The Rupture - Is Pax Americana ending?

Politics & Current Affairs
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Not so much an incoherence, as an understanding that these are differing forces at play in a dynamic system. So it seems things are changing after all and quite fast currently. There are not just two forces at play here, there are more. Such as the development of crypto, the rapid growth in money laundering and the rapid introduction of social media, AI etc. it’s a veritable witches caldron of competing forces.

Yes,but to gloss over short term developments like this is to ignore what is going on.Historically empires have fallen too and many people, myself included are contemplating a fall right now.

Yes, I knew that, but until recently America played along with the rules too, just from a position of having a freedom from the obligations of the ICC. As has been described, the other Western nations didn’t have any reason to doubt the integrity and collegiate trust of the U.S. following WW2. So it worked well and people turned a blind eye to the fact that the U.S. didn’t sign up to some of these treaties.
Regarding Biden hosting Netanyahu, the U.S. was already in the Trump era and Biden was trying to show that the Democrats where not going to abandon Israel while it was committing it’s genocide, as that would have been disastrous for the 2024 election.

You may be oversimplifying the situation a bit here. These people are not in control of the dynamic currently. Although before Trump they could have be seen that way. It is not in their interests for Trump to be playing the hokey kokey with tariffs, or endangering the stability in the gulf states. Two things which were carefully managed before he came along. These developments are seriously destabilising world trade and economy after the shocks of Covid and the invasion of Ukraine. This is seriously self destructive and the power brokers you reference above are not the same people who will be profiting from the disaster capitalism.
Not to mention the political turmoil going on inside the U.S. at the moment, which hasn’t yet come to a head. The U.S. is teetering on the edge now, with the risks of civil war, or economic collapse looming large. While The leader of the free world is twiddling with his violin like Caligula before the fall of Rome.

What I’m seeing is that Trump is playing into the hands of China and Putin. I need to point out that I do not have “Trump derangement syndrome”, a blindness to everything else, while all I see is Trump destroying things I hold dear.You have put that label on me, but all I’m doing to focussing on current events, events largely being steered by Trump atm.

Yes, but things are accelerating at the moment with Trump’s fundamental misunderstanding of economics. Where he thinks that a big AI bubble is evidence of a booming economy and that other countries are taking advantage of the U.S. through global free trade and low tariffs. Everyone’s laughing at him.

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There are not just two forces at play here, there are more. Such as the development of crypto, the rapid growth in money laundering and the rapid introduction of social media, AI etc. it’s a veritable witches caldron of competing forces.

Those are factors, not forces. Forces control factors.

until recently America played along with the rules too,

Was Abu Graib within the rules? Was arming Israel? Was Guantanamo within the rules? The invasion of Iraq? Intervention in Panama, Granada. Vietnam, Iran contra, … Seriously. What world are you living on?

Regarding Biden hosting Netanyahu, the U.S. was already in the Trump era and Biden was trying to show that the Democrats where not going to abandon Israel while it was committing it’s genocide, as that would have been disastrous for the 2024 election.

Disgraceful boot licking. Netanyahu is a war criminal. Hosting him for any reason at all is a disgrace. Like political expediency makes it OK. I’m sorry, but that’s beyond the pail.

These people are not in control of the dynamic currently.

Then we’re back to my first question. They are, nonetheless getting richer and more powerful.

So, is your theory that they just got lucky? That the first time in history they’ve been unable to exert their power, but ‘phew’ because as luck would have it things just turned out exactly the way they wanted them by chance? That’s ridiculous.

It is not in their interests for Trump to be playing the hokey kokey with tariffs, or endangering the stability in the gulf states.

Then why are they still getting richer?

These developments are seriously destabilising world trade and economy after the shocks of Covid and the invasion of Ukraine.

Again, look at the actual figures. The rich got richer as a result of Covid and Ukraine. They thrive on the chaos. That’s the whole point of crisis capitalism.

This is seriously self destructive and the power brokers you reference above are not the same people who will be profiting from the disaster capitalism.

OK. Name me one person on the rich list who’s got way poorer as a result of all this.

Everyone’s laughing at him.

And yet also subservient?

Your analysis makes no sense.

You’ve got one man able to wrest control from the entire network of rich and powerful, but he’s also an idiot and you’ve no theory as to how.

You’ve got China and Russia poised to take economic control (Russia who is also somehow controlled by a mad man and on the brink of collapse, but also about to take over the world, but also about to lose to Ukraine…).

All of this just to avoid the alternative hypothesis that the rich and powerful are exerting that power to enrich themselves.

Why are you so resistant to the simplest explanation?

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Oh there’s a theory for that: he is the President of the United States, who in the US system would have a lot of power, even if the US Congress would take it’s role and use the power vested in it by the Constitution.

And he has been voted into office now twice by the citizens of the US, which is fact and a notable issue for the topic of this thread.

65

It’s charming how you think elections are not almost entirely controlled by the wealthy and powerful.

What do you think they do at election time, just back out to give everyone a sporting chance?

But let’s go with your theory that Trump just won an election without the direct backing of the rich and powerful, and then has unilateral control over US policy…

What’s your theory as to why no one has ever exploited this loophole in US politics before? Everyone just too sportsmanlike until Trump?

The entire US population knows that complete control over the world’s most powerful nation could be obtained by one man, but no one thought to act on it?

And the actual rich and powerful could have, at any moment just seized control, but decided not to?

And again, with all of this power invested in one single individual, what are the chances of all his decisions just so happening to favour those very same rich and powerful people who accidentally let him take charge?

These must be the luckiest people alive!

Or…

The powerful exerted their power to influence events in their favour.

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It’s charming how you talk about control of the “wealthy and powerful” as this one single entity controlling everything. A typical views that followers of Alex Jones had… before their saviour was Donald Trump.

How about things like the political parties themselves where the Democrats have “superdelegates” to reign in the party from choosing someone like Bernie Sanders in the end and the Republican party leadership not having that kind of control in 2016? How cares about politics and voters, when you have your “everything is controlled by the rich”.

What loophole?

If you would know US history, I think you would observe that a “populist” coming into power that is against the elites isn’t at all unusual.

First one that comes to mind in President Andrew Jackson: he ran with a populist platform and came from outside the “Founding Fathers”-gang. If your interested, please read his Presidential Farewell speech, where he warns the country about bankers and their evil attempts to create a central bank and paper money. (link March 4, 1837: Farewell Address)

And just to give a glimpse from the 1837 speech, just how current does the following sound from the 19th Century?

It is one of the serious evils of our present system of banking that it enables one class of society–and that by no means a numerous one–by its control over the currency, to act injuriously upon the interests of all the others and to exercise more than its just proportion of influence in political affairs. The agricultural, the mechanical, and the laboring classes have little or no share in the direction of the great moneyed corporations, and from their habits and the nature of their pursuits they are incapable of forming extensive combinations to act together with united force.

When it comes to corruption, let’s see where afterwards Trump will be. Yet even if Warren Harding did appoint friends to high places regardless of their qualifications, and the Teapot Dome scandal is often viewed as a high water mark of US administration corruption, we have to see where the many billions that Trump has now made in his second term will put him as a corrupt grifter.

And yes, no US President has made billions while in office.

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This was mopping up following WW2, although McCarthyism and the paranoia about communism did string this out for decades longer than it should have. But this is not evidence of a grand conspiracy of the wealthy power brokers in the U.S. It was more to do with incompetence in the U.S. and paranoia on both sides of the Cold War.Throughout this period the UN was established and the relevant parties cooperated to establish the beginnings of a rule based world order, with a security council would try to resolve issues around a table, rather than on the battlefield. All this contributed to a long period of peace and stability from around 1945 to around 2000. Things have slowly been breaking down since then, but peaceful global trade flows had been maintained quite well until last year. Now with Israel’s war on Iran, the general breakdown is accelerating and the U.S. is uniquely vulnerable to such a failure.

And then you let the cat out of the bag, it’s a conspiracy of the global elites in control of everything and squeezing every last drop of wealth out of the world economy. Is it the blob, the swamp, the blood sucking pedo’s, deep throat?

What you say about crisis capitalism is true, but there isn’t a cabal pulling the strings. If anything it’s a general drift towards toxic capitalism and the unhealthy increased growth of the rentier class, another bubble.

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@ssu, @Punshhh

It is a fact that we live in an unequal world in terms of wealth and power. I hope I don’t have to prove that fact to either of you.

It is therefore, by definition, true that there will be a group of people who hold more power and wealth than the group below them. This is an unarguable fact resulting from the fact that we live in an unequal world.

By definition, then, there exists a grouping of rich and powerful people. Wherever we draw an arbitrary line in the continuum of wealth and power, the group above that line have greater wealth and power than the group below it.

It is also a fact (which again, I hope I don’t have to prove to two intelligent people) that inequality is rising and proceeds exponentially, not linearly.

From this it is unarguable that any group we identify at one point in the scale will have orders of magnitude more power and wealth than groups below them on that scale. This is just a fact emerging from the non-linear nature of the inequality curve.

We also live in a world with economic rules governing the ability to profit from transactions. Again, I hope I don’t have to prove this to either of you.

It therefore emerges from this, as a fact, that any rational agent wishing to maximise their wealth and power will seek to exert their existing power to ensure the rules favour further expansion of that power and wealth, and since the rules are objective (to a degree), they will all pull in the same direction (roughly).

So it follows, simply from an analysis of the non-linear nature of equality and the degree of regularity in economic rules that there will be a group (increasingly small) which will all act in a similar fashion to exert the power they do have on the current system of rules such that they favour their further increase in wealth and power, and that that exertion will all be in roughly the same direction.

We do not need any conspiracy, or ‘cabal’ to theorise the existence of a group of powerful people whose interests coincide and whose capacities allow them to exercise that interest.

To be honest, it’s a pretty pathetic reach that you try and deny this with cat calls to ‘cabals’ and ‘Alex Jones’. I expected a better level of debate.

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Let me ask you this.

Did you support Occupy, whose slogan was “We are the 99%”?

Did you oppose the Iraq war?

I strongly suspect the answer to both is yes.

So what’s changed?

Is it that the world is suddenly no longer divided into a 1% and a 99%?

Is it that wars without UN mandates are suddenly legal?

Or…

Is it that the very 1% and political warmongers you used to be opposed to have found a convenient way of distracting all that annoying attention they were getting, and you’ve just become their willing attack dog?

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Really?

237 years of US presidency and you think citing 8 of them is not unusual? You have a very wierd definition of unusual.

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Up until here I would agree with what you say. But with this I vehemently disagree. This is an over simplification of actual individuals and their objectives with a modelling that only a stupid economist would do: of people just attempting to maximize their wealth and power. And in any case the economist should know that the theory is about maximizing utility, which is different. Mother Theresa surely attempted to maximize utility in her life, only that for her utility wasn’t maximizing wealth and power.

So let’s take an example. Let’s think about famous dictators, Stalin, Hitler, Mao. They surely had an effect on the World. These people surely maximized their power. OK, but was just maximizing their wealth wasn’t their agenda? No, they had an ideology, a view how they thought they would make the World better, starting from the country they controlled. Stalin and Mao were both staunch communists who believed in their ideology. Hitler wrote a small book where he described perfectly what his intentions would be and what he would do.

The simple fact is that when we are talking about the small group of people who are leaders and those that have influence in global politics, the assumption that they are just maximizing their wealth and power is a far too simple model with to picture reality. Yet it’s great a way to model reality if you believe in the antagonistic populist idea of people being divided to the small cabal of the “evil elites” and then there being the huge number of innocent, subjugated “ordinary people”. For Hitler, Stalin and Mao that populist divide worked wonders: they got their revolutions. You can easily dismiss things like democracy and democratic institutions and all that stuff by insisting that they all are controlled by the evil elites and it all is a charade.

I personally would start from observations like no single person or group of people has control of what is happening in the World, yet there indeed are people who think they are in control of what is happening. They can only partly influence the events that are happening. And that the conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones etc. go simply too far thinking that everything is a conspiracy and give simply too much power to these elites, who indeed are still powerful. Yeah, it’s a niche especially when people want culprits and reasons why their life isn’t good.

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Mother Theresa surely attempted to maximize utility in her life, only that for her utility wasn’t maximizing wealth and power.

This doesn’t make any sense. We’re not talking about all people, We’re talking about people at the height of wealth and power. How do you think they got there if they’re not the sort of people who prioritise maximising their wealth and power?

Are we back to your very smart theory that they all just got lucky?

Let’s think about famous dictators, Stalin, Hitler, Mao. They surely had an effect on the World. These people surely maximized their power. OK, but was just maximizing their wealth wasn’t their agenda?

Sure. Hence I’m referring to the rich and powerful. None were exactly paupers.

The simple fact is that when we are talking about the small group of people who are leaders and those that have influence in global politics, the assumption that they are just maximizing their wealth and power is a far too simple model with to picture reality.

OK. So if the people in charge are not maximising their power, then why are they not already replaced in those roles by people who are maximising their power?

Are you suggesting no-one maximises their power? Or that there’s some law of nature meaning that any who attempts to maximise their power are perversely the very people in least power?

I personally would start from observations like no single person or group of people has control of what is happening in the World,

But this is obvious nonsense.

For one, by definition the most powerful are the group who have most control. That’s literally what power means. To deny that is to suggest we all have equal power.

Secondly, we’re back to the alternative you keep resufsing to provide. How else did these people obtain such vast quantities of wealth and power? Luck? Consummate skill?

The questions you keep dodging are;

  1. if the current crop of rich and powerful did not obtain this status by using their previous wealth and power to increase their wealth and power, then how did they get there?
  2. Even if the current crop did not get there by maximising their wealth and power, why are their roles not already taken by people who do?

Your argument has a gaping hole in it.

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A little potted history from my perspective…

There’s only three groups who have meaningful power;

  1. The ‘masses’ who have power by sheer force of numbers, but only with (at least localised) solidarity.
  2. Those who control the armed forces - typically the government
  3. Those who control the means of production - typically the rich

All arguments about political power come down to the extent to which any group are able to exert influence over the others.

Up until a few years ago, it used to be that the right considered group (2) to unjustly exert constraint over the others and the left considered group (3) to do so. That was basically the ideological battle ground.

No one was stupid enough to think we live in a world where group (1) largely influence the other two.

… Until round about 2015-2020, when a new left comes out of nowhere with the the sort of Law and Order “do as you’re told” politics that used to play well on the right.

Promoting Law and Order, without actively supporting group (3) leaves no choice but to double down on the previously universally dismissed notion that we live in a world where group (1) are in charge - and in need of control by group (2).

Enter ‘populism’. The half-baked theory that group (1) were in charge all along but for some reason (not specified) they only ever get their shit together when they’re racist.

It’s a sad indictment of human intellectual standards that we’re still having to actually argue against this.

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Quite telling from you that didn’t even finish my sentence or my thought, that continued: “yet there indeed are people who think they are in control of what is happening. They can only partly influence the events that are happening.”

So my point is “nonsense”, and yet then, you say:

So how am I saying “obvious nonsense” because you yourself make here the same point. You do have the masses, you do have the militaries and thus things aren’t just controlled by the owner class and the ultra-rich. Not every country is like the US. In some countries the billionaires walk a fine line of having their wealth or ending up in jail or thrown out of a window. And some countries don’t have billionaires.

And if the rich have a say especially during peace time as trade and economic performance is important for the political elite, once there is a political crises or large scale war, the rich just adapt and attempt to hold on to their riches. In truth the internationalist “Davos man” supporting globalism has little to say if the nation states start wars. If Great Powers go to war, he just adapts to the new circumstances and tries to save what can be saved from his international investments. The era of globalization vanishes as quickly as did the fraternity and brotherhood between the various workers movements in Europe when WW1 broke out.

History shows that the era of globalization can end abruptly and the next era usually isn’t as prosperous as before.

And even this divide to three groups is very simplistic. There’s a lot more to this than just three groups because even these are totally different in different countries. If you think that maximizing wealth and power is the only thing, you miss a lot. Ideologies matter. Religions and issues of faith matter. And the nation states aren’t as dead as some that believed them to be when declaring an era of perpetual globalism to be the future of humanity.

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There are cabals among the rich, certainly in the U.K. where I live. But their combined capacities are exercised to create an idealised community in which their members can thrive within an imagined utopia(I’m simplifying the reality to make my point). They leave the pursuit of political power to a small elite schooled within this Utopia, who generally form the party’s on the right of politics.
The people in this utopia are not maximising wealth, or power. Their politicians are concerned with maintaining the status quo, so as not to expose the privileged, or empower the poor to change the set up. The politics they practice is one where they develop strategies to make the poor vote to keep the rich in power.
Where their politics is concerned with economics, it’s little more than a simplified liberationism picked up from political philosophers in the U.S. during the mid 20th century. Which formed the ideology of Thatcherism, which we are still living under now.

I’ve no particular reason to think that any other country, unless it’s an outlier is much different to this in its make up. Authoritarian states operate in a different way at the top, but the status quo is the same, a wealthy class living in a utopia, while a pacified poor stay in their place.

Now alongside this is the developments in corporate capitalism and the influence of media Moguls. Corporate capitalism has become more powerful in many case than individual countries and does alongside media Moguls influence, even control political realities in many countries. So alongside their status quo politics politicians in these countries have to live with this cuckoo in the nest of global corporations and international markets.

This whole system is now very rigid and as you say results in a business as usual capitalist corporate world. But war, on a large scale, rather than proxy wars aren’t part of this system. Although it’s testament to how strong it is that it survived WW2.

This capitalist system is not controlled by anyone, it’s a fundamental reality of markets scaled up, like the way gravity affects water, always moving to the lowest point. The financial markets are like the gravity, controlling money and economies. But this control is not being managed by anyone, or any group, it’s seeking, so to speak, the lowest point. The best return for the lowest risk. It’s like a living organism, Mamon, rolling getting bigger and rolling faster as it grows and the people are just along for the ride, making the best of it, making their own little utopias within it. Because there is no alternative. Take it away and we have nothing, just anarchy, poverty, suffering.

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You do have the masses, you do have the militaries and thus things aren’t just controlled by the owner class and the ultra-rich

Yes, and the point I further made is the grouping of political ideologies into which group effectively influences the other - hence one group maintains power.

There’s obviously a right-wing notion that ‘Big Bad Government’ are in charge of everything, and a traditional left-wing notion that the government are under the sway of corporations and bankers.

What there isn’t is any serious academic political ideology that claim the masses are generally in charge influencing the other two. Even sworn ideological enemies agree that would be stupid because to exert that power they would have to
a) all agree on some course of action opposed to the other two - even though one has the army (revolution) or,
b) have free-and-fair elections in which it were impossible for either of the other two to exert an influence over the possible outcomes.

Since neither of those states exist in any country in the world, we can (and do ) rule out the possibility of considering group (1) to any any meaningful power. In most political philosophies, the role group (1) play is as the permanent risk to be averted (eg Gramscian soft revolutions, Machiavelli’s fear, etc).

The problem with the Right-wing view of ‘Big Bad Government’ is that the actual figures do not bear them out. Particularity since the 80s governments throughout the world have followed fiscal policy directly designed to favour the use of financial instruments, and since the 90s have followed strict spending constraints, even imposing them on other countries through the IMF and World Bank.

It may well be that there are exceptions in the world - a few South American countries, for example, but out conversation is not about the world, it’s about the North West block. In that region there is unanimity in governments on general fiscal policy and that policy favours capital.

Again, if you want to argue against this it’s on you to explain why the rich keep getting richer in all countries if circumstances are not favourable to them, and why they do not exert the power their wealth gives them (over, say, election campaigns, lobbying, media, economic structures, …) when they clearly can do so (we have examples of exactly that).

once there is a political crises or large scale war, the rich just adapt and attempt to hold on to their riches

Yes, I was beginning to suspect this fawning deference might be behind your views, which is why I was pushing you for an alternative explanation. If you really are convinced they’re just better than us, there’s not a lot I can do, it’s like a religion.

The rich get rich during times of prosperity because they have influence, you concede. But the rich stay rich even through times of crisis because they’re just so much smarter than ordinary folk, with their clever adaptation. It’s pseudo-religious claptrap. The rich are not the cream of the crop. Even if we lived in a world where intelligence was rewarded (we don’t), decades of inheritance would put paid to any meritocracy that had developed.
Hell Trump’s rich (as you so loudly pointed out) and he’s a moron.

History shows that the era of globalization can end abruptly and the next era usually isn’t as prosperous as before.

Does it?

Here’s the beta co-efficient of the top 1% globally.

Here’s a graph showing interstate wars.

Can you point to the bit where their relative share went down because of the wars?

Here’s the share of wealth held by the top 1% in Ukraine - you know the country that’s actually at war…

If you could point out the effect of the wars

Edit - none of my links are working. I’ll add them when I can

Got some working. Wanted to embed… You get the picture.

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They leave the pursuit of political power to a small elite schooled within this Utopia, who generally form the party’s on the right of politics.

So why is there absolutely no impact on either inequality or net wealth when parties on the left are in power?

war, on a large scale, rather than proxy wars aren’t part of this system.

True. But we’re not having any wars on a large scale anymore. Have you asked yourself why that might be? As I’ve shown above, even at war the richest 1% in Ukraine have barely had their position dented.

This capitalist system is not controlled by anyone, it’s a fundamental reality of markets scaled up, like the way gravity affects water

Except this is utter bullshit and not a single economist in the world would hold such a view. Even the worst ravages of Miltonian free-market crap don’t have literally no regulation.

Here’s a little primer from Ha-Joon Chang Cambridge Economics Professor and advisor to the world bank.

It’s testament to just how bad things have got that people ostensibly on the left (as I’m guessing you would consider yourself) are now having to trot out the very worst of free-market neoliberal economics just to shore up the fantasy. Is this really what you wanted to become? An apologist for ultra-liberal free-market economics?

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It depends on the country, here in the U.K. there is an impact. It’s like a see saw, when Labour gets in they bring in policies which reduce child poverty, improve social provision etc. When the Conservatives get in they reverse these policies and bring in policies which the better off prefer. Although you general point here is correct, there is little impact on the wealthy, the very wealthy, the elites, or inequality. Also if a real socialist were to get into No10, like Jeremy Corbyn, which nearly happened in 2017. All the elites, the markets, the media would have attacked him and his government so ferociously that his government would have collapsed.

I’m not disagreeing with this, as I say, I agree with your general point here.

[quote=“Pseudonym, post:77, topic:203”]
Except this is utter bullshit and not a single economist in the world would hold such a view. Even the worst ravages of Miltonian free-market crap don’t have literally no regulation.
[/quote]You misunderstand me, it’s my fault, I am likely not discussing these ideas in the way they are normally talked about. I’m not talking about free markets, or regulated markets here. But the fundamental basis or structure of capitalism. That it is a market and that there is no other way for human societies, past the stage of development of the Hunter gatherer,to organise itself, or cooperate and build civilisation. We have no choice but to go down the road of capitalism. It has benefited societies considerably up to the present, but problems are starting to arise, accentuated by fears of the over use of resources, shortages of resources and the looming threat of climate change. This introduces a problem for capitalism, which relies on economic growth and the increase of profit. What if there is no room for more growth? And indeed economies might have to shrink from now on? There are other issues, involved here, but if we just focus on this.How does capitalism adapt to a world where there can be no more growth, or economies are shrinking?
Perhaps this is where crisis capitalism comes in, along a spread of authoritarianism and toxic capitalism. Invevitably in such a climate, of fear and distrust, social cohesion begins to breakdown, populists rise up and acute crises will develop from time to time.

79

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have produced a nice graphic on exactly this Overall poverty rates for children, working-age adults and pensioners | Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I don’t know why you feel obliged to run point for these people. The data very clearly shows left wing governments have minimal impact on child poverty. Compare Blair to Cameron. It’s barely noticeable compared to Thatcher.

So now ‘the elites’ exist again and are capable of unified action? It seems you’re willing to invoke elites when it suits you.

Let’s have a look at where we seem to agree

  1. Market-based economics may be an inevitable consequence of agriculture, but the rules by which this system functions are written and enforced entirely by governments and could be in number of other configurations.
  2. It’s entirely possible for these rules to be arranged such as to more greatly benefit the poor, at the expense of the excesses of the rich.
  3. The rich are getting richer and this process is unaffected by changes in government, and even massive world events like covid and wars.

So, what baffles me still is how, beleiveing those three things, you can still think that the rules of the system are just coincidentally arranged to favour the rich and not that the rich exercise some power to make them so.

Why invoke an astonishing coincidence when there’s no apparent need?

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It’s reaching that point of unnecessarily argumentative again. So I’ll leave it there for now.

81

It’s not “argumentative”. I’m challenging you to defend your argument. It’s the basic process of debate.

You’ve made an argument which highlights the role of individual leaders, minimises the role of the wealthy, and supports a ‘rules-based’ order.

I’m asking you to defend those positions against the charge that;

  1. If individuals are in charge why are we seeing the rules consistently arranged such as to most benefit the wealthy?
  2. If the wealthy are not setting the rules, then how is it that they are consistently increasing their wealth?
  3. If a ‘rules-based’ order was, in some ways, better than the system you claim we’re deteriorating into, then why did that order yield no measurable benefits for ordinary people?

These aren’t “argumentative”, they’re basic questions you need to be able to answer in order to defend your position.

If you’re not prepared to defend your position then you’re just engaged in evangelism.