5 ms·

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

by xyzzyz 5y ago

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.

luckylion 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I don’t think that Bill and Hillary Clinton are representative examples of elites that the blog post above is talking about.
paulpauper 5y ago
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-of-america/ 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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    > 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.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      I don't consider it even close to inarguable. The fact that there are some "big names" that help shape, shift and constrain public discourse does not imply that the same people also shape policy decisions. [ EDIT: I don't know that the JJ founder does anything at all on policy, but he seemed to be playing the role of "stand-in for rich people that potentially push policies but nobody knows who they are". ]

by xyzzyz 5y ago

luckylion 5y ago

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 5y ago
I don’t think that Bill and Hillary Clinton are representative examples of elites that the blog post above is talking about.

paulpauper 5y ago

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-of-america/ 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 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  > 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.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I don't consider it even close to inarguable. The fact that there are some "big names" that help shape, shift and constrain public discourse does not imply that the same people also shape policy decisions. [ EDIT: I don't know that the JJ founder does anything at all on policy, but he seemed to be playing the role of "stand-in for rich people that potentially push policies but nobody knows who they are". ]