The narrow range of stability of democracy and representative government in general, a theme of The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution, highlights the importance of The Public Option. Large corporations have competitive advantages over small companies. Larger endowments enjoy higher returns on investment than smaller ones. Wealth naturally tends to migrate upwards. It may be natural for wealth to purchase political power and use that to extract more wealth from the rest of society. That will lead a middle-class society to naturally tend to extreme disparity. Pluralistic economic institutions will become (or be replaced by) extractive ones. An extractive economy will push a pluralistic polity toward plutocracy and/or autocracy.
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