The Rise of the Gamers: America’s New Upper Class

Following the cultural upheavals we explored in our previous lesson on multiculturalism and America’s social fragmentation, a new elite class emerged to fill the power vacuum left by the decline of traditional American leadership. This new upper class, known as “gamers,” would come to dominate American society from the 1970s through 2016, fundamentally reshaping the nation’s institutions, values, and social fabric in ways that continue to influence America today.

Defining the Gamers

The term “gamers” refers to a new type of American elite that rose to prominence during what scholars call the Global Era (1965-2016). These individuals are consummate competitors who approach life as a strategic game to be won, often cutting corners and bending rules to achieve their objectives. Unlike previous American upper classes that felt bound by traditional moral and social obligations, gamers possess what can be described as “higher-level self-management” – they flexibly use, modify, or discard rules to further their individual goals rather than feeling constrained by them.

The gamer class comprises approximately the top 5 percent of the American population, which represents a historically unprecedented scale for an upper class. While most upper classes throughout history have made up only about 1 percent of their societies, American gamers number more than 16 million people, including their dependents. This massive size has contributed significantly to their enormous power and influence across American institutions.

At the apex of this class are the elite gamers – roughly 50,000 to 60,000 individuals who represent the top 1 percent of the gamer class. These elite gamers substantially own and run the United States, occupying the highest positions in business, government, media, and academia.

The Character of the Gamers

Core Traits and Mindset

Essential to understanding gamers is recognizing that they possess not only basic rational self-consciousness and self-control, but higher-level versions of these traits that allow them to control and manipulate more elementary social rules and conventions. They are characterized by what can be described as “one-sided striving for self” – an intense focus on advancing their own power, wealth, and prestige above all other considerations.

Gamers work extraordinarily long hours, approaching their careers with the dedication of “latter-day, secular monks.” However, unlike traditional monks who served spiritual purposes, or earlier business leaders who felt obligations to society, the gods that gamers serve are their own advancement. They take to competition with particular relish and bring extraordinary organizational and managerial sophistication to their roles.

The gamers’ approach to social interaction reveals much about their character. In Washington D.C., for example, they are known for what observers call the “D.C. scalp stare” – constantly looking over each other’s heads at parties and public events, hoping to spot more powerful and prestigious connections toward whom they can quickly move. This behavior exemplifies their transactional approach to human relationships.

More individualistic than early American business leaders and vastly more so than the organization men of the 1950s, gamers project their own cynical realism onto others’ actions. They assume that everyone else is also primarily motivated by self-interest and strategic calculation, because that is how they themselves operate.

The Rise to Power

Displacing the Old Elite

The proto-gamers of the 1960s and full-fledged gamers of the 1970s largely displaced the traditional WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) upper class that had previously dominated American institutions. This transition wasn’t immediate – the old paradigm continued to moderate gamer behavior until the early 1990s. However, by that point, gamers had achieved what scholars call “critical mass” around the centers of the economy, government, media, and higher education.

A crucial factor in the gamers’ rise was their geographic concentration and social separation from the rest of American society. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, they increasingly withdrew into narrow lifestyle communities, migrating to regions, cities, and neighborhoods with concentrations of like-minded others. This separation allowed them to develop a distinct sociocultural matrix that fostered and reinforced gamer values and behaviors.

As one scholar noted, “In 1963 there was still no critical mass of the people who would later be called symbolic analysts, the educated class, the creative class, or the cognitive elite.” However, ten to fifteen years later, as global capitalism came into its own, this character type emerged in numbers sufficiently large to break away from mainstream American culture. The critical mass of gamers solidified during the 1980s.

Educational Advantages

Gamers appreciate higher education overwhelmingly for the doors it opens and the practical advantages it bestows – credentials, connections, and adaptability – rather than for its humanistic value. This instrumental approach to education has helped them navigate and eventually dominate the increasingly complex institutional landscape of modern America.

The Gamers’ Impact on American Society

Institutional Dominance

By the Global Era, the most successful executives and professionals dominating all major American institutions were gamers. Their facility with flexibly assuming and delegating authority, combined with their willingness to work extreme hours, proved well-suited to the streamlined corporate structures of the global economy. They also demonstrated mastery at creating and utilizing new technologies.

Relationship with the Middle Class

One of the most significant aspects of gamer dominance has been their treatment of America’s middle class. In their “smug disdain,” gamers, despite being highly disciplined themselves, cannot bring themselves to respect what they see as the simple but sturdy discipline of middle-class life. This class-centric unwillingness to recognize themselves in others has led to more than half a century of policies and attitudes that have undermined the traditional pathways for vulnerable Americans to rise into or secure themselves in the middle class.

The gamers’ estrangement from middle-class America represents a fundamental break with earlier American elite traditions. Previous upper classes, while certainly privileged, maintained some sense of connection to and responsibility for the broader society. The gamers, by contrast, feel next to no responsibility toward the larger society and remain largely unconcerned with the effects of their actions upon it.

Leadership Vacuum

Perhaps most critically, while the gamers “rose to power, stormed the bridge, and furloughed the old crew,” virtually none of them took genuine leadership responsibility for the nation’s direction. In their self-centeredness, shortsightedness, indifference, and hubris, they have been accused of dividing the country, jeopardizing national security, undermining democratic institutions, battering family structures, and contributing to moral confusion.

This represents what scholars identify as the central problem of the Global Era: a talented and disciplined but essentially amoral class of strivers who gained impressive positions which they then used without restraint to increase their power and wealth, while eschewing the leadership responsibilities traditionally associated with elite status.

Global Expansion of the Gamer Phenomenon

International Spread

While initially overwhelmingly American, the gamer phenomenon has spread throughout much of the world. The pattern has been less prominent in continental Europe than in the United States, with the United Kingdom falling somewhere between the two. More Europeans have refused to be drawn into the one-sidedness of gaming, with the phenomenon being delayed, moderated, and partly sublimated by greater concern for society.

Interestingly, gamers have been more concentrated in several developing countries than in Europe, particularly in places like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. The phenomenon has been less prevalent in Islamic countries, though the few gamers there have been highly influential. Many Muslims living in Western countries and India have adopted gamer characteristics.

Authoritarian Societies

Gamers have dominated the most developed authoritarian societies for the last two to four decades, including China, Russia, and to a lesser extent Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states. This suggests that the gamer mentality may be particularly well-suited to systems where traditional moral and social constraints are weak or absent.

The Crisis of Trust and Legitimacy

By the end of the Global Era, the dominance of gamers across American institutions had contributed to a broader crisis of trust. Americans no longer trusted Congress, the administrative state, journalism, or higher education. While gamers often present this as simply a problem of public perception, critics argue that institutions became unworthy of trust precisely because they were run by individuals whose primary loyalty was to their own advancement rather than to the institutions’ stated purposes or the public good.

This crisis of legitimacy played a crucial role in the political upheavals that would eventually challenge gamer dominance, setting the stage for the dramatic changes we will explore in our next lesson on how elite character shapes society.

Key Takeaways

The “gamers” emerged as America’s new upper class during the Global Era (1965-2016), comprising roughly 5% of the population or over 16 million people – historically unprecedented in scale for an elite class.
Gamers are characterized by their instrumental approach to rules and relationships, treating life as a strategic game where personal advancement takes precedence over social obligations or moral constraints.
They displaced the traditional WASP elite through geographic concentration, educational advantages, and superior adaptation to global capitalism’s demands for flexible, competitive leadership.
Unlike previous American upper classes, gamers feel little responsibility toward the broader society and have become increasingly separated from middle-class America both geographically and culturally.
While bringing valuable skills in organization, management, and technology to American institutions, gamers created a leadership vacuum by focusing on personal advancement rather than genuine societal leadership.
The gamer phenomenon spread globally but remained most pronounced in the United States, contributing to a crisis of institutional trust that would eventually challenge their dominance.
Understanding gamer character and values is essential for comprehending the social, political, and economic changes that shaped America from the 1970s through 2016.