Checking the elites

To make sense of inequality, we need to talk about elites.  Where do they come from?  Nature does not assign them social status.  Yet she (with fortuna) hands out very different lots.  Talents, opportunities and lucky breaks are granted abundantly to some, sparingly to others.  Even the capacity for hard, persistent and focused work is a kind of unequal talent.  But once these favored few have gained even a small advantage, mastered their environment slightly better than the rest—which is all that natural selection has ever required—elites will perpetuate and amplify their starting advantages no matter what talents their offspring may or may not possess.

All societies that are unequal—which is all of them, so far—have elites of one kind or another.  Elites themselves turn this observational is into an ought.  Whatever kind of elites they are, they wish to remain so.  The Soviets had their apparatchiks, the Chinese communists their red princelings.  And they will resist all attempts to make their society more equal.  (“My ancestors came over on the Mayflower.”  “This property has been in the family for generations.”  “My father endured the Long March at Mao’s side.”)  They may not challenge equality directly, but will call any attempt to bring about greater equality unfair (without hint of irony), or illegitimate, or unworkable.  Many of their claims will resonate with familiar and traditional values.  But this hardly means the rest of us have to knuckle under.  It is in the interests of society as a whole to identify and then mitigate its existing systemic inequalities.  But it also means we will have to carefully distinguish types of inequality (for example, of movement, of opportunity, of outcome), determine which kinds can be usefully mitigated, but also decide which potential remedies would cause more harm than good—without necessarily accepting the word of elites themselves about which harm-reductions would be most harmful.

As a rule, elites will always resist rebalancing attempts, otherwise called reforms.  No surprise there.  Elites are, by definition, the ones benefitting from the existing state of affairs.  They naturally prefer the inequalities that work to their advantage and will safeguard them at every opportunity—for example, by resisting estate taxes or exploiting preferential admission policies for their children at elite universities.  They may inject perfectly innocent-sounding phrases—I’m only thinking of what’s best for my children!  Who could object to that?  Well, consider.  To get the best for their children, other people’s children will necessarily do with less.  Those other children (already disadvantaged) will suffer by comparison.  There are cases when an innovative and competitive spirit performs a useful role in a healthy society—this is not one of them.  Ambitious parents will raise their children advantageously.  We should not blame them for trying (they would hardly be ambitious if they didn’t), but we should set limits on their ability to succeed at the expense of rivals—that is, other people’s children.  Elites, to remain so, can always be counted on to do whatever they can get away with.  It is the fault of the civil culture when the rest of society lets them.  Human nature has a well-established propensity to sacrifice the general good for personal advantage, and the future to the immediate present.  Only watchful citizens acting together with the aid of collective sanctions will curb our species’ worst impulses.

So we must keep our eyes on the elites.  It is our responsibility together.  They won’t do it for themselves.  But we must be smart about it, and mindful of a few realities.

Elites enjoy their status.  They will surely defend it.  They have the resources to do so.  They will even work hard to  justify their advantages.  (The bigger the advantages, the more strenuously they will justify them.)  But they will never be satisfied with present advantage.  They will want to preserve their status above the many, but that is not especially difficult to do.  They’re not concerned with the many.  What they really aspire to do is raise their status in comparison to other elites—those like themselves.  Elites ultimately compete with one another, sometimes cause great harm to society at large in their peer-level competition.  High-ranking Roman gentlemen of the late republican period—the Pompeys and the Caesars and their like—turned Rome into a gangland, launching deadly civil wars with hardly a forethought, marching on their own beloved city to advance their relative standing.  Powerful people will thoughtlessly destabilize a society when they think they are not receiving their due rewards.

So let us take as a given that elites will always try to gain advantage over the rest of society and over one another whenever they can.  And that the rest of us will have to monitor and check these ambitious elites (for they will not do it themselves), no matter how much they (or we) don’t like doing it.  And that they will raise a hue and cry whenever we clip their wings.  A wise society will expect such resistance and respond with firmness.  Only the impartially-observed rule of law has any hope of checking elites.  They may think that the purpose of law is to protect their property and status from the many (the envious masses), but the more socially-necessary function of law is to protect society as a whole (mostly non-elites) from the self-serving and potentially destructive competition of elites for the extravagant rewards of status.

A conservative political organization will always constitute an alliance of the advantaged few (those very elites in question) to protect their privileges against the rest.  Inequality is a fundamental element of conservative thinking, even if it is seldom articulated.  Conservatives usually claim to be the defenders of tradition.  What they are conserving, however, is their present advantage.  This characterization will strike some as mistaken.  Surely there are many who consider themselves conservative who are not particularly advantaged?  Yes, and they too have privileges they are afraid of losing.  If the less-than-elite support a conservative party, it is in the hope of protecting some small advantage they already enjoy (over immigrants, religious minorities, or other inferiors) or keep safe an advantage they hope yet to gain (wealth and status).

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Keeping them in check won’t be easy.  Elites, of course, have a lot going for them.  They already have privileged access to government and media.  They have the greatest influence on universities and corporations, through donations and investments.  Those of child-rearing age already expend considerable energy and thought giving their children advantages over competing children into the next generation.  Though manifestly unfair in intent and outcome, it is very familiar and hardly worth blaming.  Ambitious parents will donate a portion of their present wealth to political causes that not only promise to protect the remainder of that wealth, but increase the likelihood of future wealth gains for their children.  They will use their expensive education and socially-confident voices to justify their present and future privileges.  They will always deny that their advantages are unearned or undeserved (especially if they are).

Elites are well aware that the poorest members of society fail to exploit the collective power of their numbers.  They will not encourage them.  They know the poor do not vote reliably, do not get involved in public debates, fail to make their voices heard.  The elite will not remind them that they can make a difference if they get themselves organized.  For now, the many disadvantaged remain easily cowed.  Elites also know that the venerable middle classes can be relied upon to align with the interests of the wealthy (whom they hope soon to join).  They vote reliably and prize respectability above all—so are uncomfortable with change and unlikely to challenge the unbalanced nature of power.  Even the very idea and existence of the middle class offers a hopeful destination for those toiling below, struggling from day to day.  As long as the elites can dangle the prospect of rising, those just below them—the true middle classes and the working poor who think of themselves as middle class—will raise little fuss about the present state of inequality.  They will remain loyal to the current system even though it is designed to benefit the elite much more than themselves.  The elite will offer them small prizes and big promises, and so maintain their enormous relative advantage.

And if elites are willing to do virtually everything in their power to maintain their advantages, we can be sure they will do nearly anything.  They will stoop to less worthy actions, perhaps more often than they will admit.  If pushed too far, they will deny or obfuscate the sources of their advantage, perhaps by exaggerating their own hard work and merits or by obscuring what public helps and good luck they have received.  They will hire the cleverest accountants and tax attorneys to shelter as much wealth as possible from the light of day.  And when they are caught lying (which rarely happens), they will double down, deny more relentlessly.  But this is seldom required.  Mostly they will leverage their existing advantages to capture institutions, politics and the law.  If the checks and balances of constitutional democracy get in the way, they will try to evade and erode the effectiveness of their oversight—reducing the ranks of tax auditors and firing auditors-general.  This is how corruption takes root.

And ultimately, they will consent to abandon the faceless, unprivileged masses around them to suffer the worst of climate change, even as the effects become undeniable.  The elites of the wealthy world will dehumanize the poor, the economically displaced, the forced migrants.  They will call them criminals, terrorists, invading armies, existential threats to their lifestyles and borders.  They will get the unprivileged of their own countries on side by talking up criminal invaders—the vague horror that these poor migrants are the real grasping opportunists, conspiring to steal the lowest rungs of an already unfair society.  If the advantaged can turn these desperate migrants into voracious animals, it will be so much easier to ignore their real suffering.

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We human beings are bundles of contradictions.  We are remarkably skilled at saying one thing and doing another.  We may readily agree to the desirability of various goods and outcomes, without realizing that they are often incompatible or in competition with one another.  Do we want high-quality public services and utilities?  Indeed!  Do we want lower taxes?  Of course!  Which do we want more?  Yes!  We want our freedoms to be unhindered, yet keenly desire a society of law and order.  Which is more important?  Both of course!  What we are really asking is that our own pursuits and desires be unconstrained while placing severe limits on the freedoms of others.  We insist that children are the future, yet spend far more on the powerful individuals at the opposite end of life.  We are highly sympathetic to a parent who says, I only want the best for my child.  What could be more natural?  It is entirely consistent with the evolutionary demands of our ruling genome.  We seldom point out that this assertion necessarily means that this same noble parent wants worse outcomes for other children.

Human beings have profoundly mixed feelings about fairness—which is to say that they agree it’s a good thing but don’t like it when it happens.  They certainly do not want to be treated worse than others, yet fail to raise a fuss when they are treated better themselves.  In other words, they are comfortable with advantage.  Parents sincerely do want every possible advantage for their children, which can only mean that they want them to gain advantages over other people’s children.   This view is widely shared, perfectly understandable, fundamentally unfair.  And most people will happily combine with others who seem most like them (say well-connected urban professionals with young children) in order to discover further advantage for their like-minded coterie over the rest of society.  It is a natural human impulse.  But in a well-run and properly fair and equal society, this tendency needs to be carefully constrained by the rule of law.  Interest groups have their place, especially when they draw attention to past and present systemic injustices or to currently-disadvantaged groups within society.  But interest groups, when entrenched, will inevitably come to demand things contrary to the interests of society at large.

Interest groups are of course passionate defenders of their own interests.  That’s precisely what makes them interest groups—each one united to defend and expand (there can be no clear distinction) their existing privileges relative to society at large.  We’ve already seen that members of human societies (that is, all of us) tend to be highly sensitive to threats against their status, anything that might imperil their relative standing within their society.  A truly equal society would have little reason to fret about status.  But it would be very unlike any society we have ever known.  We humans behave according to what we know, and in light of the accumulated experience of our species, which is embedded partly in genetic dispositions but mostly in evolved cultural norms.  It is unrealistic to expect that we will change our attitudes and behaviors overnight, though we may be able to nudge our attitudes and behaviors—marginally, gradually.  Fear of status-loss explains much of what happens in our contemporary politics—particularly the perceived decline of our preferred identity group’s social standing relative to other groups.  Thus men have often resented women who climbed too fast.  White voters continue to resent losing status to other racial groups, however long overdue.  They will deny any such resentment.  As a consequence, any healthy and progressive (that is, increasingly fair) democracy will have to anticipate and prepare for heavy resistance from interest groups, especially the well-established ones, and employ strategies to steer society as a whole gently past these entrenched groups.

It is too easy merely to single out the openly racist and sexist groups.  These are not the real problem anyhow.  No one is very eager to defend their particular privileges.  There are other elites who are much more persistent and powerful.  They are close by, though much less obvious than we might think.

So who then are the real monsters?  We are—the writer and the readers of these words.  We who were born in the privileged West are the elites.  We don’t think we are.  We don’t feel particularly privileged.  But in almost every objective and measurable way, we are the most advantaged and fortunate human beings who have ever lived on planet Earth.  You, me.  We enjoy more comforts and consume more resources than the vast majority of those who live presently or who have ever belonged to our species.  We are the elites, the one percent.

But we are also self-aware elites, so have the capacity to do better.  And to do better, we will have to acknowledge and be more mindful of our present advantages, and what our unearned advantages and behaviors cost others.  If we are to make our modern civil society work as well as it can work, we will have to step back and see ourselves more justly in comparison to all the other members of our species.