| > The rules are simple and ancient: noble blood breeds nobles; common blood breeds commoners. This does not describe the current situation: even if we just consider net worth, there are at least 2-3 rather separated kinds of elites: - the "aristocracy": what you name "noble blood" - "old money": there is some partial overlap to "aristocracy", but not the same; for example think of family with a long pedigree, but not necessarily of aristocratic origin, think of family empires that have a standing in some industries over multiple generations. - "new money": people who got rich in particular by building some internet company. Their values and attitudes are quite different from "old money". These are three quite different groups of people. So, it's much more complicated than "noble blood breeds nobles; common blood breeds commoners". -- And this is just the "already net worth rich". For example there exist groups of intelligent people who are highly ambitious, but aren't given a chance, so they look for allies, and sometimes they succeed. In some sense the classical hacker scene can be considered as an example. Some of them actually got rich by founding some internet startup. |