If upward income/class mobility isn’t actually possible for most people, belief in it won’t make it possible.
On the other hand, if upward mobility *is* possible, widespread *disbelief* in the “Horatio Alger narrative” can make it disappear.
If we’re in the world where productive work is a fairly reliable way to escape poverty, then it’s *really destructive* to tell people it’s impossible or block their paths.
If we’re in the world where the only ways to get money are fraud, corruption, and dumb luck, then telling people that they can get rich by hard work is misleading and prevents needed change in the system.
Which narrative is valuable and which is pernicious depends on *which one is true.*
Unfortunately, it’s hard to measure statistically, for the same reason it’s hard to answer the question “is dieting an effective way to lose weight?”
You can measure how many people achieve a goal (be it increased wealth or weight loss) but if that number is low, is it because the method doesn’t work, or because few people try, or because those that do try are doing it wrong?
“How often can productive work result in personal wealth?” is an empirical question but a hard one to answer, so we often resort to anecdote and intuition, which aren’t enough to resolve the question.
It’s obvious that not *all* wealth is acquired through productivity (see: aristocrats, lottery winners, con artists) and that wealth can *ever* be acquired through productivity (see: Thomas Edison) but the magnitude matters.
Either way, I want to live in a world where providing value to other people can be expected to result in rewards to oneself.
The more self-interest and empathy are opposites, the more conflict and destruction we can expect. The more people are rewarded for doing nice things, the more nice things we can expect.
The ideology that’s *definitely* pernicious, no matter which world we live in, is the one that says mutual benefit is in principle impossible or undesirable.
It’s usually subtextual, an assumption of hostility between humans that’s never questioned. *Of course* good for me means bad for you — not just in a particular situation but by default.
It can just be *true* that a given situation is adversarial. I’m not saying it’s wrong to notice conflicts. The thing I’m saying is bad is usually an *implicit* assumption of conflict that would sound fucked up if you ever said it out loud.
I don’t know the best single word for “a system that rewards behavior that benefits others”. A system where giving results in getting. Meritocratic, just, fair, incentive-aligned, cooperative, reciprocal?
There are productive arguments to be had around “Don’t destroy this institution’s substantial meritocratic/just qualities” vs “this institution is already so unjust there’s not much to preserve”
And there are sometimes ways to cut across the debate: proposals that tend towards meritocracy/justice regardless of how fair or unfair the world currently is.
