natural level in society, the upper classes will, by definition, have greater
capacity than the lower. 2
We are not told precisely what principle of biology guarantees that biologically inferior persons cannot seize power from biologically superior ones, but it is not logic that is at issue here. Such statements as Herrnstein's are meant to convince us that although we may not live in the best of all conceivable worlds, we live in the best of all possible worlds. The social entropy has been maximized so that we have as much equality as possible because the structure is essentially one of equality, and whatever inequalities are left over are not structural but based on innate differences between individuals. In the nineteenth century this was also the view, and education was seen as the lubricant that would guarantee that the race of life was run smoothly. Lester Frank Ward, a giant of nineteenth-century sociology, wrote, "Universal education is the power which is destined to overthrow every species of hierarchy. It is destined to remove all artificial inequality and leave the natural inequalities to find their true level. The true value of a newborn infant lies in its naked capacity for acquiring the ability to do. "3 This was echoed 60 years later by Arthur Jensen at the University of California, who wrote about the inequality of intelligence of Blacks and whites: "We have to face it, the assortment of persons into occupational roles simply is not fair in any absolute sense. The best we can hope for is that true merit given equality of opportunity acts as a basis for the natural assorting process. "4 Simply to assert that the race of life is fair and that different people have different intrinsic abilities to run it is not enough to explain the observations of inequality. Children seem, by and large, to acquire the social status of their parents. About 60 percent of the children of "blue collar" workers remain "blue collar," while about 70 percent of "white collar" workers' children are "white collar. " But these figures vastly overestimate the amount of social mobility. Most people who have passed from "blue collar" to "white collar" jobs have passed from factory production-line jobs to office production-line jobs or have become sales clerks, less well paid, less secure, doing work just as numbing of the soul and body as the factory work done by their parents. The children of gas station attendants usually borrow money, and the children of oil magnates usually lend it. The chance that
The Perpetual Treadmill: Encased Within the Bureaucratic Machinery of Homelessness, Mental Health, Criminal Justice and Substance Use Services Trying to Find an Exit Point.