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The non-working upper class, the rentiers, are far more parasitic on society than the extremely small non-working section of the lower class. It is a major focus of propaganda to convince people that the opposite is the case. Nations aren’t weakened by the small fraction of GDP spent on food stamps, they are weakened by their rentier class. The stronger this class becomes the more it entrenches itself, the more it drains from the real productive economy. Revolutions disrupt this. They clear out large swaths of the non-productive idle rich. They give opportunities to people of great talent who would otherwise be shut out of the system. This is why the United States, France, Russia and now China became vastly more powerful in the years after their revolutions. It is why all of them became nicer places to live with better metrics for health and education. It is why China’s prosperity and power today is completely interlinked with Mao’s policies. Deng’s market reforms were all well and good but Mao did the heavy lifting when he cleared out the landlord class. Landlords are parasites. They contribute nothing to society and are in fact a net drain. This has been recognized by classical economists including Adam Smith and David Ricardo. There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the west about how China is finally economically powerful enough to choose not to do business with people who insult them. International football clubs worth billions now have to grovel and apologize to China. Good. These are the rewards for power in the international system. If the West is so terrified of China’s power and of its values then why not emulate the policies that made them so powerful in the first place? If our western values of free speech and association are worth defending then why not clear out the idle class of landlords and rentiers who weaken them and our societies every day? If we cannot do that then there is no point in complaining. China will supplant us because their economic system works better. And that’s how it should be.