3 ms·
By Peter Turchin. Elite overproduction hypothesis. Also paywall.
by AnimalMuppet 3y ago
By Peter Turchin. Elite overproduction hypothesis. Also paywall.
- Muromec 3y agoIs there a good critique of the hypothesis? This sounds pretty dated.
- lycopodiopsida 3y agoOne thing I've noticed: he is using the number of PhD students as an argument that people need more and more elite credentials to achieve anything. I am not impressed by this part of his hypothesis, since the academic machine simply uses naivety of young people for slave-like, tedious academic work. Especially in US, many of them are foreigners and will leave the country afterwards at some point, as far as I remember. It has a lot to do with how academia is structured (you have to get a PhD if you even consider a career in science) and not with any practical advantages it gets you.
- mikhailfranco 3y agoThe last chart I saw for the US showed numbers of STEM graduates increasing for immigrants, but decreasing for native/permres; and non-STEM unemployment was about double that for STEM. Is the over-production of non-STEM graduates decreasing? Is non-STEM unemployment going down? [Here I assume STEM is productive, or increasing productivity, and non-STEM is the pool for BS jobs and the elites - feel free to disagree]
- aebtebeten 3y agoHow does "elite overproduction" compare to "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchal Collectivism"? (tl;dr of the latter: the high are only ever overthrown by the middle, who —no matter what their ideology may claim as to the low— merely displace, becoming the new high)