It's a long research paper I work on over time, so you need a bit of background.
But the shortcut to understanding it is this:
Terminology:
Coordinate system recap (short) - State = top ~0.1–1% and their core institutions (big capital, FIRE, major oligarchic blocs).
- state = formal political machinery (elected office, bureaucracy, courts, central bank, etc.).
- public = everyone else who is net-taxed and/or net-disciplined by the system.
Ecology:
The tipping point is when State decides whether to:
- loosen its grip (redistributive reset), or
- lock in an openly rigged order (soft apartheid / autocracy),
+ under pressure from demographics + debt + external shocks.
All of this is under a modernized the framework of rentier lens.
The original rentier framework was devised for oil and natural resource countries. The gist of it is that in these countries the state can reap the benefits of natural resources, therefore the ruling class does not have to be responsive to the populace needs.
However, in my framework, oil is replaced with capital and state is replaced with State per above. So redo the math as State engages in rent seeking activities using the the state as its tool (put in place a set of rules so that the rich keep getting richer while the poor stay poor). Meanwhile, the state, i.e. the elected officials, are dependent on State for their survival (per political donations and lobbies). Therefore they are as disconnected to be responsive to the needs of the public as the Saudi government is to theirs (they can just pump oil rather than win votes).
Now you can work through the framework. |
