The One Percent

When Adam Smith theorized about the invisible hand controlling the capitalist market, was it
simply a reference to the network of people making individual decisions, or was it an allusion to the top
one percent of the one percent owning half of the world’s wealth and playing gods without permission?
In his book, The Great Leveler, Walter Scheidel acknowledges economic inequality, the disproportionate
distribution of wealth or resources among the population, as a defining characteristic of civilization. But
despite this phenomenon being inseparable with human society history, it does not mean that it was an
acceptable aspect in every era of development. Throughout history, there were many violent events
that attempted to level the playing field, so to speak, for the population. Beginning from the Stone Age,
Scheidel charts the crucial role of violent shocks and sees it as the most effective way of reducing
inequality. In contrast, a report called Making Growth Work for the Poor by Xubei Lou and Mara
Warwick enumerates solutions with less “bloodshed and misery”compared to Scheidel’s implication.
Another point of discussion is the population and its understanding of this disparity—have we gotten
used to the space the proverbial one percent allowed us to take up that it hinders us from realizing we
could occupy more?

While most people under consumer capitalism are busy restructuring their purchase and
provision of individual basic needs in order to fit them into a constrained budget, the rich problematizes
if they should get the world’s most expensive vintage motorbike or should they take the “sumptuous
gastronomic tour of Spain by private jet?” The population problem is how much to buy, while the one
percent problem is the abundance of options. This situation is only one of the many manifestations of
the disparity between the distribution of wealth in the world’s population. According to statistics, in
2010, 388 billionaires had as much wealth as half of humanity. In 2014, 85 billionaires’ net worth
equaled to that of the poorer half of the world’s population combined. And in 2015, the richest 62
billionaires owned private net wealth equivalent to that of the poorer 3.5 billion people.

There are three reasons why this should be recognized as a condition that needs greater
intervention. First, its mitigation requires violence. Scheidel enumerates four ways inequality have been
reduced in history through violent redistribution of resources, aptly calling the quartet the Four
Horsemen. The first way is through mass mobilization warfare which was greatly employed in the two
World Wars. The result was too much physical destruction, taxation, inflation, and aggressive
government intervention that the lead to the disruption of global trade flows. Second is transformative
revolution which is essentially communist governments expropriating, redistributing, and collectivizing
wealth, as in the case of the former Soviet Union. The third is the collapse of states and the succeeding
unraveling of law and order: when there is chaos, it is always the wealthy who have more to lose. Last is
the plague, most prominently exemplified by the Black Death in the Late Middle Ages which decimated a
large majority of Europe’s population, thereby making labor a scarce and expensive resource, and in
extent making the working class valuable. Despite the noble ends postulated in these scenarios, it does
not justify the violent means enough for it to merit actual support in the modern setting.

Second, leveling the field it requires high investments from all stakeholders. In the case of
Philippines, Lou and Warwick proposes a more careful murder of the elites. The two authors
emphasized on the government and private sector creating more and better jobs, boosting the quality of
basic education, especially on secondary education, and the additional investment in health and
nutrition. Furthermore, they also pointed out the need for improved disaster risk management systems,
strengthened social protection system like the 4Ps, and the increase of public investment especially in
Mindanao area to secure peace.

The third and final point of discussion is the rest of the population’s need for the realization of
the actual depth of this inequality. The movie Crazy Rich Asians recently gave us the front seat to the
lives of Eastern elites. Most people enjoyed watching it, seeing it as a racial triumph. But if we look
beyond the picture and carefully unpack the coat of advocacy, racial inclusivity and hastily mixed
attempt at representation, its selling point is the same as those in Western movies paying soulless
tribute to the one percent of the one percent’s exploitation. It is this romantic conversion of the elites in
mainstream media that prevents us from acknowledging their otherness. But while knowledge often
equates with power, being privy to the reality of the state of inequality, in this case, only leads to the
realization of our disempowerment.

To end, no matter how progressive the world becomes, we can only really enjoy the portion of
the string the likes of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Manny Villar, and Ramon Ang allow us to tug on.
Inequality remains as a truth we have to live by everyday, and the most effective way to quell its gross
manifestation—violence—could not even be considered as a real option. Government and private
organizations, however, always have the power to participate in the alleviation of the disparity by
empowering the masses through education and skills support. Lastly, all of us in the remaining 99% of
the population could always be victimized, but the rich already have more than enough, and we do not
need to apologize on their behalf.