronounced—where hipsters, hackers and hippies often awake bitter resentment in the rest of the population with their flagrant displays of “refined” expressions of art, conversation topics, fashion and instagramable lifestyles.
The long-term egalitarian goal must be, of course, to make such things as fashion and taste matter less for people’s social recognition and dignity. So we are not only looking to remedy the “hidden injuries of class” (as the sociologist Richard Sennett famously termed it), but also “to end the reign of cool”.
Social inequality harms people. When more pronounced, we can expect a number of distortions of the games of everyday life. People are likely to become tenser and less relaxed, more scheming and strategic in their friendship formations, less likely to challenge norms and habits, more socially competitive, more prone to slander and mock one another, and more prone to take anti-social measures to check or reverse the social prestige of rivals. People will judge the ideas and opinions of one another less by merit and more by status, and there is less of a stable foundation for democratic ideals and solidarity in general. How afraid are we not of losing our social ties, or to be scorned and looked down upon? When it comes to social status, people are suckers—and for good reason, too.
Social inequality is, of course, yet more difficult to address than economic inequality. After all, money and material resources can be transferred from one person to another, but friendships, trust, respect and inclusion cannot; they are not “given”, but only elicited through different behaviors and interactions.
However, as strange as it initially may appear, we can often do more about social inequality than about its economic counterpart, and such measures can often combat inequality more profoundly and effectively. We cannot change the logic of the global economic order overnight, but we can certainly shape and design organizations and institutions that generate a higher likelihood for social equality. In schools, we can have meditation training (which elicits more pro-social behaviors on a day-to-day basis), collaborative learning games in which all kids get to contribute to the greater whole, carefully designed (and non-sexual) massage sessions where kids touch one another in a friendly manner across the hierarchies, playgrounds designed for inclusive games, training in social and emotional intelligence, extended sexual education, and so forth.
In society at large, we can apply vaguer and corresponding measures, not least creating a layer of social support (by trained professionals) for the truly excluded ones, who can then be coached to greater social competence and be encouraged in their attempts. The sexual games can change if the average person is more socially and emotionally functional—and of course, norms can evolve towards less materialistic values, and unnecessary taboos and stigma can be breached so that people are generally more accepting of differences. For instance, in a more post-materialist culture, being “unemployed” can be less o
f a big deal as people can be offered a wider range of opportunities to create positive social identities beyond their employment status and profession—identities that reach deeper into the personal, civic, spiritual and aesthetic realms, echoing the words of the Young Marx:
“Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people.” [55]
Even if the Young Marx writes with the “humanist” [56] perspective of his time, and even if it smacks of romantic game denial, his vision is certainly a compelling one. Can we create a society in which people’s exchanges are free from irrational and distorting hierarchies such as different levels of wealth?
Within affluent welfare societies like Sweden, the struggle for material equality is often really the struggle for social equality in disguise. In such societies, it is not that people are actually starving, but rather that lacking economic wealth can negatively affect their status and hinder their inclusion into social events. You even hear nurses, school teachers and police officers say: “It’s not that I really need that much money. I just want my paycheck to properly validate my work and effort.”
In such societies, it may well be time to more directly address the more complex, touchy—and embarrassing—issue of social inequality. This is not only a question of extending a vague “inclusion” of minorities and misfits, but also, and primarily, an issue of changing the games through which everyday life plays out. An important part of this is to help people become more socially competent and empowered.
Going back to my young relative with schizophrenia, he doesn’t need to be included because people feel sorry for him—he needs skills, resources and occasions to be genuinely valuable to others so that they will be happy and proud to call him a friend or a lover. This, in turn, would save society a lot in terms of his worsening medical condition and by letting him be of service to others.
Nordic Ideology Page 17