“You can do one of two things in response to that discontent: You can try to placate it, whether symbolically placate it or substantively placate it so you avoid that kind of extreme income disparity… [and] even things out a just little bit more, however much you need to calm people down; or you consolidate your own power so that even if people become discontent, there’s nothing they can do to you because you’ve created this massive militarized state, this massive surveillance state. Our elite appears to be doing the later, and very little of the former, if any.”
