> The relationship between the Gentry and Elite is one of open rivalry, and that between the Gentry and Labor is one of distrust. What about Labor and the Elite? That one is not symmetric. The Elite exploit and despise Labor as a class comprised mostly of “useful idiots”. How does Labor see the Elite? They don’t. The Elite has managed to convince Labor that the Gentry (who are open about their cultural elitism, while the Elite hides its social and economic elitism) is the actual “liberal elite” responsible for Labor’s misery over the past 30 years. In effect, the Elite has constructed an “infinity pool” where the Elite appears to be a hyper-successful extension of Labor, lumping these two disparate ladders into an “us” and placing the Gentry and Underclass into “them”.

This is the most interesting piece for me; the idea that there are several social classes, with distinct values and their own internal tiers, is not exactly a new thought, so let's proceed with the idea that everyone is on a ladder, and everyone struggles towards the top of their ladder--occasionally jumping between ladders, but not very often. Given that view of life, this is a nice synopsis of how, even in a democracy, the privileges of ownership and control of such things as media networks and financial institutions allows the elite to stabilize the class structure at the top by obscuring the true distribution of wealth and playing the cultural/educational differences of the lower classes off of one-another to create strife and political inaction.

I think the question it poses to us now is if some of these new technologies we're creating--global financial systems that allow instant transfer of cash, social networks that both connect and isolate, personalized content which fulfills marketable desires but also beguiles rational thought--are these tools of the creative class, and infrastructure which will raise up the labor class? Or rather tools of the elite? And the challenge to us is to create tools which provide the same freedoms and low transactional costs, but are very hard to be used as a corruptive force.