There's nothing "experimental" about this: rich people owning land that poor people work is called Feudalism and it's been a known problem for poor people for about 1200 years. We're taught in school that the US declared independence from England over taxes or some shit but Parliament not only taxed America for everything they bought from England, they forbid anyone in America from industry. All manufactured goods needed to be purchased from across the ocean - which, once you've got capitalists of your own on this side of the pond, was an inevitably untenable situation. But that doesn't mean it wasn't effectively a war between two feudal systems. We had a frontier. We sent poor people to colonize it. Then once it was civilized, rich people bought it up and rented it back. That's not a capitalist "experiment" that's a capitalist maxim. But hey, Quartz. So Adam Smith and earnestness.
Lol. The first decision the Supreme Court ever made that overturned a state law was to say that no matter how corruptly gotten, once the rich people buy the land, it's theirs.
Nothing made my mother angrier than Monopoly. She was incensed that we were teaching children the glories of evil Capitalism, which only fostered greed and selfishness. Ben Hunt pointed out last week that the purpose of the Federal Reserve is to ensure that the war between labor and capital is always decided in capital's favor. Labor's earnings are linear. Capital's earnings are cumulative. My daughter was playing kid's Monopoly last week. The game stops whenever the first person goes bankrupt and then whoever has the most money wins. My mother's voice shrieked in the back of my head like a harpie but I think I might have to buy that game for my kid. I've been poor. I can see my way towards being rich. Being rich is way more fun and I think I'd rather my daughter learn the utility of money management than the nobility of labor.
That's a hell of a long read. An interesting thing I took away from the piece, though it's not the sole focus of it, is that this article illustrates a bit about how diversity and prosperity in economies go hand in hand. I don't have any links to throw out right now, but it's interesting how I keep on running into that idea again and again in the past few years.