Equality is an aspiration. Inequality is by design.

We are either rich and poor or all poor. At least that’s how we’ve designed our economic and political models. And changing that seems utopia.

We like to talk about fairness in New Zealand—as if it’s something we already have, or something we can legislate into being. But when it comes to economics, fairness isn’t evenly distributed. It’s designed, zoned, taxed, and inherited. There’s no version of Aotearoa where we all own our own home. That’s not how housing—or economics—works. The architecture might look different from one decade to the next, but the structure remains. The real question is: what level of inequality are we willing to tolerate—and what stories do we tell ourselves to justify it?

I have a lot of conversations about politics with a lot of different people who hold very different views—some from the radical left, others from the radical right. And one theme that keeps coming up is the role of money: wealth, funding, capital, donors, influence. The role of millionaires and billionaires. And how all of that intersects with politics.

My take? I don’t think wealth matters as much as we think it does.

Now—if you lean Marxist in your political analysis, or follow Max Rashbrooke and agree with his framing, you’ll probably strongly disagree with that. And that’s okay, because its likely that I disagree with you.

It’s important to understand that capitalism is an economic model, and politics is a social model. They are different systems with different logics, and while they influence each other, they are not interchangeable. How you see their relationship often depends on your ideology, your personal vantage point in terms of access to wealth and opportunity, and your experience of globalisation, open markets, or free trade.

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

In a country like New Zealand—a liberal democratic constitutional monarchy (more formally: unitary parliamentary representative democracy under a constitutional monarchy) built on colonisation and capitalist foundations—any party that enters government will, to some degree, support and benefit from capitalist systems. That’s not unique to National or ACT. Labour, the Greens, and yes, even Te Pāti Māori, all operate within that same economic framework. They may want to reform or soften capitalism’s impacts, but none are offering a serious alternative to capitalism itself. Thats not by accident.

Does capitalism produce inequality? Of course. That’s baked into its structure. The goal in a democratic capitalist society is to keep that inequality from becoming so extreme that it undermines social cohesion, political trust, or upward mobility. In other words, you want most people to exist somewhere in the middle—not massively wealthy, not destitute. A functional centre and middle class.

In most systems, you're either rich and poor—or just poor. Equality for all sounds nice, but it rarely exists.

Is there an alternative? Sure. But if it’s socialism, you also have to reckon with the trade-offs. Redistribution at scale can limit innovation, dampen incentives, and often ends up producing stagnation. We’ve seen this play out in places like Cuba and post-Mao China, before it shifted toward state capitalism and opened to global markets. Venezuela is another cautionary example, where heavy state control over industry, combined with economic mismanagement, led to collapse rather than equity.

Now, the Nordic countries—Sweden, Norway, Denmark—are often cited as successful examples of “socialism,” but that’s misleading and incorrect. They’re not socialist in the classic sense. These are still market economies with strong property rights, competitive private sectors, and capitalist foundations. What sets them apart is their high taxation, universal services, and a cultural emphasis on trust and equity. In other words, they're not anti-capitalist—they’re highly regulated capitalist democracies with robust social safety nets.

There are other alternatives too. Communism, in its theoretical form, aims for a classless, stateless society—but in practice, it’s never been achieved. Attempts in the Soviet Union or North Korea led to authoritarianism, inefficiency, and the suppression of personal and political freedoms. Then there are hybrid or mixed economies, like Germany or Canada, where public and private sectors coexist—education, health, and infrastructure might be publicly funded, while markets drive innovation elsewhere.

Some thinkers propose participatory economics—democratically run workplaces, shared ownership, and planned resource use rather than market-based decisions. It’s a compelling idea in theory but remains largely untested at scale. And Indigenous economic models—like Te Ōhanga Māori—offer community-oriented alternatives rooted in reciprocity, stewardship, and collective well-being rather than accumulation. These models remind us that economic systems are always social systems too.

The point is: yes, there are alternatives to capitalism—but each comes with its own set of compromises. The question isn’t just “what’s better than capitalism?” but “what’s workable, fair, and adaptable in our context—without losing what does work?”

Of course, all of this is debated—and to be clear, I’m not an economist. But these conversations keep surfacing, especially around the role of political funding.

I’ve written about this before—most personally in my piece on why I left The Opportunities Party. One of the core reasons was the difficulty of influencing how money flowed within the party, and how that limited our ability to compete politically. So yes, funding matters. But it’s not everything.

If money alone won elections, the left would never govern. Around the world, right-leaning parties tend to draw from wealthier donor bases, and have better access to capital. Yet we’ve seen left parties win in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the US—even with smaller war chests. And the reverse is true too: enormous spending doesn’t guarantee success. Kamala Harris’s campaign in 2020 raised millions and still lost traction early. Bloomberg spent hundreds of millions and flamed out. Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her seat with a grassroots campaign that ran on a shoestring budget.

In New Zealand, big donations do exist—think of the controversies around the NZ First Foundation, or National Party donations from wealthy Chinese businesspeople. But we also have some of the strictest electoral finance laws in the OECD, including donation caps, transparency requirements, and public funding for broadcasting. Could enforcement be better? Sure. But we’re not the US. There are guardrails.

The problem I have is with the idea—often circulated on the far left—that politics is irredeemably corrupted by wealth. That all politicians are just puppets of oligarchs. That the system is rigged entirely in favour of the 1%. It’s a tempting narrative, especially in a time of rising inequality and declining institutional trust. But it’s also lazy. And in the New Zealand context, it’s just not accurate.

Could things get worse? Of course. We should stay alert. But cynicism isn’t the same as analysis. And I’m not convinced that constantly shouting “capitalism is evil” or “tax the rich” gets us any closer to a fairer, more functional society. Critical thinking, political innovation and civic eduction will.

Nat