INEQUALITY - or the pattern we refuse to see...
After most of the world has spent a few days in a strange tension between disbelief and euphoria, it might be time to try to make sense of the election in New York. Because no matter how you turn it, it is not random.
Just as the election of Trump - twice - was not either.
Here is my take on why -
Mamdani was not elected in New York because the poor and desperate stormed the ballot boxes. Whatever anyone tries to tell you, that is a misunderstanding.
He was elected because two groups - who have historically found themselves on opposite sides of society and the ballot - have found each other over recent decades.
On one side, the young who feel left behind before they have even begun. The future was promised to them. But reality came first. They cannot buy housing. They can barely pay rent. They work but do not advance. The housing market is a fortress without gates. Wages stand still while everything else rises. A future with family, house, financial peace - what was once called 'The American Dream' - exists mostly as a bad joke and a nostalgic meme for many of them.
They stand with student debt the size of their parents' mortgages and look around at an economic landscape where everything rises - except their opportunities.
When you are 24 and feel knocked out of adult life before you have even taken the first step, you begin looking for someone who points at the blame. And Mamdani does that gladly -
"You are a victim of the system. There are people who have taken something from you, and you are entitled to get it back."
The other group voting him in - actually the largest - is the one nobody really talks about - the progressive class earning between 60,000 and 150,000 dollars a year. Middle to upper middle class.
They can afford to live in the right neighbourhoods, live the right life, vote for the right things. They lack nothing materially but have instead a permanent deficit of meaning in existence. They carry a diffuse guilt, as if their privileges require penance.
They do not vote for Mamdani to get something - but to give something up. They try to cleanse their conscience by buying moral indulgences.
The young want JUSTICE.
The affluent want SALVATION.
Mamdani offers them both, wrapped in the sentence -
"It is NOT YOU. It is THE SYSTEM."
And it works.
Because when the future feels lost, even really bad solutions become attractive - as long as they promise that someone else takes responsibility.
But here is the uncomfortable reality that neither Mamdani - or Trump for that matter - really want to touch.
Because there are no votes in it.
Let me still - since nobody has to vote for me - lay it out for you as well as I can and understand.
What creates inequality and concentration of power, money and opportunities... is not capitalism. And it is not socialism.
It is a pattern.
The Pareto principle.
What we popularly call the "80/20 rule".
And the distribution is probably even more merciless.
This principle does not just function as a rule of thumb.
It is a structural force in reality that dictates that 80% of results end up with 20% of actors.
Pareto is not an economic theory. It is one of reality's deep structures - and whoever has eyes to see sees this same distribution again and again - everywhere -
In economics where 80% of wealth collects with 20% of people.
In companies where 20% of employees create 80% of results.
On social media where the distribution is even worse - 1% of users account for almost all views.
In creative industries where 1% of artists get almost all the attention.
In language and communication where we use 20% of words 80% of the time.
In healthcare where 20% of patients account for 80% of costs.
In traffic and infrastructure where 20% of roads carry 80% of traffic.
In sport where very, very few athletes account for most records and sponsorships.
In science where most breakthroughs come from a small minority of researchers.
Even in books where 80% of book sales come from 20% of titles.
It does not just mean that 20% get 80% of resources. It means that the 20% distribute themselves in 80/20 again. And this remainder again. And again. That is why there exists the absurdly rich outer percentile - which is so easy to spot.
But it does not stop there.
It also applies in nature.
In forests 20% of trees grow above all the others and take 80% of the light.
In ecosystems few species produce most of the energy.
In genetics a small number of genes affect most of your traits.
Even in the big bang and galaxy distribution we see that mass groups itself around few centres.
It is difficult for modern humans to acknowledge - but it is not just numbers we are talking about here. It is a principle of concentration.
And it becomes even more dizzying.
Because it also applies to the relationships we have.
20% of our relationships create 80% of our joy - AND 20% of them create 80% of our problems.
Pareto is not an "economic injustice".
It is an emergent order.
It is REALITY organizing energy where there is already movement. When we dive deeper, we see the same pattern in the Fibonacci sequence, in spirals, in the number Pi.
The Bible calls it - "measure, standard and order."
Reality is not chaos.
Reality has pattern.
We just have not learned to read it - yet.
Inequality is not politics. Inequality is physics. It is fractal. And it repeats at every level. Like a spiral you can zoom into, and no matter where you stop, you see the same form again.
It is the same pattern you find in the Fibonacci sequence. In ocean waves. In the form of galaxies. In architectural proportions. Even in the biblical language of measure, order and logos - the order that creates the world.
In other words, it is not politics that creates the inequality we experience in this time. It is reality organizing itself as it always has - and always will.
Socialism tries to flatten the pattern through force. Capitalism tries to exploit the pattern through freedom.
Neither of them works in a way that matches our Western understanding of "Justice".
But since it is so hard to see - we apparently prefer to spend our time blaming "the others" for "it not working".
But Pareto always returns.
Like gravity.
This naturally does not mean we should just accept inequality.
It means we must stop fooling ourselves that we can solve it with outbursts of anger, slogans or political or ideological solutions that scratch lightly at the surface of this deep reality - and certainly not ideas that have repeatedly killed millions of people, by trying to create "equality" through more poverty.
Mamdani does not have the solution.
Trump does not either.
Mamdani speaks to the victim.
Trump speaks to the hero.
But it is not the hero or the victim that is the problem. It is the map - the board - REALITY - we play them on.
We need a completely new category of leadership - when Trump and Mamdani are done being crowbars.
We need the Human who dares to see reality as it is - without falling into ideology or guilt.
I think we should try to position ourselves there.
On the side that speaks to courage, to mission, to the inherent strength and dignity in the human being. The side that says -
"You are not a victim of the system.
You are a participant in creation."
I KNOW there is a solution to Pareto. But we will NEVER find it by fighting each other. We must desperately rise above the old paradigms - capitalism vs. socialism, right vs. left - and dare to stand in the uncomfortable but liberating - to admit we do not know the answer yet - if that solution is to arrive.
Because this is where change begins.
And the current hypnosis lets go.
....
So what does all this mean?
It certainly does not mean we should throw out capitalism and introduce socialism.
Because here history is brutal and unambiguous - every single time we have tried to remove inequality through force and state redistribution, it has not ended with freedom but with control. Not prosperity but stagnation. Not equal opportunities but equal poverty.
Socialism capsizes societies because it starts with ideals - continues toward Utopia - and ends with force.
But it does not conversely mean we can defend the current version of capitalism either. Because hypercapitalism - financialization, market dominance, power concentration - has abandoned morality and purpose and turns people into numbers and markets into gods.
Capitalism was never meant as a casino but as an arena for RESPONSIBILITY, CREATION and VALUE.
We do not need to abolish capitalism.
We need to restore it.
Healthy capitalism - where freedom and responsibility are coupled together - is still the best system we have.
A system where people can create, build, grow, work, dream. A system where the most productive idea wins - not the most politically correct!
But we must also say it aloud -
"There is something wrong with the model as it functions now."
So. We should not replace capitalism but develop it. We should create a system that knows Reality's pattern - Pareto - but finds just ways to balance it without crushing freedom and initiative.
A capitalism with soul.
With meaning.
With direction.
Not right.
Not left.
UPWARD!
Until we find the answer, we must hold onto the best guess we have while seeking the better we cannot yet see.
I stand on the side that believes in the Human.
In courage. In mission. In the hero within us - and that the solution is found not by making people into victims but by calling them to action.
We should not fear the future.
We should build it.
...
The picture was mostly to get your attention.
It is modern "art". 🤡
