The Lowly masses, Venerating the Wealthy Elite

THERE'S AN INTERESTING experiment, and not only does it reveal tons about the way the world works, you can try it yourself, only, not in the comfort of your own home. Some researchers stopped at a stoplight, and, when the light turned green, just stayed there, idling, in a very expensive, fancy, luxury automobile, say, a brand new Rolls Royce. They timed how long it took before somebody sitting behind lost patience, and honked. Then they tried the same thing again, only this time they were driving a twenty five year old banged up cheap little compact, totally pitted out. As you may have supposed by now, the wait time until the first honk was considerably longer for the Rolls than the Pinto, each and every time. As is to say; give the rich guy all the respect we can, be patient with him, but hurry the poor slob along. Treat the rich one better, give more respect to the wealthy one. Of course the people who did the honking were different every time, but the experiment was tried often enough that the results seemed to show a pattern. Try it yourself! All you need are a couple of very different cars and a second hand, which you might be able to borrow, though the Cadillac might not come easy, even on loan. One wonders what the outcome would be if someone, or some group, tried this at hundreds or thousands of stoplights, in hundreds or thousands of American cities and towns, or even all over the world, involving thousands, or tens of thousands of people. the Trick would be to make sure that the contrast between the super fancy expensive car and the clunker was really, really obvious. Most American baby boomers can probably remember a time, say, the nineteen fifties or sixties, when the conspicuously wealthy were widely admired as a sort of aristocracy; and some of that still lingers today, though to a somewhat lesser degree, thank heavens. the doctor, the lawyer, with the larger home, more numerous cars, and better dressed kids deigning to grace the public schools, maybe. The privileged elite, so very deserving of their lofty social status, so worthy of respect and admiration merely for the sake of their accumulated and displayed wealth. Alas, the value system of free market capitalism, to whom the winners of the competition go the spoils, among which is the veneration by the lowly masses.