Austen in Austin: Class, and Social Entropy in the US
- Karl Johansson
- för 20 timmar sedan
- 11 min läsning
Rigid class systems are social entropy, as we can see in the US at the moment.
I’ve recently enjoyed reading two series of substack posts from Michael Green on the US economy. To me here in the social democratic heartland, his conclusions – that America is not a meritocracy at all, and that average wealth statistics hide the fact that the economy is working less and less for the typical family and more and more for the upper class – is banal. Still, the way in which he illustrates it is powerful. Which leads me onto what I want to discuss here. My thesis is that we are seeing a strict class system emerge in the US in real time.
I think us modern people raised in a cultural environment where liberal ideas, and post-French and American revolution ideas of equality misunderstand how the unfair systems of old were instituted and maintained. It is frighteningly easy to assume that people back then were less intelligent than we are today, or that the inherent unfairness of strict class systems simply had not occurred to them. In reality, class systems are the social equivalent of entropy. Unless you actively fight for an equal society and against strict class systems such systems will gradually take form naturally.
Ideas which sounds fair and good like changing tax codes to be less punishing on inheritance and allowing schools and universities to charge tuition fees tend to in the long run cement class dynamics. The crucial insight here is that in generational terms – which is the only timeline in which discussions of class systems are relevant – small advantages compound. Unintuitively, the fact that lowering inheritance taxes is good or neutral for some ~90% of households is far less important than that it is really good for top earners and wealth holders. The thing about preserving equality is that it is necessarily unjust for individuals to be just for society.
Green’s writings are not interesting for his conclusions, anyone with a passing familiarity with American society and the American economy will know that it is a class system rather than a meritocracy. Indeed, Green and other Americans propagating for reforms so as to make the economy more just often miss the insidious ways in which American ideals like meritocracy and freedom are used to justify the very structures which cement the class system.
For example, educational meritocracy is a noble ideal, indeed one which is useful and desirable for a society to hold. And yet, the American higher education system by almost any standard falls far short of this ideal, being replete with unfair and regressive barriers for poorer students like wildly high tuition fees and the loathsome institution of “legacy” admissions, while at the same time laundering the reputations of graduates as being the absolute pinnacle of academic achievement.
When I was young I wondered how someone could be crowned the world champion in a sport when they had not faced literally everyone in the world. The answer of course is that they are the best of everyone who showed up to the Olympics, and can thus be assumed to be the best, because even if there is someone better they declined the challenge. The same element is at play at American ivy league and some technical universities, except that many of the potential challengers are not showing up because they cannot afford to rather than because they are not smart enough or because they don’t want to.
I think these discussions are particularly relevant for understanding the political changes in America since the Great Recession. American democracy was never as democratic or fair as it made itself out to be, but perhaps the degeneration that started accelerating with Donald Trump’s election in 2016 is due in part to the emergence of a class system with sharper edges than it the latter half of the 1900’s.
Michael Green wrote a series of substack posts about poverty in America where he makes the excellent point that while fewer and fewer people are officially poor in America, they are also further and further away from reaching the middle class lifestyle they were promised. How can those two facts exist side by side? The official cap for being poor has not kept up with inflation, so while people in the 15th percentile of income may no longer be poor according to the official technical definition, they feel poor, and they deeply resent elites telling them that the economy is wonderful in complete contradiction to their lived experience. A reactionary turn is one form of response to feeling one’s economic opportunities close up.
But I don’t want to make this seem as some kind of petty response from those slowly sinking in socio-economic status, destroying the intricate clockwork of American politics in an act of juvenile rage. The logic for electing a bully is quite sound if you feel like your society is becoming ever more plutocratic. Perhaps only an already rich and headstrong person can stand against the temptations and threats brought by plutocrats and their armies of lackeys, lobbyists, and lawyers.
What a tragedy then that Trump turned out to be a conman, playacting the working man’s champion on the campaign trail only to reveal himself a charlatan in the White House. Material class interests won out over the demands of an electoral base, and now someone the plutocrats consider a loose cannon, the middle class a buffoon, and the working class a traitor has the keys to the car. I choose the metaphor of a car deliberately, because what is Trump’s reign other than a joy ride? A man who relishes power for power’s sake, and who seems to have no objective, no overarching vision, no fixed ideology, instead letting his whims take him where they may.
The result is inevitably that those with the most resources are free to construct a strict class system brick by brick. I mentioned two stalwarts of class systems already, inheritance tax and higher education, the implications of which are self-evident. There are however many more areas in which class systems express themselves, and for the purposes of this essay we will confine the discussion to the following three: law and lawyering, electoral politics, and entrepreneurship.
America is a famously litigious society, and allows a lot of legal disputes to be settled via negotiated settlements between parties rather than arbitration by a judge. This not only means that getting into a lawsuit is more common in America, but that your choice of representation is even more important when their primary role is as a negotiator rather than as a defender. Obviously getting better representation in court generally costs more, which is another way in which the odds are stacked in favour of the wealthy.
Furthermore, people who cannot afford to have lawyers on retainer, and who are not lawyers themselves may not know what their rights and options are if they get into a situation involving the law. How many law suits which would have won were never brought because the potential litigant didn’t know that was an option? Or because the potential litigant didn’t have the money up front to get the process started?
This in practice manifests as a tiered legal system where a litigant or defendant’s class gives them different access to justice. True, the law makes no official distinction between rich and poor, but the law is never encountered without its guild of translators, which have differing abilities based on price. Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 plea deal is a textbook case of how standards for being found guilty are different based on net worth. Would a plumber, middle manager, or surgeon get the type of deal Epstein got? If your answer is no, is that not clear evidence that there is a different standard for being guilty and for access to justice based on class? De facto, if not de jure.
Another aspect of public life which is intensely tiered is politics. America has the most expensive election cycles in the world, but money is really important in less obvious ways than spending on political ads. For example, for a long and intense campaigning season for nation-wide office you need to have enough to pay the bills while you make speeches. America’s paltry two week’s worth of vacation and long campaign season is almost perfectly designed so as to exclude the dabblers, part timers trying to make it full time, and career pivoters from politics.
Is it any surprise that America has political dynasties? That is not uncommon in any society, and with the barriers to entry high in no small parts due to the individualistic focus on candidate over party there is a lot to be gained by inheriting some brand trust. To be a British MP you need to be a well respected and engaged in your party, but with the essential hollowness of American parties, local knowledge and connections is more valuable, which can also be inherited.
Then there are the informal and classically, Austen-like aspects of class which surface in any discussion of politics in America. Unless you are rich enough to be invited to fund raising dinners as a donor or have been to one as a candidate there are likely expectations in terms of manners, dress, and a host of small details you are unfamiliar with. As an outsider it is impossible to know if faux pas like eating with the wrong fork or having red wine with white fish is a disqualifier, the point is rather that having institutionalized formal events where politicians and the rich meet creates barriers for class outsiders.
The same outsider status which American voters have proven time and time again that they look for in a candidate is a clear hindrance in settings where the candidate needs the consent and financial backing from the monied class. And if you don’t get the money you need for political ads, to cover travel costs, and to cover living expenses you might not ever get to a point where the electorate gets to share their views on your candidacy.
While the business of politics is an unfair one, so too is the actual business of entrepreneurship. Since at least the financial crisis Silicon Valley culture has been ascendant in the US, and has converted ever more Americans to the Cult of the Entrepreneur. The idea is simple, and from an economic perspective not unsound, that one of the most difficult, rewarding, and pro-social careers a person can choose is to start a business. Obviously, having money means that starting a business is easier, but there are more nuanced class differences too.
Firstly, consider how class influences what kind of business you might start. Working class entrepreneurs are more likely to start businesses like restaurants, contracting firms, or corner stores which tend to have lower starting costs than what someone from the 1% might start like a cosmetics brand or a private equity fund. This matters because the payouts from success in different businesses can be wildly different; a successful contracting firm nets you a comfortable middle class lifestyle with two cars and a college fund for the kids, a successful private equity fund nets you penthouse apartments, Rolexes, and Lamborghinis. What you picture when you imagine a successful entrepreneur is probably the flashy and overstated success of an Elon Musk rather than the modest success of your local dry cleaner, even though the latter is much more realistic.
It is also worth making the point that the Cult of the Entrepreneur creates ample room for the rich to launder their reputations so as to adhere to what Americans think they ought to be rich and famous for. As an example consider Kylie Jenner. Most probably think of her as a successful cosmetics entrepreneur and influencer rather than as a socialite heiress. But the platform from which she launched Kylie Cosmetics was the millions of Instagram followers she gained by being related to reality TV-star Kim Kardashian and having been on Keeping Up With the Kardashians for years. This is not a rags to riches story where Jenner’s drive and passion for cosmetics made her business a laudable success, it is a story where wealth and connections made success a foregone conclusion.
A hypothetical Karlie Cosmetics would not have a chance – not just because of my lack of knowledge and frankly interest in skin care and make up – because the costs for starting it and gaining the kind of brand awareness which Jenner had from the beginning would be prohibitive. While I don’t doubt the financial viability of Jenner’s enterprise, it really would not matter if the business was a money furnace. Its function is not primarily to make money for the Jenners, they have lots of other ways of amassing millions, it is to legitimize their preexisting wealth and social status. Unlike in the old world there is not a hereditary aristocracy in the US, instead each generation gets to buy their own personal claim to fame and financial freedom with the family fortune.
Meanwhile, the lack of anti-trust which has been an issue for decades in America mean that average Janes find it ever more difficult to start their own business and embark on the voyage towards the kind of success children of the wealthy routinely conjure through an LLC. Starting any kind of retail business is significantly more difficult in the age of Amazon, as is the case with starting a restaurant when you have to tango with chains and food delivery platforms with deep pockets. And as mentioned, running a business is significantly more arduous when that enterprise is actually meant to pay for itself and generate enough cash to maintain your standard of living.
The specific policy changes needed to reverse this social entropy should hardly come as a revelation. It is the usual suspects of inheritance taxes, more progressive taxation generally, outlawing legacy admissions, lowering tuition fees, capping political donations for both individuals and companies, and start to vigorously enforce anti-trust laws again. This is not meant to be a blueprint for a better America, but as a wake up call to direct your attention to the fact that not only is no one is fighting this entropy, but the president and his courtiers are actively encouraging it.
And this form of class is some ways more vicious than its forebears in Europe. The Cult of the Entrepreneur and the steadfast belief in the American dream cultivates a harshness in the upper class. The boyar cannot blame the serf for his natural inferiority, nor can the earl blame the help for their lack of manners and education; but the billionaire cannot help but blame the uber driver for not pulling himself up by his bootstraps. The billionaire built an empire by themselves, so why can’t others? A class system relying solely on money as the legitimizing structure feeds a resentment of the masses in elite, who are blissfully unaware of the ways in which the odds are stacked in their favour, and see the working classes as rubes, sloths, and losers who couldn’t summon up a little ambition and emancipate themselves into the good life.
If the US does not wake up, if it does not start to hold its ground against the social entropy, America will soon resemble the exact kind of class society chronicled by stalwarts of Old World literature like Dostoyevsky, Austen, and Balzac. The only difference being that you introduce your son or daughter to society at Burning Man or Mar-a-lago instead of an officer’s ball.
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If you liked this post you can read a previous post about the war in Ukraine here or the rest of my writings here. I also have a section for longer reads I call essays here, I particularly recommend my series called The Bird & The Technoking exploring Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and its political and cultural implications. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!
I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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Cover photo by Patrick Nizan from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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