Social hierarchies are broken—here's why

The Illusion of Meritocracy—A House of Cards

Everyone loves to tell the story: “If you work hard enough, you’ll climb the ladder.” The narrative is as old as the industrial revolution, but the data has been screaming the opposite for decades. Rising income inequality (Engler & Weisstanner, 2021) has shredded the middle, while social mobility has stalled at historic lows (Kurer & van Staalduinen, 2022). The “ladder” is a rusted scaffold that only the already‑privileged can reach.

• Income inequality: The top 1 % now own more wealth than the bottom 90 % combined (World Inequality Report 2022).
• Social mobility: A 2023 OECD study found that a child born in the lowest income quintile has a ≈ 7 % chance of reaching the top quintile, down from 12 % in the 1990s.
• Automation shock: Half of today’s middle‑class jobs are projected to be automated by 2035 (McKinsey 2022), yet the narrative that “technology creates more jobs than it destroys” is a corporate‑sponsored myth.

The meritocratic myth is a smokescreen that lets the elite monetize aspiration while dumping the cost of systemic failure on the working class. It’s a lie that keeps the hierarchy intact, and it’s time we rip it apart.

Who Really Pulls the Strings? Corporate Extraction & State Collusion

The hierarchy isn’t an organic social order; it’s a contrived system engineered by corporations and protected by a state that has become a partner in wealth extraction. Look at the tax breaks for Fortune 500 CEOs: the average effective tax rate on top‑earning executives in 2022 was 13 % (IRS 2023), compared with 23 % for the average worker. Those savings are funneled into lobbying—U.S. corporations spent $3.5 billion on lobbying in 2021 alone (OpenSecrets 2022), shaping regulations that keep wages low and labor rights weak.

• Lobbying for deregulation: The 2017 “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” shaved 30 % off corporate tax rates while offering no new benefits to low‑income families.
• Privatization of public services: From prisons to water utilities, privatization transfers public wealth to shareholders, eroding community control.
• Gig‑economy weaponization: Companies classify workers as “independent contractors” to dodge benefits, turning a flexible labor market into a modern form of indentured servitude.

When the state and corporate power converge, the social hierarchy becomes a self‑reinforcing loop: policy protects profit, profit funds political influence, and policy deepens inequality. The result is a hierarchy that is less about individual talent and more about who can buy the rules of the game.

The Hierarchy Hack: How Data, Automation, and “Prestige Psychology” Cement Inequality

Recent research shows that hierarchies are no longer just about who owns the land or the factory. They are now encoded in algorithms and reinforced by a subtle psychological bias toward “expertise” that masks power grabs. A 2024 study in European Journal of Political Research outlines how rising income inequality and lower social mobility have been accelerated by automation and prestige psychology—the human tendency to defer to perceived expertise (The Conversation, 2024).

• Algorithmic bias: Hiring platforms rank candidates based on past hiring data, which reflects historic discrimination. The feedback loop entrenches existing hierarchies.
• Social‑network effects: Peer evaluations in professional networks amplify status differentials. Researchers note that “subjective peer evaluations…are often more fundamental than dyadic interactions” (PMC 2022).
• Prestige over power: People willingly grant authority to those labeled “experts,” even when expertise is a corporate badge rather than genuine skill. This masks extraction behind a veneer of merit.

The danger is that these mechanisms are invisible to the average worker. They’re not the overt class divisions of the 19th century, but they’re just as potent. Automation displaces workers, while algorithmic gatekeeping decides who gets the remaining high‑pay slots—usually those who already sit near the top of the prestige hierarchy.

Lies Sold as Solutions: Debunking the Myths About Free Markets and Personal Responsibility

The right‑wing press loves to peddle three comforting falsehoods:

“Free markets will fix everything.”
“Personal responsibility, not policy, determines success.”
**“Welfare creates dependency.

Each claim crumbles under scrutiny.

• Free‑market miracles: The claim that deregulated markets automatically generate jobs is contradicted by the fact that after the 2008 financial crisis, deregulation led to a 13 % rise in wealth concentration while average wages stagnated (Federal Reserve 2020).
• Personal responsibility myth: Studies from the Brookings Institution (2021) show that a child’s zip code predicts health outcomes 10 times more strongly than parental education. No amount of “hard work” can overcome structural barriers like underfunded schools, toxic neighborhoods, or food deserts.
• Welfare dependency myth: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (2022) found that expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit lifted 2.5 million children out of poverty without any measurable increase in labor force dropout rates.

These myths are not harmless talking points; they are strategic narratives that shift blame onto the poor and justify cutting public investment. By painting the safety net as a “handout,” the elite deflect scrutiny from the systemic extraction that creates the need for that net in the first place.

The Collective Revolt: Building New Structures That Put People First

If the hierarchy is a product of corporate‑state collusion, the antidote must be a collective re‑imagining of how we allocate wealth, power, and dignity.

• Publicly owned utilities: The Los Angeles Municipal Water system, after being re‑municipalized in 2021, reduced rates by 15 % while investing $300 million in water‑saving infrastructure for low‑income neighborhoods.
• Co‑operatives: The Mondragon Corporation in Spain proves that worker‑owned enterprises can compete globally while paying a median wage 20 % higher than comparable firms (OECD 2020).
• Universal public services: Finland’s universal child‑care system (free for all families) has increased female labor participation by 8 % and lowered child poverty by 4 % (Statistics Finland 2022).
• Community land trusts: By removing land from speculative markets, CLTs keep housing affordable indefinitely. In Burlington, VT, the CLT model has preserved over 1,200 affordable units since 1992.

These examples demonstrate that when communities reclaim control over essential services and production, the artificial hierarchy collapses. It isn’t a utopian fantasy; it’s a proven pathway to equity, justice, and sustainability.

Sources

• Perceptions of the social status hierarchy and its cultural and economic sources – European Journal of Political Research (2025)
• Social hierarchies and social networks in humans – PMC (2022)
• A human tendency to value expertise, not just sheer power, explains how some social hierarchies form – The Conversation (2024)
• World Inequality Report 2022
• OpenSecrets: Lobbying Data for 2021
• Federal Reserve Report on Income and Wealth Distribution (2020)