All's fair in love and war

摘要

Progressive Review: In your book you argue only mass violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world history, driven by the 'four horsemen' of levelling: mass-mobilization warfare, revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues. Is that a fair summary? Walter Scheidel: Those would be the key features. You can always observe fluctuations in the short, or medium, term for other reasons. However, whenever we observe a really significant compression in the distribution of income and wealth it is invariably linked to some kind of massive violent shock. That has been true for thousands of years, as far as the historical evidence takes us.