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I, for one, believe in conspiracies... ... but I also believe in class conflict, which I see as different things. Our economic system is predicated on the exi

I, for one, believe in conspiracies... ... but I also believe in class conflict, which I see as different things. Our economic system is predicated on the existence of both a working class and an owning class -- it's no fun to be a general if you don't have a bunch a bunch of enlisted to boss around. And in the US, the myth is that the enlisted commoners deserve their lot from lack of smarts and ambition. The owning class, and their educated lackeys like me, intuit that if we don't keep this division going, we lose our positions in the upper half of the pyramid, and adjust our day-to-day behavior accordingly without ever explicitly working it out in our minds. Also, we just plain feel more comfortable around people who share experience and cultural background. These dynamics, plus a HUGE difference in access to educational know-how, are enough to sustain class divisions even while making it plausibly deniable that any systematic class oppression exists. Also, there is a rhetorical technique called the "straw man" which the commenter is using: subtly re-characterize your opponents argument as something easily attacked, and then attack it. The commenter explicitly said there was no grand explicit conspiracy, but you attack him as if he did. (One of the things I like about HN is that when issues like this come up there are smart people here on both sides -- libertarians and Marxists, united by a love of hacking!)

T-R 16y ago
I have a little trouble conceiving of a completely classless society - at some point you have to acknowledge that, for example, some programmers are better than others, and that that's a positive thing. That acknowledgement alone creates a class. The important thing is upward mobility - we shouldn't define "better" as "knows the other people who are 'better'".
- Dn_Ab 16y ago
  This cannot be argued. But many people conflate worth of skills and accomplishments with worth as a person. They over reduce the dimensionality of a superiority vector. And worse, assume transitivity of the elements composing said vector.
- forkandwait 16y ago
  Often (though not always) the reason for differences in talent are directly traceable to personal background, and by allocating different resources to folks growing up is how we sustain our class system. Bourdieu.

T-R 16y ago

I have a little trouble conceiving of a completely classless society - at some point you have to acknowledge that, for example, some programmers are better than others, and that that's a positive thing. That acknowledgement alone creates a class. The important thing is upward mobility - we shouldn't define "better" as "knows the other people who are 'better'".

Dn_Ab 16y ago
This cannot be argued. But many people conflate worth of skills and accomplishments with worth as a person. They over reduce the dimensionality of a superiority vector. And worse, assume transitivity of the elements composing said vector.
forkandwait 16y ago
Often (though not always) the reason for differences in talent are directly traceable to personal background, and by allocating different resources to folks growing up is how we sustain our class system. Bourdieu.