This anomaly, which can only occur in a bureaucratic or paper-work nobility, denotes normal development with a minus sign, so to speak. For the sense of that normal development is the gradual accumulation of transmitted values, although this may begin with an original conferral; in China, however, that substance is given all at once, as it were, and then it is gradually used up.

DEFINE: Explains how Chinese paper-work nobility differs from normal hereditary nobility: instead of gradual accumulation of transmitted values, status/support is granted at once and depleted over time.

DEFINE: Contrasts two models of nobility: Western gradual accumulation of transmitted values versus Chinese one-time conferral that gets used up. XREF: Connects to Weber's broader analysis of bureaucratic versus patrimonial domination and how social status is transmitted differently.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 518