‘Property is sacred in our world, too.’
‘On First Earth, it was upheld by something called the Social Machine,’ explained the alien. ‘The Social Machine was a powerful enforcement system, and its Enforcers could be found in every corner on the planet. Some of these units no bigger than mosquitoes, but they were capable of killing hundreds in single strike. They were not governed by the Three Laws proposed by your Asimov, but by the fundamental principle of the First Earth Constitution, that private property shall be inviolable. But it would be inaccurate to say they brought about autocracy.They enforced the law with absolute impartiality, and showed no favor to the wealthy. If the pitiful property of some poor fellow came under threat,they would protect it in strict accordance with the constitution.
‘Under the powerful protection of the Social Machine, the wealth of First Earth flowed relentlessly towards the pockets of an elite minority. To make matters worse, technological development eliminated the reliance of the propertied classes on the propertyless. On your world, the rich still need the poor, because factories still need workers. On First Earth,machines no longer needed human operators, and high-efficiency robots could perform any required task. The poor could not even sell their labor,and they sank into absolute destitution as a result. This transformed the economic reality of First Earth, vastly accelerating the concentration of wealth in just a few people’s hands.
‘I would not be able to explain the highly complex process of wealth concentration to you,’ the alien said, ‘but in essence it resembles the movements of capital on your world. During my great-grandfather’s lifetime, sixty percent of the wealth on First Earth was controlled by ten million people. During my grandfather’s lifetime, eighty percent of our world’s wealth was controlled by ten thousand people. During my father’s lifetime, ninety percent of the wealth belonged to just forty two people.When I was born, capitalism had reached its apex on First Earth, and had worked an unbelievable miracle: ninety-nine percent of the planet’s wealth was held by a single person! This person became known as the Last Capitalist.