I appreciate your tolerance of my admittedly long-windedness.
My starting frame of reference is via the academic places. I've now noted that I am a parent with a DC who will be going down that route. I thus carry the weaknesses and biases that may come with this. My use of the phrase, "the quiet cloud of personal ignominy" was my own personal take on it, in the specific context of those who go down the route for the test places. Am I not entitled to voicing my own personal opinion?
This was not at all meant as a "marker of disgrace" for anyone other than myself. Of course, I do not wish these feelings on anybody. Particularly for the countless families not going down any test-based route, which I agree is normal and very right for normal comps. And I do acknowledge that the limited nature of this kind of discussion doesn't do much more than nibble around the edges of far bigger problems. But I can see that my regrettable use of the word "ignominy" has had some deleterious effects and for this, I sincerely apologise.
I'll try to answer your other question re parents moving in versus sibling places -
To begin with, my focus has solely been on this specific school. I am not here to discuss the wider school system across the country. My position remains unchanged in that this is not an ordinary or typical school.
With regard to parents buying or renting a home to get into DAO, I didn't say I thought this was fair. I said it was understandable how these places were "earned". Parents who have money can simply use that money; this is expected in a market economy. I don't have that kind of money myself, but I see no need to be bitter about others having it.
With regard to the sibling places, this is an institutionalised practice whose function is to support local neighbourhood comps (and very understandably so). Perhaps DAO was a school like that in the past. But I don't think anyone can say that with a knowledgeably straight face today. So I question its current fitness-for-purpose as well as the suitability of arguments such as, "This is just how it is for comps." Because, well, it's not.
And given the money that keeps flowing in, those parents' elbows will continue to get sharper every year. I actually think a more productive question, which may be a subset of this, is how should the DAO foundation be distributing its annual endowments? This money is a huge part of what has made the school into what it is today and if/as continued, I imagine will only make questions on equitability grow louder.
Given how vocal you have been on this thread, (to which I very much welcome,) perhaps you would like to share what your stake in this is and thus your frame of reference? I've stated mine. It may help the discussion to know. We may not always agree, and that is perfectly fine. But at least we can try to understand each other better.