DEMOPHOBIA

    Hatred of the masses: a chronic disease of the rich believed to arise from extremes of socio-economic inequality.
        Sufferers can be found anywhere - though they predominate in highly-developed regions and are recognizable by their intolerable arrogance and impenetrable self-regard. They dwell behind high walls in guarded mansions, travel first class and, except for their extensive use of servants, keep apart from the vulgar herd. Their greatest fear is of being dispossessed, which is why they push for ever more inegalitarian and repressive laws, long jail sentences for thieves, capital punishment, heavy military expenditures, restrictions on immigration, strict border controls, tax breaks, and weapons of mass destruction.
        Despite grand advances in social medicine over the last couple of centuries, attempts to find a cure for Demophobia have so far proved unsuccessful. This appears to be a consequence of a steady growth in world population and the resultant tendency of ever larger numbers of the poor to demand the basic necessities of life: food, clothing and refuge.  Nightmares haunt the thoughts of Demophobes in which ragged hordes break into their homes and their bank accounts, and strip them of their assets as locusts strip the earth.
        Their reaction to the threat of social insubordination has been to devote increasing resources to security. Entrances to the exclusive Bel Air district of Los Angeles, for example, are guarded by police, and strollers venturing into the enclave face arrest on the assumption that people on foot must be up to no good. No respectable residence in any part of Los Angeles is without its grim warning: “Armed Response”, advising the plebeian rabble to steal from some place else.¹
        Two possible outcomes suggest themselves: either the sterile repressiveness of Orwell and Huxley (big brother and a genetically modified proletariat) or the triumph of the masses and the destruction of what the elite call “civilization as we know it”. We could try global wealth distribution and universal justice instead. But chances are we won’t.

¹  Which they generally do - targetting homes of those who cannot afford protection.