> Atkins: People of the prisoner class have really, really bought into the capitalist dream. But they were too unlucky, ill-educated, unfortunate, or born in the wrong place to have all the things that society has told them they should have. They were taught from a very early age: You can have it all, not just the wealth but the stuff.
My favorite part. They don’t realize that capitalism itself is regressing to a class-based system. People like Trump, Johnson, Cameron can fake invoices, but the interviewer, just an ordinary member of the public has to play by the rules.
Capitalism is primarily about private property ownership to incentivize enterprise. It is more class-based when more private-property starts off in the hands of people by birth. It is more meritocratic the more that property migrates into the hands of people that work to benefit society more.
Examples of class-based systems. India's caste-system that disadvantages lower-castes. Pre-civil war America's racially implemented Constitution that disadvantaged non-whites (and women?). Fundamentalist Sharia Law systems that disadvantage non-muslims and women. You can tell you live in a more class-based capital system when the top slots are occupied more by birthright vs other systems.
BTW I think it's clearer to narrow talk to specific policies that make a system more class-based vs more meritocratic, and to remember to define them in terms of which particular groups of people they target. Because then we can see that meritocratic capitalism, boosted by the major revolutions we celebrate around the world, slowly gets eroded by things like redlining in the States, or low inheritance taxes etc.
I don't think there /hasn't/ been a class based system in human prehistory even. Granted then the classes may have been hunter and gatherer. It is fundamentally inevitable as a result of specialization and even within the same the normal curve would effectively do the same.
There are of course differences in the degrees of inequality.
My favorite part. They don’t realize that capitalism itself is regressing to a class-based system. People like Trump, Johnson, Cameron can fake invoices, but the interviewer, just an ordinary member of the public has to play by the rules.