What particularly caught my attention in this reading assignment was the ascension of the merchant classes to nobility through the purchasing of titles, forging of genealogy, and education of their offspring. This method of usurping power from the old nobility using their extensive financial weight and then pulling the ladder up behind them to ensure the next wave of merchants can't follow their path is mimicked almost exactly in capitalist American society today. An entrepreneur goes out, makes alot of money, creates an empire, and then goes about supporting legislation and laws that ensure lower tax rates for corporations and allow them to buy out any upstart competition, making it even harder for someone else to accomplish what he has accomplished. In this same way the merchant class gained power by becoming involved in money lending, and in a few generations managed to change the laws and political structure, limiting access to the powerful groups and political offices to those that were already elite. Now all the power was in the hands of the top 0.5 - 3% of the population (sound familiar?). The old system of cities taking care of their own was gone, and city or town loyalty evaporated when the wealthy went elsewhere after their long removed educations were complete. These trends and policies further contributed to a widening separation between the classes. It is evident that humanity hasn't come that far in 400 years, since we are still functioning under, and tolerating a system that allows a few have's, and many many more have not's.
I found the instances of the older nobility trying to humiliate anyone they view as "new" or "illegitimate" nobility quite funny, especially since by the end of the 1600's most nobility had some merchant ancestors hiding in their family trees. The fear and paranoia that this new nobility had of being ousted was so great because they knew just as easily as they had done it in a few generations, someone else could do it to them.
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