What we always have to understand is that we live in a society whose main values do not rise from below but fall on us from above. The absence of this understanding also means at the same time the absence of an explanation as to why a large number of those in the middle class (a class that is in fact much smaller than it believes it is) have such an aversion to taxes. The taxpayer revolt that began in California in 1978 and rapidly spread into all areas of national politics would not have been possible without popular support from middle-class Americans. But an examination of economic facts soon reveals that taxes are ultimately bad for a section of our society that's tiny and far above those in the middle. If your main asset is a house, you have a very long way to go before taxes turn around and show you a face you have never seen, the face of an enemy. What all of this goes to show is that the middle class has adopted a value from a place that is alien to their world.

Another part of American life that suffers daily from the mass adoption of values that only make sense to those who only need society to protect their wealth, reproduce it, and increase it is public transportation. At this moment, for example, New York City is fighting manspreading on its subway seats. It is, of course, a very antisocial thing to do. The seat is not yours, this not a sectional in your palace, this not the backseat of a limo. This is public space. The best kind of space there is. This is how a king sits; this how the public sits.

An example from Seattle is this bad business of popping open the escape hatch on the Metro bus. The type who does this sort of thing is usually a man from, to reference the name of a famous play by Maxim Gorky, the lower depths, who has somehow adopted the attitude of a lord or baron or some kind of nobility. There is really no reason to crack open the hatch, but it's their prerogative, their exclusive right (as in, the right of a king) to do so. Public transportation will never work if the values that at the core of society are derived from a class of people who from skin to bone are against sharing. We are at our worst when we act like the rich.