Comment by GuB-42
17 hours ago
Honestly, the elites are categorically better, on average. Not flawless by any mean but in many ways superior.
The Victorian elites had better education, better diet, better lifestyles, better care, etc... So yes, it makes for smarter and healthier people.
If you mean in term of human qualities like morals, kindness, ethics, etc... This is complicated. Many of the elites also tend to be better in that regard too, with a very big caveat. The reason why they are better is simple: it is easier to be generous when you are not in the need, education can play a part too but it can go both ways.
The thing that make elites worse is mostly the consequence of their actions, the "with great power comes great responsibilities" thing. What is an inconsequential for the poor can have huge implication when the rich do it. If you decide to stop buying bread from one bakery will not impact that bakery too much, they loose and gain customers all the time. If you have a restaurant chain and decide to stop working with a baker, you may have ruined him.
That's when things become more complicated, sometimes the elites really are terrible to the people under them, sometimes, they are as good as humans can reasonably be, noblesse oblige. In history, it is not uncommon, when there is a revolution and power is given back to the people to end up very badly.
I don't know how Victorian elites sit on this scale, certainly not all bad, certainly not all good (especially to the colonies), but where exactly is hard to say.
Thiels protege over here
I am definitely middle class, being raised in a middle class family and most people I know are also middle class. Definitely not elite, and I have nothing to do with Peter Thiel, the only thing I know about him is that he is a controversial billionaire.
But most of the times I met people of a high socioeconomic status, they turned out to be really nice and interesting, more commonly hiding their wealth than flaunting it. Sure enough there is the occasional prick, and they are particularly detestable because of how unfair it feels, so they stand out. But they are a minority, at least in my experience.
Note that by "high socioeconomic status", I mean something like the 1%, not the 0.001%, maybe things are different at that level, but I can hardly approach it. But from those who did, it was mostly positive, from a human to human perspective. But these are just second degree anecdotes.
The thing is, when discussing the elite, most people talk about news reports, business decisions, declarations, etc... When they are discussing lower-middle class, they are talking about personal experience, for understandable reasons. We rarely get "I had dinner with Peter Thiel, we talked about the impressionist style of painting and how he commissioned an artist to decorate the guest bedroom in this style" (completely made up story), that is, the small details that make people feel human.
> the elites are categorically better, on average
this is quite the statement. i can think of many, many ways they are not categorically “better” … many ways.
i can think of a number of “peasants” who are categorically “better” than “elites” in many, many areas.
i mean, i think most of us here have personally met at least one or two absolute failsons who are absolute dipshits yet will always fall upwards due to who their families are.