advocating the preservation of the elite by gating access to it
This statement assumes that there is a fixed amount of wealth that must be protected; it's prevalent in socialist thinking, as well as in the thinking of the poor (it's part of the contagion).
It's also 100% incorrect. The creation of wealth is not a zero-sum game.
You are making assumptions about my thinking on this subject. All I'm saying is that the parent commenter is advocating gating access, so as not to "ruin Harvard". Maybe he believes there's a fixed amount of wealth.
My point (and the op's) is that there isn't a single network that needs to be accessed, there is a single network that needs to be disengaged from.
It's making the opposite point than the article does: You don't improve the lot of the poor by introducing them to some master network of elites, you improve it by removing them from the network that reinforces the bad behaviour.
This statement assumes that there is a fixed amount of wealth that must be protected; it's prevalent in socialist thinking, as well as in the thinking of the poor (it's part of the contagion).
It's also 100% incorrect. The creation of wealth is not a zero-sum game.