The Noble Much Obliged

This was a comment I left at the The Belmont Club.

In a feudal system, the military leaders that conquer a region become the new aristocracy. In Western Europe's recent wars, the conquering Military was not aristocratic or European. Nor was it interested in holding the reins of power, but did protect those who would pick the reins up. This has allowed a new aristocratic system to evolve.

Because after the last century's wars, it was the clerks of Europe (sometimes confused with intellectuals) who emerged triumphant. Their means of control are not martial but material in nature (basically, the disposition of taxes in a system of political "group" patronage). This allows women to acquire positions of great power without having to work through the male family line. In this system, power grows from an inked rubber stamp, flowery prose, poisoned logic, and a purple ribbon. In this (is it proper to say?) women are the equal of men.

Europe now develops into a "Clerical aristocracy" with de facto primogeniture at its center. In an emerging static system of hierarchy (National and European), the most prepared child of either sex will inherit a position of similar prestige to that of the parents. The guaranteed inheritance is not (yet) total and not (yet) explicit.

In a martial aristocracy the "militarists" control, with some difficulty, the clerks. It is more essential that the clerical aristocrats control the military. In both systems, the Aristocracy wants to control the "guns" and keep them out of the hands of the commoners (unless especially trusted and favored). But not so much out of the hands of the "healthy" criminal class (those uninterested in attacking the aristocracy). Aristocrats look at healthy criminals as competitors and, at times, allies in the exploitation of commoners.

The Noble clerks perpetuate their ruling class by properly designing the education and testing system so that the "class favorites" are from the favored class. Selection from this "merit pool" would be influenced by family connections -- with the candidates culled as they are promoted up the ranks.

In such an emergent system having more than two children would be considered suspect. You could argue the third was an accident. But the fourth would constitute a kind of rebellion, since the promotion of your brood will leave fewer choice positions for the "child" of others. This "gang of siblings" could become bandits grabbing control of bureaucratic turf. As a matter of "noble" self-defense, they would be held back.

A clerical aristocracy would not be wealth creators but wealth administrators. The multiplication of social programs would be accompanied by a multiplication of noble positions (with squires and yeoman attached) and a cohort of dependent clients. The nobles would be highly suspicious of freewheeling capitalism since it provides an independent route to status and prestige. Besides, who knows where those free wheels are going to go a-wheeling? The Noble clerks sell free lunches, and their little hot dog stand might get knocked over. The free lunch is a con, of course, but it is also a living for the proprietor and his Noble patron.

The (ideally unarmed) commoners would be dependent on this system even as they became cynical about it. They see that children, as a class, are an excuse for the multiplication of Noble positions -- and an excuse for higher taxes. This turns their own immediate descendants into a class enemy. Also, in a static society, it makes sense to concentrate your limited influence on preparing and marketing one child to achieve one low-level clerical position -- a position from which the child can climb the greased pole and establish a clerical line.

But the "Nobles" need a population that the domesticated commoners are not producing. One solution is to import them -- but in a manner where they will provide additional Noble positions (meaning additional expenditures to the "department" and, ideally, tax revenues to the government) while not competing for those positions. The Nobility does not need a second generation of honor students from their immigrant class -- quite the opposite. Keeping them separate from the native commoners and engendering mutual hostility between them is "Maintaining an Aristocracy 101." They put that "Marxist dialectic" they all studied to work -- in reverse.

What is the way forward?

1. Make the new Aristocracy explicit, along with a new Chivalric Code. Only one, or at most two, noble children continue the clerical line. Lesser children enter a class of lower clerical gentry. Or they can be married into the class of (properly regulated, constrained, and most of all administered) business people. This will strengthen a system of family alliances and make all dependent on the "new chivalry."

2. Recognize that the system is exploitive of future generations and cut the commoner parents into the deal. This can be done by selling new infants a reverse "savings bond" where the parents keep the money. Right now only the Nobles profit from the immediate entry of a new baby into "the system." With this bond, commoners will get a monthly stipend for each child they have. The children will begin paying the bond back when they reach 22. This will be a clear profit for the first generation of commoner parents. The second generation would have to perpetuate the system to get their money back. If they don't have children they will live in poverty even worse than what they are already experiencing (we are not designing a system that allows people to thrive -- only one that pretends to).

Perhaps the Swedes can lead the way here. US to follow.