Comment by gwbas1c

> Maybe the Victorian elite succeeded in spite of being feckless and incompetent: the Industrial Revolution created great wealth, which they enjoyed passively and parasitically

This leads to two important questions:

1: How much did the Victorian elite really know about the "hundreds of millions whom they subordinated and oppressed"?

2: How much power did they really have to end this oppression?

Let's look at a fact and implication:

1: The Victorian Elites were born into, and groomed for, their position in their social hierarchy. They knew of no other position.

2: Their incentives were to maintain their lifestyle, and by proxy, others' lifestyles.

What I take from this:

Economies and supply chains are complicated, and the decision makers at the top have far less power than we think they do. If the elites chose to pass laws to end oppression, what would happen? I suspect that food prices and clothing prices would skyrocket, which would then cause some kind of social unrest, which would then push the elites out of their position.

Or, a greater lesson to take from this is that leadership is always incentivized to maintain the current social order; and that social change comes about from outside pressure; and that outside pressure for change only works when the change is to maintain a status quo elsewhere.