In my opinion, HG Wells made one mistake in his Time Machine novel. Humanity’s dominant class will never be forced to descend into the earth’s depths and become neo-Neanderthals like the Morlocks. Instead, as we are seeing in this century the elites are pale, urban, and effete, looking more like scrawny, Peleton-riding Eloi than the Morlocks. I ask you, don’t the Eloi you see sitting at their bistro tables with their fruit cups and gluten free vegan dishes remind you of the long ago Sunday brunches of the swells in the early black and white, talkie pictures? Eating healthy, check. No children, yup. No elderly, oh yeah.

Wells lived and wrote at the tail-end of the first wave of the Industrial Revolution, when wealth came from the product of the smokestack, mass assembly line production and cheap urban labor. Now wealth comes from knowledge, credentials, creativity and cheap offshored labor. Lest we think that this new meritocracy represents an advance, think again. This is 1984, Brave New World territory. For example, they softly importune us to let our phone apps police our social distancing duties and socially track us as we move about our separate but equal worlds.

These new agey, pasty faced elites talk a good game. After all, the articulation of moral purpose rather than the achievement of a practical good (may Daniel Patrick Moynihan RIP) is a key attribute of these elite members’ mores. They champion the cause of the unwashed Morlocks, but that is a simple voodoo fetish to ward off the furies of guilt generated by wealth. But never think for a minute that they will jeopardize their few children’s path to the Ivy-elect by sharing a classroom with “them.”

That’s why at least to me their proffered solutions to today’s current inequities ring hollow. They have no skin in the game and never will. They are just the latest in a long line of Darwinian winners who are blind to Middle America’s decline that so many of us have witnessed, the growing, widespread financial stratification by geography and zip code, the economic parochialism we see evident in our popular culture and on and on. All of this is, at least in large part is the fruit of meritocracy. This near religious ideology maintains that one’s place in society should be determined solely by one’s “merit.” This essential feature of any just society is foundational to meritocrats and their ideas’ claim to legitimacy. Thus, by the same token, anything that gets in the way of the individual’s maximizing the social and economic rewards that could accrue because of his individual skills and talents — his merit — is unjust.

My deceased family members were and those in my generation remain builders, financiers and engineers. My #1 brother has, I reckon, a similar jaundiced view of these wannabe do gooders. He designed, built and operated factories in China and Asia, making all sorts of widgets, subassemblies and machines. The social utility of his work was a side benefit. He considered it a job and focused at the job at hand. The fact that he left decent jobs in his wake was an unintended consequence. Yet, he was probably responsible for more wealth creation and escape from abject poverty than any 1000 of these current do-gooders.

What I guess I am suggesting to these elites is that they voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American urban creative gives them. I am here to entreat them to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right they have to impose their benevolence and wisdom upon the rest of us. I am here to challenge them to recognize their inability, powerlessness and incapacity to do the “good” which they intend to do.

I beg them to use their money, status and education to travel far away from their super powerful and rich zip codes and experience the real America. Come to look, come to sup with us, and to enjoy our gardens and our other simple pleasures. Yes, even come to study. But do not come to help. Just spend time with us and leave 10% of your annual income each and every year to local charities across America. They know how to do good and make things better.

These, our current Eloi, do not.

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