[mariusz79]

He did something to help promote computer science to people who could not afford a computer. Accepting OBE, on the other hand, is equal to becoming a member of a caste system. You either believe that all people deserve equal rights, or you don't.

[markdown]

> Accepting OBE, on the other hand, is equal to becoming a member of a caste system.

No, it's like receiving a Nobel Prize, or a Medal of Honour (or any medal, really).

An organisation awarding a prize to someone who has done something remarkable for his fellow men.

[mariusz79]

The titles given are taken from the aristocratic system that's still alive and kicking in the GB. And while OBE does not give the recipient anything special besides titles, heraldic supports and order of precedence, one could argue that it's supporting the aristocratic system. If you accept a title, be it sir or knight, or whatever else there is, you indirectly accept that the person with a higher title is above you, even if they did not earn that title with the hard work like you did, but simply by being born into a right family. You accept being a royal subject, , and you accept that the king or queen, are not your equals but your rulers.

In any modern society we have titles, and honors but they have to be earned.

President, general, senator is your equal, selected for their office based on the skills (I know that a staggering oversimplification, and a very naive point of view) not based on the birth right.

[Angostura]

> one could argue that it's supporting the aristocratic system

One could. But most people would disagree.

[mariusz79]

Let's eat s*. Billions of flies can't be wrong!

[dfc]

To say that this is "like receiving a Nobel Prize, or Medal of Honour(sic)" or the Victoria Cross is absurd. There are 1,946 MoH recipients (excluding civil war recipients when it was awarded under different conditions), 1,357 Victoria Cross recipients and 876 Nobel Laureates. In one year "more than a thousand people have been recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours."[1]

[^1]: With one thousand awardees this seems more like an Eagle Scout Badge or

[markdown]

Yes.

Like an Eagle Scout Badge or a Medal of Honour.

Doesn't matter how many people get it, my point is that it's a reward for either doing something positive or achieving something remarkable.

[dfc]

The Medal of Honor and/or Victoria Cross are not rewards.

[markdown]

Jesus Christ dude, you're missing the point completely.

Read the comment I originally responded to.

[nicholassmith]

An OBE (and MBE) are basically a nice bit of paper and a day out. They confer no privilege or powers, it's just a recognition that's given.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

The UK may have a class system (sadly, all capitalist societies do and must), but it does not have "castes". Knighthoods and other honours are merely titles.

[arethuza]

Out of interest, what do you see as the link between classes and capitalism or are you equating social class with a level of income (or ownership of assets) - it's really much more complex than that in the UK due to the remarkable amount of historical baggage we have.

[hcho]

Not the OP, but concentration of wealth in the hands of a class and concentration of capital in the hands of capitalists sound awfully similar.

[arethuza]

Having loads of money is neither necessary or sufficient for belonging to the UK Upper Class, traditionally at least:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_...

[NB I'm really not defending this state of affairs - just pointing out that "Upper Class" traditionally meant "aristocracy" not "rich" in the UK].

[hcho]

I don't think anybody is disputing that. But there was a time upper class meant rich, no? That's considered proto-capitalism by many.

[patrickk]

PG has an interesting bit about this in an essay:

"This started to change in Europe with the rise of the middle class. Now we think of the middle class as people who are neither rich nor poor, but originally they were a distinct group. In a feudal society, there are just two classes: a warrior aristocracy, and the serfs who work their estates. The middle class were a new, third group who lived in towns and supported themselves by manufacturing and trade.

Starting in the tenth and eleventh centuries, petty nobles and former serfs banded together in towns that gradually became powerful enough to ignore the local feudal lords. [10] Like serfs, the middle class made a living largely by creating wealth. (In port cities like Genoa and Pisa, they also engaged in piracy.) But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a lot of it. Any wealth a serf created belonged to his master. There was not much point in making more than you could hide. Whereas the independence of the townsmen allowed them to keep whatever wealth they created.

Once it became possible to get rich by creating wealth, society as a whole started to get richer very rapidly. Nearly everything we have was created by the middle class. Indeed, the other two classes have effectively disappeared in industrial societies, and their names been given to either end of the middle class. (In the original sense of the word, Bill Gates is middle class.)

But it was not till the Industrial Revolution that wealth creation definitively replaced corruption as the best way to get rich. In England, at least, corruption only became unfashionable (and in fact only started to be called "corruption") when there started to be other, faster ways to get rich."

http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

[frobozz]

If you can change your caste, then it can't be a caste system, can it?

[mariusz79]

You can't change it - you can only be accepted into it. So not only you have to do something extraordinary, someone from the caste needs to like what you did. Or you could be born into it...

[migstopheles]

I think you're confused about what this honour actually is. Receiving an OBE doesn't imbue any extra rights or powers, it's literally just an award for doing something that helps others. That's specifically what it was created for.

You can't be born into it, and the system has traditionally honoured thousands of 'normal' people that have been nominated, usually by their peers, for doing work in their field or community.

[asuffield]

I think you're confused about who awards these. Honours are awarded based on decisions made by a committee comprised of the members listed here:

https://www.gov.uk/honours-committees

As you can see, some of them are themselves honours recipients, and some are not.

In no sense is this a self-awarding organisation - and the only reason there are so many recipients on the committee is because honours are given out to just about everybody who has achieved anything of note.

[mariusz79]

@migstopheles I wasn't talking about being born into OBE, but about being born into British aristocracy. I admit that OBE is just a small part of the whole system of honors, but by using titles and heraldry it still helps to keep the caste system alive in the GB.

[sbuk]

There is no caste system in the UK. There was a class system that is largley defunced, despite pretestations to the contrary. You aren't even British, so why do you care?

[pjc50]

The OBE doesn't convey any extra rights on the recipient.

[mariusz79]

order of precedence, titles, heraldic supporters.