If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Did you know that throughout the history of civilization, the only forces truly capable of closing the gap between the rich and the poor have been mass-scale catastrophes?
- Have you ever wondered why long periods of peace and stability almost always lead to a massive surge in economic inequality?
- What’s the secret connection between global disasters and social fairness, and is it actually possible to achieve equality without the threat of violence?
Listen to The Great Leveler — Free Audiobook
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Key Takeaways from The Great Leveler
- Understand why widely praised systems like democracy and capitalism have historically failed to eliminate inequality compared to the effects of massive disasters.
- Discover how the end of the ice age and the shift toward agricultural food surpluses first introduced a hierarchical divide between the rich and the poor.
- Learn how the privatization of once-egalitarian land systems allowed early elites to consolidate wealth through predatory loans and property hoarding.
- Find out why catastrophic events, such as the political collapse of the Roman Empire and the Black Death, were ironically the most effective mechanisms for raising lower-class wages and closing the wealth gap.
- Explore how massive, violent conflicts like World War II acted as powerful societal levelers to forcibly reset highly imbalanced nations like Japan.
The Great Leveler — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: A higher quality of life bred inequality, and later technological progress made it even worse.
Chapter 3: In the beginning, land was shared equally, yet in some circles property soon concentrated heavily.
Chapter 4: Across Europe’s history, inequality was checked by state collapse and devastating plague during turbulent periods of war and crisis.
Chapter 5: Inequality plagued Japan, but this shifted dramatically during WWII itself.
Chapter 6: Russia’s 1917 revolution reduced inequality through coordinated and violent measures and widespread seizures.
Chapter 7: Although Somalia’s state collapsed in 1991, the ensuing poverty paradoxically left the country in better condition than before overall.
Chapter 8: Democracy or left-wing governments cannot ultimately solve inequality alone.
Chapter 9: Economic reforms have been proposed to curb inequality, but they have still not undergone feasibility testing in practice.
The Great Leveler Summary & Overview
The Great Leveler (2017) takes a look at the inequality faced by different societies throughout history. It highlights war, plague and other major catastrophes as a leveler of the unequal distribution of power and property, prompting the question: can equality be achieved in a non-violent manner?
Who Should Listen to The Great Leveler?
- People interested in the history of inequality
- Students of politics
- Those who enjoy learning about different societies
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