> The premise seems wrong in that he disagrees with the elite overproduction thesis, but the professions he lists are " lawyers, MBA holders,..." and later to f

> The premise seems wrong in that he disagrees with the elite overproduction thesis, but the professions he lists are " lawyers, MBA holders,..." and later to finance. But these are the professions likely to be zero-sum I disagree with you. From the article, those very professions existing would be explained by Elite Underproduction. It is an example of the system optimizing for all surplus to be competed away. Thus we have created an Elite which include the science and study of competing where only so many resources and only so much status is available. If you read his argument, it is that we create an "elite" whose role is not to advance the frontier of understanding and achievement, but instead to capitalize on the currently available resources and status. I think the part that is a little bit of a stretch, is that he's redefining "elite", he seems to say that "elite" should be a status held by those who innovate our capabilities of understanding and producing for all. And then he says, if you take "elite" to mean that, you'll see that we do not produce a lot of those, therefore we are "underproducing elites". That said, I think generally people think of "elites" more as the "aristocracy", a.k.a, those who have entrenched themselves with social capital and status. With that definition, you can say we produce too many "elites", as in, too many people who are trained in trying to acquire a big slice of the social capital and status, and because there is a limited pool of that, these people fail to acquire a big chunk of it as they all compete for that limited resource. Thus the theory of "Elite overproduction". So you see, it really just depends how you define "Elite". But the main point of OPs' article is valid, our system does not reward or invest enough in trying to push our understanding and capabilities in order to advance all of humanity. And because of that, if you have the qualifications to try and do so, you instead choose to capitalize on maximizing your slice of the existing wealth by going into Quants for example, because the system pays well to do that, but doesn't for true research.