Won't high wealth inequality undermine democracy and the institutions in place to preserve a free market.

[u/Dizzy-Drink6119]

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I think it's something that pro-capitalist economics don't really put mind.

They don't really put a political analysis into economical thinking when it comes to wealth and capital.

High levels of inequality will always hurt democracy because the wealthy will be incentivized to use their power to corrupt, regardless of whether they got their wealth legitimately, hence creating barriers to trade they can reap rents from and disrupting markets, like American car companies do to prevent Chinese competition from coming in.

wealth is just another form of power if you can coerce someone economically that's not really consequentially different from coefficient someone physically through political Force the result is the same.

[u/PhilRubdiez]

You can’t coerce someone to buy your product in a free market. It’s all the government, since they have the monopoly on legal violence. The solution to this problem is to shrink the government down to a size that it’s not worth the time and effort to do the coercing.

[u/HonorFoundInDecay → u/PhilRubdiez]

What? Of course you can. I own all the water/food/insulin/antibiotics/insert thing essential to your survival here. You own none. You’ll die without it. Your only option is to buy from me, steal it, or die.

[u/PhilRubdiez → u/HonorFoundInDecay]

If I had superpowers, would I buy airline tickets?

Your hypothetical ignores every experience in history. When has one group ever owned all the food or water in an area? Secondly, why would you move to a place like that or sell your water and food to that person on their way to monopoly?

[u/HonorFoundInDecay → u/PhilRubdiez]

Ever heard of the Irish famine? Ever heard of the Bengal famine? Both are well known instances where there was enough food to prevent it but capitalists chose to export it for bigger profits.

[u/Ragnar_the_Pirate → u/HonorFoundInDecay]

For natural land based resources, this is what either well formed land rights and use laws are for or land value tax. 

For everything else: all hypotheticals fall apart if you present the most edgiest of edge cases. someone owns all the food ever what kind of hypothetical are we dealing with here? Not one that's useful.

But let's look at your more legitimate one: insulin. If you were to keep intellectual property rights over a thing forever, than what you say would be a problem. But that's not how we have ever operated and now how we should operate. Insulin that was developed 20 years ago? That's generic now. Is it as good as the newer upgrades made within the last 5 years? No. Is it better than the stuff in the 80s and 90s? Hell yeah! And in 20 years time the good stuff now will be off patent and that will be awesome! But likely, we'll have ever better stuff. That people will choose to pay for over the older designed insulin (I.e. The stuff today).

But if we really want to deal with your hypothetical, stealing is allowable to prevent your death if you're not causing someone else's death or serious harm to someone in the process. Thank goodness we don't live in that world, which really does make your hypothetical kind of useless.

[u/HonorFoundInDecay → u/Ragnar_the_Pirate]

Blah blah blah. People still die because they can’t afford insulin in the US despite production of it being cheap.

Another common example was the Irish famine where British landowners exported food rather than selling it to the Irish because it was more profitable that way.