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by unity1001 1239 days ago
> Yes the two Parties can agree on a few things, that does not imply "one Party oligarchy"

Those 'few things' define the oligarchy. As the Princeton study found out.

> Open Society, all that stuff.

That's a false perception. There's nothing open about the existing American oligarchy. The famous UCSC study referenced in the grandparent comment found out that ~30,000 people (including women, children) constitute the American elite class and they are extremely class conscious and exclusive. They hold balls to introduce their children into their own society for coming of age, they intermarry within themselves, they monopolize all positions of power among themselves. The study found out that they monopolize everywhere from governors' seats to senate to corporate boards.

Even the people who are more or less familiar with this think that because there are some 'exceptions' to this in the tech sector due to the existence of startups and also a few upwardly mobile upper middle class personas occasionally marry into that oligarchy, there isn't an oligarchy and the society is 'open' and upwardly mobile. But exceptions don't make a rule. Even the anomaly that is the tech sector is a rule-taker in American economy and politics, not a rule maker. The rules are still made by mostly East Coast 'old money' families and the elite networks that their social groups constitute. Here are the critical findings of the study again:

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.html