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Invariably, the people most interested in the formation of a “true” aristocracy are the ones who expect to (1) be labeled as “genuine” aristocrats, and (2) bene

Invariably, the people most interested in the formation of a “true” aristocracy are the ones who expect to (1) be labeled as “genuine” aristocrats, and (2) benefit most greatly and directly. It should come as no surprise that the author is one such person[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_8

InSteady 3y ago
It seems like an appeal to certain billionaires to be more audacious and inventive when it comes to their philanthropic and prosocial pursuits. He puts particular emphasis on educational institutions, alluding to a higher purpose than simply donating more millions into the bloated endowment industry. Which tends to be resistant to large scale innovation within its own sphere (MOOCs are a great idea, but they don't seem to have bootstrapped into actual institutions on their own standing like they might have). It doesn't seem like he's advocating for new special powers for a new special in-group so much as waxing thoughtfully about what better to do with what they already have. It's easy enough to be cynical about his motivations. Maybe the distinction of being a "natural aristocrat" is merely self-serving and conceited. But we have aristocrats whether we like it or not. Perhaps a subset of the modern aristocracy might be more naturally aligned with his idealistic notions, and thus heed a calling to transformatively serve the public out of which they rose. I personally can forgive a bit of hubris if it is wielded responsibly and aimed at lofty, altruistic goals (because I'm a total sucker for that kind of rhetoric).
supertrope 3y ago
Just like how philosophers advocated for benevolent enlightened philosopher kings.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Yep. There’s a good basic underlying principle to be found here: practice skepticism towards any system or philosophy that has a logical conclusion in the natural or preternatural right of its leaders to rule.
  - cxr 3y ago
    There's nothing particular to philosophy here. "Is this principle or opportunism?" is an extremely pertinent thing to ask when confronting any kind of proposal or plea. In other words, does the person really believe in this on its merits, or have they ran the simulation in their heads, taken note of where that would put them, and are now pushing the idea that would get them there? For example, an ardent supporter of tax reform who strenuously argues that the cutoff should be such-and-such is someone who should be paid much more attention to if they're advocating to increase taxes on the rich in such a way that it results in their paying more, over the rich person who argues we shouldn't be taxing the rich. Not completely unrelated: In the bad days of the late aughts when software designers were beginning to be deified and given way too much inscrutable power to make dubious decisions, I came up with a simple litmus test that could be applied to determine whether one's stated justification was horseshit* or not: it's to ask them, "In all your time as a designer where you have justified your decisions on the basis that the new way is better for the userbase as a whole—and so individuals who don't like the new defaults need to sacrifice for the greater good—are there any instances where you have undertaken a change where the result was you being among those in that instance who were negatively impacted by the change?"
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      Agreed. “Philosophy” in the previous comment was being used in the “philosophy of x” sense, not philosophy solely qua politics, or whatever else. (I think your taxation example is great, and it’s one I’ve used before to test myself on my own stances. More generally, that sort of test roughly rhymes with Kant’s universalization test.)
      - salawat 3y ago
        Philosophy, done right, is just what it says on the tin. It is the "Love of Wisdom". Wisdom is a funny thing. It isn't knowledge per se, but it is the ability to navigate the "space of knowledge". One who is wise is one who can strip the noise out a context, (or recognize that a context stripped by another is missing noise unjustifiably cut). You can teach people knowledge til the cows come home, wisdom comes only through the act of living and navigating through it. Given that, it is no surprise that given Jefferson's umwelt, ge had opinions on the topics he did. Note, however, how in spite of that there, the mechhanisms and processes built originally still included measures specifically tuned to spoil the natural tendency of wealth centric aristol to arise and dominate above those that could actually do the work of leading well. Which worked just fine right up until the public threw out the benefit of that wisdom with the implementation of national political parties, and resorted to wealth accrual as the primary metric of success rather than other works.
prvc 3y ago
How, if true, does this bear on the validity of the idea?
- woodruffw 3y ago
  On the validity of aristocracy as an idea? It makes it an ironically self-defeating one: to actually possess (political, among other) ariste is to not seek power for its own sake. Thus, openly pining for aristocracy demonstrates a lack of ariste. (Everybody wants competence. This is a universal human desire; it should be separated from a political structure that reifies power in those who think that they’re the most competent.)
  - mistermann 3y ago
    It makes it appear that way, but exerting an inevitable causal filter on the physical manifestation of the future is highly speculative.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      I’m having trouble parsing this; I don’t think I made a prediction about the future. The point was simpler than that: virtue, ariste, etc. is already a shared human value, one that people apply to their decision making processes already (including in democracies). Anybody asking us to consider it a “lost idea” is trying to sell something other than the thing we’ve already bought.
  - salawat 3y ago
    Question: Do you think he pined for the establishment of and recognition of an American aristocracy? I took from the reading less that Jefferson was desirous of it, and more that he recognized the inevitability of something indistinguishable from it arising, and wishing to somehow thumb the institutional scales as it were to amplify the "aristocrat by virtue" rather than merely the "aristocrat that came into it by heritance". He was very concerned with the tendency of heritable wealth to snowball, but, also to result in increasingly incompetent wielders thereof. Remember, this is the same guy who wanted a new Constitutional Convention every 19 years when the next generation came of age, and mandatory sunsets on all acts of government. To be clear, if you were an aristocrat in charge of things/in a position of power in Jefferson's imagined world, you were not in for a fun time. Wielding that power would be a hell of a lot of retread ground over and over and over and over. In fact, the only way to exercise power in that circumstance, would have been knowing how to use it effectively. There'd simply be no room for maintaining your personal capricious self-edifying precipises of power, because of the sheer effort of keeping them in place against the march of time, and the agreeableness of those you're sharing the world with, and who ultimately bear the burden of doing the work. The system we have now, (First pass the post, and once it's in it's in forever) is quite the opposite.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I bailed almost immediately on reading the article when I saw who it was, but was gladdened to see the opening quote at least suggests these founding fathers recognized natural aristocracy as an insidious hard to repep threat. > The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

InSteady 3y ago

It seems like an appeal to certain billionaires to be more audacious and inventive when it comes to their philanthropic and prosocial pursuits. He puts particular emphasis on educational institutions, alluding to a higher purpose than simply donating more millions into the bloated endowment industry. Which tends to be resistant to large scale innovation within its own sphere (MOOCs are a great idea, but they don't seem to have bootstrapped into actual institutions on their own standing like they might have). It doesn't seem like he's advocating for new special powers for a new special in-group so much as waxing thoughtfully about what better to do with what they already have. It's easy enough to be cynical about his motivations. Maybe the distinction of being a "natural aristocrat" is merely self-serving and conceited. But we have aristocrats whether we like it or not. Perhaps a subset of the modern aristocracy might be more naturally aligned with his idealistic notions, and thus heed a calling to transformatively serve the public out of which they rose. I personally can forgive a bit of hubris if it is wielded responsibly and aimed at lofty, altruistic goals (because I'm a total sucker for that kind of rhetoric).

supertrope 3y ago

Just like how philosophers advocated for benevolent enlightened philosopher kings.

woodruffw 3y ago
Yep. There’s a good basic underlying principle to be found here: practice skepticism towards any system or philosophy that has a logical conclusion in the natural or preternatural right of its leaders to rule.
- cxr 3y ago
  There's nothing particular to philosophy here. "Is this principle or opportunism?" is an extremely pertinent thing to ask when confronting any kind of proposal or plea. In other words, does the person really believe in this on its merits, or have they ran the simulation in their heads, taken note of where that would put them, and are now pushing the idea that would get them there? For example, an ardent supporter of tax reform who strenuously argues that the cutoff should be such-and-such is someone who should be paid much more attention to if they're advocating to increase taxes on the rich in such a way that it results in their paying more, over the rich person who argues we shouldn't be taxing the rich. Not completely unrelated: In the bad days of the late aughts when software designers were beginning to be deified and given way too much inscrutable power to make dubious decisions, I came up with a simple litmus test that could be applied to determine whether one's stated justification was horseshit* or not: it's to ask them, "In all your time as a designer where you have justified your decisions on the basis that the new way is better for the userbase as a whole—and so individuals who don't like the new defaults need to sacrifice for the greater good—are there any instances where you have undertaken a change where the result was you being among those in that instance who were negatively impacted by the change?"
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Agreed. “Philosophy” in the previous comment was being used in the “philosophy of x” sense, not philosophy solely qua politics, or whatever else. (I think your taxation example is great, and it’s one I’ve used before to test myself on my own stances. More generally, that sort of test roughly rhymes with Kant’s universalization test.)
    - salawat 3y ago
      Philosophy, done right, is just what it says on the tin. It is the "Love of Wisdom". Wisdom is a funny thing. It isn't knowledge per se, but it is the ability to navigate the "space of knowledge". One who is wise is one who can strip the noise out a context, (or recognize that a context stripped by another is missing noise unjustifiably cut). You can teach people knowledge til the cows come home, wisdom comes only through the act of living and navigating through it. Given that, it is no surprise that given Jefferson's umwelt, ge had opinions on the topics he did. Note, however, how in spite of that there, the mechhanisms and processes built originally still included measures specifically tuned to spoil the natural tendency of wealth centric aristol to arise and dominate above those that could actually do the work of leading well. Which worked just fine right up until the public threw out the benefit of that wisdom with the implementation of national political parties, and resorted to wealth accrual as the primary metric of success rather than other works.

prvc 3y ago

How, if true, does this bear on the validity of the idea?

woodruffw 3y ago
On the validity of aristocracy as an idea? It makes it an ironically self-defeating one: to actually possess (political, among other) ariste is to not seek power for its own sake. Thus, openly pining for aristocracy demonstrates a lack of ariste. (Everybody wants competence. This is a universal human desire; it should be separated from a political structure that reifies power in those who think that they’re the most competent.)
- mistermann 3y ago
  It makes it appear that way, but exerting an inevitable causal filter on the physical manifestation of the future is highly speculative.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I’m having trouble parsing this; I don’t think I made a prediction about the future. The point was simpler than that: virtue, ariste, etc. is already a shared human value, one that people apply to their decision making processes already (including in democracies). Anybody asking us to consider it a “lost idea” is trying to sell something other than the thing we’ve already bought.
- salawat 3y ago
  Question: Do you think he pined for the establishment of and recognition of an American aristocracy? I took from the reading less that Jefferson was desirous of it, and more that he recognized the inevitability of something indistinguishable from it arising, and wishing to somehow thumb the institutional scales as it were to amplify the "aristocrat by virtue" rather than merely the "aristocrat that came into it by heritance". He was very concerned with the tendency of heritable wealth to snowball, but, also to result in increasingly incompetent wielders thereof. Remember, this is the same guy who wanted a new Constitutional Convention every 19 years when the next generation came of age, and mandatory sunsets on all acts of government. To be clear, if you were an aristocrat in charge of things/in a position of power in Jefferson's imagined world, you were not in for a fun time. Wielding that power would be a hell of a lot of retread ground over and over and over and over. In fact, the only way to exercise power in that circumstance, would have been knowing how to use it effectively. There'd simply be no room for maintaining your personal capricious self-edifying precipises of power, because of the sheer effort of keeping them in place against the march of time, and the agreeableness of those you're sharing the world with, and who ultimately bear the burden of doing the work. The system we have now, (First pass the post, and once it's in it's in forever) is quite the opposite.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

I bailed almost immediately on reading the article when I saw who it was, but was gladdened to see the opening quote at least suggests these founding fathers recognized natural aristocracy as an insidious hard to repep threat. > The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.