[jondubois]

I can relate to this - The older generation owns all the land and use hard-working young people to pay the rent so that they don't have to lift a finger. In the western world, older generations tend to not be very generous with their children (interestingly, as I found out, this is often not the case in ex-communist countries like Russia where well-off parents tend to spoil their children rotten - Note that this is a gross generalisation though).

In the west, we have a situation which is just like we had in the middle ages when peasants had to pay their lords commission to work on their own farms (because the land technically belonged to the barons, knights, dukes, kings...). Except in the middle ages, work was based on manual labour and that didn't help any of the peasants to 'grow' intellectually - In fact, only high-society had the time to cultivate their intellect.

In today's society - Now that a lot of jobs are highly specialised and increasingly technical - By working, today's peasant class is accumulating highly specialised intellect. For the first time in history, we have a case where the lower class 'the scum' of society is becoming more intelligent than the high class of society (though not necessarily wiser - In that case, I would suggest the opposite).

I think that's why this idea of 'disruption' is so critical - Disruption is a mechanism which allows the younger generation to acquire wealth from older generations. Older generations have a collective monopoly (lock-in) on the world's wealth, disruption is about pulling the rug from under them one industry at a time.