Nicholas Wade

But the societies are pretty much stable.

His basis for this is he follows people who attended Oxford and Cambridge, which were the only places you could educate them.

And he looks at people with very rare surnames who, because the surnames are so rare, they're very likely to be related to each other.

So you look at the sort of shuffle doors in the 13th century attending Oxford, and lo and behold, in the 17th century, the shuffle doors are still there.

So this is a family that sort of kept itself at the top.

So if that is the case, if our societies are in fact stratified by some kind of genetic merit to a much greater extent than we recognize, then it's going to be very hard to sort of shuffle them up short of war or revolution.

Right.

And if you wish, I guess you're so pleased

that you don't hide your wealth.

And you constantly see the rich competing with each other in terms of the size of their yacht or whatever it is.

So their wealth is not hidden from the lower orders.