Title: Inequality and Evolution: The Biological Determinants of Capitalism, Socialism and Income Inequality
Author: Charles L. Ladner
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 9781664144880
Pages: 212
Genre: Non-Fiction/Business
Reviewed by: Barbara Bamberger Scott

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Inequality and Evolution: The Biological Determinants of Capitalism, Socialism and Income Inequality by author Charles L. Ladner is how a financial expert proposes a possible means to improve capitalism by acknowledging its potentially fatal flaw and resolving to change it.

Ladner, a retired but still active financial adviser, examines in fine detail the two opposing governmental systems of capitalism and socialism. He notes through available economic data that since 1976, all but one of the world’s self-identified socialist countries has disappeared. He identifies this phenomenon through the microscope of Darwinism. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was propounded on the basic, selfish need of species to survive and multiply.

In capitalist countries, this human tendency allows some to become rich, and a few to become rampantly so, as their innate selfishness seems boundless. But, Ladner notes, if selfishness is suppressed – as in a purely socialist state in which all share work and resources equally – there will be an inevitable deterioration, as happened in the Soviet Union. That state-imposed system failed even though the country’s resources were vast, because the only way that workers could express their individuality was through leeching the system “in tiny increments.”

Socialism, Ladner suggests, can function in microcosm, such as a monastery or commune, but not on a large scale. Its greatest success in modern times has been in Scandinavian countries where a modified combination of capitalism and socialism allows wealthier citizens voluntarily to provide services for the less advantaged through strict but not onerous taxation.

Ladner’s exploration of these issues, underpinned by lively tables he has created throughout the text, leads him to predict that if the very wealthy in the US continue to expand their holdings and the poor continue to struggle, there could well be a rebellion which would put a total end to the capitalist system. To prevent this outcome, he recommends a fairer means of taxation, noting that many tax loopholes have been instilled here at the insistence of the wealthy who want to increase and protect their assets. Smoothing out the tax system to make it more like what it was meant to be at its inception, and using the resulting funds to assist the lower earners – “redistribution of large pools of concentrated wealth” – is Ladner’s rational solution to income equality. Ladner’s methodology is based on carefully gathered data, and his basic tenet that core human selfishness/survival instinct may remain, but in a more controlled form on the national level, is worthy of further study and discussion among those in a position to make the needed change, and those prepared to influence the agents of such change. This is a perfect read for anyone who is concerned about the fate our country and improving the lives of citizens.