Wealth & Money Quote by Henry George

Henry George doesn’t frame inequality as a regrettable side effect of progress; he treats it as a civilizational suicide mechanism. The line lands like a diagnosis delivered without bedside manner: empires don’t usually die from a lack of invention or culture, they rot from a rigged internal economy. By saying “every previous civilization,” George swings for the panoramic claim, not because he’s careless with history, but because he’s trying to make complacency impossible. If the pattern is that old, then the polite hope that “this time is different” is just another luxury belief.

The intent is practical and political. George wrote in the Gilded Age, when industrial growth made nations richer on paper while urban poverty hardened into a permanent feature. His target is the quiet genius of rent-seeking: wealth accruing not from producing value but from controlling the ground rules-land, monopolies, political access. “Tendency” matters here. He’s not accusing individuals of villainy so much as warning that systems drift toward capture unless actively corrected.

The subtext is a rebuke to elite moralism. Charity, virtue, even education can’t outrun a structure that concentrates power, because concentrated power defends itself, buys laws, shapes “common sense,” and narrows democratic choice until it becomes theater. George’s rhetorical trick is to make inequality feel less like an ethical debate and more like a maintenance issue: ignore it, and collapse is not tragic, just predictable.