The 1% Switcheroo

Do we have a personnel issue?

The 1% Switcheroo (Or 0.001%)

I often wonder, if we swapped out the top 1% with any other slice of society, say the 37th percentile, would things really change? Picture a Trading Places-style scenario where the super-rich are replaced overnight with a cohort of Eddie Murphys from the 1980s. Would the system suddenly become fair and virtuous? Or is our problem not a personnel issue at all? It’s worth asking the question of ourselves, What if I was one of those Eddie Murphy’s? Would I be able to resist the temptations and pressures of power? Me? Absolutely not. You?

My hunch, backed by history and social science, is that little would change. The top tends to act in similar ways but in different degrees, because the incentives and the guard-railing institutions (or lack of them) are what largely shape economic behaviour. Think of the fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. It seems the system itself does most of the selecting. Neoliberal Capitalism is a competitive optimization narrative, it rewards those who are most effective at maximizing profit, growth, and efficiency. While it punishes those who hesitate due to moral haste. Over time, this narrative elevates the people most willing to play by its rules, even when those rules demand ruthlessness. The individuals rise because they embody the system’s striving, not because they’re uniquely capable of virtuous leadership, but because they’re the most useful vessels for the systems logic. Trump did not chose the system, the system chose Trump to represent it’s interests.

Concentrated wealth, concentrated power

Global wealth today is mind-bogglingly concentrated. The top 10% own about 76% of all wealth worldwide, the bottom 50% hold a mere 2% of global wealth. And the top 1% alone captured nearly 40% of all wealth growth since 1995 (World Inequality Report 2022). These aren’t just numbers, they’re a structural fact about the way our economies work.

And yet, every time a government proposes taxing that concentration of wealth, there’s the same dilemma, in the age of free capital flows, the wealthy can simply move their assets, and themselves, somewhere more comfortable and fiscally hospitable. If a country raises taxes on millionaires and billionaires, they hop on a Lear jet to a friendlier regime. In the simplest terms, it’s the same survival reflex that guides a single-cell organism. The move away from harm, towards comfort. We should not expect any different from individuals who have won at capitalism. The gospel of neoliberalism, greed is good and winning proves it, almost guarantees that the “winners” will be predisposed to self-serving behaviour.

This mobility of capital makes serious redistribution incredibly difficult. Without cross-border rules or global coordination, any single country that tries to act gets punished. The wealth doesn’t disappear, it simply relocates to retain and continue its concentration.

Does wealth equal virtue?

Part of the reason inequality feels so corrosive is because we half-expect the wealthy to be morally well-compassed. We are conditioned, in a Weberian sense, to see material success as a proxy for virtue. After all, the Uber wealthy are the best educated, the most privileged, with the most time to reflect. They have the private yoga classes, therapists, nutritionists, the wellness retreats. Surely all that available mindfulness and moral philosophy should produce gentler, kinder leaders? .

Not really. Research shows wealth does not reliably increase morality or empathy. Some studies link higher class status to lower compassion and more self-focused behavior (Piff et al., 2010). Others (Van Lange et al, 2025), note that wealthier people donate more in absolute terms, often because they have more to give, but not necessarily a higher share of their resources. It does not show that the wealthy have more empathy, just more ability to act in seemingly altruistic and socially desirable ways. A recent review in The Times (2025) finds evidence that wealth equates to virtue is mixed at best. The humble brag of a philanthropist who donates millions to projects they care about, is only possible because of tax breaks on charitable contributions which basically reroute funding from projects we all deem worthy through democratic processes. So who gets to decide?

That’s another problem baked into neoliberalism itself, selection effects. Markets are competitive optimization systems. That means the players who rise to the top aren’t necessarily the most moral, but often the most ruthless, aggressive, or single-minded. Success requires squeezing margins, crushing competitors, and prioritizing profit over everything else. Over time, this dynamic selects for leaders willing to externalize costs. The system demands it. Though they may be very nice people doing it, smiling, dressed nice, very appropriate in society, even church going family people. The same dynamic explains why tech platforms optimize for engagement even when it fuels polarization or misinformation. The system rewards growth, not virtue. In other words, Neoliberalism has a bias toward elevating the people, and firms, most willing to sacrifice long-term social health for short-term wins.

Comfort may make people more agreeable, more “appropriate,” better dressed, better spoken. But that’s not the same as being just. Sometimes the kindest person is the angry one, the one willing to shout, protest, or disrupt. Appropriateness in exclusivity is passivity. One becomes merely a vessel that culture passes through, . The happy and cheerful well-groomed elite head from their nutritionist appointment to a café to debate whether kombucha aligns their chakras. Meanwhile, the binman with the bad back is still lifting trash into a roaring truck for his tenth hour on shift before he arrives home sore and grumpy. If only he had the time to protest, but then the system selects against that. Free time and resources are largely for the compliant and complicit.

Institutions

Although when weakened these too can be misused for the benefit of a few, but strong institutions are the only thing that keep wealth and power in check. They provide the guardrails that channel self-interest into something compatible with the public good. when the institutions are under attack and being wrapped in conspiracy theories so they can be bashed and broken, ask yourself who’s way were they in? Who’s power were they restraining? Because that who wins when they fall. When institutions like the free press fall, the reins are are off power.

We have plenty of evidence for this. Randomized audits in Brazil cut corruption and allowed voters to punish corrupt officials at the ballot box (Ferraz & Finan, 2008). Press freedom is consistently linked to lower corruption levels worldwide, particularly when paired with other strong institutions capable of implementing rule of law etc (Mahmood, 2025). These aren’t flukes; they’re signals that when rules and oversight are strong, behavior changes. We don’t need soldiers on streets, we need stronger institutions, and stronger rules in the halls of power, where what is criminal or legal is determined.

Political scientists have been pointing this out for a century. The Iron Law of Oligarchy would agree that simply swapping the top 1% for the 37th percentile won’t magically fix things. Unless institutions actively counter it, power naturally concentrates, and those at the top adapt to preserve their position, regardless of their background. Selectorate theory argues leaders do what keeps them in power given the rules of the system. In both cases, change the rules, change the outcomes. Swap the people without improving the structures, and the cycle repeats eventually.

Why global institutions matter

This logic applies not only within nations but across them. If capital moves globally, then only global institutions can constrain it. And yet the very institutions we need, multinational tax agreements, international regulators, cooperative governance bodies, are among the weakest, and the most under attack.

For years, these institutions have been under attack. Some of that criticism is fair, many are imperfect, bureaucratic, and slow. But much of the assault has come wrapped in conspiracy theories, amplified online, painting institutions as corrupt puppet-masters rather than underpowered referees.

Nationalist movements often claim to be defending “culture” or “sovereignty,” but functionally they weaken the very lnstitutions that have provided the political stability for sovereignty and culture to flourish. People of different cultures, languages, religions and political leanings working towards a shared future, towards a unity despite difference. Without those shared structures, democracies splinter, and their divisions become easy prey for stronger, more authoritarian regimes. Unity has historically been our strength. Without it, our vulnerabilities glow like a heat signature to circling predators.

Adam Smith may not have been wrong, but how we’ve bastardised his humanist capitalism certainly is. Smith never argued for unrestrained greed or the worship of profit and efficiency above all else. In The Wealth of Nations he wrote about markets, yes, but in The Theory of Moral Sentiments he also insisted that sympathy, fairness, and social duty were inseparable from economic life. What passes as “capitalism” today has amputated that humanist half of his philosophy, leaving only the invisible hand. Which, untethered from morality, ushers people towards a deviant individualism.

Instead of a system that balances self-interest with the common good, we’ve built one where shareholder value trumps everything else including the rest of Nature, communities, even democracy itself. Oil companies that knew about climate change in the 1970s chose profit over truth. Tobacco companies buried evidence of cancer risks for decades. Tech platforms right now optimize for engagement even when it polarizes societies, spreads disinformation and has detrimental mental health impacts on its users, particularly on young developing minds (Haidt et al). None of this would have surprised Smith, who warned that unchecked merchants and manufacturers would conspire against the public if not constrained by strong institutions.

In other words, the problem isn’t that Smith gave us bad ideas, it’s that we cherry-pick the parts convenient for capital and quietly discard the parts which demand moral responsibility.

The Real Switcheroo

So, back to our thought experiment. Would swapping the 1% for the 37th percentile fix things? Probably not. The new elite would be fallible humans too, facing the same incentives, the same temptations, the same opportunities for capture. We might even act the same way if we are honest.

The switcheroo that matters isn’t about who has power, its about how the structures are designed to restrain and direct that power towards good regardless of who is driving. It’s about how strong the rules are around them. Do institutions channel self-interest into broad benefit, or do they allow it to metastasize into corruption and capture? That’s the real lever of change, and that lever needs moving.

The hopeful side of this argument is that it doesn’t depend on having saints as leaders. Surely one thing we can all agree on is that there are no perfect people of moral purity who can resist the implicit and explicit forces our highly sophisticated system pushes on them. What we need to change is within the system, and the goals it’s optimising for.

The power to make crucial decisions about the future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a tiny elite, in the vain hope that their wealth or entrepreneurial success somehow qualify them to make virtuous choices. Take AI, for example. Deregulating it and letting Silicon Valley “have at it” seems wildly naïve given everything we’ve discussed here. If anything, we need massive, global cooperation and oversight of AI. Keep the narrow systems fully functioning, but all research into general intelligence must be ring-fenced, monitored, and governed collectively. We are creating an entity smarter than ourselves, but without any real governance or ringfencing. At the very least regulating for Isaac Asimov’s 3(4) rules of robotics or any required foundational framework would be a good start.

In conclusion, Trading Places made it funny, but the reality is tragic. We don’t need a new messiah, or a different set of elites to worship. We need rules that snap at the face of greed, strong institutions that hold the line, and systems that refuse to let self-interest metastasize into massive concentrations of wealth. Because us fallible humans will do dumb stuff, like race to space or live on Mars while burning everything else. We’ve been doing it for a while now. The real switcheroo isn’t swapping one percentile or personality for another, it’s switching our attention from the personality contest of modern politics, to the rules and systems that most influence our every day lives. This is hard in a time of persuasive technologies that hunt our attention from all sides, but that’s for another post here.

The irony is not lost.

P.S. Note to self - I earn an average wage in the west of Ireland which puts me in the 1% Globally. I sometimes drink in a café, kombucha on occasion, and I also Yoga’d once.. the fuckin chakras, oh shit.. Hold on a minute.. I’m one of them …. delete…delete…delete…