American demographer, academic and author Joel Kotkin discusses his new book, 'The Coming of Neo-Feudalism' with John Anderson, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.
When I say "Feudalism, obviously people are not going to go around with chain mail and swords," Kotkin joked. "What we are seeing is what we would consider the freezing of class lines. Less and less upward mobility throughout the whole west, and now beginning to effect China as well."
"The old up-from-the-bottom process, which was characteristic of the 20th century, is now much more difficult," he said. "We have two very powerful classes, very much like the old French First and Second Estates. The aristocracy is now the tech and Wall Street people and what I call the clerisy, which used to be the clergy but is now secular. The universities, the media, the upper bureaucracy and tell us to do whatever they want us to do."
"In …