This seems to be a very privileged position to have. That if you were taught strong ethics by parents and the right social network, then everyone can obviously/simply have the same?
The base assumption of the article: We've moved away from ancestral privilege (think: inherited titles of nobility) to an era of ability based privilege (think, the smartest and hardest workers can advance their position in society).
Important sub-assumptions:
1) In Great Britain we believe people can be roughly said to fall in 'classes'
2) Nobles of the past were aware their position was a bit random, and they felt an obligation to the classes below them. AKA "noblesse oblige".
The points the author tries to make are:
1) We lose "noblesse oblige" because the successful people are now taught that they're successful because they deserve it, and unsuccessful people are unsuccessful because of their faults.
2) The lower classes lose the ability to speak for themselves, because their natural leaders or people of talent are recognized in school, and bumped up a class instead of being forced into the positions and careers of their parents regardless of aptitude.
it’s the same as the tech lax dresscode, super high salaries, benefits, overall relaxed “we can get away with it because we’re both high status and enlightened” that operates as a signal to their assumed superiority.
I think you have an overly rosy view of the aristocracy of old. That social institution involved a hereditary monarchy, and you don't have to go very far back before the term divine right was being thrown around. Talk about entitlement...
If you go back in history, I believe you'll find that most socially advantaged people simply thought they were inherently better than others. "I worked harder", whether true or not, is a better narrative.
>people of higher SES do not want to mix with people of middle and low SES.
To some extent the opposite is also true, because spending time with people with higher SES might cause a discomfort/decreased self-esteem or simply expose the asshole-side of elites which quite often appears in face of "paupers".
http://www.paulgraham.com/orth.html
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