[HN Gopher] Experts vs elites
___________________________________________________________________
Experts vs elites
Author : asimjalis
Score : 152 points
Date : 2021-09-12 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (overcomingbias.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (overcomingbias.com)
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I recently ran into a reddit post in which a young individual
| (low 30's) just got a job at University of California, and was
| seeking advice on retirement investments. He claimed that he
| expected to make 300+ grand a year at the UC. New assistant
| professors start sub 100k, and most top-tier professors near the
| end of their careers can reach 200+k a year, not counting
| benefits. What job is this 30 year old getting at the UC that
| starts at 300k? It must be in the CEO track, where they assume
| they should be paid most, and somehow, do so.
|
| It is often argued that CEO's deserve extraordinary salaries on
| the basis that they are smarter than most people...but when you
| work at a University, you know a lot of people who
| extraordinarily intelligent people who are familiar with running
| large, complex organizations/programs. There is no way those
| CEO's deserve more than they do. It purely a culture and power
| thing. And its bloody disgusting.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I would rather pay a CEO more than an educational bureaucrat
| cause you can at least fire the CEO.
| overeater wrote:
| You're generalizing too much by averaging averages, so that
| your numbers are off. Salaries depend on university, campus,
| field, etc.
|
| These are average salaries over 5 years ago:
|
| "The Daily Californian created a database of professor pay-
| checkers in 2016 that shows the variation in inter-departmental
| salaries for the 2015 year. For example, average professor
| salary was $326,230 for the economics department, $202,711 for
| the electrical engineering department and $163,035 for the
| English department."
| paulpauper wrote:
| salaries for professional/college-req. jobs have really swelled
| in the past decade.
| sesm wrote:
| Aren't diplomacy, management and public speech areas of expertise
| too?
| mybrid wrote:
| Side note; Disqus has a terrible reputation for selling user
| data. https://victorzhou.com/blog/replacing-disqus/
|
| I tend to avoid any site that uses it.
| stopnamingnuts wrote:
| Pretty dour commentary on human nature. There's a kernel of
| something worth considering but sacrifices nuance in favor of a
| crafted idea.
|
| As a member of the described expert class, I'd say we have
| limitations equal to those of elites. That's not examined.
| Animats wrote:
| Now we have "influencers", which are neither experts nor elites,
| but merely visible. That used to be a tiny niche. Now it's a
| career path.
|
| Angelyne was probably the first to pull this off in modern times.
| She used to have billboards all over LA, with her name and
| picture. She became famous for being famous, without performing
| or accomplishing much. She's on the California recall election
| ballot right now.
|
| Somewhere between a third and three-quarters of kids, depending
| on survey, now want to be YouTubers when they grow up.
| paulpauper wrote:
| they are experts at that which they are influencing
|
| Someone who does YouTube comedy for a living is probably an
| expert at both comedy and youtube.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| That piece is a self-own.
|
| Whatever expertise Robin has as an economist simply does not
| translate into psychological / sociological / anthropological
| analysis.
| karol wrote:
| Are you saying he is pontificating to be counted among the
| elites?
| eplanit wrote:
| "When an academic wins a Nobel prize, they have achieved a
| pinnacle of expertise. At which point they often start to wax
| philosophic, and writing op-eds. They seem to be making a bid to
| become an elite. Because we all respect and want to associate
| with elites far more than with experts. Elites far less often
| lust after becoming experts, because we are often willing to
| treat elites as if they are experts. For example, when a
| journalist writes a popular book on science, they are often
| willing to field science questions when they give a talk on their
| book. And the rest of us are far more interested in hearing them
| talk on the subject than the scientists they write about."
|
| Not one single sentence of that paragraph is true.
|
| _When an academic wins a Nobel prize, they have achieved a
| pinnacle of expertise._ No, they 've achieved celebrity status
| (perhaps well-earned by being a top expert). There are those who
| are experts, but who do not get Nobel prizes. It's not a perfect
| prize.
|
| _They seem to be making a bid to become an elite._ They don 't
| get the prize because the ask for it or buy it, and the celebrity
| status comes with it automatically. Some recipients capitalize on
| it, for sure. I think "the elites" bring them into their circles
| on their own.
|
| _Because we all respect and want to associate with elites far
| more than with experts._ No, we all don 't.
|
| _For example, when a journalist writes a popular book on
| science...the rest of us are far more interested in hearing them
| talk on the subject than the scientists they write about._ I
| think many (maybe not enough, for sure) don 't see 'journalists'
| as scientific experts. For your Sanjay Guptas it may be true, but
| he's not a true journalist .
| creddit wrote:
| > When an academic wins a Nobel prize, they have achieved a
| pinnacle of expertise. No, they've achieved celebrity status
| (perhaps well-earned by being a top expert). There are those
| who are experts, but who do not get Nobel prizes. It's not a
| perfect prize.
|
| You're mistaking a claim of necessity for a claim of
| sufficiency.
|
| > They seem to be making a bid to become an elite. They don't
| get the prize because the ask for it or buy it, and the
| celebrity status comes with it automatically. Some recipients
| capitalize on it, for sure. I think "the elites" bring them
| into their circles on their own.
|
| Hanson is talking about what they do to garner additional
| publicity with the prize now that they have it, not getting the
| prize and its status in the first place. You conveniently left
| out the sentence before that.
|
| > Because we all respect and want to associate with elites far
| more than with experts. No, we all don't.
|
| Steelmanning Hanson here would suggest reading it as hyperbole.
| I think a good thought experiment would be "ho many people
| wanted to hang out with the pre-Nobel winner vs the post-Nobel
| winner", however, to illustrate what he is getting at.
| actuallyalys wrote:
| > _For example, when a journalist writes a popular book on
| science...the rest of us are far more interested in hearing
| them talk on the subject than the scientists they write about._
| I think many (maybe not enough, for sure) don 't see
| 'journalists' as scientific experts. For your Sanjay Guptas it
| may be true, but he's not a true journalist .
|
| Yeah, this seems dubious to me. For one thing, I think people
| are plenty interested in pop sci books written by experts--
| hence all the books by doctors that include "MD" after their
| name on the cover. Of course, sometimes the MD doesn't indicate
| expertise in the topic they're writing in, but I suspect a book
| marketed as "pediatrician and pediatrics researcher Dr. So-and
| So writes about [childhood health topic]" would probably do
| better than "Dr. So-and-So, MD, writes about [childhood health
| topic]."
|
| For another thing, there are other plausible explanations than
| a preference for elites--journalists are more experienced at
| writing for a general audience and they may have more
| connections to mass market publishers (rather than academic
| publishers).
|
| I'd also argue communicating science is a separate skill from
| doing science. I think all scientists have at least a modicum
| of skill at communicating science to their _peers_ , but
| journalists can very well have more experience in communicating
| science to the public than scientists. It's confusing since
| Hanson acknowledges communication as a kind of expertise when
| he refers to journalists as "news experts" elsewhere in the
| post.
| hobom wrote:
| His science journalist part is also not convincing. Neil
| deGrasse Tyson far outstrips the popularity of science
| journalists, because unlike other scientists he is not boring
| to everyday people
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's also worth noting the time delay between winning a Nobel
| prize and the work for which the prize is received - which
| generally is 20 or perhaps even 30 years.
|
| They were at a pinnacle of expertise decades before winning the
| Nobel prize, and arguably might not be there anymore when they
| do get the award - which essentially is the point of
| transforming from an expert to elite status.
| bo1024 wrote:
| The intriguing part is not that elites get to make decisions
| instead of experts (that's practically the definition of elite),
| but that people seem to _prefer_ listening to elites. The panel
| vs talk example resonated with me.
|
| I think a resolution, though, is that real expert knowledge --
| things we know for sure -- quickly becomes commoditized,
| disseminated, and boring. You wouldn't ask a panel how to repair
| a car engine that's developed a knock. But you might ask them how
| long until electric vehicles outsell gasoline. So most
| "interesting" questions, by definition fall outside of anyone's
| range of expertise (even if expertise can be relevant to
| answering well).
|
| In fact, influenced by Taleb, I wonder if a better model of the
| world is that almost every question is actually either "every
| expert knows and agrees on the answer" or "nobody knows and any
| predictions or arguing about it are almost purely entertainment".
| Nobody's interested in discussing Type 1 questions, and you might
| as well listen to elites as experts when it comes to Type 2.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Hmm. Maybe the elites know how to be more entertaining. If
| you're listening to an answer to a type 2 question, you might
| as well get entertainment with the answer, because you're not
| going to get actual knowledge.
| qsort wrote:
| > Nobody's interested in discussing Type 1 questions, and you
| might as well listen to elites as experts when it comes to Type
| 2.
|
| Technical issues matter, though. If experts disagree on
| something, it doesn't mean they disagree on everything, and
| this sublety is unfortunately often lost when the discussion
| moves on to "full elite mode".
|
| It's patently obvious on IT/software development/AI subjects,
| where people who can't write hello world come out of the blue
| to inform us there's going to be a singluar aipocalypse or
| whatever it's called now.
|
| There definitely exist topics where it's anybody's guess, but
| my model is that this is - once more - an epiphenomenon of our
| inability to effectively incorporate proper science and
| scientific thought in the public debate.
| [deleted]
| interlocutor2 wrote:
| I read the examples as a different architype. Not elites but
| communicators. Experts write to be carefully technically correct,
| standing up to the scrutiny of other experts. Pop-sci or more
| general communicators write to express the ideas in a fun or
| relatable way, sometimes mangling them.
|
| Just like other mass media, popular = lowest common denominator.
| soohyung wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210825201442/https://overcoming...
| motohagiography wrote:
| I'd posit that elites are just the objects of mimetic desire,
| where experts have expertise, they're almost completely unrelated
| outside narrow fields. Elites are the people you want to be like,
| and sometimes who we envy as a result.
| lamontcg wrote:
| ironic that this is published on a blog called "overcoming bias".
| cgrealy wrote:
| > As we saw early in the pandemic, the elites are always visibly
| chattering among themselves about the topics of the day, and when
| they form a new opinion, the experts usually quickly cave to
| agree with them, and try to pretend they agreed all along.
|
| My experience was the opposite in most of the world, where
| experts recommended lockdowns and masks and most political
| "elites" (especially in the US and UK) ignoring that to the
| chagrin of the experts.
| etangent wrote:
| Cases when experts propose something and then elites disagree
| with the experts are not surprising. It is the default state of
| affairs everywhere in the world. That's a "dog bites man"
| situation---essentially a non-story.
|
| What is _really_ surprising (and revealing) is when elites do
| propose something and then experts follow along even though it
| runs against their previous opinion from just a week ago. For a
| vivid example: most experts before the pandemic agreed that
| masks help limit spread of respiratory diseases, yet
| nevertheless in the very first few weeks of the pandemic most
| of them followed along with the completely unscientific claim
| that masks do not help and that everyone should simply wash
| their hands instead. Likewise, we had expert voices making
| sophisticated arguments that shutting down international travel
| would do nothing to limit spread of the virus---a claim that a
| middle-schooler would call out as largely bullshit.
| dexen wrote:
| What you describe is matter of selection bias:
|
| in fields as crowded as public health and medicine, experts
| voice all sorts of advice, citing all kinds of research, and
| often contradicting each other. At the end of the day, we
| regular citizens usually hear from those experts that got their
| voices amplified by operators of platforms (journalism,
| political institutions, etc.). In Robin's terms, the _elites_
| choose from the crowd of _experts_ those that they like the
| advice the best.
| bko wrote:
| > It was Jan. 31, 2020, and a leading infectious disease
| expert, Kristian Andersen, had been examining the genetic
| characteristics of the newly emerging SARS-CoV virus.
|
| > "Some of the features (potentially) look engineered,"
| Andersen wrote in an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci, noting that he
| and other scientists "all find the genome inconsistent with
| expectations from evolutionary theory."
|
| > But, he added, "we have to look at this much more closely and
| there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions
| could still change."
|
| > Change they did. Just four days later, Andersen gave feedback
| in advance of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
| and Medicine letter that was referenced in the prestigious
| Lancet medical journal to argue against the idea that the virus
| had been engineered and brand it a conspiracy theory.
|
| > In his email, Andersen called the ideas that the virus was
| engineered "crackpot theories," writing, "engineering can mean
| many things and could be done for basic research or nefarious
| reasons, but the data conclusively show that neither was done."
|
| It appeared that the expert gave an unbiased opinion, and 4
| days later, not only did they retract the opinion but denounced
| it as a conspiracy theory.
|
| Maybe he just had more time to review the information or maybe
| the elite told them that this theory is politically sensitive
| and should be dismissed.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fauci-s-emails-don-t-pr...
| pphysch wrote:
| The author is lumping management & aristocracy into one group and
| calling it "elites". This sort of unjustified & useless
| ontologizing is one of the mainstays of the Rationalist crowd.
| But it sure is fun.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Finally, consider that recently I went into clear expert mode to
| release a formal preprint on grabby aliens, which induced almost
| no ( < 10) comments on this blog or Twitter, in contrast to far
| more comments when arguable-elites discuss it in panelist/elite
| mode: Scott Aaronson (205), Scott Alexander (108), and Hacker
| News (110). People are far more interested in talking with elites
| in elite mode on most topics, than in talking with the clear
| relevant experts in expert mode._
|
| This can obviously be explained by them having bigger
| audiences/platforms.
| raspasov wrote:
| False dichotomy.
|
| Much more useful to think about most things (esp. societal and
| behavioral) as a spectrum.
|
| Very few things are completely black and white.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Is this something you can expand on, or just another argument
| to moderation?
| netcan wrote:
| There's a certain kind of innocence to this. "Elites" are one
| half of many popular dichotomies, and the term takes a lot of
| meaning from whatever it's being compared to.
|
| Elite is a morally evocative term, and that tends to surface a
| users values, and what we find outrageous. Robin associates elite
| with celebrity, prestige and credit... expertise with a lack of
| it. Unfairness and dishonesty in how status and prestige are
| allocated.
|
| Personally, I separate large parts of the celebrity aspects from
| this whole tangle. Celebrity scientists, engineers and such are a
| great thing. Why should the celebrity sphere only contain
| socialites, athletes, actors, musicians, billionaires.
|
| Something like the nobel prize ceremonially designates someone a
| celebrity scientist. That's not a terrible thing. Like any other
| idol, they represent something. Reality is always more complex,
| but idols embody simple stereotypes that they represent.Watch a
| small nation bring home a gold in women's judo. Two years later
| judo is often a thriving sport with many high achievers. Idols
| are values, and values impacts like this. Doing the same for
| medicine or physics works the same way.
|
| I get that people feel celebrity worship is vapid idolatry, but
| every society worships stuff... often designated hero types.
| Subcultures too. Led Zeppelin, Elon Musk, Mother Theressa, etc.
| Why not worship a scientist, if we're always worshipping
| _somebody_ anyway?
| [deleted]
| moksly wrote:
| > elites are selected primarily for their prestige and status,
| which has many contributions, including money, looks, fame,
| charm, wit, positions of power, etc.
|
| I'd argue that it's only money. Prestige, looks, charm, wit and
| even positions of power come and go and rich people have always
| surrounded themselves with those the same way they have always
| surrounded themselves with experts.
|
| At its core, I don't think human society has really changed that
| much since the dawn of organised civilisation. Sure we've tried
| different some very systems over the thousands of years, but if
| you zoom out to the helicopter perspective, the biggest
| "influencers" have always been the oligarchs and the sole
| requirement for joining their ranks is having lots and lots of
| money.
|
| At least I can't think of a period of human history, or a
| political system, where the richest families within it, didn't
| have much more power than the ordinary citizen, and I suspect the
| sole reason liberal democracy has been so successful is because
| it is the "safest" system to be extremely wealthy within.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > looks, fame, charm, wit
|
| Imagine if any of our elites had this, would a wonderful world
| it would be. Instead we get ruled by dementia patients and big
| mouths.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The halo effect means that attractive people are more likely to
| end up in charge or wealthy. Many qualities contribute to
| attractiveness, mainly height, but charm and wit also work.
| chaircher wrote:
| Additionally it's another feedback loop: Wealth makes people
| physically attractive. Posture, retinol creams, tailored
| clothes, and a good hair cut can do a lot to transform
| someone's life.
| ummonk wrote:
| There are plenty of nations or periods of history where the
| ultra rich acquired their fortunes due to their power rather
| than vice versa.
| netcan wrote:
| It's interesting how we all project a moral position, in
| defining what sits across from elites... representing everyone
| else.
|
| The blog puts a lot of weight on prestige and attention,
| celebrity in it's expert-elite division.
|
| _" People are far more interested in talking with elites in
| elite mode on most topics, than in talking with the clear
| relevant experts in expert mode_"
|
| There's a "some animals are more equal" retort to this, IMO. If
| attention and prestige _was_ showered onto the real experts, in
| expert mode, then they would be the celebrities. Are you
| concerned about elitism, or the quality of elites?
|
| You're addressing elitism more broadly. I sort of agree with
| you in principle, but I think you're discounting how much
| breadth the principle allows. It's definitely true that most
| societies have elites and power structures. But, there's a
| pretty big range of how that works. Nobel prizes are actually a
| good example. It's an intentional, symbolic piece of elitism...
| they kind of things that an archaeologist or historian might
| note. It doesn't relate to majhor power structures very
| directly though.
| cryptica wrote:
| Agreed, it's 100% about money. Sometimes looks and charm can
| help you to get money, but you need money first in order to be
| considered an elite.
|
| Another effect which I've noticed in the tech industry is how
| engineers who work at big name, wealthy, monopolistic
| corporations are treated as superior to engineers who work for
| no-name companies, even when the engineer's role at the no-name
| company is far more challenging end requires far more expertise
| and skill.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I am not sure, but I conjecture that Internet "influencers"
| fall into the elites group. They often do not have money when
| they start out.
| moksly wrote:
| Are they really impactful though? Maybe in terms of selling
| things, but have the Kardashians (or whoever is the biggest
| influencer) impacted the world the same way that someone like
| Rudolph Murdoch has?
| rkk3 wrote:
| > have the Kardashians (or whoever is the biggest
| influencer) impacted the world the same way that someone
| like Rudolph Murdoch has?
|
| believe you are referring to Rupert Murdoch.
|
| They do have some similarities... both are billionaires
| with widely successful tv shows about their family drama.
| listenallyall wrote:
| You're picking and choosing. Murdoch is rich AND (or
| because) he owns a global media organization, which
| provides influence/impact. Plenty of billionaires have tiny
| impact or influence, or just in a small niche, in fact,
| most of them you probably wouldn't even recognize their
| name.
| moksly wrote:
| Those billionaires still have the means to impact the
| world in ways that you or I do not, should they chose to
| do so.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Make a coherent argument. You were comparing to the
| Kardashians, who are massively influential, not to "you
| or I". And so what "if they choose to"? They've chosen
| not to.
| paulpauper wrote:
| even if they wanted to, I think they would find that
| their success to be quite limited. Without using google,
| what is the name of Ray Dalio's 2017 book. It got some
| media attention at the time, but surely being how rich he
| is you should have heard about it. Or Bill Gates' latest
| book.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| But to use your example, the Kardashian's _are_
| billionaires, meaning they could impact the world should
| they choose to. And Murdoch, to use your other example,
| didn't start to build his global influence until the
| 1980s, some 30 years into his career. And although the
| global influence of his media groups isn't debatable, it
| is important to note that the vast majority of his
| newspaper properties are tabloids.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I am reminded of how Bloomberg spent $500 million dollars
| on his ill-fated presidential campaign that lasted 100
| days....about 4 months. It was clear proof that money
| does not always result in impact.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| In the middle ages some nobility could be quite cash poor and
| still have influence. Go back far enough and rulership came out
| of how many armed men you had loyal to you.
|
| Today, certainly, having lots of money generally gives a person
| a lot of decisive power as well as general influence (the
| wealthy are indeed called the ruling class by some).
|
| But OP's argument kind of falls into incoherence given that
| "elites" is an utterly vague term. The famous and the
| attractive have some influence, some uniqueness but so do those
| with expertise, they're a kind of "elite" if we're being that
| vague.
| tommymachine wrote:
| Am I missing something here? The United States at least is a
| constitutional republic. I must have missed the day in college
| government class when they renamed that form of government
| "liberal democracy", presumably in an effort to convince more
| people to vote for "liberal democrats" as their
| representatives.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The United States is a liberal democracy, a constitutional
| republic, an oligarchy, a military kleptocracy; it is
| centralized, federated, and a union of equal states; it is an
| authoritarian scientific bureaucratic apparatus, a
| traditional common-law community; its judges are elites
| skimmed from the top of Harvard, men elected by peers, and
| unqualified friends of the Mayor; it is unicameral and
| bicameral depending on your location. It is all of these
| things balanced against one another precariously and stably,
| at minima, maxima, and saddle points in thousands of millions
| of dimensions.
| tommymachine wrote:
| Ya, if nothing else, the events of the last 2 years have
| assured me of the United States' "stability".
| nohuck13 wrote:
| "Liberal" here is just the adjective form of liberty.
|
| A "liberal" democracy is a democracy is one that enshrines
| the classic individual freedoms (speech, assembly,
| religion...) e.g. the United States.
|
| A "illiberal" democracy is a democracy that doesn't, e.g.
| 20th century Singapore.
| tommymachine wrote:
| Weird how none of the founding documents of the US
| government use either of those words ("liberal" or
| "democracy"), but they do use the words "constitution" and
| "republican".
|
| I'm sure that artful re-defining of our government format
| has nothing to do with the infiltration of communism into
| the education system here.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Liberalism and Communism are diametrically opposed.
| Communism is proudly illiberal.
| tommymachine wrote:
| Nobody would ever sneak in communism under a different
| name, now would they?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't know about this. There are too many examples of people
| who exerted influence due to reasons other than having money:
| for example, coming from an old family has meant a lot
| throughout most of history, and while accumulated wealth is a
| common side effect of that, a king is not typically made a king
| because they have the most money in the bank, instead because
| of what I guess Hanson would call the "prestige" of coming from
| a particular bloodline.
|
| The aristocracy in many places and times in history have been
| influential while being cash poor, at least compared to those
| filthy parvenus in the merchant and banking classes.
|
| In terms of soft power influence, I think it's easy to mix up
| cause and effect. Is Jeff Bezos one of the most influential
| people in the world? Yes. Is he one of the richest people in
| the world? Yes. But, is he influential because he's rich, or
| rich as a side effect of the influential company he started?
| I'd argue the latter.
|
| There have also been too many changes to what we call wealth to
| consider it the single constant in the history of power: would
| money today even be recognizable _as a concept_ to someone from
| 3000 BC? The same goes with what we call influence: Martin
| Luther was one of the most influential people in history, and
| wealth was not a factor in that.
| j7ake wrote:
| I think in United States it has always been money. But in other
| cultures it may be something else.
|
| For example, during the Edo society in Japan, merchants were
| near the bottom of the social hierarchy even though they could
| have been richer than some aristocrats.
| simonh wrote:
| The reason liberal democracy is so successful is because it's
| the safest system to become wealthy in through means that don't
| involve influence in a bureaucracy or paying off gatekeepers*.
| That means essentially anyone can become successful, which
| unleashes the potential of a much bigger proportion of the
| populace. This makes freer societies dramatically more
| innovative, industrious and successful.
|
| * Gatekeepers still exist in liberal democracies, no system is
| perfect, but they don't control everything. The freer a society
| is, the less control and influence bureaucracies and
| gatekeepers have, and the bigger the incentives are for
| gatekeepers to help others achieve success.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > The freer a society is, the less control and influence
| bureaucracies and gatekeepers have, and the bigger the
| incentives are for gatekeepers to help others achieve
| success.
|
| I am personally concerned that gatekeeping is increasing
| significantly lately, and I'm concerned about the effects
| that will have on long term economic growth and inequality.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > The freer a society is, the less control and influence
| bureaucracies and gatekeepers have, and the bigger the
| incentives are for gatekeepers to help others achieve
| success.
|
| Not necessarily. Regulation can free citizens and business
| owners from enslaving business practices of powerful
| business. The mistake is to think that "free market", and
| much more so "free society", is the same as "no regulation".
| This is not true. Free markets, and especially free
| societies, need some regulation to keep the rich in their
| place and from smothering everyone around them.
| simonh wrote:
| I agree completely, see one of my other replies on this. I
| only meant the less influence they have on who wins and who
| loses, in the sense of picking and choosing.
| paulpauper wrote:
| * The reason liberal democracy is so successful is because
| it's the safest system to become wealthy in through means
| that don't involve influence in a bureaucracy or paying off
| gatekeepers*
|
| I think that is mostly unique to the US . Not at all a
| feature of all democracies. The meritocracy is still mostly
| intact in the US, whereas in other areas talent is not as
| greatly rewarded.
| pphysch wrote:
| "Liberal democracies" are conflated with being part of the
| global upper class. Which major wealthy liberal democracy
| hasn't participated in colonialism or invasion in the last
| 200-300 years?
|
| I assume there are proper aristocrats making your same
| argument about their way of life. That they are wealthy
| because they have the "right" system and not because they
| were born into a corner of the globe made prosperous by
| modern economic exploitation.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > "Liberal democracies" are conflated with being part of
| the global upper class. Which major wealthy liberal
| democracy hasn't participated in colonialism or invasion in
| the last 200-300 years?
|
| There are a few. Switzerland, Norway, Sweden (depending on
| how far back you go), Iceland, Ireland.
|
| And, if you're going back 200 years and thinking about
| Great Britain, well, sure, they had colonies. They also
| arguably were not a liberal democracy. They had parliament,
| but they also had the king. Who controlled international
| policy (which determined whether they had colonies)? I
| don't know enough to answer that, but I'm not sure they
| should automatically be put in the "liberal democracy"
| bucket.
| simonh wrote:
| The list of countries anywhere that haven't
| enthusiastically engaged in warfare at one point or
| another is rather short. Yes Britain conquered India, we
| have a bloody history, but show me any period in India's
| history before then that wasn't soaked in blood.
|
| I'm not excusing anything, I'm just saying human nature
| is what it is, or has been historically. Power has
| generally been in the hands of warrior elites, because if
| it wasn't a warrior elite would come along and seize it.
| Liberal democracy, when it works, is a massive
| improvement on that state of affairs.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| That's a nostalgic sentiment.
| throwdecro wrote:
| Looking at the top 10 richest people [0], most of them
| weren't born into anything close to the level of wealth
| they have now. None of them were poor, so "essentially
| anyone can become successful" is almost certainly an
| overstatement, but the ability to go from "raised by
| dentists/lawyers/professors/engineers" to "among the
| richest in the world" is evidence of considerable mobility.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaire
| s#Ann...
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| How many of those 10 richest people came from families
| which weren't already in the top 5th income percentile?
|
| Is that the social mobility that we care about? Anyone
| who is willing to work hard and already has the means to
| attend an Ivy League school can become a billionaire.
| btilly wrote:
| Top 5% in the USA, or top 5% in the world?
|
| Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Sergey Brin were NOT top
| 5% in the USA. Depending what period in his childhood
| that you look at, Sergey Brin wasn't top 5% in the world
| either. (His family was educated, but they arrived in the
| USA as refugees from the Soviet Union.)
|
| Several others started with rather less than you might
| expect. For example Elon Musk arrived in North America
| with only a few thousand dollars to his name, and had to
| work manual labor to get by. (Yes, his father was a
| businessman, but the two of them have
| a..difficult..relationship.)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I spent more than a year working for the guy who went
| from "raised by ..." to "the richest man in the world".
| And when I say "working for", I mean "worked in the same
| converted garage".
|
| Bezos' stratospheric economic "mobility" is not evidence
| of a more generalized economic mobility. In a system that
| is even vaguely capitalist, there will _always_ be people
| who become incredibly wealthy without inheriting most of
| it. Their existence is not evidence of "considerable
| mobility", it's merely evidence of some sort of
| capitalistic economy.
|
| The fact that the 10 richest people on earth were not
| born into stratospheric wealthy is a testament (of sorts)
| to capitalism; if you want to know about economic
| mobility, you're better off focusing on statistics, not
| the exceptions that prove the rules.
| eevilspock wrote:
| Exactly. We could have a system where every year 10
| random poor people are chosen to become super wealthy.
| That isn't "economic mobility" in any meaningful or
| healthy sense.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| It's possible to return to that prelapsarian state (at
| least to the degree it actually existed)
| mcguire wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28500508
|
| Ah, the good ol' days.
| gumby wrote:
| Exactly
| simonh wrote:
| It's my lived experience. I've watched it happen. Two of my
| jobs, both of my favourite ones in my careers, were working
| for companies founded by ordinary people from what I
| suppose are reasonably call disadvantaged backgrounds. One
| of them was started by Mo Ibrahim, who started life in
| Sudan too poor to afford shoes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Ibrahim
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Though I agree with the sentiment and am all-in on
| democracy in general, personal stories are selection and
| survivor bias all the way down.
|
| It might just be that you are the lucky one, and by
| definition, are surrounded by other lucky ones who landed
| similar jobs. Many millions others might have tried and
| failed and live in poverty or are dead. You'd need data
| on all those millions to talk about the % chance of
| someone succeeding, and to show it's better here vs
| there.
|
| But that's all unhelpful. I think hope is important. I'd
| love to see us have a national consensus around equal
| opportunity, egalitarianism, and tolerance to different
| ways of life (and not just the "different" that I agree
| with!).
| listenallyall wrote:
| > The freer a society is, the less control and influence
| bureaucracies and gatekeepers have
|
| which is why governments and corporations continue to expand
| and add more and more rules, regulations, verifications,
| safety checks, privacy violations etc... they have a vested
| interest in restricting, rather than promoting, freedom.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| governments have no such vested interest.
|
| existing corporations do, and yes, they are often
| successful at regulatory capture.
|
| but ... private citizens, families, communities (geographic
| and of interest) _also_ have a vested (and legitimate)
| interest in more rules and regulations, verifications, and
| safety checks, and sometimes (just sometimes) they are
| successful are getting government to implement these
| things.
|
| when you look at a rule or regulation, you'd better be
| really sure about its history before you lay the blame at
| the feet of corporations seeking to restrict freedom.
| simonh wrote:
| In fact many regulations were fought tooth and nail by
| corporations. Environmental protection, tobacco health
| warnings, seat belt mandates, nutritional and content
| warning labels on food. Limitations on misleading
| adverts. Many, many more.
|
| Arguably these regulations promoted competition. By
| raising awareness of these issues consumer information
| regulations helped new entrants promote innovative
| healthier or safer products. Increasing public confidence
| in a class of products can even make those products more
| popular.
|
| Absent regulation individual companies can become locked
| into a race to the bottom that can turn a market into a
| cess pit. But introduce minimum quality standards and
| consumer confidence and participation can rise. There are
| spectacular examples of this in developing countries
| where effective regulation of financial services builds
| consumer trust and adoption of banking services. Used car
| sales and prices in many countries boomed when
| regulations were brought in to ensure customers were
| properly informed about the car's history and that the
| cars passed basic checks, because suddenly customers
| could trust that they weren't being ripped off. The
| narrative that regulations are necessarily bad for
| markets is simply not always true.
| simonh wrote:
| Right, and it's up to us to try and vote in politicians
| that militate against those tendencies, for example the way
| many financial regulations were swept away in the UK in the
| 1980s, or many examples of deregulation on airline
| industries (long way still to go), long distance telecoms
| and haulage industries.
|
| Regulation is very much a two edged sword though. Too
| little and cartels and monopolies are unconstrained, and
| individual customers are too easily cheated by deceptive
| practices. Too much regulation and the cost of entry into
| markets gets too high. It's a constant balancing act.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| There are plenty of wealthy people who have little claim to any
| sort of elite status, and plenty of elite people who don't have
| a lot of wealth. It's easiest to see it in the following way:
| there are plenty of elite people in America whose net worth
| might be "only" a couple million of dollars, but less than
| $10M. Think, a typical high profile journalist. For comparison,
| there are probably something like 3-4 million people in America
| whose household's net worth is above $10M. Are they all elite?
| Clearly, not.
| paulpauper wrote:
| this 10x
|
| Having a lot of money does not in any way equal power or
| influence.
|
| Does anyone know who Jimmy John Liautaud is? He's the founder
| of the Jimmy Johns sandwich chain. Worth over $1 billion, but
| people with like Paul Krugman, Glenn Greenwald, and Mathew
| Yglasis, who have huge platforms, keep dominating the
| discourse on important issues.
|
| Being rich is hardly sufficient to have a large platform. It
| means you can buy a big house, which looks cool, but it's not
| nearly enough to make people want to care about your
| opinions. Having credentials is no guarantee either although
| i think it helps way more than just having a lot of money.
|
| http://greyenlightenment.com/2021/09/06/the-class-
| structure-...
|
| I think the category for these people would be priests. Elite
| implies having a lot of power. These journalists and
| commentators do not have much power in so far as policy or
| the ability to hire or fire people, but they have
| considerable influence and reach in terms of having large
| followings.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Does anyone know who Jimmy John Liautaud is? He's the
| founder of the Jimmy Johns sandwich chain. Worth over $1
| billion, but people with like Paul Krugman, Glenn
| Greenwald, and Mathew Yglasis, who have huge platforms,
| keep dominating the discourse on important issues.
|
| This seems naive to me. You imagine that Krugman's columns
| in the NYT, Greenwald's pontifications on whatever platform
| he's on now, or little Matty Y's ruminations on substack
| are actually "dominating the discourse" ?
|
| Well, yes, of course they are dominating the _discourse_ ,
| but that's wildly different from dominating policy
| formation. To do that, you make a big donation an important
| politician, and then you follow up with friendly but firm
| reminders of (a) the size of your donation (b) the social
| importance of whatever it is that you do (c) your preferred
| policy direction.
|
| Krugman or Matt Y will write a column about this later,
| post-facto, and you'll have moved on, smiling.
| pasabagi wrote:
| I think also, in the case of somebody like Greenwald, it
| doesn't really matter how many people he reaches because
| he's essentially an empty envelope - he doesn't really
| hold substantive opinions. For example, he supported the
| Iraq war, only to moralize about how awful it was when US
| soldiers killed Iraqi soldiers. There's a lot of moral-
| stand-taking but no real incisiveness or heart.
|
| PS: That's also kind of how you get a broad audience - by
| articulately broadcasting the sort of opinions that most
| people already have.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > This seems naive to me. You imagine that Krugman's
| columns in the NYT, Greenwald's pontifications on
| whatever platform he's on now, or little Matty Y's
| ruminations on substack are actually "dominating the
| discourse" ?
|
| One could argue one way or another, but the point here is
| that they unarguably more impact on public discourse and
| policy than Jimmy John Liautaud has, despite having much
| less money than he has.
| luckylion wrote:
| That's the _current_ net cash-wealth, though. If you
| considered their potential, you might come to a different
| result.
|
| E.g. Bill & Hillary Clinton leaving the White House was,
| according to him, $16m in debt. His net worth was negative.
|
| Two decades later, they made over $200m. But it's obviously
| not like that money didn't come from the power and influence
| they've had when they left the White House. Nobody would have
| paid tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a speech of
| the wife of the former governor of Arkansas and failed
| presidential candidate.
|
| Some have $10m and that's it, and I'd agree, they're not
| elite. Others have much more, but little of it in cash, and
| they are elite. Influence can typically be transformed into
| cash, as the Clintons have shown.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| I don't think that Bill and Hillary Clinton are
| representative examples of elites that the blog post above
| is talking about.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| The people with all the political power, and the people with
| all the economic power, are always the same people. In every
| civilization in history.
| robocat wrote:
| The whole quote was "As a book I recently reviewed explains in
| great detail, elites are selected primarily for their prestige
| and status, which has many contributions, including money,
| looks, fame, charm, wit, positions of power, etc.".
|
| The book is Lauren A. Rivera's 'Pedigree: How Elite Students
| Get Elite Jobs'
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691155623/pe...
| which gives the tagline "How social class determines who lands
| the best jobs".
|
| Robin Hanson's review of the book:
| https://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/11/what-makes-prestige.h...
|
| I completely disagree money is all that matters. I expect the
| book explains why other markers of prestige/status are deeply
| important. We can all name influential people that are not
| wealthy - which proves that money isn't everything.
|
| I think it is rude to selectively quote someone who has gone to
| the effort to point to what backs up their statement. You are
| disagreeing with a book, not Robin.
| andreilys wrote:
| _At least I can't think of a period of human history, or a
| political system, where the richest families within it, didn't
| have much more power than the ordinary citizen_
|
| Bolshevik Revolution, China's revolution, Iran's Islamic
| revolution... Plenty of examples of middle class/upper middle
| class leaders overthrowing the richest families and seizing
| control. Now in most cases those who take control end up
| enriching themselves but the point still stands.
| gumby wrote:
| > I can't think of a period of human history, or a political
| system, where the richest families within it, didn't have much
| more power than the ordinary citizen
|
| You presumably haven't lived in a society where the powerful
| become wealthy rather than the wealthy becoming powerful.
|
| In republican Rome, the elite families controlled (to a major
| degree) the expenditures of the state, but their own fortunes
| waxed and waned. Gaius Julius Caesar came from an old but not
| especially wealthy family (his was a cadet branch), worked his
| way up the system (elected a tribune etc -- didn't start at the
| bottom!) but made his fortune in the usual way, by running
| Spain and then winning some wars. His chief asset was the
| Julian name.
|
| His friend amd heir, Augustus inverted this system (e.g. was
| able to pay the national budget out of his own assets).
|
| Aristocracies worked this way too -- you gained or lost wealth
| due to your power and proximity to the king, not the other way
| around. In fact if you became too wealthy it could cost you
| your fortune or even your life.
|
| Modern kleptocracies still operate this way, on scales from
| Congo to Russia to China.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > Gaius Julius Caesar came from an old but not especially
| wealthy family (his was a cadet branch), worked his way up
| the system (elected a tribune etc -- didn't start at the
| bottom!) but made his fortune in the usual way, by running
| Spain and then winning some wars. His chief asset was the
| Julian name.
|
| Gaius Julius Caesar family didn't have the Auctoritas or
| wealth, but His uncle was Marius, the most important man in
| Rome and he married at a young age Marius's successor's
| daughter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Marius
|
| Sharp contrast to Pompey Magnus who was so rich his first
| foray into public life was using his own funds to raise a
| private army, without being elected or having imperium, to
| support Sulla.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| > but if you zoom out to the helicopter perspective, the
| biggest "influencers" have always been the oligarchs and the
| sole requirement for joining their ranks is having lots and
| lots of money.
|
| That, on the other side, sounds very American-centric and
| contemporary-centric to me. I would say that even though money
| generally correlates with influence, there were many other
| factors at play.
|
| Feudal nobles of Europe resented and despised the merchant
| class even if they could not utterly suppress it. Wealthy
| commoners would have an influence, but holders of hereditary
| titles would still in many cases be considered above them
| legally. In countries such as Tsarist Russia, being of noble
| birth would be way more important than being rich; pre-
| revolutionary France wasn't too dissimilar.
|
| There were strict theocracies where the priestly caste would
| hold sway. Notably, scholars were considered more prestigious
| in Jewish societies than businesspeople, which might have
| contributed to the intellectual strength of the nation that is
| obvious even now.
|
| In Soviet-like systems, real power was held by the nomenklatura
| consisting of high level apparatchiks, senior members of the
| Party. You could bribe them, but money wasn't really the most
| important thing; the most important thing was their intra-Party
| position, earned over decades of patient scheming against other
| possible competitors in badly sewn grey suits.
|
| Spartans (or, to be more precise, Spartiates, the hereditary
| top class) would never under any circumstances admit any
| outsider among them as an equal - even if it meant that their
| ranks were thinning with each generation to the point of near
| extinction.
|
| Saddam Hussein only trusted his own Tikrit gang and anyone
| else, rich or smart, was second rank only.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I am thinking the disagreement with GP can be resolved by
| assuming money is representation of influences and
| connections.
|
| I'd argue that you can't be poor with tons of connections
| with rich, and sole currency accumulation is not sufficient
| to be influential because it is only an aspect of your
| portfolio, but are usually well correlated with the level of
| influences as money exists as a representation of
| connections.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > Feudal nobles of Europe resented and despised the merchant
| class even if they could not utterly suppress it.
|
| Sure, and as with all rank, there is an element of pride
| driving this. You even have racial origin theories like the
| Sarmatian origin myth that held for a couple centuries among
| the Polish nobility to distinguish themselves from commoners.
| But the distaste for merchants I gather is more complex than
| absence of noble title, or rather, the noble title is
| presumed to have some association with certain virtues
| opposed to mercantile activity. For example, pre-industrial
| Polish nobility were actually forbidden from engaging in all
| commerce save for commerce of an agrarian nature. Probably
| whatever else they earned came from some kind of taxation, at
| least among those rich enough to own villages, towns, or even
| cities. But why forbid commerce? Either the Crown had managed
| to check the power of the nobility in some way (who had
| become obscenely wealthy by the 17th century), or the
| nobility themselves saw that they should not themselves
| partake in such commerce for some, ostensibly virtuous,
| reasons. But the fact is that the wealthier nobility
| nonetheless had the upper hand and the advantage. Poorer
| family members were known to work for their richer relatives.
| So you have segmentation within a given social class by
| wealth.
|
| > There were strict theocracies where the priestly caste
| would hold sway. Notably, scholars were considered more
| prestigious in Jewish societies than businesspeople, which
| might have contributed to the intellectual strength of the
| nation that is obvious even now.
|
| I would say that even in Catholic Europe, which was Catholic-
| confessional but never theocratic and could not legitimately
| be by virtue of the Christian distinction between secular and
| religious estates (something unique in history; e.g. neither
| Jews nor Muslims understand this concept natively, only as
| something borrowed ill-fittingly and ad hoc from the
| Christian worldview), the priesthood was (and among Catholics
| still is) regarded as the higher calling owing to man's
| supernatural end. Thus Catholics understand the supreme
| pontiff as the highest ranking authority on earth and the
| bishops as very literally the princes of the Church. This
| places them above the nobility in a certain sense, even if
| this is more of a partial rather than total order. And of
| course the clergy were the best educated members of society
| and among whom no hereditary advantages existed in the strict
| sense (even if the nobility within its ranks did promote
| "nephews" to various positions, but this is an aberration).
| Perhaps we can understand this as the result of the Catholic
| priesthood being heir to the Jewish priesthood. Which is to
| say that here, a bishop has higher rank than a wealthy noble.
| shakow wrote:
| > pre-revolutionary France wasn't too dissimilar.
|
| In appearance maybe; if you dig a bit under the varnish, the
| power exerted by creditors over nobles and even kings quickly
| appears.
| cassepipe wrote:
| There is that and let's not forget that powerful nobles
| were nobles with estates and/or positions in the state
| apparatus that directly corresponded to receiving a rent.
| I'd argue that OP's theory that the wealthy were always in
| control still holds but what has changed throughout history
| is what wealth has been (cattle, land, slaves, merchandise-
| money like gold, credit backed money you name it)
| Sebguer wrote:
| It's always the means of production, the means just
| change with the era.
| ghassanmas wrote:
| I am happy that there are such a discussion exists, understanding
| the problem is the first step toward resolving it. I hope we as
| humans being, would eventually learn and apply a better system
| for handling decisions that affect the public. I do think that it
| might take time however I am kinda optimistic.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The author throws away their own and our power - it's up to you
| (and me) to evaluate elites and experts and to influence your
| community and decide what happens there. All elites and experts
| can do is attempt to persuade other people, but it's really up to
| those other people. There are endless examples of the public
| ignoring the elites and experts.
|
| > This also helps explain why artists are said to "contribute to
| important conversations" by making documentaries, etc. that
| express "emotional truths." They present themselves as qualifying
| elites by virtue of their superior art abilities.
|
| Artists are 'experts' in observing, conceiving, and expressing
| the world that is and the world that isn't. Many experts in their
| own domains overlook the real issue, misunderstand it, have
| failures of imagination, and fail to express themselves
| effectively.
| User23 wrote:
| > All elites and experts can do is attempt to persuade other
| people
|
| Experts rarely persuade anyone, and when they do it's usually
| another expert in the same field. So much for expertise.
|
| Meanwhile, being successful at persuasion is one of the
| defining characteristics of high social status. Napoleon was
| dead broke when he escaped from Elba, but by the time he made
| it to Paris virtually the entire French army was marching with
| him. It's hard to be more elite than being a beloved emperor
| who persuades the usurping king's army to join him.
|
| Another way you can tell social status is mate selection. For
| example, Elon Musk is clearly not just rich, but socially
| elite. Consider the difference between the women he is with
| compared to the obvious wildly rich but low sociosexual status
| nerds like Zuckerberg.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think he means to claim that we don't have an active
| role in this. The argument is that when you're trying to listen
| to the experts, you have to be careful, because it's easy to
| end up listening only to elites who claim to represent the
| experts.
| mybrid wrote:
| I'd contrast this by watching a season of HBO's "Entourage".
|
| I find it interesting that actors who are those with the least
| expertise and least value of conversation have talent agents and
| publicists whereas the experts have little to no talent agents or
| publicists.
|
| Why not just hire a publicist to write popular versions of the
| technical stuff that the expert feels accurately portray the
| technical innards?
|
| The ability to communicate with the masses is talent independent
| of other expertise. One can be talented in both that's what it
| is, two talents.
|
| Finally, America's corruption right now is off the charts. One
| cannot take seriously any critique of America's elite without
| factoring in the huge amount of influence corruption is having at
| all levels of elitism in this country. So I couldn't take this
| seriously.
|
| America is weird.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| What corruption exists in the US? Short of politicians and
| lobbyists (since thats obvious), where else does it occur? As
| far as I'm concerned, family politics and inheritances are not
| corrupt.
| mertd wrote:
| Clubhouse in a nutshell
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