But rather than enabling individuals to compete on fair terms for access to elite jobs, what if we asked instead how those who hold positions of leadership in our society can serve everyone else? What if early learning, schooling and entry to the professions were guided by the injunction that elites in a democratic society should serve the common good and not just their individual aspirations?
Elites drawn from a narrow gene pool - the privately educated and socially segregated who marry and mix with each other - will often possess limited understanding of those they represent or serve in their professional lives. They will have little first-hand knowledge of the conditions in which others live, still less of their concerns. At worst, they will be entirely ignorant, prejudiced or disrespectful of them. In professions such as politics, the civil service or law, these deficiencies spill directly over into democratic inequalities that injure the interests of the least advantaged.
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