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Comment by jacobolus | Hacker News Reader

Being from a solidly middle class family (my mother is an elementary school teacher) puts me at the 10th or 15th percentile by family income at Harvard. The Ivies are indeed institutions mainly for the wealthy and the super-wealthy.

I'm not sure that most people you ask at Harvard would favor a "classless society". A distressingly large percentage of them want to go join a financial consulting firm or hedge fund and make as much money as they can right out of school.

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A distressingly large percentage of them want to go join a financial consulting firm or hedge fund and make as much money as they can right out of school.

Why is this distressing?

Few people really want a true "classless society". I'd assume that few of the founders on HN plan on donating 100% of all income they earn above the median level.

This wasn't addressed to me, but I'd say it's distressing because the financial sector has been artificially stimulated by the government for decades. Resources which would have been directed to more productive uses were instead sent to finance. Who knows how much we've lost because some smart people were screwing around on Wall Street instead of doing something more useful?

"Few people really want a true "classless society". I'd assume that few of the founders on HN plan on donating 100% of all income they earn above the median level."

There's a difference between believing that a classless society is a worthy goal and, noticing that one is not currently in a classless society and that being in an above average class has certain benefits, seeking to achieve an elevated class for the time being.

I would like to think I am a fairly strong believer in a classless post-scarcity utopia, but giving away most of what I own is not going to bring that any closer - all I'd be doing is reducing my own power to act. Better to retain it for now and use it to work towards the long term goal.

Sounds self-serving, maybe, but what can you do?

Why would you want a classless society? Isn't that communism?

Not at all. You can be a happy capitalist with lots of money without being different in a "qualitative" way from your poorer neighbors. At least in principle.

Actually, that's really not true. A classless society refers to a society which lacks any distinctions of wealth, income, education, culture, or social network.

I would certainly not want communism, especially not as it's been classicly implemented. I don't believe a classless society worth living in will be possible before a true end to scarcity; this may or may not be possible with the advent of MNT; some have high hopes.

It's important to note that I refer mainly to material classlessness here; obviously classes of intellect and culture will still exist and you wouldn't want to eradicate them anyway. I would imagine political classes would also exist but hopefully determined by will to participate, not material means.

And why? Well, egalitarianism, basically, and the belief that material means of one's parents should be neither benefit nor hindrance in life.

This is the stuff of essays, not little comments like this, but I hope you get the idea : D

I don't think that's true. I know many people who work towards a classless society, which isn't segmented into groups with antagonistic interests. After all, no one believes in the class societies of the past, like under the pharoahs, feudalism, slavery; which took generations to overthrow. (And during those times, persuasive justifications were offered for those systems.)

I'm personally interested in Participatory Economics (Parecon for short), which is a model for a decentralized classless economy, which offers properties that I think many people want from their economic system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

A distressingly large percentage of them want to go join a financial consulting firm or hedge fund and make as much money as they can right out of school.

Oh, I absolutely agree. But ask them directly and quite a few of them will still tell you, with a straight face, that they want a classless society.

I don't think it's a terribly larger percentage than at any other college. The guys at the other colleges just regret that they don't have the leg up on such a plan that Harvard would give them.

Could be. But a few years ago, 40% of the graduating class got jobs in finance. I find that a sickening indictment of our whole society and its priorities.

I agree. I just want to add that this is what happens when the financial sector gets so heavily subsidized by the government, directly and indirectly. That's where the money is sent, so that's where the fat salaries are.

I've heard truly disgusting stories about how cash is spent on Wall Street.

Things like this make me glad to have grown up in the UK. I went to Cambridge, which is (at least academically) as good a university as you can find, and it's a state school. You apply through the unified UCAS system and the fees - around £3000 a year now, I think - are the same as you'd pay at almost any UK university.

Sure, you get more private school kids and people from rich backgrounds, but it's not nearly as unbalanced as the scenario you paint.

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