I completely disagree. It makes a huge difference, especially if the second son is not limited to a fratricidal competition with his brother but is given an even starting place in a meritocratic competition for places inside the local economy. Then his incentives will be to succeed locally. The main driver of the "second sons" is the favoring of the firstborn for inheritance and place. Primogeniture was both the success of the European feudal system (by avoiding Kenya's problem) and the driver of its external aggressiveness.
Well, we do completely disagree. I see the major problem with the "2'nd son" being a winner take all issue. It is completely irrelevant how the winner is selected. The problem is that the loser is shut out. The "2'nd son" problem disappears if both are allowed to achieve.
Often they don't even seem to consider the possibility of movement, but speak as if "people in the upper quintile" were a fixed set.
Given the rise of fortunes in the tech age, which are mostly new fortunes, it is hard to believe that anyone would doubt mobility. What I see as the crucial issue is that America has shifted very far to the superstar mentality. This is true in sports, entertainment, and business. Lots of kids in the ghetto dream (and spend hugh fractions of their time trying) of making it to the NBA, but there are not many slots to fill. Those that do make it are well compensated. Those how don't get nothing, or very little. The only relevance that mobility provides is that it means the NBA has the best players. IMO, it is OK in sports because those who don't make it can go do something more productive in life. It is a much bigger problem when our economy in general adapts this mindset. We reward a small % with most the wealth, but those at the bottom can't leave the economy to do something more useful elsewhere.
I'm not saying things are dangerous yet, it just interests me that the drift seems to be going that way. Difficult to predict what will happen, but one should not be oblivious to trends. |
