The coronavirus pandemic accelerated drastic economic changes that were already underway. And one expert warns that it’s threatening the future of the free market system.

“We are barreling towards a nation with three million lords being served by 350 million serfs,” NYU Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway told Yahoo Finance Live.

Galloway, the outspoken New York Times best selling author, addresses these themes in his latest book, Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity. Specifically, he explores who the winners and losers will be following the COVID-19 pandemic and suggests ways people can prevent a future that threatens to leave millions behind economically.

“We don't like to say this out loud, but I feel as if this pandemic has largely been invented for taking the top 10% into the top 1%, and taking the rest of the 90% downward,” Galloway said.

Wealth by the numbers

A recent UBS PwC study of the world’s 2000 billionaires found “Total billionaire wealth reached $10.2 trillion at the end of July 2020, touching a new high after the year’s V-shaped rebound in asset prices.” It broke the previous record, $8.9 trillion, set at the end of 2019 despite the pandemic’s negative impact on the global economy.

In the United States, a report from the Federal Reserve shows the top 1%, which includes millionaires and billionaires have a combined net worth of $34.9 trillion while the bottom 50% has a combined net worth of $7 trillion.

“Capitalism is meant to be full body contact violence and competition to unleash incredible prosperity,” according to Galloway.

But he points out that while the two largest asset classes in America — real estate and the stock market — are at all time highs, “80% of those assets by value are owned by the top 10%” of the population.

Galloway agrees that government efforts to save businesses and financial markets worked during the pandemic. But there has been little, he says, to help people at the bottom of the economic ladder.

“We haven't figured out a way to keep schools open,” an example Galloway cites.

Saving capitalism with empathy and love

A Washington Post analysis of Census Bureau data found one in six Americans didn’t have enough food to eat in the last week toward the end of November.

“A third of Americans are worried they can't pay their rent,” Galloway noted. “This is the best of times and the worst of times,”

“We've decided to protect corporations, not people. Capitalism is literally collapsing on itself unless it rebuilds that pillar of empathy,” which Galloway says in turn supports capitalism.