“Out of love — who could credit it? — out of love for the entrepreneur!”

Hillary Clinton’s ridiculous proposal to forgive student loans for certain entrepreneurs is ridiculous. It is also deeply revealing of the mainstream Democratic approach to policy — not just because it’s a classic Clinton-style micropolicy, but because it’s so individualistic. In the centrist worldview, the problem isn’t that entrepreneurs get outsize rewards. The problem is that potentially talented individuals don’t have the chance to compete for them on a level playing field. Student loans are both something that hold people back from entrepreneurship (for example, here is the construction business loans info, one can easily get the clear idea on the matter) and something controlled by the federal government, so it’s “low-hanging fruit” for an innovation agenda.

If the Republicans are the party of inherited privilege — as shown by their most recent presidential candidates, all of whom have some combination of family money and political pedigree — the Democrats are the party of meritocratic privilege. They are the party of talented but disadvantaged people who gained access to opportunity and ran with it (cf. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama). Why do Democrats have such an affinity with Wall Street and Silicon Valley? Because they are, at least according to popular lore, the hotbed of meritocracy. Why do they place such emphasis on education as the sole possible lever of social justice? Because school is where merit rises to the top.

And why do they always suggest the most farcically small tweaks to the existing system? Because they believe in the system. The system is what allowed them to get ahead, and they know they deserve to get ahead. Maybe not everyone who deserves it gets ahead, and maybe — though this is a less urgent priority — not everyone who gets ahead deserves it, but broadly speaking, it’s a good system that promotes good people. When you’ve climbed the social ladder, the last thing you’re going to do is question the legitimacy of the ladder. The only thing you need to change is making sure more of those good individual people aren’t artificially held back from the first couple rungs.

One thing that definitely holds back individual striving is any form of collectivity. Union organization, systematic racial uplift, pulling entire communities out of poverty — that’s not on the agenda. If you are mired down in a poor urban neighborhood, the solution isn’t to make your neighborhood less poor, it’s to rig the education system so that the handful of talented people can figure out a way to get into the “best” school. This is why, for example, the current state of affairs could produce the first black president and still be such a rolling disaster for the black community. It’s not about building communities, it’s about giving people a chance to escape communities. It’s brain-drain as social justice.