Inflation serves to reduce wealth (if just stuffed under the mattress), and encourages investment (to beat inflation). The real problem is that wealth begets wealth - if left to it's own devices the capitalist system will ensure wealth becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The only way this can be counter-balanced is with government regulation (e.g. anti-monopolistic laws, wealth redistribution).
Inflation, in the current form, transfers wealth to the first people to receive/spend the newly printed money (the financial system) from the last people to receive the newly printed money (this is termed the Cantillon effect). Since the end of Bretton Woods in the 1970s there's been a massive increase in USD inflation coinciding with a massive increase in wealth inequality, as would be expected from a system based around systematic transfer of wealth from the real economy to the financial industry. Technically inflation doesn't have to act like this; if it occurred via helicopter money airdropped equally into everybody's bank account, there wouldn't be a wealth transfer. But with the current system it's a systematic source of inequality.
Humans respond to incentives, and all incentives line up toward the merger of corporation and state in a democracy. I’d like to see a free market democracy that lacks corporate personhood to see if that changes the structure, but a human life isn’t long enough to really witness such a thing.
Every non-democratic form will be bought even faster, if it's not operated directly by the "buyers" in the first place.
Though I doubt that "in the absence of government intervention, wealth is more likely to tend toward the center". There are dozens of ways for the rich to get richer and fuck the poor/center over without government intervention. In a more anarchic, no-government-at-all situation, for an extreme example, they are the ones to afford the best mercernaries and dictate terms...
As for anarchy, yes, you could have more or worse violent action, but the type you cite is directly how the current system works. In the USA, the US and its states have the greatest military strength and therefore set the terms. They also engage in military action on behalf of corporations like United Fruit, Coca-Cola, Exon, etc. The argument that "in the absence of a government the warlords would take over" ignores that the warlords are already in power. Further, I at no point advocated for anarchy. I merely stated that in the absence of government intervention, wealthy is more likely to tend toward the center. In the USA, the wealth gap has widened as government intervention in the market has increased and that is the basis of evidence for my argument. Today, the richest and poorest are further apart that any prior time in US history, and law/regulation is and has been in continuous expansion not retraction.
If anything democracy has only shown that it isn't a magic bullet for corruption. Part of the goal is that oversight by the voting public will eventually weed out the corrupt, that works somewhat and should certainly be better than no oversight from other forms of government.
I'd argue that I've never truly lived in a democracy, but I hope to one day. It's a system I would fight for if there were actually a semblance of a movement willing to stand up and say enough is enough. So far though I've been a bit sad, or maybe just disappointed, to see that the vast majority of our people don't seem interested in democracy, liberty, or individual freedoms.
I'm not sure what alternative you envision.
When Roman emperors inflated their currency, the first people to receive the new money created were their soldiers. Wealth of the rest of Roman citizens was in this way redistributed to the soldiers.
Today we have a fractional reserve system in banking, meaning that banks actually create money and inflate the money supply when they give a "loan". While a lot of this money goes to governments and some goes to companies, the wast majority of new money enters circulation by being lent to real estate purchasers. That's why real estate is so unaffordable. It's not more complicated than that.
> The only way this can be counter-balanced is with government regulation
Then start regulating the banks and take away their privilege of creating money from nothing.
I'd argue government is just the same. If you look at who holds office right now, it's predominantly the older generation [0]. They achieved that by becoming career politicians. Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalism which lifted generations of people out of poverty [1]. It has a good track record of doing that. The rich companies lobby the government to make competition for the little guy impossible and solidifying their concentration of power -- crony capitalism. I do think there should be a push and pull, but both sides are human and power hungry.
[0] https://theconversation.com/politicians-are-getting-older-sh... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/20/world/deng-xiaoping-a-pol...
> crony capitalism