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The term plutocracy is generally used as a pejorative to describe or warn against an undesirable condition. [3] [4] Throughout history, political thinkers and philosophers have condemned plutocrats for ignoring their social responsibilities, using their power to serve their own purposes and thereby increasing poverty and nurturing class conflict and corrupting societies with greed and hedonism.
Throughout history, power structures considered to be oligarchies have often been viewed as coercive, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, contrasting it with aristocracy, arguing that oligarchy was the perverted form of aristocracy. [4]
A politically unstable and kleptocratic government that economically depends upon the exports of a limited resource (fruits, minerals), and usually features a society composed of stratified social classes, such as a great, impoverished ergatocracy and a ruling plutocracy, composed of the aristocracy of business, politics, and the military. [32]
Modern depictions of aristocracy tend to regard it not as the ancient Greek concept of rule by the best, but more as an oligarchy or plutocracy—rule by the few or the wealthy. [citation needed] The concept of aristocracy according to Plato has an ideal state ruled by the philosopher king.
oligarchy: government by the few; timocracy: government by the honored or valued; tyranny: government by one for himself; aristocracy: government by the best (Plato's ideal form of government) Plato found flaws with all existing forms of government and thus concluded that aristocracy, which emphasizes virtue and wisdom, is the purest form of ...
Solon introduced the ideas of timokratia as a graded oligarchy in his Solonian Constitution for Athens in the early 6th century BC. His was the first known deliberately implemented form of timocracy, allocating political rights and economic responsibility depending on membership of one of four tiers of the population.
In a 2011 forensic study of grand corruption cases, the World Bank found the United States was the leading victim of illegal incorporation of entities involved in money laundering schemes. [25] The Department of Treasury estimates that $300 billion is laundered annually in the United States in violation of US law. [26]
A polity is a sort of mix of democracy and oligarchy: "A constitution which is a really well-made combination of oligarchy and democracy," Aristotle says, "ought to look like both and like neither." It tends to most empower the middle-class, and is most healthy if economic inequality is kept within reasonable bounds. [1]: IV.8–9,11–12