Asshole capitalism, as we hereby define the term, is the name of this kind of unstable social system. Every kind of society requires a reliable asshole-dampening system—that is, a set of social institutions, such as the family, religion, public education, or the rule of law—that keeps the asshole population from getting out of hand. For if the proportion of assholes in the population becomes too large (i.e., the non-asshole to asshole ratio takes a dive), cooperative people will become increasingly unable or unwilling or just too few in number to uphold the practices and institutions needed for a society to stave off decline. If this is possible in any kind of society, asshole capitalism, as we will understand it, is especially prone to undoing itself in this way. This is not necessarily to say that there is something about the very nature of capitalism that encourages people to be, become, or act like assholes.1 That may well be true, and it does seem telling that quintessential capitalists such as John D.
