Equalitarian Societies are Economically Impossible

TL;DR

This paper presents a model explaining the universal inequality of wealth as a consequence of hierarchical social structures, suggesting that efforts to eliminate inequality could threaten social stability.

Contribution

It introduces a wealth distribution model based on a hidden tree structure, linking social hierarchy to the emergence of wealth inequality.

Findings

Wealth distribution follows a scale-free pattern due to hierarchical cascades.

Efforts to eliminate inequality may destabilize social and economic structures.

Wealth inequality is inherently tied to the organization of society.

Abstract

The inequality of wealth distribution is a universal phenomenon in the civilized nations, and it is often imputed to the Matthew effect, that is, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Some philosophers unjustified this phenomenon and tried to put the human civilization upon the evenness of wealth. Noticing the facts that 1) the emergence of the centralism is the starting point of human civilization, i.e., people in a society were organized hierarchically, 2) the inequality of wealth emerges simultaneously, this paper proposes a wealth distribution model based on the hidden tree structure from the viewpoint of complex network. This model considers the organized structure of people in a society as a hidden tree, and the cooperations among human beings as the transactions on the hidden tree, thereby explains the distribution of wealth. This model shows that the scale-free phenomenon of wealth distribution can be produced by the cascade controlling of human society, that is, the inequality of wealth can parasitize in the social organizations, such that any actions in eliminating the unequal wealth distribution would lead to the destroy of social or economic structures, resulting in the collapse of the economic system, therefore, would fail in vain.