For example, there is usually a strong emphasis on “male privilege”, but very little emphasis on “rich privilege”.
This is, in my estimation, a real problem for the sometimes disjunct groups of rationalists and social justice types alike, and one I haven’t yet come up with a good solution for other than “talk about class a lot”.
I guess most people who talk about “class” don’t actually have a good idea about what it means. We have the approximate idea of “if you have more money and more power, you are a higher class”, but most people are completely uncalibrated; they do not know how the power ladder actually works. So, as would be expected of humans, they usually divide the whole society into two classes, US and THEM, where “us” means people who make as much money as me, or less; and “them” means people who make more money than me. So the guy next door who makes twice as much money as I do is put into the same set as the oligarchs who rule the country. Then the oligarchs will make a law that increases the tax for the guy next door, and I will celebrate it.
(For example, the government of Slovakia created a new extra tax for “people with income between 2000 and 3000 euro monthly, except for lawyers” and called it “the millionaire tax”. It was depressing to see all the left-wing people celebrating it, because if it is called “the millionaire tax” in the pro-government media, then of course it targets the millionaires, and not just some IT guy next doors. One could naively think that being ruled by Marxists for almost a century should give these people at least some insight into the class fight. But they merely remember the passwords.)
In my opinion, the critical part is to realize that class isn’t money, although it correlates. Imagining that people with a lot of money are automatically upper-class, that is confusing the cause and the effect. The real causation is in the opposite direction. The upper-class people have sources of money unavailabble to muggles, but sometimes also an incredibly smart, intelligent and hard-working muggle can accumulate comparable amounts of money using completely different strategies. Morearticles from the same author:
Rich people are not automatically upper class. Steve Jobs was a billionaire but never entered it; he remained middle-class (in social position, not wealth) his entire life. His children, if they want to enter its lower tier, have a shot. Bill Gates is lower-upper class at best, and has worked very hard to get there. Money alone won’t buy it, and entrepreneurship is (by the standards of the upper class) the least respectable way to acquire wealth. Upper class is about social connections, not wealth or income.
The wealth of the upper class follows from social connection, and not the other way around. Americans frequently make the mistake of believing (especially when misled on issues related to taxation and social justice) that members of the upper class who earn seven- and eight-digit salaries are scaled-up versions of the $400,000-per-year, upper-middle-class neurosurgeon who has been working intensely since age 4. That’s not the case. The hard-working neurosurgeon and the well-connected parasite are diametric opposites, in fact. They have nothing in common and could not stand to be in the same room together, because their values are too much at odds.
Consider two analysts at a prestigious financial firm, both 24 years old and of equal drive, intelligence, and talent. Let’s also assume, for now, that none of their co-workers or managers know either analyst’s family background, except through their behavior. The middle-class kid spends the bulk of his time trying not to offend, not to behave in a way that might jeopardize the job he worked so hard to get and could not easily replace if he lost it. He doesn’t invite himself to meetings, avoids contact with high-ranking executives, and doesn’t offer suggestions when in meetings. Thanks to the fear he experiences on a daily basis, he’s seen as “socially awkward” and “mousy” by higher-ups. … Even when they are cognitively aware of how to manage authority, the stakes of the career game for a middle-class striver, who will fall into humiliation and possibly poverty if he fails it, are so severe that only the well-trained and steel-nerved few can prevent these calamitously high risks from, at least to some degree, disrupting their game.
The rich kid, on the other hand, relates even to the highest-ranking executives as equals, because he knows that they are his social equals. He’ll answer to them, but with an understanding that his subordination is limited and offered in exchange for mentoring and protection. He views them as partners and colleagues, not judges or potential adversaries. Perhaps this is counterintuitive, but most of his bosses like this. His career advances fast. He respects others and himself and has an uncanny air of effortless “coolness” (by which I mean freedom from anxiety) that enables him to actually get things done. It becomes common knowledge that he’s “up-and-coming”, a rising star in his company. Even if his performance is smack-average or somewhat below, his effortless rise will not be deterred.
This “middle path” between self-defeat and entitled arrogance is narrow– a tightrope, metaphorically speaking. It is, I should note, of equal width and tension for both rich and poor. There is no intentional preference given to one class over the other. The difference is that children of wealth traverse it at a height of one meter over a mattress, while the middle-class and poor traverse it at a height of 20 meters over a lava pit.
I think I might have an advantage of being born in a Communist country, where the class differences not only existed just as strongly as they exist today (despite of what our propaganda was saying back then), but they existed in their raw form—the power of social connections translated directly into the ability to help or hurt people, unobscured by the red herrings of education, skills and salary. (Education and skills are important to make this world a better place, but the social class is a different topic.)
Taxing the upper middle class is a generally good idea; they are the ones most capable and willing to pay taxes. Many European countries apply progressive tax rates. Calling it a millionanaire tax is a misnomer, or course, but otherwise I would support that (I’m from Latvia FYI)
Michael O. Church is certainly an interesting writer, but you should take into account that he basically is a programmer with no academic qualifications. Most of his posts appear to be wild generalizations of experiences personally familiar to him. (Not exclusively his own experiences, of course.) I suspect that he suffers heavily from the narrative fallacy.
The reason why I like those articles are that they are compatible with my (very limited) experience with what I consider upper-class people. Of course I may be wrong, or me and the author can share the same bias, etc… I am just saying that there is more for me than merely interesting writing.
Taxing the middle class allows the government to get a lot of money easily: those are people who already have enough money that can be taken, but not enough money to defend themselves. From that angle, it is a good idea. On the other hand, the strategy of “taking money where taking money is easy” contributes to increasing the gap between the rich and the poor, and to elimination of the most productive part of the population, which some people would consider a bad idea. Unfortunately, the consequences of getting more tax money come quickly, and the consequences of destroying the middle class take more time.
Read Paul Fussell on socioeconomic class. (Kate Fox in her book Watching the English also has some interesting UK-specific commentary on class.) Some of the best stuff out there (that I know of).
Both of them focus on cultural and lifestyle differences, though—just as a word of warning if that’s not what you’re looking for.
Gladwell in Outliers also has some interesting things to say on the influence of an upper class background on the skill to forge social connections, specifically in regards to comparing the respective achievements of Robert Oppenheimer (upper class) and Christopher Langan (very high IQ, but lower/middle class).
I find the “labor and gentry” division interesting.
There is a sort of conservation argument against the sustainability of elite networks in the absence of the right sorts of coercive power. In addition, our emotion reactions to prestige, which depend more on relative position than absolute power, lead us to exaggerate how much domestic power is actually wielded by elites in a country like Sweden, or even the United States (this includes the self-perceptions of elites). The narrative tone that tends to be used when discussing elites is evidence of this.
Much of the identified elite are the decay products of the former upper echelons of labor and gentry. The known determinants of personal traits make it seem implausible that this group is self-sustaining (as an elite, rather than an upper-middle, group) in the manner that he describes (i.e. shared family environment leading to a dominant personality): And so the cost of valuing an elite appointee in excess of the expected value of their connections (versus investing in a meritocrat) should be large. Unless you can replenish the “wealth” of the network in a non-meritocratic way, this can’t last. So this story says that elites are slowly being relieved of their resources down to the value of their non-network traits, knowingly (via donations) or by fitter agents, with the stock of elites being occasionally replenished by the other ladders. The rate of decay might depend on things like the relative growth rate of the elite, their access to corrupt power, and the strategies of other classes (taxation, exile, killing them, etc). We’d prefer the rate of decay to be higher rather than slower.
Does this argument make sense and predict anything useful? I’m not sure.
I’m thinking about the United States, and what the linked article describes as an “elite” social class. I’m trying to be more explicit that what explains the character of an elite class is the attempt to control the transfer of elite status to the next generation of elites. The linked article doesn’t explaining this well, presenting a model without much predictive value. A better model is something like:
People enter the elite class from other backgrounds via raw money and power. The initial entrant might be a military conquerer, a dominant politician, or a self-made billionaire. They will try to transfer their status to their children and friends, who display more the characteristic social traits of the elite. But the traits that initially propel people into the elite class aren’t transfered perfectly. Specifically, you see regression on cognitive ability, personality, and luck. A good model of an elite class will be mostly a model of how elites try to prevent this regression on traits from bringing about a regression in social class.
Elites have historically used many strategies, but the best way is to make explicit political appointments. Even here, a society that does too much of this will find itself facing displacement by more meritocratic societies, and a segment of society that does more of this will face pressure from other segments. If an elite is only able to make commercial appointments, it faces an accelerated version of this pressure: The companies that get saddled with too many nth-generation-regressed elites will be eventually be displaced by more meritocratic companies, or more meritocratic internal divisions, or whatever.
The author tells several stories (about young nth generation elites) that exaggerate the ability of family environment to compensate for this regression in traits, and obscure the long term constraints that elites face. Historically, the strategy of elites encouraging the idea that particular social behaviors create elites (and then teaching their children those behaviors) doesn’t seem to have much impact once you account for access to direct political appointments. The instant an elite group can no longer pass on special titles or get sinecures in the Royal Navy, we find that the social shibboleths are quickly discarded. It’s a strategy based on obscuring the real nature of the transfer.
What he may have in mind, but doesn’t say explicitly, is that making commercial appointments is only a sustainable way to transfer elite status if you can use commercial appointments to get some sort political power, and then convert that political power into a non-meritocratic source of further political power or commercial wealth. Not surprisingly, this is what American elites, (who are forced to rely on commercial appointments more than most historic elites), generally do: You mostly can’t use political power to make direct political appointments, or use commercial power to give sustainable commercial power to descendants, but you can sort of bounce back and force between the two and hope to get enough edge.
I hope I’ve expressed that clearer. People have a vague sense of “money and politics” as the central thing in the American elite system, but I don’t think they realize that this is simply elites trying to pass on elite status in the face of a reformed political system and commercial pressures that make the older methods less effective. Comparison of the United States to places like Russia are a mixed bag, because while the class system might have the same general form, American elites really are using quite different strategies.
This is, in my estimation, a real problem for the sometimes disjunct groups of rationalists and social justice types alike, and one I haven’t yet come up with a good solution for other than “talk about class a lot”.
I guess most people who talk about “class” don’t actually have a good idea about what it means. We have the approximate idea of “if you have more money and more power, you are a higher class”, but most people are completely uncalibrated; they do not know how the power ladder actually works. So, as would be expected of humans, they usually divide the whole society into two classes, US and THEM, where “us” means people who make as much money as me, or less; and “them” means people who make more money than me. So the guy next door who makes twice as much money as I do is put into the same set as the oligarchs who rule the country. Then the oligarchs will make a law that increases the tax for the guy next door, and I will celebrate it.
(For example, the government of Slovakia created a new extra tax for “people with income between 2000 and 3000 euro monthly, except for lawyers” and called it “the millionaire tax”. It was depressing to see all the left-wing people celebrating it, because if it is called “the millionaire tax” in the pro-government media, then of course it targets the millionaires, and not just some IT guy next doors. One could naively think that being ruled by Marxists for almost a century should give these people at least some insight into the class fight. But they merely remember the passwords.)
So far the best description of class system I found online is “The 3-ladder system of social class in the U.S.” (I guess it pretty much works for other countries, too).
In my opinion, the critical part is to realize that class isn’t money, although it correlates. Imagining that people with a lot of money are automatically upper-class, that is confusing the cause and the effect. The real causation is in the opposite direction. The upper-class people have sources of money unavailabble to muggles, but sometimes also an incredibly smart, intelligent and hard-working muggle can accumulate comparable amounts of money using completely different strategies. More articles from the same author:
I think I might have an advantage of being born in a Communist country, where the class differences not only existed just as strongly as they exist today (despite of what our propaganda was saying back then), but they existed in their raw form—the power of social connections translated directly into the ability to help or hurt people, unobscured by the red herrings of education, skills and salary. (Education and skills are important to make this world a better place, but the social class is a different topic.)
Taxing the upper middle class is a generally good idea; they are the ones most capable and willing to pay taxes. Many European countries apply progressive tax rates. Calling it a millionanaire tax is a misnomer, or course, but otherwise I would support that (I’m from Latvia FYI)
Michael O. Church is certainly an interesting writer, but you should take into account that he basically is a programmer with no academic qualifications. Most of his posts appear to be wild generalizations of experiences personally familiar to him. (Not exclusively his own experiences, of course.) I suspect that he suffers heavily from the narrative fallacy.
The reason why I like those articles are that they are compatible with my (very limited) experience with what I consider upper-class people. Of course I may be wrong, or me and the author can share the same bias, etc… I am just saying that there is more for me than merely interesting writing.
Taxing the middle class allows the government to get a lot of money easily: those are people who already have enough money that can be taken, but not enough money to defend themselves. From that angle, it is a good idea. On the other hand, the strategy of “taking money where taking money is easy” contributes to increasing the gap between the rich and the poor, and to elimination of the most productive part of the population, which some people would consider a bad idea. Unfortunately, the consequences of getting more tax money come quickly, and the consequences of destroying the middle class take more time.
Read Paul Fussell on socioeconomic class. (Kate Fox in her book Watching the English also has some interesting UK-specific commentary on class.) Some of the best stuff out there (that I know of).
Both of them focus on cultural and lifestyle differences, though—just as a word of warning if that’s not what you’re looking for.
Gladwell in Outliers also has some interesting things to say on the influence of an upper class background on the skill to forge social connections, specifically in regards to comparing the respective achievements of Robert Oppenheimer (upper class) and Christopher Langan (very high IQ, but lower/middle class).
I find the “labor and gentry” division interesting.
There is a sort of conservation argument against the sustainability of elite networks in the absence of the right sorts of coercive power. In addition, our emotion reactions to prestige, which depend more on relative position than absolute power, lead us to exaggerate how much domestic power is actually wielded by elites in a country like Sweden, or even the United States (this includes the self-perceptions of elites). The narrative tone that tends to be used when discussing elites is evidence of this.
Much of the identified elite are the decay products of the former upper echelons of labor and gentry. The known determinants of personal traits make it seem implausible that this group is self-sustaining (as an elite, rather than an upper-middle, group) in the manner that he describes (i.e. shared family environment leading to a dominant personality): And so the cost of valuing an elite appointee in excess of the expected value of their connections (versus investing in a meritocrat) should be large. Unless you can replenish the “wealth” of the network in a non-meritocratic way, this can’t last. So this story says that elites are slowly being relieved of their resources down to the value of their non-network traits, knowingly (via donations) or by fitter agents, with the stock of elites being occasionally replenished by the other ladders. The rate of decay might depend on things like the relative growth rate of the elite, their access to corrupt power, and the strategies of other classes (taxation, exile, killing them, etc). We’d prefer the rate of decay to be higher rather than slower.
Does this argument make sense and predict anything useful? I’m not sure.
Well, this was too complicated; I am not sure what you are saying. ELI5?
I’m thinking about the United States, and what the linked article describes as an “elite” social class. I’m trying to be more explicit that what explains the character of an elite class is the attempt to control the transfer of elite status to the next generation of elites. The linked article doesn’t explaining this well, presenting a model without much predictive value. A better model is something like:
People enter the elite class from other backgrounds via raw money and power. The initial entrant might be a military conquerer, a dominant politician, or a self-made billionaire. They will try to transfer their status to their children and friends, who display more the characteristic social traits of the elite. But the traits that initially propel people into the elite class aren’t transfered perfectly. Specifically, you see regression on cognitive ability, personality, and luck. A good model of an elite class will be mostly a model of how elites try to prevent this regression on traits from bringing about a regression in social class.
Elites have historically used many strategies, but the best way is to make explicit political appointments. Even here, a society that does too much of this will find itself facing displacement by more meritocratic societies, and a segment of society that does more of this will face pressure from other segments. If an elite is only able to make commercial appointments, it faces an accelerated version of this pressure: The companies that get saddled with too many nth-generation-regressed elites will be eventually be displaced by more meritocratic companies, or more meritocratic internal divisions, or whatever.
The author tells several stories (about young nth generation elites) that exaggerate the ability of family environment to compensate for this regression in traits, and obscure the long term constraints that elites face. Historically, the strategy of elites encouraging the idea that particular social behaviors create elites (and then teaching their children those behaviors) doesn’t seem to have much impact once you account for access to direct political appointments. The instant an elite group can no longer pass on special titles or get sinecures in the Royal Navy, we find that the social shibboleths are quickly discarded. It’s a strategy based on obscuring the real nature of the transfer.
What he may have in mind, but doesn’t say explicitly, is that making commercial appointments is only a sustainable way to transfer elite status if you can use commercial appointments to get some sort political power, and then convert that political power into a non-meritocratic source of further political power or commercial wealth. Not surprisingly, this is what American elites, (who are forced to rely on commercial appointments more than most historic elites), generally do: You mostly can’t use political power to make direct political appointments, or use commercial power to give sustainable commercial power to descendants, but you can sort of bounce back and force between the two and hope to get enough edge.
I hope I’ve expressed that clearer. People have a vague sense of “money and politics” as the central thing in the American elite system, but I don’t think they realize that this is simply elites trying to pass on elite status in the face of a reformed political system and commercial pressures that make the older methods less effective. Comparison of the United States to places like Russia are a mixed bag, because while the class system might have the same general form, American elites really are using quite different strategies.