Modern Malaise

First, I’m not claiming that the disequilibrium point is anywhere specific, just that it exists.

Second, all you need to do to understand this is to consider the most extreme scenario: if the king has literally all the wealth in every form (all property, all money, all food, etc), and everyone else have literally nothing, how stable do you think the system is?

In fact inequality is the bedrock of civilization according to our current theories of anthropology.

How do self interested parties gather together to fund great infrastructure projects and technology required for the progress of civilization? People on their own are self interested do not assist others outside of family or tribal units.

What causes people to organize is that there must be a small group of wealthy individuals who pays a Large group of individuals who lack wealth to work together. This isn't something I'm making up. This is the basis for the formation of civilization according to anthropology and there there are loads and loads of research and papers that support this theory so it is currently the best of what we know.

So it is not at all clear that the result is trivial. your conclusion is not at all scientific or logical you're just going off your intuition which is highly flawed.

All human capability has limits. You have limited strength and limited intelligence. There is no amount of intelligence or physical strength in a single human that can allow one man to build a feat of technology such as a Boeing 747. It can't even be done by one human in 10 lifetimes. This fundamental impossibility in your words is "always the case."

Yet there are individuals that exist in the world with enough wealth to buy several 747s. You will see that anyone with this amount of wealth could not have achieved this wealth through the sheer power of their individual IQ or physical strength. They had to have worked with many others in order to achieve such wealth. The existence of said individuals completely verifies the existence of how wealth is distributed unfairly. There is no fair barter that can allow one man to gain a 747 unless that man extracted work off the backs of others. It is logically impossible if this was not the case.

The only thing you can argue here is that wealth inequality is required for society to progress; but there is no argument on whether or not the resources are distributed fairly.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake

Social alienation is the source of much mental illnesses. Poverty itself isn't the source of most people's misery. Our society is our preservation matrix. If we cannot reproduce or at least contribute to something beyond ourselves that bears the promise of persisting, we are left alone with death.

This lonely dance with death, which I have danced for years as a poor housebound reclusive, can cause a disintegration of mind. I suspect the brain tries to rewire itself so it can find a new interpretation of life...one in which it finds a way of surviving in isolation. Many delusions can arise as a result. Also, mystical and religious experiences are common under such conditions. I've experienced them. Many strange things happen to the mind when we feel like we are connected to nothing that will preserve us. It's an unnatural, or abnormal state, which humans cannot ordinarily adapt to. We are microrganisms part of the macroorganism of society. Being alone is utterly abnormal and the brain isn't equipped to deal with it.

American culture makes the poor feel like trash. That's why so many of us become crazy lunatics, drug addicts, or vengeful people. It's the social alienation and isolation that condemns most of us.

However, this condition is not limited to the poor. Even rich people feel alienated. In fact, wealth often turns every relation into a suspicious one--is she just using me for my money? Everyone craves the sense of belonging that comes from genuine love, but it's hard to find. So we see many wealthy people, famous people, the most connected, also feeling disconnected.

Rich or poor, what matters most is feeling connected. We have a connectivity problem. One that leaves many individuals left alone to dance with death. This is what is causing the modern malaise above all things...however, the material conditions discussed by the author ultimately contribute to this disconnection.

Love is the answer, but this solution is so profound that we can hardly comprehend it. In the absence of understanding, we spend billions on psychoactive drugs and label people as "mentally ill" instead.