OK, Inequality is Bad. But Can We Do Anything About It?

After 286 pages in The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility showing that despite the determination of western elites to eliminate inequality it is alive and well, from Sweden to the US to China and especially India, Gregory Clark, professor at a gubmint university, ends his book with a the usual blather in the passive voice suggest more gubmint programs to end inequality.

Even though he admits that the competition among elite parents for places at elite schools probably doesn't make much difference.

Even though he admits that gubmint interventions like Head Start don't make much difference.

Even though he proposes that assortative mating has limited benefits to elites.

Says he:

A better, more humane, less competitive, social world than ours may exist, but it is not that obvious how we will attain it in a world where people have such strong aspirations for the social success of their children.

Would it?

Let's do a Great Reset on the inequality front.

Let's say that, most likely gubmint programs won't really do much about inequality. Want to know why?

It is encoded in my understanding of politics and government, that politics is war, Us against Them, because "They" are an existential threat, and government is force.

You think you are going to solve inequality by war and force? By taxing people and then having bureaucrats handing out loot and plunder to the supporters of the elite?

Obviously, in the last 200 years, the Age of the Educated, the elite has strongly believed in its power to change the world. Its power strategy, becoming more and more naked over the years, is an over-under strategy, of justifying political power because it helps the underdog. And the Educated Class gets to distribute the loot to its supporters -- er, worthy underdogs.

Does it? Gregory Clark shows, it seems to me, that the Rule of the Educated seems to have made very little difference to the lower classes. On the other hand, we know from the Great Enrichment that the operations of capitalism, which nobody really understood 200 years ago, has increased per capita income by 30 times in real terms. What did the Educated Class have to do with that? Nothing.

Suppose we approach the question of inequality by another way. Suppose we say, for a start, that the social problem of inequality -- specifically the problem of the lowest class that tends to be vagabonds, or "Travellers" or homeless -- should be solved by social methods, by people working together to help other people, and not by Educated Class educrats ginning up yet another gubmint program that ends up being nothing more than a program of taxation collecting loot that is handed out to regime supporters. And all imagined by gubmint professors at gubmint universities using gubmint research grants to propose another gubmint program. What could go wrong?

My effort in this department is Road to the Middle Class, first put on the internet in April 2004. My idea was that, to wive and thrive in the modern world, the underclass needed to acquire cultural skills: religion, law, mutual aid, and education. Religion and law are of course the necessary cultural framework to make the commercial city work. Education is needed because you need literacy and numeracy to do useful work in the city. Mutual aid is the welfare state society of the 19th century when "everyone" belonged to the Masons or the Elks or the Oddfellows and dozens of others. These mutual-aid societies provided, first, death benefits. Then they looked after widows. Then they had "lodge doctors," young doctors just out of medical school who would help birth your child for a song.

But let us look at other means of helping the lowest class.

Voluntary Slavery. Yes, did you know that back in The Year 1000 you could go to your feudal lord, place your head between his hands and become his slave -- and get food and lodging? But you already know about this. It's called "Welfare."

Servant. If you read 19th century novels or watch 20th and 21st century TV series about the good old days, you will notice that everyone either had servants or was a servant. That ended after World War II and the beginning of the full-on welfare state. One thing about servants: they weren't allowed to marry, and they weren't allowed to have "followers." Do you think we could serve the poor better by giving them jobs as servants?

Apprenticeships. In Shakespeare's time you went to work at age 8 unless you went to a grammar school like young Bill. Later "everyone" went to work at 12 or 13 as a servant or an apprentice. Thing about apprenticeships was that the employer was supposed to supply practical education to the apprentice. You think that might suit the average teenager and the lower-class teenager better than the gubmint teacher thingy? Notice that we could have Big Woke & Co. pay for all this. Actually, right now, at Walmart stores there is a back room where employees can take on-line courses and up their skills. And get more money. Then there is Walmart's $1 a day college program. Maybe this would be better than more taxes.

Thing is: hierarchy, or inequality, is universal. That was the point about Jordan Peterson's lobster thingy. Even lobsters have hierarchy, and the reason is because it reduces violence on the lobster front.

The question is: what kind of hierarchy is beneficial and what kind of hierarchy is harmful.

My guess is that most kinds of gubmint wars on inequality in fact have the opposite effect, and entrench and create new, harmful hierarchies. That is, after all, the lesson of socialism, that equality leads to a brutal hierarchy and millions of deaths.

So let's think about how we can create and adapt hierarchies that are beneficial and actually helpful to the less fortunate.