Four Class System Vs. Three Class System

Glenn Harlan Reynolds reviews Joel Kotkin's new book, "The New Class Conflict". I have not read the book, but Reynolds gives a description of Kotikn's premise that we can examine, even if it is not quite congruent with what Kotkin had in mind. Kotkin apparently identifies four classes, the uber-rich oligarch class, their intellectual defenders in the clerisy (media, government and academic/intellectual class), the expanding poor class, and the shrinking middle class.

So I'm wondering if this maps onto the three class system of Messiah Class, Victimhood Class, and Oppressor Class.

"As the Federal Reserve noted last week, despite a booming stock market and several years of "recovery," most Americans aren't doing well. In fact only the top 10% saw their incomes rise between 2010 and 2013.

One reason is that America's labor market, once famously flexible, has been rendered much less so. As The Economist notes, stifling occupational regulations make it harder for people, especially at the bottom of the economic ladder, to find jobs: "The spread of occupational licensing, for everything from horse massage to hair braiding, has raised barriers to entry for occupations that once required little or no training."

Those most affected are the young, the poor, and the unemployed. Meanwhile, members of Kotkin's "clerisy" find work teaching in schools needed for licensing, and in enforcing the licensing programs."

While managing the poor with more regulations does keep the poor, poor, I don't think that the clerisy Kotkin defines relates to the three class system very well. For one thing, Kotkin's clerisy class is not necessarily supportive of the filthy rich, and by comparison are part of the shrinking economic middle class.

"And as Radley Balko notes in the Washington Post, a thicket of petty regulation helps to keep the poor, poor. Traffic fines, fines for not using a city-approved garbage service, even parking tickets all provide revenue for municipal machines that support jobs for the clerisy — social workers, police, etc. — even as they make it harder for poor people to keep their heads above water, or find the kind of work that would let them rise above poverty."

Social workers and police don't seem to fit the original definition of clerisy, so it's possible that this reviewer didn't quite get it down the way that Kotkin meant it, or that Kotkin went off-rail somewhere.

And I still think that the division is better stated in terms of worldview: Many of the poor are poor in their worldview and because of their worldview. They vote for those who promise them stuff, just enough to get by, of course, without having to extend themselves too far. The Victims are worldview captives of the messiah class. The messiah class contains several economic classes, all with the same worldview. The massively rich want all the others to be equal to each other so that their is no guilt for their rich filthiness. The perpetually Leftist totalitarians want to control everyone else, and the Victimhood game is working for them at the moment. The banker class wants to be in the filthy rich class and adopts their worldviews. The academics want to be considered gods-on-earth, the natural worldview for the messiah class.

To the messiah class, cops and the middle class are considered the same as anyone else in the Oppressor Class. Some of the wealthy, notably the Koch Brothers as Harry Reid daily reminds us, are part of the Oppressor Class.

So are we to be better classified by economic classification, or by worldview classification? Or even racial classification? It seems to me that as long as votes actually mean something (a hazardous projection) that the worldview separation into exclusive categories might better define our classes.

When black gangs attack random whites and even other blacks, is it racial? Is it economic? Is it worldview?

Perhaps economics drives worldviews of those in poverty. But the economics are set up to do that by the worldviews of the messiah class which has the power and motive to do so. Poverty serves the messiah class well as a mere tool for the aggrandizement of the messiahs, as does the demonization of the designated Oppressor Class.

And I think that the classes are asserting moral outrage at each other rather than economic outrage. While this might be a suppressed Marxism vs. Anti-Marxism, it is still an apparent worldview clash rather than an actual clash of coherent economic strata.

So it still appears to me that the western civilization is being fragmented more due to worldview fractures than by economic factors or even race.