Can American Egalitarianism Survive A Globalized Economy?

Extract

Most of the infrequent contacts between CEO’s and philosophy professors take place on airplanes. These contacts take the form of exchanges of life-stories between seatmates, exchanges which mitigate the boredom of the flight. Such exchanges provide one of the few ways in which inhabitants of the world of business and inhabitants of the academy get a sense of what the other is doing.

Professors who work in fast-breaking fields like molecular biology or neopragmatist philosophy are always flying off to conferences in places like Sao Paulo, Taipei or Vienna. Our trans-oceanic flights are usually in economy class, but we nevertheless have our reward. When we return home we find that the airlines have sent us upgrade certificates for domestic air travel. This means that we can sometimes go first class to conferences in places like Los Angeles or Seattle. We thus get to sit next to richer and more important people.