Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

It’s not, and I think your view ignores a really important fact about our society. Ownership of wealth in America is relatively diffuse. The top 1% owns only 32% of the wealth. And even the top 1%, which starts at about $12 million net worth, covers a lot of people who aren’t exactly the ownership class.

Much of the power in society is therefore held by a class of non-owner managers that run these enormous institutions. Folks like Jamie Dimon and Tim Cook are billionaires, but they made that money by being very highly compensated employees of institutions in which their equity interest is negligible. Many layers of managers beneath those executives also wield tremendous power.

Institutions like Harvard serve as gatekeepers to those roles. They also serve as gatekeepers to adjacent industries, such as finance and law, that not only are lucrative, but also exert tremendous power.

And as credentialism has overtaken society, the same class of Harvard-educated professionals have come to run everything else as well. When an expert agency sues a corporation over some important issue, it’s highly likely that the agency expert policymakers, the agency lawyers, the corporation’s lawyers, the corporation’s management, the judge, and the journalist reporting on the case all went to Harvard or one of a handful of other elite schools. They all went to school together, they attend reunions and weddings together, their kids end up marrying each other.

What I've seen in the last year or so is making me reconsider. I see the profiles of the top graduating seniors in our newsletters and they read like parodies. 4.9 GPA - check. Sports teams - check. Competitive academic club - check. Social clubs - check. Musical instrument competitions - check. Leadership roles - check. Volunteer roles- check. It's just so cynical after a while. You know some consultant has been hired with a todo list and they've dutifully filled in every box.

Then the kids I know who've gotten in and gone to these elite schools are really struggling. Struggling in ways that I didn't see when my peers and I were going to these schools. There's been a sea change in expectations and requirements.

In the meantime it's the kids I know who got into the "second-tier" schools who are doing well. They aren't under such high expectations, they aren't surrounded by classmates under such high expectations. If some day they don't get hired by a FAANG or a some Wall Street firm than maybe that's for the best too.

I was talking to a couple of high school seniors from Germany recently and it all sounded so sane. All the state colleges are free and all are good. You fill out one application, rank the ones you want to get into, and wait for your letter.

I can make guesses as to how it all got so insane in the US but it doesn't matter much. I don't want to play. I don't want my kid to play.

Harvard is just a pay to play gated community.

Except that no; prices would almost not budge at all. Each millionaire will buy 2, maybe 3 houses. But they will target the nice and expensive home; the price/demand for middle/low class houses will not change at all.

Same for car; the demand for Rolls Royce will increase and the price there might increase as well if they were being discounted because nobody was buying them. But they will not even look at the Toyota Prius and I don't see the car dealer there saying thinking "This billionaire will definitely buy all my Prisues, so I will increase their price". He will just shrug it off and keep selling his cars to the middle class whose purchasing power didn't move by an inch. The main difference he will see is that maybe the Rolls Royce dealer who could not afford a car himself because he was not selling anything will now be able to buy a Prius. So it's one more customer.