Does America Need an Aristocracy?

[Metamorph]

No, I mean the idea you're suggesting is freaky. I don't see how you could think any overt aristocracy could possibly be "good" if you already have a problem with the middle-class, who themselves still have some but less exploitative power than an elite class would.


I mean, the Horse Metaphor is good for debunking a few things.....but it doesn't account for the behavior of the de facto corporate aristocrats. Because there's solid evidence out there that corporate culture is designed to make people more miserable to profit, and keep them economically insecure and exploitable even when providing for them might be mutually beneficial.

I think competing standards of elitism would cancel out the negative aspects of either individually, and I think it's intellectual cowardice that, when Americans give a list of better countries than ours on various metrics, they're willing to adopt foreign education systems and foreign economic systems even when they associate them with suicide and genocide, but not consider foreign systems of social ranking even while acknowledging we do have a system of social ranking already and while thinking inequality of outcome is desirable based on their impressions of human nature.

While handing out titles might not be the answer and might even be a catastrophe in practice, I can't help but be reminded of the situation in American literature. Most of the world doesn't take American literature seriously and Americans don't take most of the rest of the world's literature seriously and the conflict shows itself exactly in Americans judging literature based on market value and ignoring literary prizes while other countries follow various prizes rather than book sales. People also refer to political movements around the world as "populism," especially if they're problematic. We clearly need an adrenaline shot of elitism to the heart even if aristocracy is as ridiculous as it sounds, which I don't think it is since entitled aristocrats don't all seem like a bunch of horrible people to me.

The "middle class" is not actually a middle class. It's an upper class with bourgeoisie values, which has existed since the bourgeoisie was recognized as a group. I don't relate to bourgeoisie values that threaten to consume everything else like some kind of metastatic tumor and only value things according to what they cost and sell for on a commodity market. I don't want to live in a world controlled solely by merchants and laborers, yet I'm given no other option. Even if my education, connections, and skills wouldn't give me a title, I'd still rather live in a world that recognizes better and worse and strives for the good rather than one that sweats like a horse and runs like a horse but only produces horseshit.

Here’s Why Almost Everyone Thinks They Are Part of the Middle Class