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Turchin uses the term “elites”, which is not the same as “brainy”. Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too

Turchin uses the term “elites”, which is not the same as “brainy”. Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. “Elites” on the other hand - highly credentialed and entitled - play zero-sum games. There’s a lot of interesting critique written by heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch, on how the current progressive movement is just intra-elite competition. Take BLM for example: how are Floyd/Blake policing incidents related to removing entrance tests from the super-elite schools and colleges, or shaking down super-elite art galleries until they show more POC artists? Or having a nominally black VP who’s made a career out of prosecuting black criminals? Or the populist conservative movement appealing to the “non-elite” working class, who the progressives used to represent. This is happening all over the western world. TLDR: Elite vs. non-elite seems exactly right, but let’s not confuse it with “brainy” please

xenocratus 6y ago
> Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. > And we should not expand our system of higher education beyond the ability of the economy to absorb university graduates. An excess of young people with advanced degrees has been one of the chief causes of instability in the past. I think he genuinely means that too many educated people (by too many meaning more than society can actually accomodate) is a bad thing.
- devenblake 6y ago
  I would think that would be an indicator not that the quantity of smart people is bad but that we live in a society built for stupid people (which implies it was built by stupid people).
  - luckylion 6y ago
    If you simplify it: if you have a lot of architects but very few builders, you're not going to get a lot done. That doesn't mean that society was made for or by the builders. Since academics tend to want to eat as well, you still need somebody to provide the food. If all you have is educated people for whom food production is beneath their qualifications, you're going to end up with starving academics lamenting the cruelty of the universe not providing food to them.
    - devenblake 6y ago
      In the absence of uneducated laborers to do the jobs nobody wants to do, we can get the educated laborers to automate these tasks.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        That would be people you'd need though, not people that get "produced" in larger numbers than desirable. A million more engineers will be great. A million more art history majors not so much.
        username90 6y ago
        If every manual laborer had an engineering degree I bet a ton of it will get automated really quickly. If every paper pusher had a computer science degree I bet a ton of it would get automated really quickly as well. When liberal arts majors do low skill work they start clamoring for low skill immigration so they get people they can manage.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      The problem with this analogy is that there is no shortage of uneducated people in other countries. If immigration or export is possible then uneducated people in rich nations don't stand a chance in the first place.
varispeed 6y ago
"brainy" people can also think how to exploit society, and they are actually quite effective at it. Take a look at the rise of various totalitarian societies in the last century. The books that have been written by them more or less are still the basis of frameworks various countries have adopted.
amelius 6y ago
> Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. > “Elites” on the other hand - highly credentialed and entitled - play zero-sum games. Your comment says nothing about what happens when "genuinely brainy" people get caught in the zero-sum games set up by the elites.
awelkie 6y ago
Could you give some examples of such critiques? The idea seems interesting and I'd like to read a more long-form argument.
paganel 6y ago
> heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch, Any book or article recommendations that you might have easy access to? Reason is I've only recently started to read some Lasch and I genuinely like his writing, and on top of that I've also become really interested in fringe/heterodox left-wing writings as of late (I say that as a person usually on the right when it comes to politics). If it matters I'm also a fan of Jacques Ellul (which Lasch mentions among others as one of his inspirations).
dalbasal 6y ago
>>Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. While we're on grand theories of politics and society... I think one of our modern/liberal theses is (perhaps) being played out currently. Assuming that "brainy" is not totally unrelated to academic/educated, we have ratcheted up the supply of braininess. That does include empty credentialist trends, but it also includes people trained in science, engineering, mathematics and such. We have more of all of these people. A lot of the logic behind producing them (ramping up university enrollment massively over decades) has been that productivity and income are a product of "human capital." IE, an engineer/doctor/etc. is n% more productive than a dock worker and therefore earns and produces n% more because education. Educate more people. They'll produce & earn more. This was, like most social theories, part economics and part romanticism. People view/viewed economic gaps between poor and rich countries this way. IE, besides physical capital, you could turn a poor country into a rich one with education. I don't think this was totally untrue. That said, I do think reality has given us some reality check nuances. There are other limits/factors on economic growth than education. To some extent, education was a proxy for wealth/power.. not it's source. Income does not necessarily reflect productivity, and productivity itself can be subjective. To put a blunt end on it... "clerk" was, 50-100 years ago, the entry level white collar job. It came with entry level bougie status & income. Today, "clerical jobs" are very common. Those clerks are more highly educated. PCS are basically clerical super-efficiency machines. Yet, modern clerks don't have the modern equivalent of old timey clerk's status & income.
herbstein 6y ago
> There’s a lot of interesting critique written by heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch, on how the current progressive movement is just intra-elite competition. There's a joke in leftist spheres that boils down to "Progressives simply want more female slave owners". I think it encapsulates the sentiment of the paragraph I partially quoted quite nicely.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
leetcrew 6y ago
> Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. "brainy" people can only contribute more than their non-brainy counterparts when they can leverage meaningful amounts of resources. a really clever person working a register in mcdonalds is not a whole lot more productive than a barely competent employee. even if they have some brilliant idea to streamline things in the store, no one will care. it's entirely possible to have more "brainy" people than there are opportunities available for them to leverage their intelligence. if resources are diverted to develop "brainy" people, then this would be a case where there are too many of them.
- jl2718 6y ago
  A smart person automates everything they do. Put them in front of a register for a year and they’ll end up improving it as a side project. What I’ve noticed in my lifetime is that smart people in regular jobs have become more and more rare, and this kind of organic innovation has stopped. Innovation now generally comes from outside of any business.
biophysboy 6y ago
> Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. Sure, but brainy people do need resources to apply their ability. In my field (biophysics), pioneering new methods is expensive, time & money wise. Elites have more of both (more grant $ and 10x more grad students).
pksebben 6y ago
there's another assumption being made in this article, and that's the (all too common) assertion that stability is always a good thing. consider the state of affairs; the mechanisms by which we enact and enforce public policy are largely anachronisms from an era when the most efficient method of information exchange was a printing press. we still vote with paper. mostly in a single day. this is not a situation that we would devise from scratch if called upon to create a solution today. entrenched interests pose a fundamental barrier to social progress. those interests are demonstrably more efficient at gaming the system as it stands. introduction of chaos to such a system may provide the only opportunity for real, fundamental shift in sociopolitical system dynamics. this is a good thing - a forest needs the occasional fire.
bleepblorp 6y ago
I generally take the view that the SJW identity politics plague was born due to nominally left-leaning people striking it rich in SV and wanting some way to feel 'woke' without feeling guilty over all the money they've acquired. SJW identity politics is left politics made safe for the California startup equity/VC/IPO crowd because it pays utterly no attention to economic inequality at all.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Pretty much. American ""intersectionalist"" (The first intersectionalists realized that in our society class is the major by far axis of discriminatio) is a repackaging of explicitly class-focused ideas and politics in order to serve the interests of Capital (in this case formulated as the VC/IPO class).
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > SJW identity politics is left politics made safe for the California startup equity/VC/IPO crowd because it pays utterly no attention to economic inequality at all. The general shape of this critique of bourgeois identity politics is much older than either the phrase "identity politics" or Silicon Valley itself (its at least as old as divides within late-19th/early-20th century feminism between radical and bourgeois feminism.)
whearyou 6y ago
You are very on point

xenocratus 6y ago

> Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. > And we should not expand our system of higher education beyond the ability of the economy to absorb university graduates. An excess of young people with advanced degrees has been one of the chief causes of instability in the past. I think he genuinely means that too many educated people (by too many meaning more than society can actually accomodate) is a bad thing.

devenblake 6y ago
I would think that would be an indicator not that the quantity of smart people is bad but that we live in a society built for stupid people (which implies it was built by stupid people).
- luckylion 6y ago
  If you simplify it: if you have a lot of architects but very few builders, you're not going to get a lot done. That doesn't mean that society was made for or by the builders. Since academics tend to want to eat as well, you still need somebody to provide the food. If all you have is educated people for whom food production is beneath their qualifications, you're going to end up with starving academics lamenting the cruelty of the universe not providing food to them.
  - devenblake 6y ago
    In the absence of uneducated laborers to do the jobs nobody wants to do, we can get the educated laborers to automate these tasks.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      That would be people you'd need though, not people that get "produced" in larger numbers than desirable. A million more engineers will be great. A million more art history majors not so much.
      - username90 6y ago
        If every manual laborer had an engineering degree I bet a ton of it will get automated really quickly. If every paper pusher had a computer science degree I bet a ton of it would get automated really quickly as well. When liberal arts majors do low skill work they start clamoring for low skill immigration so they get people they can manage.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The problem with this analogy is that there is no shortage of uneducated people in other countries. If immigration or export is possible then uneducated people in rich nations don't stand a chance in the first place.

varispeed 6y ago

"brainy" people can also think how to exploit society, and they are actually quite effective at it. Take a look at the rise of various totalitarian societies in the last century. The books that have been written by them more or less are still the basis of frameworks various countries have adopted.

amelius 6y ago

> Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. > “Elites” on the other hand - highly credentialed and entitled - play zero-sum games. Your comment says nothing about what happens when "genuinely brainy" people get caught in the zero-sum games set up by the elites.

awelkie 6y ago

Could you give some examples of such critiques? The idea seems interesting and I'd like to read a more long-form argument.

paganel 6y ago

> heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch, Any book or article recommendations that you might have easy access to? Reason is I've only recently started to read some Lasch and I genuinely like his writing, and on top of that I've also become really interested in fringe/heterodox left-wing writings as of late (I say that as a person usually on the right when it comes to politics). If it matters I'm also a fan of Jacques Ellul (which Lasch mentions among others as one of his inspirations).

dalbasal 6y ago

>>Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. While we're on grand theories of politics and society... I think one of our modern/liberal theses is (perhaps) being played out currently. Assuming that "brainy" is not totally unrelated to academic/educated, we have ratcheted up the supply of braininess. That does include empty credentialist trends, but it also includes people trained in science, engineering, mathematics and such. We have more of all of these people. A lot of the logic behind producing them (ramping up university enrollment massively over decades) has been that productivity and income are a product of "human capital." IE, an engineer/doctor/etc. is n% more productive than a dock worker and therefore earns and produces n% more because education. Educate more people. They'll produce & earn more. This was, like most social theories, part economics and part romanticism. People view/viewed economic gaps between poor and rich countries this way. IE, besides physical capital, you could turn a poor country into a rich one with education. I don't think this was totally untrue. That said, I do think reality has given us some reality check nuances. There are other limits/factors on economic growth than education. To some extent, education was a proxy for wealth/power.. not it's source. Income does not necessarily reflect productivity, and productivity itself can be subjective. To put a blunt end on it... "clerk" was, 50-100 years ago, the entry level white collar job. It came with entry level bougie status & income. Today, "clerical jobs" are very common. Those clerks are more highly educated. PCS are basically clerical super-efficiency machines. Yet, modern clerks don't have the modern equivalent of old timey clerk's status & income.

herbstein 6y ago

> There’s a lot of interesting critique written by heterodox leftists today, in the spirit of Chris Lasch, on how the current progressive movement is just intra-elite competition. There's a joke in leftist spheres that boils down to "Progressives simply want more female slave owners". I think it encapsulates the sentiment of the paragraph I partially quoted quite nicely.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

leetcrew 6y ago

> Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. "brainy" people can only contribute more than their non-brainy counterparts when they can leverage meaningful amounts of resources. a really clever person working a register in mcdonalds is not a whole lot more productive than a barely competent employee. even if they have some brilliant idea to streamline things in the store, no one will care. it's entirely possible to have more "brainy" people than there are opportunities available for them to leverage their intelligence. if resources are diverted to develop "brainy" people, then this would be a case where there are too many of them.

jl2718 6y ago
A smart person automates everything they do. Put them in front of a register for a year and they’ll end up improving it as a side project. What I’ve noticed in my lifetime is that smart people in regular jobs have become more and more rare, and this kind of organic innovation has stopped. Innovation now generally comes from outside of any business.

biophysboy 6y ago

> Genuinely “brainy” people can find new ways to contribute to society, there can never be too any of them. Sure, but brainy people do need resources to apply their ability. In my field (biophysics), pioneering new methods is expensive, time & money wise. Elites have more of both (more grant $ and 10x more grad students).

pksebben 6y ago

there's another assumption being made in this article, and that's the (all too common) assertion that stability is always a good thing. consider the state of affairs; the mechanisms by which we enact and enforce public policy are largely anachronisms from an era when the most efficient method of information exchange was a printing press. we still vote with paper. mostly in a single day. this is not a situation that we would devise from scratch if called upon to create a solution today. entrenched interests pose a fundamental barrier to social progress. those interests are demonstrably more efficient at gaming the system as it stands. introduction of chaos to such a system may provide the only opportunity for real, fundamental shift in sociopolitical system dynamics. this is a good thing - a forest needs the occasional fire.

bleepblorp 6y ago

I generally take the view that the SJW identity politics plague was born due to nominally left-leaning people striking it rich in SV and wanting some way to feel 'woke' without feeling guilty over all the money they've acquired. SJW identity politics is left politics made safe for the California startup equity/VC/IPO crowd because it pays utterly no attention to economic inequality at all.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Pretty much. American ""intersectionalist"" (The first intersectionalists realized that in our society class is the major by far axis of discriminatio) is a repackaging of explicitly class-focused ideas and politics in order to serve the interests of Capital (in this case formulated as the VC/IPO class).
dragonwriter 6y ago
> SJW identity politics is left politics made safe for the California startup equity/VC/IPO crowd because it pays utterly no attention to economic inequality at all. The general shape of this critique of bourgeois identity politics is much older than either the phrase "identity politics" or Silicon Valley itself (its at least as old as divides within late-19th/early-20th century feminism between radical and bourgeois feminism.)

whearyou 6y ago

You are very on point