[6ren]

They don't seem to account for non-socioeconomic factors like genetics and nurturing.

I'm not saying aristocrats are a master race, just that if your ancestors won competitions, you may have inherited whatever genetic factors helped them. These might include abilities for collaboration, "reading" other people, intelligence... and perhaps competitiveness, controlled aggression and ruthlessness.

Nurture would include very basic care of infants (e.g. talking to them), and general ways of thinking and attitudes. It's easier to be "successful" if you reach your basic potential by having your developmental needs met. You'll tend to raise your children the same (partly because you've experienced it, partly through oral tradition passed on from grandparents).

NB: I'm not saying "social success" is necessarily a good thing, nor that the factors leading to it necessarily make a better world, just noting what explains the data. Of course, maybe this article is only measuring social mobility, and not claiming social position as complete causation.

[heurist]

The article did suggest upbringing as a possible cause. If genetics were that big of a factor wouldn't we see the two groups dividing over time? Instead the article says that the odds of surnames having the same economic value are the same after 300 to 500 years. I assume all of the genetic traits you listed are more fluid than that.

[6ren]

I'm not clear which two "groups" you mean, or that they'd divide.

There is a class divide for human "breeding", with expressions like "marrying below" etc. But more importantly, people marry people they meet, who tend to be in their social group. So I guess this does come down to a class "race".

Aside: I expect specific surnames having the same economic value over time is a consequence of that class strata having the same value over time. i.e. it's the class, not the specific lineage. But I agree that if was due to the lineage, not the class, it would indicate something else passed on (money, influence etc) other than genetics. Of course, in practice all these factors are present to some degree and hard to disentangle.

Tangent: I think many people take political solace in us all being genetically more-or-less equal - but I think the true source of equality is that we can all think and exchange. We can create things that didn't exist before, solve problems we haven't seen before. I don't mean scientific breakthroughs, just the trivial problem-solving we all do, every day, to function. From making a joke to baking a cake. And we can communicate and trade, to combine our strengths and work together - which benefits each of us more than zero-sum conflict. Who cares who's at the "top"?

This philosophy enables aliens - of all kinds - to be "one of us" instead of "the other".