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The most accurate description of social hierarchy in America

The 3-ladder system of social class in the U.S. Typical depictions of social class in the United States posit a linear, ordered hierarchy. I’ve actually come to the conclusion that there are 3 distinct ladders, with approximately four social classes on each. Church describes a “Labor,” “Gentry,” “Elite” taxonomy, with an underclass as unlucky 13th. Transitions occur from “high skill labor” to “transitional gentry” (think the milling machine operator taking business classes at night) and “high gentry” to “elite strivers” (think the Ivy league grad who spends three years on Wall Street and then jumps to form a financial services startup) Thinking about this description of class in my own life, I can see where people I know rose up the rungs, jumped from one ladder to another, or found a place and stayed in it. I really enjoyed his description of the “Global Elite” (e1) On the other hand,…


The 3-ladder system of social class in the U.S.

Typical depictions of social class in the United States posit a linear, ordered hierarchy. I’ve actually come to the conclusion that there are 3 distinct ladders, with approximately four social classes on each.

Church describes a “Labor,” “Gentry,” “Elite” taxonomy, with an underclass as unlucky 13th. Transitions occur from “high skill labor” to “transitional gentry” (think the milling machine operator taking business classes at night) and “high gentry” to “elite strivers” (think the Ivy league grad who spends three years on Wall Street and then jumps to form a financial services startup)

Thinking about this description of class in my own life, I can see where people I know rose up the rungs, jumped from one ladder to another, or found a place and stayed in it.

I really enjoyed his description of the “Global Elite” (e1)

On the other hand, E1 is pretty much objectively evil, without exceptions. There are decent people who are billionaires, so there’s no income or wealth level at which 100% objective evil becomes the norm. But if you climb the social ladder, you get to a level at which it’s all cancer, all the way up. That’s E1. Why is it this way? Because the top end of the world’s elite is a social elite, not an economic one, and you don’t get deep into an elevated social elite unless you are very simliar to the center of that cluster, and for the past 10,000 years the center of humanity’s top-of-the-top cluster has always been deep, featureless evil

Church touches on conflict between the ladders:

Between the Gentry and Labor, there is an attitude of distrust. The Elite has been running a divide-and-conquer strategy between these two categories for decades. This works because the Elite understands (and can ape) the culture of the Gentry, but has something in common with Labor that sets the categories apart from the Gentry: a conception of work as a theater for masculine dominance. This is something that the Elite and Labor both believe in– the visceral strength and importance of the alpha-male in high-stakes gambling settings such as most modern work– but that the Gentry would rather deny. Gender is a major part of the Elite’s strategy in turning Labor against the Gentry: make the Gentry look effeminate. That’s why “feminist” is practically a racial slur, despite the world desperately needing attention to women’s political equality, health and well-being (that is, feminism).

Thought I'd share, I got a lot of insight out of this.

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