This was a great read. It’s one of those fascinating observations whereby you raise it with people (even the old) and they intuitively know it. Granted, as soon as you talk about the next steps (I.e. retracting resources) they get defensive (“I paid in to this system!”) but it doesn’t detract from the underlying agreement on the observation.
This is one of the many topics I’m exploring through my book, which my Substack is a vehicle for socialising the key ideas. I also draw on Marx to isolate productive labour capacity as the sole driver of value creation. I don’t make any moral arguments (which Marx leaned on heavily) but I do assess our world through the lens of what a purely value-driven framework would think about our world.
The article correctly senses that something is deeply wrong, but repeatedly mistakes government-created privilege and monetary distortion for free market capitalism itself.
And the irony is that the article condemns this political economy while repeatedly demanding another political authority to correct it.
The crucial distinction the article misses is between voluntary exchange and political privilege. Subsidies, bailouts, central-bank manipulation, regulatory barriers, government pensions, compulsory taxation, and monetary inflation aren't evidence of free market capitalism failing. They're evidence of political power corrupting the market and redistributing wealth through political coercion.
Calling property owners, investors, landlords, financiers, and retirees a “parasitic class” doesn't explain how they acquired their wealth. Ownership is not parasitism. Earning a return on capital is not exploitation. Voluntary exchange is not a zero-sum game in which one person must lose for another to gain.
The article is right that wealth without purpose can produce a spiritually impoverished society. But that isn't proof that private property or capital accumulation is inherently parasitic.
The real parasite is the political system that allows one group to obtain wealth by coercively taking it from another—and then calls the resulting arrangement an economy.
It seems more likely now than a decade ago that the modern fracturing of global cooperative frameworks (UN, NATO, etc.), rise of competition between nation-states (US+Japan+EU vs China+Russia), and the reworking of supply chains (nearshoring, friendshoring, etc.) may just bring some “real work” back to the heavily financialized West. That’s my hope anyway. Unfortunately, economic hardship tied to financial system stress also seems a likely (ongoing) outcome.
The irony is that the past 100ish years have produced arguably the greatest explosion of wealth and mass economic improvement in the history of civilization. Never before has it been easier to live above extreme poverty. Calories as cheap as they’ve ever been (as an American, ask me how I know that). Untold billions of lives made materially better. However, and Alessandra you hit the nail on the head in this piece, this material expansion has been devoid of any meaningfully spiritual power. Our spirits have been siphoned off to feed our bellies. The sad thing is, as a comment above laid out, so many recognize it, but nothing changes until something breaks. And I shudder to think of the suffering following close behind, even if the end is redemption and renewal of souls.
I appreciate the Christian perspective on interest rates. I don’t know how well that ethic works at the scale of our world, but if nothing else, it does demonstrate the attitudes of the powerful and wealthy: self absorption and insulation.
Alessandra, an excellent article! Bold and brave, you are unafraid to shake the tree ... and that is great!
I think that your essay may have uncovered something larger than the “parasitic class” itself.
There may be a more fundamental question underneath:
What happens when the person receiving the benefit becomes structurally separated from responsibility for the cost?
That would explain something particularly interesting in your essay.
You begin by describing Boomers as the parasitic class. But as you develop the article you observe that young people, when placed under the same incentives, begin doing essentially the same thing — passive investment, speculation, rent extraction, OnlyFans, crypto, etc.
That seems to suggest, by implication in your article, that the generation itself isn't the fundamental variable.
It is the relationship that is the fundamental variable.
A government can create it through taxation, monetary distortion, subsidies or pensions.
A corporation can create it through political privilege.
A financial institution can create it through risk socialisation.
A landlord can create it if artificial scarcity gives them the ability to extract without a genuinely voluntary exchange.
An investor can create it if returns become detached from responsibility for the consequences of the investment.
And, equally, none of those people need be “parasitic” if the exchange remains genuinely voluntary and the beneficiary remains meaningfully connected to the consequences.
So perhaps the deeper distinction, as I think you have already sensed, isn't:
capitalism vs socialism
or even:
Boomers vs younger generations.
Perhaps it is:
benefit ↔ responsibility
versus
benefit ↔ externalised cost.
That would also make your Renaissance example particularly interesting!
The Medici didn't merely possess wealth. Their wealth was embedded in a relationship of patronage, obligation and creation. Their expenditure produced things whose value extended far beyond their own private consumption.
You seem to be reaching toward a distinction between wealth that circulates into value creation and wealth that extracts from the conditions of value creation.
If so, I wonder whether “parasitism” might ultimately be better understood not as a characteristic of a class, but as a relationship between benefit, cost, consent and responsibility.
And that would be quite an interesting thing to investigate, because it could let us analyse the phenomena you've identified without first having to decide whether they belong to “capitalism” or “government.”
In other words:
Perhaps you've found the symptom, but not yet the general mechanism.
And if that mechanism exists, it might explain why the same behaviour keeps reappearing whenever the institutional incentives permit it — regardless of age, ideology or economic system.
That would be a very interesting rabbit hole. 🙂
As an Italian from the world wide diaspora I came "back" with my famiglia to find that the "Fantasy of Italy" that our immigrant parents nurtured in us is a snapshot of their past and what you sense as a kind of malady has suffocated Italian creative ingenuity ... you are definitely on to something regardless of any commentary around your article that may seem negative ...
As a side note to this it might be worth mentioning that corporate boards have 25% rate of people who qualify as sociopaths compared with around 1% of the population. One of the main traits is this condition is the instrumental use of people. That hundreds of CEOs of major companies resigned after being in the Epstein files is just a symptom of a larger problem. We have a system which promotes these tendencies and this trickles down through everything.
Interesting premise but the assessment isn’t factually correct. Capital allocation and investment is the reason Space X, Amazon, Disney, Apple, NVIDIA, etc, even exist.
Should assess both the benefits and the risks rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water.
The author should blame the greed and excesses of the people, not the value creators she claims don’t create value.
In fact, the real issue resides in the people. It’s not the fault of Goldman Sachs and its cohort of ultra high net worth institutions that consumers are greedy, buying homes at 300k and selling them at 600k. It’s not the fault of the wealthy that a large portion of the people demand their food and healthcare subsidized, thereby inflating costs for the rest of the people.
Couldn’t agree more, with the setup of central banking, not so hidden tax, helping outsource productivity and value, and other misleadings. I wonder though, if that generation was just in the perfect storm of timeframe and conditions to result in this. It looks still more difficult for the ones that follow later. Have to be very strategic to not be left behind.
This was a great read. It’s one of those fascinating observations whereby you raise it with people (even the old) and they intuitively know it. Granted, as soon as you talk about the next steps (I.e. retracting resources) they get defensive (“I paid in to this system!”) but it doesn’t detract from the underlying agreement on the observation.
This is one of the many topics I’m exploring through my book, which my Substack is a vehicle for socialising the key ideas. I also draw on Marx to isolate productive labour capacity as the sole driver of value creation. I don’t make any moral arguments (which Marx leaned on heavily) but I do assess our world through the lens of what a purely value-driven framework would think about our world.
Thanks again for the great essay
The article correctly senses that something is deeply wrong, but repeatedly mistakes government-created privilege and monetary distortion for free market capitalism itself.
And the irony is that the article condemns this political economy while repeatedly demanding another political authority to correct it.
The crucial distinction the article misses is between voluntary exchange and political privilege. Subsidies, bailouts, central-bank manipulation, regulatory barriers, government pensions, compulsory taxation, and monetary inflation aren't evidence of free market capitalism failing. They're evidence of political power corrupting the market and redistributing wealth through political coercion.
Calling property owners, investors, landlords, financiers, and retirees a “parasitic class” doesn't explain how they acquired their wealth. Ownership is not parasitism. Earning a return on capital is not exploitation. Voluntary exchange is not a zero-sum game in which one person must lose for another to gain.
The article is right that wealth without purpose can produce a spiritually impoverished society. But that isn't proof that private property or capital accumulation is inherently parasitic.
The real parasite is the political system that allows one group to obtain wealth by coercively taking it from another—and then calls the resulting arrangement an economy.
I guess your comment comes down to “real capitalism has never been tried”, right?
And that’s mistaken, for it has been tried in industrial England and was a shithole. Literally.
It seems more likely now than a decade ago that the modern fracturing of global cooperative frameworks (UN, NATO, etc.), rise of competition between nation-states (US+Japan+EU vs China+Russia), and the reworking of supply chains (nearshoring, friendshoring, etc.) may just bring some “real work” back to the heavily financialized West. That’s my hope anyway. Unfortunately, economic hardship tied to financial system stress also seems a likely (ongoing) outcome.
The irony is that the past 100ish years have produced arguably the greatest explosion of wealth and mass economic improvement in the history of civilization. Never before has it been easier to live above extreme poverty. Calories as cheap as they’ve ever been (as an American, ask me how I know that). Untold billions of lives made materially better. However, and Alessandra you hit the nail on the head in this piece, this material expansion has been devoid of any meaningfully spiritual power. Our spirits have been siphoned off to feed our bellies. The sad thing is, as a comment above laid out, so many recognize it, but nothing changes until something breaks. And I shudder to think of the suffering following close behind, even if the end is redemption and renewal of souls.
I appreciate the Christian perspective on interest rates. I don’t know how well that ethic works at the scale of our world, but if nothing else, it does demonstrate the attitudes of the powerful and wealthy: self absorption and insulation.
A question stayed with me while reading this.
Perhaps the deeper problem is not wealth itself, but what happens when wealth becomes separated from responsibility and reciprocity.
Can an economy remain socially healthy when accumulation no longer carries an expectation of contribution?
And could this help explain why so much of modern life feels increasingly transactional—not only economically, but socially and even intellectually?
I am not sure of the answer. I find the question worth pursuing.
Alessandra, an excellent article! Bold and brave, you are unafraid to shake the tree ... and that is great!
I think that your essay may have uncovered something larger than the “parasitic class” itself.
There may be a more fundamental question underneath:
What happens when the person receiving the benefit becomes structurally separated from responsibility for the cost?
That would explain something particularly interesting in your essay.
You begin by describing Boomers as the parasitic class. But as you develop the article you observe that young people, when placed under the same incentives, begin doing essentially the same thing — passive investment, speculation, rent extraction, OnlyFans, crypto, etc.
That seems to suggest, by implication in your article, that the generation itself isn't the fundamental variable.
It is the relationship that is the fundamental variable.
A government can create it through taxation, monetary distortion, subsidies or pensions.
A corporation can create it through political privilege.
A financial institution can create it through risk socialisation.
A landlord can create it if artificial scarcity gives them the ability to extract without a genuinely voluntary exchange.
An investor can create it if returns become detached from responsibility for the consequences of the investment.
And, equally, none of those people need be “parasitic” if the exchange remains genuinely voluntary and the beneficiary remains meaningfully connected to the consequences.
So perhaps the deeper distinction, as I think you have already sensed, isn't:
capitalism vs socialism
or even:
Boomers vs younger generations.
Perhaps it is:
benefit ↔ responsibility
versus
benefit ↔ externalised cost.
That would also make your Renaissance example particularly interesting!
The Medici didn't merely possess wealth. Their wealth was embedded in a relationship of patronage, obligation and creation. Their expenditure produced things whose value extended far beyond their own private consumption.
You seem to be reaching toward a distinction between wealth that circulates into value creation and wealth that extracts from the conditions of value creation.
If so, I wonder whether “parasitism” might ultimately be better understood not as a characteristic of a class, but as a relationship between benefit, cost, consent and responsibility.
And that would be quite an interesting thing to investigate, because it could let us analyse the phenomena you've identified without first having to decide whether they belong to “capitalism” or “government.”
In other words:
Perhaps you've found the symptom, but not yet the general mechanism.
And if that mechanism exists, it might explain why the same behaviour keeps reappearing whenever the institutional incentives permit it — regardless of age, ideology or economic system.
That would be a very interesting rabbit hole. 🙂
As an Italian from the world wide diaspora I came "back" with my famiglia to find that the "Fantasy of Italy" that our immigrant parents nurtured in us is a snapshot of their past and what you sense as a kind of malady has suffocated Italian creative ingenuity ... you are definitely on to something regardless of any commentary around your article that may seem negative ...
Since most ancient cultures allowed polygamy and slavery, I assume you want those to come back too?
As a side note to this it might be worth mentioning that corporate boards have 25% rate of people who qualify as sociopaths compared with around 1% of the population. One of the main traits is this condition is the instrumental use of people. That hundreds of CEOs of major companies resigned after being in the Epstein files is just a symptom of a larger problem. We have a system which promotes these tendencies and this trickles down through everything.
Interesting premise but the assessment isn’t factually correct. Capital allocation and investment is the reason Space X, Amazon, Disney, Apple, NVIDIA, etc, even exist.
Should assess both the benefits and the risks rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water.
The author should blame the greed and excesses of the people, not the value creators she claims don’t create value.
In fact, the real issue resides in the people. It’s not the fault of Goldman Sachs and its cohort of ultra high net worth institutions that consumers are greedy, buying homes at 300k and selling them at 600k. It’s not the fault of the wealthy that a large portion of the people demand their food and healthcare subsidized, thereby inflating costs for the rest of the people.
Just for understanding, do you believe that 'Space X, Amazon, Disney, Apple, NVIDIA, etc' are the advancements of modern civilization?
My beliefs don’t matter, I’m stating facts.
I'm not making a case for socialism. I don't think the government can be trusted.
Couldn’t agree more, with the setup of central banking, not so hidden tax, helping outsource productivity and value, and other misleadings. I wonder though, if that generation was just in the perfect storm of timeframe and conditions to result in this. It looks still more difficult for the ones that follow later. Have to be very strategic to not be left behind.
Yes, unfortunately, in our world the governments could not be credited with trust.
Atheism is to blame for all the things you attribute to the decline