Brand Sussex, Karl Marx and why pitchforks matter.

Harry and Meghan are seceding from the monarchy -- well, except for Harry's inheritance. It's a useful reminder that inherited wealth and not "inventing a better mousetrap" is where the One Percent got all that money in the first place.

Seen in this harsh light, amok capitalism and hidebound feudalism have quite a lot more in common than might be evident. This said, I wish Brand Sussex much luck; someday they may even appear on the cover of Extol Magazine.

But there's really no reason whatever why any of us should give a damn. 

Harry, Meghan and Marx at The Economist

Brand Sussex represents the biggest threat to the monarchy so far

 ... The Sussexes are doing something new. They are embracing capitalism in its rawest, most modern form: global rather than national, virtual rather than solid, driven, by its ineluctable logic, constantly to produce new fads and fashions.

This type of capitalism is the inverse of feudalism. In a feudal society you are bound to your followers by mutual bonds of obligation. In 21st-century capitalism you accumulate followers in order to monetise them. In a feudal society you are bound to plots of land: Harry is the Duke of Sussex while his elder brother is the Duke of Cambridge. In a 21st-century-capitalist society you are propelled around the globe in pursuit of the latest marketing opportunity. It is only fitting that the principal agent of the current debacle, Meghan Markle, is the product of an entertainment business that has done more than any other industry to fulfil Marx’s prediction that “all that is sacred” would be “profaned” and “all that is solid” would “melt into air”.

snip

The daylight that Walter Bagehot said should not be let in upon the magic of monarchy is as nothing to the glare of 21st-century capitalism.

Just tell me why we should refrain from pointing to the wealth amassed by religious personalities like the late Rev. Berniece Hicks.

The Main Street "house" owned by the late Rev. Hicks is up for sale.

Meanwhile in Indianapolis, I believe Session 5 of the estate auction is scheduled in October.

Even the auctioneer is thunderstruck.

“In nearly 30 years as an auctioneer, I’ve never seen a collection as large as this one”, said Darin Lawson, CAI, President, Wickliff Auctioneers. “Our staff is eager to begin the process of sorting and cataloguing all items, and making them available for worldwide bidding.”

Hicks was a preacher, and she had a church. Maybe she owned the church; maybe it owned her. Obviously she owned lots of stuff. One needn't devote hours of research to grasp that the church Hicks founded has been controversial almost from the beginning, as this front page from 1979 attests.

Note the effort made 40 years ago by the Courier-Journal to get Hicks' and her church's side of the story (naturally the News and Tribune didn't bother in the aftermath of Hicks' death, preferring the usual platitudes), and indeed, even I am compelled to admit there are two sides.

I heard from local residents over the weekend who've lost family members to what they consider is a cult. Others have spoken of love and service to mankind.

And: A million dollar house in New Albany, and a collection of valuable so vast that is makes a luxury auctioneer's head spin.

I'm an atheist, and my skepticism pertaining to religion predates all the other aspects of my life (travel, beer, politics, small business ownership) that readers may know about me.

From mainline mega-churches old and new to Christianity's hundreds of bizarre splinter sects, about the only points of agreement amid the cacophony is derision toward rationalists like me.

I've no desire to proselytize non-belief -- it doesn't even make sense to do so -- but from my perspective as an onlooker, the "prosperity gospel" alibi used to shield personages like Hicks surely is the most cynical P.T. Barnum-like of all notions somehow derived from the figure of Jesus as handed down to us. Even a cursed, filthy, drunken atheist can read desert scrawlings and conclude that the Jesus narrative, real or contrived, had nothing to do with wealth accumulation. 

But didn't all those church members tithe voluntarily?

I'm sure many did, although in any power structure there's a long discussion to be had about the nature of "voluntary," because it's seldom all that simple. Significantly, even if the members tithed "voluntarily," this fact in itself tells us nothing about the manner by which their faith was manipulated and their money spent.

Lifestyles of the ostentatiously rich and pious? Okay, but don't expect me to look the other way. 

Following is an excerpt from Elmer Gantry, the classic satirical novel, which makes this point in gripping fashion.

Elmer Gantry, the traveling evangelist who loved whiskey, women and wealth, was conceived by Sinclair Lewis in a best-selling 1927 novel. Lewis went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Gantry went on to lofty-synonym status: Displays of hypocrisy and showmanship will often evoke his name, especially in reference to preachers — and, increasingly so, to politicians.

In this passage, the garrulous wealth-accumulating charlatan preacher Gantry converses with the humble and impoverished true believer, Pastor Pengilly – and it happens in Indiana, of all places.

---

He came with a boom and a flash to the town of Blackfoot Creek, Indiana, and there the local committee permitted the Methodist minister, one Andrew Pengilly, to entertain his renowned brother priest ... when he heard that the Reverend Elmer Gantry was coming, Mr. Pengilly murmured to the local committee that it would be a pleasure to put up Mr. Gantry and save him from the scurfy village hotel.

He had read of Mr. Gantry as an impressive orator, a courageous fighter against Sin. Mr. Pengilly sighed. Himself, somehow, he had never been able to find so very much Sin about. His fault. A silly old dreamer. He rejoiced that he, the mousy village curé, was about to have here, glorifying his cottage, a St. Michael in dazzling armor.

After the evening Chautauqua Elmer sat in Mr. Pengilly’s hovel, and he was graciously condescending.

“You say, Brother Pengilly, that you’ve heard of our work at Wellspring? But do we get so near the hearts of the weak and unfortunate as you here? Oh, no; sometimes I think that my first pastorate, in a town smaller than this, was in many ways more blessed than our tremendous to-do in the great city. And what IS accomplished there is no credit to me. I have such splendid, such touchingly loyal assistants — Mr. Webster, the assistant pastor — such a consecrated worker, and yet right on the job — and Mr. Wink, and Miss Weezeger, the deaconess, and DEAR Miss Bundle, the secretary — SUCH a faithful soul, SO industrious. Oh, yes, I am singularly blessed! But, uh, but — Given these people, who really do the work, we’ve been able to put over some pretty good things — with God’s leading. Why, say, we’ve started the only class in show-window dressing in any church in the United States — and I should suppose England and France! We’ve already seen the most wonderful results, not only in raising the salary of several of the fine young men in our church, but in increasing business throughout the city and improving the appearance of show-windows, and you know how much that adds to the beauty of the down-town streets! And the crowds do seem to be increasing steadily. We had over eleven hundred present on my last Sunday evening in Zenith, and that in summer! And during the season we often have nearly eighteen hundred, in an auditorium that’s only supposed to seat sixteen hundred! And with all modesty — it’s not my doing but the methods we’re working up — I think I may say that every man, woman, and child goes away happy and yet with a message to sustain ’em through the week. You see — oh, of course I give ’em the straight old-time gospel in my sermon — I’m not the least bit afraid of talking right up to ’em and reminding them of the awful consequences of sin and ignorance and spiritual sloth. Yes, sir! No blinking the horrors of the old-time proven Hell, not in any church I’M running! But also we make ’em get together, and their pastor is just one of their own chums, and we sing cheerful, comforting songs, and do they like it? Say! It shows up in the collections!”

“Mr. Gantry,” said Andrew Pengilly, “why don’t you believe in God?”

Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls historian Rutger Bregman a "tiny brain...moron," then gets all anatomical.

First the serious part.

Says Rutger Bregman, the hero of Davos: "No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there."

Altruism, capitalism, charity and drinking before noon.

Now the hilarity.

Historian who confronted Davos billionaires leaks Tucker Carlson rant, by Sam Wolfson (The Guardian)

Historian who confronted Davos billionaires leaks Tucker Carlson rant

• Rutger Bregman clashes with Fox News host in unseen clip
• Visibly annoyed Carlson tells Bregman: ‘Go fuck yourself’

Rutger Bregman is the Dutch historian who became a global sensation after an appearance at this year’s Davos summit, where he accused attending billionaires of ignoring taxation. Now he has created another viral moment in an extremely uncomfortable interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.

Bregman so riled Carson with his accusations of hypocrisy, critiques of Fox’s conservative agenda, and attacks on Donald Trump that the TV host called him a “moron” and angrily told him: “Go fuck yourself.”

According to Bregman, he recorded the interview with Carlson last week and it was scheduled to air later, but never did ...

Says Rutger Bregman, the hero of Davos: "No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there."

And he's absolutely right.

Rutger Bregman at was a sensation at Davos, but the Dutch historian was repeating something we all should know: from the end of WWII through the advent of Ronald Ray-gun's presidency, the American economic system worked pretty damn well with a marginal tax rate higher than 70%. When Ray-gun instituted tax cuts under the banner of trickle-down economics, wealth instead flooded upward -- and these days, poultry workers chopping up chickens wear diapers because they're not allowed a bathroom break.

Bregman wrote the following for The Guardian in 2017. It's a long read but essential.

No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there

Bankers, pharmaceutical giants, Google, Facebook ... a new breed of rentiers are at the very top of the pyramid and they’re sucking the rest of us dry

This piece is about one of the biggest taboos of our times. About a truth that is seldom acknowledged, and yet – on reflection – cannot be denied. The truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state.

These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have “made it”. By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world.

Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded – the philosophy of the left is that the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, while the right fears high taxes will blunt enterprise – but across the spectrum virtually all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top.

So entrenched is this assumption that it’s even embedded in our language. When economists talk about “productivity”, what they really mean is the size of your paycheck. And when we use terms like “welfare state”, “redistribution” and “solidarity”, we’re implicitly subscribing to the view that there are two strata: the makers and the takers, the producers and the couch potatoes, the hardworking citizens – and everybody else.

In reality, it is precisely the other way around. In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity. Meanwhile, a growing share of those we hail as “successful” and “innovative” are earning their wealth at the expense of others. The people getting the biggest handouts are not down around the bottom, but at the very top. Yet their perilous dependence on others goes unseen. Almost no one talks about it. Even for politicians on the left, it’s a non-issue.

To understand why, we need to recognise that there are two ways of making money. The first is what most of us do: work. That means tapping into our knowledge and know-how (our “human capital” in economic terms) to create something new, whether that’s a takeout app, a wedding cake, a stylish updo, or a perfectly poured pint. To work is to create. Ergo, to work is to create new wealth.

But there is also a second way to make money. That’s the rentier way: by leveraging control over something that already exists, such as land, knowledge, or money, to increase your wealth. You produce nothing, yet profit nonetheless. By definition, the rentier makes his living at others’ expense, using his power to claim economic benefit.

For those who know their history, the term “rentier” conjures associations with heirs to estates, such as the 19th century’s large class of useless rentiers, well-described by the French economist Thomas Piketty. These days, that class is making a comeback. (Ironically, however, conservative politicians adamantly defend the rentier’s right to lounge around, deeming inheritance tax to be the height of unfairness.) But there are also other ways of rent-seeking. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, from big pharma to the lobby machines in Washington and Westminster, zoom in and you’ll see rentiers everywhere ...

Every day, too: "NFL Owners Sure Came Off Like Dumbasses When They Met With Players About Protests."

"Don’t ever get old. Don’t ever get rich."

Terry Pegula, owner of the Buffalo Bills, might be interested to know that Charlton Heston retired from the National Rifle Association in 2003 and died in 2008.

One wonders if Pegula ever read a book.

NFL Owners Sure Came Off Like Dumbasses When They Met With Players About Protests, by Tom Ley (Deadspin)

... How do advanced age and generational wealth affect a person’s ability to have a meaningful discussion about a heavy subject? Not well, it seems. The Times reports that the meeting was full of school-room invocations of Wise Men Of History—Falcons owner Arthur Blank quoted Thomas Paine while Dolphins owner Stephen Ross brought up Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march on Selma—and failed metaphors. Bills owner Terry Pegula was in rare form.

Then the pinnacle of foot-shot references from Pegula, who made his fortune in fracking.

And then Pegula came back with whatever the hell this idea is:

Pegula offered that he thought the league was battling a perception and “media problem.” He said it would be great for the league to find a compelling spokesman — preferably a player — to promote all of the good things they were doing together. He suggested that the league could learn from the gun lobby in this regard.

“For years we’ve watched the National Rifle Association use Charlton Heston as a figurehead,” Pegula said. “We need a spokesman.”

"It turns out the rich really are different from you and me. They drive like entitled jerks."

Without further comment.

It's official: The fancier the car, the more likely the driver's a jerk, by Alfred Lubrano (Philly News)

It turns out the rich really are different from you and me. They drive like entitled jerks.

They’re middle-finger-pointing, ride-up-your-trunk-bullying, outta-my-way motorists.

That’s the authoritative word from researchers who keep track of this sort of thing.

Three studies over the last five years show that people driving expensive cars were more likely to cut off other motorists and less likely to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks ...

You're adept at making tons and tons of money? That's nice. Now, get off my porch.

A few weeks back, I began to compile a list of the idols that get extremely short shrift in this contrarian's world.

These are the tenets of conventional Americans wisdom that I refrain from worshiping. If allowed to bop along unprovoked, I also generally don't openly disdain them, but today I'm feeling a tad challenged.

Among the concepts I refuse to worship are the narrow (automobiles as genital extension mechanisms, big-time college sports, Miller Lite tastes great) and the broad (gods and religion; flags and patriotism).

Capitalism's pretty high on my list of conceptual conscientious objection, especially the way we've come to practice it in contemporary America.

I accept that it takes all sorts to make a world, and for someone to be good at running a business is fine by me. I've even done it on an often unintentionally non-profit basis.

However, to me this skill exists alongside musical aptitude, vocational ability, linguistic prowess, and so many other components that define a human being.

When it comes to elevating capitalism to a value system I'm supposed to accept without question and venerate as the highest aspiration of a man or woman, then you can count me out. If memory serves, neither the Constitution nor the Bible stipulates capitalism, although as noted in the space only recently, a case can be made for Buddhist Economics.

The morning Constitutional: "It is capitalism that must be overcome to solve its inherent inequality problem."

The reason for today's rumination stems directly from a conversation I had yesterday, in which it was deemed an item of central importance that a wealthy man had been born poor, and raised himself up to praiseworthy status as a billionaire -- verily, a "self-made man."

Please.

Tellingly, even an obvious disciple of "the business of America is business" is capable of seeing through the fallacy of the "self-made man," as here:

Self-Made Man - No Such Thing, by Mike Myatt (Forbes)

Do you view yourself as a self-made man or woman? If you do, you may want to take another look in the mirror. What’s wrong with the “self-made” theory? Everything. If your pride, ego, arrogance, insecurity, or ignorance keeps you from recognizing the contributions of others, then it’s time for a wake-up call. If your hubris is overwhelming your humility then the text that follows is written just for you.

An article at Slate takes the debunking considerably further.

The Self-Made Man: The story of America’s most pliable, pernicious, irrepressible myth, by John Swansburg

I’ve always admired what my father accomplished, and how he accomplished it, while not quite sharing his confidence that his experience was repeatable, especially in our current economic moment. The yawning gap between the dearly held ideal of the self-made man and the difficulty of actually improving your station in America, particularly if you’re poor, made me wonder about the utility of the rags-to-riches story. Is it a healthy myth that inspires us to aim high? Or is it more like a mass delusion keeping us from confronting the fact that poor Americans tend to remain poor Americans, regardless of how hard they work?

The reason I personally refuse to worship the idol of the "self-made man" (note the traditionally and annoyingly masculine usage) parallels my unwillingness to fetishize capitalism, because in both instances, the common denominator is the accumulation of money and wealth to the exclusion of other characteristics that might be plausibly applied to a definition of adult success.

Put another way, we're all self-made to an extent in terms of our interests; taking into account the Forbes columnist Myatt's valuable listing of the ways we've all been helped by others along the way -- teachers, coaches, mentors, friends, co-workers -- most of us discover nuanced interests, and even when deprived of material resources, these are honed into what delights and defines us.

Impoverishment surely closes off certain of these avenues of self-development, and I'd be a fool to deny it. But I'd be equally foolish to say that the impoverished might choose at any point to embrace capital accumulation and lift themselves to wealth and influence. It plainly isn't so in most cases, and to push the analogy even further, some of us aren't inclined to be capitalists, just as I'm not equipped (or inclined) to sing Pavarotti's arias.

All the same, there might be a very poor 50-year-old man who can sing these parts because he's been practicing them on his own, passionately, his whole life, and to me, such a man would be eligible for lauding as "self-made" as much as any billionaire.

He's more likely to be denigrated because he remains poor. It always has to be about money, right?

Not in my world.

I may know how to play a game, and I may be good at it (or not). It doesn't mean it's the right game to play.

James Baldwin, the second part: On understanding reparations.

(James Baldwin, the first part)

James Baldwin, speaking at Cambridge University's Union Hall in 1965 during his debate with William F. Buckley.

You are thirty by now and nothing you have done has helped to escape the trap. But what is worse than that, is that nothing you have done, and as far as you can tell, nothing you can do, will save your son or your daughter from meeting the same disaster and not impossibly coming to the same end. Now, we’re speaking about expense. I suppose there are several ways to address oneself, to some attempt to find what that word means here. Let me put it this way, that from a very literal point of view, the harbors and the ports, and the railroads of the country–the economy, especially of the Southern states–could not conceivably be what it has become, if they had not had, and do not still have, indeed for so long, for many generations, cheap labor. I am stating very seriously, and this is not an overstatement: *I* picked the cotton, *I* carried it to the market, and *I* built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing.

The Southern oligarchy, which has still today so very much power in Washington, and therefore some power in the world, was created by my labor and my sweat, and the violation of my women and the murder of my children. This, in the land of the free, and the home of the brave.And no one can challenge that statement. It is a matter of historical record.

On August 16, an article in the Louisville Eccentric Observer caused heads to explode on social media.

White people, here are 10 requests from a Black Lives Matter leader, by Chanelle Helm

[This article is part of a package covering Louisville’s reaction to Charlottesville. Check out the other pieces, including Ricky Jones’ column “Black People Should Arm Themselves Now!” and Erica Rucker’s “America… where are you going?”]

Some things I’m thinking about that should change (in that Southern, black grandmama voice):

1. White people, if you don’t have any descendants, will your property to a black or brown family. Preferably one that lives in generational poverty ...

I've been aware for some time that there is a persuasive argument for reparations, and thankfully, Erika Rucker was right there in LEO the following week (August 23) to help explain.

On understanding reparations

When Chanelle Helm penned “White people, here are 10 requests from a Black Lives Matter leader” for LEO’s last issue, many readers were unprepared to hear or decipher what she meant. Helm’s piece was satirical, but the point she expressed is serious — America needs to start talking about how to help families who live in generational poverty and make racism and racists uncomfortable. America has to fix these issues.

This message was lost for some in the hyperbole, but, sometimes, to wake people up, shaking them up is the best method. This piece was effective. The reactions were a mix of confusion and outrage. White readers were polarized and frightened. Many reacted emotionally, instead of trying to figure out what Helm was really saying.

America has no idea what it means to create restorative justice, or to institute reparations. Too many believe that reparations means sending everyone in an oppressed group a check, or that a black family would have the rights to move into your personal home as repayment for historical slavery and systemic racism. Reparations is a debt, not a handout.

Americans have missed the point for a long time ...

Then I read this article in The Guardian with interest, although finding myself a tad puzzled by the search term "utopian thinking" affixed to it.

Is it really?

The west’s wealth is based on slavery. Reparations should be paid, by Kehinde Andrews

If the countries and companies that became rich by exploiting human flesh paid their debts, the world would be a radically different and fairer place

The west is built on racism; and not in some abstract or merely historical way. Genocide of over 80% of the natives of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries paved the way for the enslavement of millions of African people and the conquest of the world by European powers. At one point Britain’s empire was so vast that it covered two-thirds of the globe, so large that the sun never set on the dominion. The scientific, political and industrial revolutions the British school system is so proud to proclaim, were only possible because of the blood, toil and bounty exploited from the “darker nations” from across the globe. Colonialism left Africa, Asia and the Caribbean underdeveloped, as the regions were used to develop the west while holding back progress in what we now call the global south.

Any discussion of progress in racial equality in Britain or the rest of the world has to acknowledge the damage that the west has inflicted on the former colonies and their descendants. Malcolm X explained that “if you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, that’s not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress comes from healing the wound that the blow made”. Instead of attempting to fix the damage, we are completely unable to progress on issues of equality because countries such as Britain “won’t even admit the knife is there” ...

... Make no mistake, the knife is still planted firmly in our backs and it is time we not only removed it, but healed the wound. The only way to do this is for reparations to be paid to wipe out the unmistakable debt the west owes.

Reparations have been routinely dismissed by British leaders, including David Cameron who told Jamaica that it was best to “move on” rather than expect so much as an apology. But as dismissive as Cameron was, there are plenty of precedents for the repayment of historical and economic debts.

I've only excerpted these links. You owe it to yourself to read them all in their entirety. I feel like I understand the concept of reparations far better than before, and Erika's right: It's going to take a very long time, but of course we have to start somewhere, at some point.

We can scream, wail and wave fists, but it's hard to contest the fundamental veracity of these positions -- and to conjure a glib way to end this post.

A fetishization of wealth vs. capitalism's honorable foot soldiers.

Has it really been 13 years since the release of Fast Food Nation, the book by Eric Schlosser that examined "the local and global influence of the United States fast food industry"?

On the general theme of widening inequality, two recent articles in the Guardian considered food and eating. First, the moralism of fast food critics.

Don't look down on those who eat fast food, by Kathryn Hughes

Moralists sneer at people who choose McDonald's or KFC. But not all of us have time to cook a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Then, the glorification of wealth through dining.

London's restaurants: a grotesque display of opulence, by Tanya Gold

In the naked fetishisation of wealth that dominates the capital's most fashionable eating places there are no critics.

Perhaps the definitive word on Donald Sterling, the NBA, the infotainment media, and rich folks liquidating their assets.

Thanks to RG for this link, which seems tangentially connected with yesterday's posting about Thomas Pinketty.

Why I Don’t Care What Donald Sterling Says, by Plexico Gingrich (Ruthless Reviews)

Are you saying that being a slumlord who gets obscenely rich by fucking over all of his tenants, and who discriminates against minorities, is worse than saying something nasty about Magic Johnson?

We’ve come full circle. Systematic oppression, be it racist or classist, is no longer a concern. We’re totally distracted by matters of etiquette and stupid morality plays staged by the infotainment media. We don’t care about problems, we care about judging other people as being bad so we can pat ourselves on the back for not being in the KKK. Meanwhile, you could argue that anyone making money off the NBA, be they player, owner or media is a hypocrite to complain about drunk uncle racism.

"The top 1 percent cannot evade its share of responsibility for the growing gulf in American society."

Chickens, Colonel Sanders ... you know.

OPINION: The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent, by Chrystia Freeland (New York Times)

... The story of Venice’s rise and fall is told by the scholars Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” as an illustration of their thesis that what separates successful states from failed ones is whether their governing institutions are inclusive or extractive. Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness.

The 1%: "Their apparent success is a cognitive illusion."

Required reading for One Southern Indiana's wannabe small-pond oligarchs.

The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen; Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt, by George Monbiot (guardian.co.uk)

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.