The Future of Inequality: A Selection from Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2019)
“In countries such as France and New Zealand, with a long tradition of liberal beliefs and welfare-state practices, perhaps the elite will go on taking care of the masses even when it doesn’t need them. In the more capitalist United States, however, the elite might use the first opportunity to dismantle what’s left of the American welfare state.
An even bigger problem looms in large developing countries such as India, China, South Africa, and Brazil. There, once common people lose their economic value, inequality might skyrocket. Consequently, instead of globalization resulting in global unity, it might actually result in speciation: the divergence of humankind into different biological castes or even different species.
Globalization will unite the world horizontally by erasing national borders, but it will simultaneously divide humanity vertically. Ruling oligarchies in countries as diverse as the United States and Russia might merge and make common cause against the mass of ordinary humans. From this perspective, current populist resentment of ‘the elites’ is well founded.
If we are not careful, the grandchildren of Silicon Valley tycoons and Moscow billionaires might become a separate species superior to the grandchildren of Appalachian hillbillies and Siberian villagers. . . .
Improvements in biotechnology might make it possible to translate economic inequality into biological inequality. The superrich will finally have something really worthwhile to do with their stupendous wealth. While up until now they have only been able to buy little more than status symbols, soon they might be able to buy life itself. If new treatments for extending life and upgrading physical and cognitive abilities prove to be expensive, humankind might split into biological castes. . . .
Throughout history the rich and the aristocracy always imagined that they had skills superior to everybody else’s, which is why they were in control. As far as we can tell, this wasn’t true. The average duke wasn’t more talented than the average peasant—he owed his superiority only to unjust legal and economic discrimination. However, by 2100 the rich might really be more talented, more creative, and more intelligent than the slum-dwellers.
Once a real gap in ability opens between the rich and the poor, it will become almost impossible to close it. If the rich use their superior abilities to enrich themselves further, and if more money can buy them enhanced bodies and brains, with time the gap will only widen. By 2100, the richest 1 percent might own not merely most of the world’s wealth but also most of the world’s beauty, creativity, and health.”—Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2019)
