Capitalism isn’t unique in perpetuating injustice, but it certainly excels at it, with passive exponentiality and unprecedented scalability.
Regarding comparison to planned economies, I was solely referring to resource distribution. Planned economies (including the planned aspects of mixed economies) typically have significantly more equitable distribution of resources than capitalism. Certainly there is still massive inequality, but it is far less than capitalism. E.g. the Gini index for USSR/Russia basically doubled when capitalism replaced communism.
The Gini index only measures wealth, not other forms of power; a system that does not focus on wealth as a means of accumulating power and favors is going to end up with less formal accumulation of wealth, but not necessarily less formal accumulation of power. The Gini index does not, for example, reflect such things as access to higher-quality goods and services, or the innumerable favors exploited by Soviet apparatchiks that would be replicated in capitalist societies by the expenditure of wealth.
Capitalism isn’t unique in perpetuating injustice, but it certainly excels at it, with passive exponentiality and unprecedented scalability.
Regarding comparison to planned economies, I was solely referring to resource distribution. Planned economies (including the planned aspects of mixed economies) typically have significantly more equitable distribution of resources than capitalism. Certainly there is still massive inequality, but it is far less than capitalism. E.g. the Gini index for USSR/Russia basically doubled when capitalism replaced communism.
The Gini index only measures wealth, not other forms of power; a system that does not focus on wealth as a means of accumulating power and favors is going to end up with less formal accumulation of wealth, but not necessarily less formal accumulation of power. The Gini index does not, for example, reflect such things as access to higher-quality goods and services, or the innumerable favors exploited by Soviet apparatchiks that would be replicated in capitalist societies by the expenditure of wealth.