The relationship between democracy and the middle classes which were so obvious to the Ancient Greeks should with the hindsight of millennia be even more apparent to us. Mankind has experienced only two great waves of democracy in all its history. The first emerged along the Mediterranean Basin in the 6^th Century BC; the second along the North Atlantic in the 18^th Century AD. In both cases, the diffusion of wealth preceded the diffusion of power. And the graduated property requirements of ancient military organization confirm the existence of a large middle stratum in Classical Greece as conclusively as studies of household net income in Revolutionary New England.

On this essential connection between democracy and the middle class ancient and modern writers agree, either expressly or implicitly, from Euripides, Aristotle, Oresme, Giannotti, and James Harrington, to Noah Webster, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville.

But the mere existence of the middle class does not itself summon democracy. The middle class must be independent of patronage and subjugation. It must be able and willing and courageous enough to resist oppression. Democracy is not based on the fantasy that consent may be given, but in the possibility that it may be withheld. The military labor strikes that gave birth to ancient democracy and the tax revolt which inaugurated modern democracy both attest that the power to create democracy does not reside in logic or rhetoric, but in economics. A democratically potent middle class must thus be independent of economic and financial patronage.

But while the diffusion of wealth anticipates the diffusion of power, the reverse is also true. The concentration of wealth leads to the concentration of power.

When the middle class recedes, the democracy which rode in its tide does not instantly retreat from its high water mark. When the wealth of the middle class is siphoned into the upper classes, and its people drained into the lower classes, precarity and dependency leaps from the lower fringes of society to the central strata. All animosities and jealousies sharpen. Demagogues quickly expropriate the machinery of democracy for special interests. Some politicians exploit the people’s vulnerabilities. Some politicians profess to assuage them. But in this bewildering political discord, in the twilight of democracy, what statesmen sets forth to cure the problems that beset democracy and the middle classes? In all of history, Tiberius Gracchus made perhaps the most genuine attempt. For that, he and his brother were abandoned by the people and murdered by the plutocracy. Within a century, all of Antiquity was swept up into world monarchy, democracy not to return for eighteen centuries.

The same forces which swept ancient democracy off its feet threaten to demolish ours.

If democracy, moderation, and stability are so inexorably tethered to the middle class, so too should all other things be anchored to the middle class. What ideas, what values, what individuals, what organizations, what interests, what fears, what animosities, what desires are so great and powerful that they should be exempt, or permitted to stray, betray, or destroy the middle class? In the Classical republican tradition, and the Anglo-American legal tradition, there are none.

Aside from the preliminary guarantees of due process and individual liberty, there is no higher political value than promoting an independent middle class, for there is no higher political value than a stable and moderate democracy. All energies destructive of democracy and the middle class must thus be subordinated to those values which promote democracy and the middle class.

To reconstruct our democracies, let us therefore proceed in accordance with Vitruvian principles, so that we may ensure the proper stability and proportion of our political constitution and society. For this we must begin with the foundation of a stable, moderate, democratic society: the independent middle class. The building blocks of this foundation are the modest, working households which occupy the middle class or aspire thereto. The cornerstone of democracy is comprised of the brave, principled, and patriotic households which distrust all forms of patronage, ostentatious displays of wealth, and excessive luxury. The measuring stick, indeed the ruler, of democracy is and should be the median household net worth.

On this basis, let us benchmark our societies against the median household net worth. 1x the median household net worth shall be our fixed unit of measurement, our building block. Let honest legislators calculate as any good architect would determine how high above this foundation the topmost portions of the building may reach, without abandoning the paramount values of stability and moderation. And that multiple having been determined, let us impartially enforce this mathematical relationship between the top households and the median households in order to maintain the proper socioeconomic aspect ratio.

We propose to start the discussion at a ratio of 10,000:1. That is, we propose that going forward, the top households should be capped at 10,000x the median household net worth. In deference to the values of due process, we do not propose to expropriate wealth from any household already exceeding this limit. We also propose to focus only on households.

Tethering the top households to the median household net worth – a doctrine whose proper etymological name would be rationism – does not establish a maximum limit on the wealth that any household may accumulate. It only establishes a maximum ratio by which the top households may exceed the median.

We believe that anchoring the top households to the median household net worth will produce these key social benefits:

First, it will incentivize and reward top households to increase the median. Under a 10,000:1 ratio, every $10,000 by which the national median is raised will raise the top limit by $100,000,000. Properly enforced, the billionaire class will thus be aligned with the middle class. And it is the billionaire class and their counselors – those with the greatest pecuniary interest and skill – who are best positioned to determine how to efficiently diffuse earned wealth into the median, so as to raise the median, so as to raise their own outcomes. Far from privatizing or centralizing the economy, we propose to outsource the responsibility of productivity to private actors. We would put capitalism on contingency. This Vitruvian capitalism would not establish a centralized command economy, but an incentivized commission economy.

Second, constructing a policy based on net worth, as opposed to net income, will nullify all forces depressing the middle class. This is because net worth directly and indirectly registers the cumulative effects of all economic activity and all adverse forces against the median. Income only measures income over a given period; it does not factor taxes, debt, expenses, or prices. Income also only measures those households which receive wages, whereas net worth factors the entire national population. And by factoring the entire population, net worth registers indirect adverse forces against the national middle class, such as the impact of outsourcing, job-destroying technology, race and sex disparities, and the gig economy.

Third, benchmarking outcomes against census results does not involve subsidies, does not favor any special interest groups, and both requires and enables the productive diffusion of earned wealth. The problem with subsidies (such as Universal Basic Income) is that while they may simulate a middle class existence through regular cash and benefit infusions, they cannot sustain financial or political independence. Indeed, a general reliance upon financial subsidies is inconsistent with political independence because it requires the machinery of the state itself to engage in redistribution, transforming state into patron and recipients into clients. When the state becomes an essential provider for a large segment of the population, all authenticity in democracy is subsumed by patronage.

The enforcement and compliance of these principles is mostly a topic for lawyers and accountants. It is nevertheless worth mentioning here that benchmarking policy against household net worth far simpler to enforce outcomes against natural persons than against corporate bodies. This is especially multinational corporate bodies, which are easily able to evade national enforcement efforts either through international or tax arbitrage, layoffs, or passing expenses backwards to workers or forwards to customers.

This “rationism,” this “Vitruvian capitalism,” would be enforced through a bundle of appraisal requirements and anti-expatriation measures, which should be no more onerous than wealth taxes already being proposed by various politicians.

By adopting these Vitruvian principles, by enforcing a prescribed mathematical ratio between the top and median household net worth, we can rehabilitate our middle class, resting our democracy on a firmer foundation. 

Notwithstanding the most ardent wishes of the most devout socialists and communists, every human society organizes itself as a pyramid. The question is not whether our society should too shaped as a pyramid, but how proportionate and stable the design should be. Let our social pyramids, let our Great Democracies, be designed and constructed upon sound political theory, so that they may survive as long as the Great Pyramid, built more than four millennia ago.