I don't think that's really true, outside some niche cultural arenas. Sure, if you're at a posh member's club or a party of aristocrats people might be impresse

I don't think that's really true, outside some niche cultural arenas. Sure, if you're at a posh member's club or a party of aristocrats people might be impressed by your lineage. I would concede that in politics a degree from Oxbridge has an outsized cachet, and those universities traditionally recruited from elite private schools. However, this is diminishing over time, both because those institutions are proactively recruiting from a wider base, and because people are pointing out the unrepresentitive composition of political parties, which then self-correct to stay politically relevent. The hereditary parts of the House of Lords are increasingly unimportant, and the Lords is of minor importance to the political process anyway. Royalty has been politically vestigial for more than a century. But in industry and most business spheres your lineage is unimportant. Just like those other parts of the world you mentioned, it's personal accomplishment that matters. Britain has big problems, but I think archaic veneration for family lineage is only a small force within them.