PREDATORY LOGIC: going beyond inequality

This paper assumes the existence of important constitutive elements in complex social systems that contribute to inequalities, but that cannot be understood by analyzing income distributions. I focus here on a specific and complex reassembly of key elements that constitutes one of the dynamic changes since the 1980s. The second half of the article analyzes a specific case to illustrate its predatory characteristics, from the 2000s. We must go beyond the concept of inequality to understand the main logics currently at play. Essential for this argument is the distinction between finance and traditional banking. Finance is marked by a logic of extraction and not of mass consumption. Thus, the specific modes that inequality assumes today take us beyond unequal distributions of income and power.

Inequality; Financialization; Global capitalism; Evictions; Systemic capabilities