Nostr

So plutocrats need to find ways to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. One important trick is to convince us all that the system is fair, guided by an #InvisibleHand that performs mystic passes over our heads at birth and locates the very best of us and elevates us to the apex of the social pyramid.

But there's a problem with this: plutocracy is self-sustaining.

Cory Doctorow 2y ago

The story that we're all just "#TemporarilyEmbarrassedMillionaires" who can rise to the top with hard work and smarts falls flat in the face of the reality that nearly everyone at the top was born there. If the system selects rulers based on merit, and if everyone the system selects was born rich, then the rich must have some *genetic* trait that makes them destined to rule.

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

This is why plutocracy always turns into aristocracy: the idea that some people are suited to rule because they have "good blood." Eugenics is, above all, a way to excuse inequality. Fitness to rule is determined primarily by whose orifice you emerge from, and only secondarily by any obvious competence or skill.

So right wing footsoldiers are mired in a terrible and shameful swamp of self-loathing.