Income Inequality

I've noticed a lot of people talking about income inequality these days, mostly revolving around the ideas of debt, fair wages, and how uncivilised such inequality seems. Very few grasp that it's somewhat inevitable in specific contexts.

Actually, it's inevitable in a context that is very specific and also very rarely thought about. All city-states are like that, because a city-state seldom has control over its hinterland except by huge investment in overwhelming military force.

Such investment normally cripples the economy, because you need to reward the soldiers and mercenaries. A rich city-state normally avoids that, one way or another, by disproportionately rewarding wealth generation, networking ability, and the personal power to control and manipulate others. And this is also how the state will define merit implicitly.

That's it in a nutshell. The whole argument is partly historical in nature and very much longer. Major footnote: see here.