A different way the economy is able to deal with talented newcomers is to actually absorb them into the established order and let them become part of the upper class. You see, the established classes need the new vitality that the best of the aspiring class has to offer, but they want it only if they can harness it to their advantage in order to perpetuate their own dominance over society and the economy.

The real-life club is sort of like a country club. You have to be sponsored by a current member to get in, and your entry can’t be threatening to other club members who might vote against, or blackball, your admission.

In order for a current member to sponsor you, you need to be talented and you need to be doing something for him. Sometimes, if all you want to do is get into an exclusive university, all you need to be is talented. Even more importantly, though, the upper-class companies, whose grants support the university, need talented managers, engineers, and the like to stay in business. They need a pool of talent from which to draw their new leadership. That’s why they support the university in the first place. It’s in their own self-interest.

The trick is that once the students are educated, the upper classes don’t want them to emigrate or open fancy restaurants. They want them to join corporate America and contribute to reinvigorating or building the establishment.

The established club members need newcomers to accept the values and morals of the establishment until they come to embody it. Young lawyers aren’t just given partnerships in big firms. They’re exploited until they can think of nothing but the firm. For years the junior associates are forced to work eighty-hour weeks. They give up nights and weekends to brown-nose every partner with whom they come in contact. Ninety percent of these associates will wind up getting nothing but a paycheck for these efforts. (And just to be selected to compete in this manner, they had to be in the top 5 percent of law graduates.) The lucky few who finally are selected, though, get Nirvana—a huge partner’s salary at a big law firm. And so the best of the aspiring class becomes the established class.

But what of the true innovators, the entrepreneurs who build their own enterprises? How do they fit into the picture? Very well, thank you. Most fledgling businesses, you see, will require capital to get started. This capital doesn’t come cheap. The capital comes from the establishment as it is dispersed by the venture capitalists, who take huge, often controlling interests, in the new companies in exchange. In this way the establishment hedges their bets. They own not only the current means of production but have an interest in any new methods that might come to threaten them. As time goes on and the new company succeeds, it will need financing. Again, this time, through insurance companies and pension fund portfolios, the established interest increases its controlling stake. If the new company really wants to grow and do a joint venture with an established company, shares of the ownership in the new company must often be given to the establishment company, as part of the deal.

By the time the new company is ready to go public, “professional managers” (read, “establishment executives”) must be hired and given big option packages in order to provide the necessary experience and “give the market confidence.” These options also represent more of the ownership percentage going over to the establishment.