[wlxarken] hope nand comfort

hypothesis: a society may grant its lower classes hope for upward social mobility, or a comfortable existence, but not both.

this is a depressing hypothesis similar in spirit to those that originally got economics labeled the dismal science.

the general ideas justifying the hypothesis are the following.  if you grant the lower classes the possibility of upward social mobility, only some of them will be permitted to achieve it, so they will need to compete against each other in a zero-sum game for who achieves it.  zero-sum games are cutthroat, not comfortable.  if you grant (enough) comfort, there won't be incentive to seek upward social mobility (this might require more thought).  if you grant comfortable upward social mobility, then the lower classes will become depopulated, so society won't be able to function because it needs lower classes to do lower-class stuff.

also seemingly in support of this hypothesis are highly unequal, highly stratified societies which have remained stable for long periods of time.  they presumably deny upward mobility but grant enough relative comfort to squelch social upheaval.

unfortunately, or fortunately, this hypothesis is only a vague idea which could be incorrect in many ways.

Solow famously disproved Malthus's original "dismal science" with the economic concept of technology.  however, our dismal hypothesis survives overall positive sum: technology may lift the entire pyramid, but it still remains a pyramid.

society can grant its lower classes neither hope nor comfort, which is why the conjunction is nand not xor.  but a situation with neither hope nor comfort might be unstable, threatening civil war.