Band of Rich Brothers

It's one of Hollywood's most tired cliches: A group of upper class medocrities tries to keep a talented lower class contender down by excluding them from some competition. In the end, the lower class star always thwarts the schemes of the band of snobbish thugs and wins.

But is that how things work in real life? Not really. The "bad" guys usually win.

Are the upper class thugs really doing anything wrong, though?

Banding together with people who want to succeed is one of the surest ways to win yourself.

Banding together with a group that wants to succeed and has easy access to the tools needed for for success (money, political power, connections in the business world, etc.) is even better.

And if this groups is willing to make it hard for talented newcomers to compete against them, better still.

This phenomemom can readily be seen in action with blogs.

Two interlocking groups, one right-leaning and one left-leaning politically, have risen to the top of the blog world by linking to each other's blogs, praising each other's brilliance, reposting each other's posts and even giving each other awards.

Some of them are very generous in providing links to "talented newcomers," but many have blogrolls that haven't been updated in years...the most generous bloggers tend to be the ones who have successful careers already outside of blogging.