I have the pervasive feeling that LLMs in particular, but also the current generative-AI boom we're witnessing, will have the effect of "come along or be left behind."
by way of privilege, I am at the cutting edge, able to use the most powerful tools available to humans. In a year or two, I'll be an expert in these systems, and I'll be plugged in enough to jump through the next paradigm hoop.
I fear that anyone who isn't paying attention RIGHT NOW is going to be left behind.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts...I hope AI does not accelerate lifestyle gaps but I see how it could very easily...if only embedded in elite services for the elite.
In fact, I don't see how this phenomenon can possibly be avoided. If 10% of the human population all of a sudden had 200 IQs, while the other 90% remained static, that does not bode well for the 90%. I think this is comparable (although you can't just push a button and have "intelligence", the ability to dominate is what concerns me). Thanks for giving me even more to think about!
I foresee smartphones - > AR glasses - > brain implants. I don't relish having Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg inside my head, but tech goes from luxury toy to essential, and anyone who doesn't get an implant will be left behind. I can only think of the implications, eg needing a firewa
This is a very interesting essay but it goes seriously awry with its association of university-educated elites with "non-conformism" and "critical thinking"..... "Baby Boomers and Generation X generated a much larger group of critical thinkers unwilling to take institutional pronouncements at face value." etc. (Depends which "institutional pronouncements").
The true - paradoxical - situation in the 21st c. West is that those who have been through the tertiary education leftist sheep dip are actually probably MORE likely to be conformist group-thinkers (conforming to every crass, fashionable 'woke' fad) than those lower down the social scale. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
Historically, surplus elites are the most destructive class and lead to revolutionary activism at home and exporting ideology abroad—in Middle Europe around 1848, for example, Spain in the 1930s or Russia in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Interesting, how docile our surplus elites have been so far.
Assortive mating is both a fact and something that parents of the "elite" desire, because those marriages are based on a commonality of background and are more likely to persist.
In turn that leads to assortive friendships from the schools that the two spouses attended. Also the friends that the parents make with fellow parents of their children's schools. These friendships are also likely to persist, because of a commonality of background.
In my opinion, elites should proactively protect themselves (and do the right and moral thing) by strengthening the social safety net .We should be willing to pay higher taxes and endorse initiatives like the 2021 Child Tax Credit, which went fairly high up the income ladder.
So if I buy a 48k Tesla I am an elite but if I buy a massive 70k Diesel pickup truck, a Harley, a boat and a jet ski, I am not. I am tired of these articles that basically just define elite as the kind of social status signaling liberals do and not the kind conservatives do, even though both are status and yes, even virtue signaling. Just different virtues. On the left we have identity politics morons divorce class from adversity and on the right we have "elitism" obsessives trying to divorce class from elitism. This thinking requires some strange contortions? Is spending money on healthy food and a gym membership so you can bench press 400lbs and squat 600lbs and be swole elite or not? Conservatives want to redefine "elite" the way liberals want to redefine "racism". I'd say the guy in your medium size Southern town that owns 6 fast food franchises and a car dealership and has classic muscle cars, a massive truck, boats, and jet skis and a massive house is elite. And is more catered to politically by your state than a tenured college professor or a lawyer.
The most truthful statement in the entire post is: "A Hunger Games-style urban elite has already formed". Kudos to you for realizing that and that you are part of it. However, you don't follow the implication throughout the entire post.
Large cities, the majority of colleges, the majority of institutions, the media, etc... are all part of the indoctrination program creating one-minded automatons resembling the "Capital" that you recognize as a problem.
Your following false dichotomy summarizes your position: "The schism is between a) ‘left-leaning’ elites favoring individualist techno-modernism instead of social tradition and b) ‘right-leaning’ elites trying to return to an imagined patriarchal past of strict gender roles, limited class mobility for non-whites, even white supremacy."
i.e. the people in "The Capital" are weirdo uppity snobs under peer pressure to think exactly alike through a lifetime of manipulative coercion from schools, colleges, media, and groupthink... and that's not good...but if you don't fall in line with this way of thinking then you are -gasp- a white supremacist?
As long as this is the hand that you reach out with for reconciliation, the "deplorables" in "District 12"
will reject it and continue to laugh at the Karens who shop at Whole Foods and go to idiotic yoga retreats.
"right-leaning’ elites trying to return to an imagined patriarchal past of strict gender roles, limited class mobility for non-whites, even white supremacy."
This is the most "elite" take of all, the communal hallucination that holds the "elite" together.
First, is a "patriarchal past of strict gender roles" really imagined? I thought this was one of the main accusations against it; also, preferring traditional values doesn't equate with a "Handmaid's Tale" theocracy, it is how most humans, past and present, live.
And if we're talking about the past generation of "right elites" from the Bush fam to even the Romneys, they've never once done more than suggest these things and nothing more, as it might interfere with the market and the needs of the Fortune 500.
"limited class mobility for non-whites, even white supremacy": this is pure nonsense, there hasn't been an American politician pushing for this since the days of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, unless wanting to limit illegal immigration counts. And "white supremacy" is a totally downscale belief most popular in trailer parks and state prisons.
Modern elite liberals can't see how condescending they are and how they always send mixed messages along the lines of: We want what's best for you and your family, but first we need to rearrange all your beliefs and customs, because they are backwards and bigoted.
I’ve written pieces on matters related to this. The term Elite is amorphous. The elite adapt to the zeitgeist. America is stratified in myriad ways. The cross section of education and money is an interesting one. There are conservatives and progressives that align on many things simply because they are similarly educated and living situations sorted by income. A person with a masters degree or above and an upper quintile income will have many similar habits regardless of their political ideology. For example high culture and Aesthetic’s are on the rise once again. People are appreciating thinness, classical music, and strong “traditional relationships”.
Not explicitly mentioning Christianity weakens these thoughts, but is consistent with your implication that Christians are White Supremacists. Obviously false when called out. The main problem of current elites is their woke/secular humanism as a Christian replacement source of belief fails to provide meaning to the 60-75% of average and below average IQ folk, while they set up laws to make the rich get richer faster.
We need more jobs, and far fewer illegals than Dem elites so often hire, for US workers.
Society needs more focus on absolute values for enough food, shelter, clothing, to end poverty. Not relative-there will always be a bottom quintile. Mobility should also be noted more accurately as moving up, or down, into another quintile in some time period.
I believe you made a critical error in your analysis of elites. Defining elites in terms of an inflation-adjusted figure will created an upward bias as an artifact in your trend. This is because of economic growth. Real incomes rise over time. The correct for this one needs to use a measure of living standards (I use nominal GDP per capita) as your deflator. For example, using the CPI, to adjust for inflation as I suspect you did, makes 138K in 2023 equivalent to 13.5K in 1962. But if you adjust 13.5K in 1962 for sixty years of economic growth and inflation using GDP per capital that income corresponds to nearly 340K in 2023. So you are looking at a much more rarified group in 1962 compared to today.
A simple stat that captures what you are looking at is income share. As Figure 3 in the link shows, income share for the bottom 90% (working and middle class) has fallen by about 9 percentage points since around 1980. Income share of the top 1% (rich) has risen by about 6 points and that of the 91-99 percentile (upper middle) has risen by 3 points, from about 23% to 26%.
I believe we are in in the crisis phase of one of Turchin's secular cycles, which is what my substack is about. These periods get resolved in a fourth phase during which the influence of elites dissipates. That is the ratio of elites to the "pie," slices of which they compete, falls. This can happen by physical elimination. For example, the resolution of the Anglo-Saxon secular cycle by the Norman Invasion saw the Norman and English states combined, the Saxon elites eliminated, and the Norman elite spread over a larger region. Other examples are the self-extermination of elites during the Plantagenet cycle 4th phase:
the ejection of British administrators and their American supporters after the American Revolution, and the elimination of Southern elites by the loss of the slave wealth after the Civil War.
Alternatively, the problem can be solved by growing the among of pie per elite, without numerical reduction of elites. This happened following the English Civil War-to-Glorious Revolution resolution of the Tudor-Stuart Cycle, which saw the economic output per capita begin to rise with the appearance capitalism (see figure here).
The last cycle was resolved by the Depression and the New Deal. Here the elite was not eliminated or dispossessed. Rather New Deal economy policy restricted their ability to grow their income wealth further beyond where it was, while the economy around it grew dramatically, reducing the ratio of elites to the pie.
A new category of elites (which I call the Mandarins see below) appears after the New Deal resolution. They joined the Capitalist elite, who themselves were the new thing after the Glorious Revolution. This is the group Rob Henderson is focused on, and is close to what you talk about here.
This is a great callout.
I have the pervasive feeling that LLMs in particular, but also the current generative-AI boom we're witnessing, will have the effect of "come along or be left behind."
by way of privilege, I am at the cutting edge, able to use the most powerful tools available to humans. In a year or two, I'll be an expert in these systems, and I'll be plugged in enough to jump through the next paradigm hoop.
I fear that anyone who isn't paying attention RIGHT NOW is going to be left behind.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts...I hope AI does not accelerate lifestyle gaps but I see how it could very easily...if only embedded in elite services for the elite.
In fact, I don't see how this phenomenon can possibly be avoided. If 10% of the human population all of a sudden had 200 IQs, while the other 90% remained static, that does not bode well for the 90%. I think this is comparable (although you can't just push a button and have "intelligence", the ability to dominate is what concerns me). Thanks for giving me even more to think about!
I foresee smartphones - > AR glasses - > brain implants. I don't relish having Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg inside my head, but tech goes from luxury toy to essential, and anyone who doesn't get an implant will be left behind. I can only think of the implications, eg needing a firewa
...ll for your brain!
I see this the same way, Sam.
This is a very interesting essay but it goes seriously awry with its association of university-educated elites with "non-conformism" and "critical thinking"..... "Baby Boomers and Generation X generated a much larger group of critical thinkers unwilling to take institutional pronouncements at face value." etc. (Depends which "institutional pronouncements").
The true - paradoxical - situation in the 21st c. West is that those who have been through the tertiary education leftist sheep dip are actually probably MORE likely to be conformist group-thinkers (conforming to every crass, fashionable 'woke' fad) than those lower down the social scale. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
Historically, surplus elites are the most destructive class and lead to revolutionary activism at home and exporting ideology abroad—in Middle Europe around 1848, for example, Spain in the 1930s or Russia in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Interesting, how docile our surplus elites have been so far.
past revolutionaries fought by shedding blood, ours fights by shedding tears. different times, different strategies...
Why fight if manipulation and crybullying work?
Interesting post that made me think.
Assortive mating is both a fact and something that parents of the "elite" desire, because those marriages are based on a commonality of background and are more likely to persist.
In turn that leads to assortive friendships from the schools that the two spouses attended. Also the friends that the parents make with fellow parents of their children's schools. These friendships are also likely to persist, because of a commonality of background.
In my opinion, elites should proactively protect themselves (and do the right and moral thing) by strengthening the social safety net .We should be willing to pay higher taxes and endorse initiatives like the 2021 Child Tax Credit, which went fairly high up the income ladder.
So if I buy a 48k Tesla I am an elite but if I buy a massive 70k Diesel pickup truck, a Harley, a boat and a jet ski, I am not. I am tired of these articles that basically just define elite as the kind of social status signaling liberals do and not the kind conservatives do, even though both are status and yes, even virtue signaling. Just different virtues. On the left we have identity politics morons divorce class from adversity and on the right we have "elitism" obsessives trying to divorce class from elitism. This thinking requires some strange contortions? Is spending money on healthy food and a gym membership so you can bench press 400lbs and squat 600lbs and be swole elite or not? Conservatives want to redefine "elite" the way liberals want to redefine "racism". I'd say the guy in your medium size Southern town that owns 6 fast food franchises and a car dealership and has classic muscle cars, a massive truck, boats, and jet skis and a massive house is elite. And is more catered to politically by your state than a tenured college professor or a lawyer.
The most truthful statement in the entire post is: "A Hunger Games-style urban elite has already formed". Kudos to you for realizing that and that you are part of it. However, you don't follow the implication throughout the entire post.
Large cities, the majority of colleges, the majority of institutions, the media, etc... are all part of the indoctrination program creating one-minded automatons resembling the "Capital" that you recognize as a problem.
Your following false dichotomy summarizes your position: "The schism is between a) ‘left-leaning’ elites favoring individualist techno-modernism instead of social tradition and b) ‘right-leaning’ elites trying to return to an imagined patriarchal past of strict gender roles, limited class mobility for non-whites, even white supremacy."
i.e. the people in "The Capital" are weirdo uppity snobs under peer pressure to think exactly alike through a lifetime of manipulative coercion from schools, colleges, media, and groupthink... and that's not good...but if you don't fall in line with this way of thinking then you are -gasp- a white supremacist?
As long as this is the hand that you reach out with for reconciliation, the "deplorables" in "District 12"
will reject it and continue to laugh at the Karens who shop at Whole Foods and go to idiotic yoga retreats.
"right-leaning’ elites trying to return to an imagined patriarchal past of strict gender roles, limited class mobility for non-whites, even white supremacy."
This is the most "elite" take of all, the communal hallucination that holds the "elite" together.
First, is a "patriarchal past of strict gender roles" really imagined? I thought this was one of the main accusations against it; also, preferring traditional values doesn't equate with a "Handmaid's Tale" theocracy, it is how most humans, past and present, live.
And if we're talking about the past generation of "right elites" from the Bush fam to even the Romneys, they've never once done more than suggest these things and nothing more, as it might interfere with the market and the needs of the Fortune 500.
"limited class mobility for non-whites, even white supremacy": this is pure nonsense, there hasn't been an American politician pushing for this since the days of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, unless wanting to limit illegal immigration counts. And "white supremacy" is a totally downscale belief most popular in trailer parks and state prisons.
Modern elite liberals can't see how condescending they are and how they always send mixed messages along the lines of: We want what's best for you and your family, but first we need to rearrange all your beliefs and customs, because they are backwards and bigoted.
You suck at describing that half of the elite you don't belong to.
I’ve written pieces on matters related to this. The term Elite is amorphous. The elite adapt to the zeitgeist. America is stratified in myriad ways. The cross section of education and money is an interesting one. There are conservatives and progressives that align on many things simply because they are similarly educated and living situations sorted by income. A person with a masters degree or above and an upper quintile income will have many similar habits regardless of their political ideology. For example high culture and Aesthetic’s are on the rise once again. People are appreciating thinness, classical music, and strong “traditional relationships”.
Not explicitly mentioning Christianity weakens these thoughts, but is consistent with your implication that Christians are White Supremacists. Obviously false when called out. The main problem of current elites is their woke/secular humanism as a Christian replacement source of belief fails to provide meaning to the 60-75% of average and below average IQ folk, while they set up laws to make the rich get richer faster.
We need more jobs, and far fewer illegals than Dem elites so often hire, for US workers.
Society needs more focus on absolute values for enough food, shelter, clothing, to end poverty. Not relative-there will always be a bottom quintile. Mobility should also be noted more accurately as moving up, or down, into another quintile in some time period.
I believe you made a critical error in your analysis of elites. Defining elites in terms of an inflation-adjusted figure will created an upward bias as an artifact in your trend. This is because of economic growth. Real incomes rise over time. The correct for this one needs to use a measure of living standards (I use nominal GDP per capita) as your deflator. For example, using the CPI, to adjust for inflation as I suspect you did, makes 138K in 2023 equivalent to 13.5K in 1962. But if you adjust 13.5K in 1962 for sixty years of economic growth and inflation using GDP per capital that income corresponds to nearly 340K in 2023. So you are looking at a much more rarified group in 1962 compared to today.
A simple stat that captures what you are looking at is income share. As Figure 3 in the link shows, income share for the bottom 90% (working and middle class) has fallen by about 9 percentage points since around 1980. Income share of the top 1% (rich) has risen by about 6 points and that of the 91-99 percentile (upper middle) has risen by 3 points, from about 23% to 26%.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/why-the-postwar-prosperity-was-not
Now on to actual comments on the article. Are you aware of Peter Turchin's material about excess elites and "elite overproduction"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
Elite overproduction is a phenomenon related to what Turchin calls a secular cycle, which I wrote about here:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-american-secular-cycles
I review Turchin's newest book about these topics here:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-critical-review-of-end-times-by
This has a bit more on the excess elites problem.
I believe we are in in the crisis phase of one of Turchin's secular cycles, which is what my substack is about. These periods get resolved in a fourth phase during which the influence of elites dissipates. That is the ratio of elites to the "pie," slices of which they compete, falls. This can happen by physical elimination. For example, the resolution of the Anglo-Saxon secular cycle by the Norman Invasion saw the Norman and English states combined, the Saxon elites eliminated, and the Norman elite spread over a larger region. Other examples are the self-extermination of elites during the Plantagenet cycle 4th phase:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Towton
the ejection of British administrators and their American supporters after the American Revolution, and the elimination of Southern elites by the loss of the slave wealth after the Civil War.
Alternatively, the problem can be solved by growing the among of pie per elite, without numerical reduction of elites. This happened following the English Civil War-to-Glorious Revolution resolution of the Tudor-Stuart Cycle, which saw the economic output per capita begin to rise with the appearance capitalism (see figure here).
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbb4795b9-2c64-418d-a3c3-e79de08200df_614x229.gif
The last cycle was resolved by the Depression and the New Deal. Here the elite was not eliminated or dispossessed. Rather New Deal economy policy restricted their ability to grow their income wealth further beyond where it was, while the economy around it grew dramatically, reducing the ratio of elites to the pie.
A new category of elites (which I call the Mandarins see below) appears after the New Deal resolution. They joined the Capitalist elite, who themselves were the new thing after the Glorious Revolution. This is the group Rob Henderson is focused on, and is close to what you talk about here.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-mandarins-and-capitalists
ng the denominator bigger without an elite reduction.