The tops of the ladder are there to show what people further down aspire to be. The idea is that if you are a building super you daydream about owning a general contractor business. If you’re a VP at an investment bank you dream of being a billionaire hedge fund manager.

The conceit is that random lawyers and doctors wish they could be the kinds of lawyers and doctors that could get an Op-Ed published, but I don’t think it works. Maybe most Econ PhDs secretly want to be Paul Krugman. I doubt it, but maybe. But no way I buy most doctors secretly want to be Anthony Fauci.