4 ms·

Notably, it's only 3.7% in the US, & 5% across democracies – but 29% in autocracies, and 36% in China. There are some fishy things in their choices, with poten

by gojomo 3y ago

Notably, it's only 3.7% in the US, & 5% across democracies – but 29% in autocracies, and 36% in China. There are some fishy things in their choices, with potential rationales but still creating caveats about their results. For example: • "excludes politicians and royal family members whose wealth and political power cannot be disentangled. Vladimir Putin, for example, is not on the list despite speculation that he may be the world’s wealthiest person" • those who had political roles before they became billionaires, like Sheryl Sandberg, are excluded because "they reflect a different dynamic than the wealth-to-politics trajectory that we explore in this paper" (?!) • it even includes failed runs (election losses & early-aborted campaigns) & some positions that can be almost entirely ceremonial (ambassadorships to minor countries) Further, the only comparison to rates of participation of non-billionaire groups is a vague mention of that only "4%" of people in "pipeline fields" like "law, business, education, and community activism" who "consider" running-for-office do so. Notably, that's about-equal to the US billionaire's "3.7%" participation. And, it'd be interesting to drill-into the mega-political-feeders (in the US) – like children/family of politicians, or law degrees from top/Ivy schools. I suspect those may blow billionaire involvement rates out of the water.

rsynnott 3y ago
> those who had political roles before they became billionaires, like Sheryl Sandberg, are excluded because "they reflect a different dynamic than the wealth-to-politics trajectory that we explore in this paper" (?!) She was a civil servant, who then moved into the private sector doing ad sales, and won the lottery twice (she joined Google in 2001 and Facebook in 2007). Not to say she wasn't skilled, she clearly was, but she was also very lucky with timing and with which companies she joined. Going from public to private sector isn't uncommon, and her role in Google wasn't closely related to her civil service role. There are, presumably, hundreds if not thousands of civil service people who left the same year she did, took roles in the tech sector, but oops, most of them joined Yahoo or Pets.com, or a million companies who were gone by 2003, and that was the end of that. She's such an edge-case that it probably makes sense to exclude her. Now, if Nick Clegg (former leader of the LibDems and Deputy PM of the UK, now works at Facebook) were to become fabulously wealthy, that would be more relevant (and arguably more worrying); so far that hasn't really happened tho. EDIT: Yahoo may be a bad example; thinking about it I'm not sure it actually was in decline in 2001. Worldcom? Webvan? Netscape? Whatever; loads of examples available; most high-flying exec types joining tech companies, just as well-regarded as Google at the time, out of the civil service (or anywhere else) in 2001 would've ended up with some worthless paper, but joining _Google_ was winning the lottery, and then she did it again with Facebook.
gwern 3y ago
> • those who had political roles before they became billionaires, like Sheryl Sandberg, are excluded because "they reflect a different dynamic than the wealth-to-politics trajectory that we explore in this paper" (?!) That seems sensible to me. Official corruption seems like an entirely different phenomena to successful businessman interested in second careers in politics or philanthropy. Xi Jinping is a billionaire, and Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire, but when they are seeking votes for an elected position, it's rather different things...
- gojomo 3y ago
  Sure, that's what they want to focus on & they have a high-contrast read on "Forbes-certified-billionaire-then-politics". But without even accusing Sandberg of any "official corruption", she was already in the sort of "feeder roles" towards politics (Ivy-league Economics BA, MBA, position at global QUANGO World Bank) – that I find this paper under-considers as useful comparison-classes – before her first US government position. And, she was already potentially a centi-millionaire (via her Yahoo exec then SurveyMonkey CEO late husband) before her roles at Google & Facebook. (If there were enough data, it might be found that centi-millionaires are in even more of a "sweet spot" for politics than "billionaires", given the extra attention/resentment towards the upperest-top.) So while I don't blame the authors too much for their choice of what to emphasize, & data-limitations, she's indicative of other parts of the full picture. Characterizing the full probabilistic 'state-machine' of people's transitions between [education, inheritances of money or name-recognition, levels-of-wealth, private-sector-offices, public-offices, etc] could be a valuable extension of this tiny cross-sectional analysis. And, given that they did enough analysis to exclude Sandberg-types from their counts, it'd be good to have seen how many such people were so-excluded – a salient detail I didn't notice from a skim of their paper.

by gojomo 3y ago

rsynnott 3y ago

> those who had political roles before they became billionaires, like Sheryl Sandberg, are excluded because "they reflect a different dynamic than the wealth-to-politics trajectory that we explore in this paper" (?!) She was a civil servant, who then moved into the private sector doing ad sales, and won the lottery twice (she joined Google in 2001 and Facebook in 2007). Not to say she wasn't skilled, she clearly was, but she was also very lucky with timing and with which companies she joined. Going from public to private sector isn't uncommon, and her role in Google wasn't closely related to her civil service role. There are, presumably, hundreds if not thousands of civil service people who left the same year she did, took roles in the tech sector, but oops, most of them joined Yahoo or Pets.com, or a million companies who were gone by 2003, and that was the end of that. She's such an edge-case that it probably makes sense to exclude her. Now, if Nick Clegg (former leader of the LibDems and Deputy PM of the UK, now works at Facebook) were to become fabulously wealthy, that would be more relevant (and arguably more worrying); so far that hasn't really happened tho. EDIT: Yahoo may be a bad example; thinking about it I'm not sure it actually was in decline in 2001. Worldcom? Webvan? Netscape? Whatever; loads of examples available; most high-flying exec types joining tech companies, just as well-regarded as Google at the time, out of the civil service (or anywhere else) in 2001 would've ended up with some worthless paper, but joining _Google_ was winning the lottery, and then she did it again with Facebook.

gwern 3y ago

> • those who had political roles before they became billionaires, like Sheryl Sandberg, are excluded because "they reflect a different dynamic than the wealth-to-politics trajectory that we explore in this paper" (?!) That seems sensible to me. Official corruption seems like an entirely different phenomena to successful businessman interested in second careers in politics or philanthropy. Xi Jinping is a billionaire, and Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire, but when they are seeking votes for an elected position, it's rather different things...

gojomo 3y ago
Sure, that's what they want to focus on & they have a high-contrast read on "Forbes-certified-billionaire-then-politics". But without even accusing Sandberg of any "official corruption", she was already in the sort of "feeder roles" towards politics (Ivy-league Economics BA, MBA, position at global QUANGO World Bank) – that I find this paper under-considers as useful comparison-classes – before her first US government position. And, she was already potentially a centi-millionaire (via her Yahoo exec then SurveyMonkey CEO late husband) before her roles at Google & Facebook. (If there were enough data, it might be found that centi-millionaires are in even more of a "sweet spot" for politics than "billionaires", given the extra attention/resentment towards the upperest-top.) So while I don't blame the authors too much for their choice of what to emphasize, & data-limitations, she's indicative of other parts of the full picture. Characterizing the full probabilistic 'state-machine' of people's transitions between [education, inheritances of money or name-recognition, levels-of-wealth, private-sector-offices, public-offices, etc] could be a valuable extension of this tiny cross-sectional analysis. And, given that they did enough analysis to exclude Sandberg-types from their counts, it'd be good to have seen how many such people were so-excluded – a salient detail I didn't notice from a skim of their paper.