Many good comments on this debate. We spend a lot of time on it in my classroom based course, and I think its common for people to at first blush find the order theory superficially convincing, but after investigation find it to be more of an ideology seeking to legitimize inequality, than a sociological theory explaining it. For example, order theorists imply that social inequality is ultimately based in unequal individual abilities, but when we see just how unequal the distribution of wealth is in the U.S., and how many of the ultrarich either inherited or married into their money, the order theory's power to explain the "really existing" society will disappear.