The Tao Te Ching says:
The Way of Heaven takes from what has too much and gives to what does not have enough. The way of man is different: it takes from those who do not have enough and gives to those who already have too much.
Class hierarchy is the default result of the way of man. You could even say it is something we all work together to produce.
Resources flow toward people who already have resources. Credit flows toward people who already have credit. Education, marriage, capital, connections, and influence all tend to add advantage to advantage. This does not require a conspiracy. Parents want to preserve what they have for their children. Employers prefer candidates with proven credentials. Investors prefer people who have succeeded before. Each choice is understandable. Together they make society harder to move through.
But Laozi did not say that because this is natural, we should simply accept it. He continued:
Who can take what is in excess and offer it to the world? Only one who has the Way.
When I was young, I thought “one who has the Way” meant someone who did charity, or perhaps a moral saint. Who else would voluntarily give away what they had?
I no longer think that is the only meaning. In modern society, people who have the Way are often those who can reorganize the direction in which value flows. They may be entrepreneurs, inventors, or institutional reformers. They do not merely give away part of what they own. They reorganize a system so that something previously concentrated among a few becomes available to many more people.
People like to criticize Pinduoduo, and much of that criticism may be justified. But when Taobao dominated Chinese e-commerce, Pinduoduo opened another path for consumers and suppliers whom the existing system did not serve very well. In that particular sense, it was acting as one who had the Way.
People also like to criticize OpenAI, again often for good reasons. But compared with the technology giants that came before it, OpenAI made a powerful technology available to ordinary people. Something that had belonged mainly to large companies and research laboratories could suddenly be used by a student, a programmer, or one person working alone. This may also be a modern form of “taking what is in excess and offering it to the world.”
This does not mean that Pinduoduo or OpenAI is morally good. “One who has the Way” is not a permanent title. A company may break an old concentration of power and later create a new one of its own. The value it releases will accumulate again. New classes will form around it, and the system will begin to harden once more.
Class hierarchy is therefore not as frightening as it first seems. It may be permanent, but the force that breaks it is permanent too. History keeps producing people who rearrange the flow of value. What they release eventually becomes concentrated again, until someone else finds a way to release it.
History is the repeated struggle between these two forces: things harden, and someone breaks them open.