A New Aristocracy [pdf]
law.yale.edu
law.yale.edu
Parental income can be seen as the result of parental traits that (if passed to the offspring) will help them in life - intelligence & industry.
Ie the parents are rich because they are smart and work hard. Those traits are passed to the children - who then follow suit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_theory
The current system has the dual advantages of plausible deniability (anybody can, in theory, get into Stanford and become a master of the universe, but family income and culture radically boost your SATs and character), and it allows for new blood to enter the system more easily than when you needed a pedigree.
Buffett calls it the 'ovarian lottery'.
Whereas a poor white kid might be less likely to be stopped, but also not really able to defend themselves if they are stopped.
Finally, a poor black kid is more likely to get stopped and not really able to defend themselves if they are stopped.
Would you be comfortable with saying that someone who is committing a crime is "acting black" because black people have a higher prison enrollment?
'privilege' speaks not to one's own decisions, but one's own environment.
I'm disappointed. I thought abuse of the term 'racism' required greater sleight of hand. I'm only just starting to understand it
This criteria is nonsense. If you have an asian guy committing a crime and you say he's acting black because he didn't get enough white privilege, both of those components are racist. His crime and his relative privilege level have nothing to do with his skin color.
Would you be comfortable with saying that someone who is committing a crime is "acting black" because black people have a higher prison enrollment?
Stunning. But no surprise you invest in your kids credentials if you can afford it.
Can someone propose a way the free market can be considered fair without the definition of 'fair' being defined as 'market-determined'?
> But although it was once the engine of American social mobility, meritocracy today blocks equality of opportunity.
This reminds me somewhat of the phrase "kicking away the ladder" that Chomsky mentions, in a different context:
> Well, that’s what the intellectual property rights are for. In fact there’s a name for it in economic history. Friedrich List, famous German political economist in the 19th century, who was actually borrowing from Andrew Hamilton, called it “kicking away the ladder”. First you use state power and violence to develop, then you kick away those procedures so that other people can’t do it. [1]
Here is my poorly paraphrased version of the idea:
1. use whatever means are available to obtain
a position of advantage (the ladder).
2. now, let us change the rules so from this
moment forth we shall compete upon our equal
merits, without resorting to such ugly means
as "ladders" to obtain advantage.
3. note however, that i still remain in a
position of absolute advantage, due to my
previous use of the ladder, which you now
cannot access.
4. ho ho ho, "meritocracy" / "free trade" / etc.
that is also what I have independently observed, though not phrased as eloquently.
.
(slightly off topic)
I have to say I'm very thankful to have found HN. I grew up in a decent, moderately sized city (300k) going to a private religious school with children whose parents were similarly strongly interested in the intellectual development of their children.
I had access to all the sports teams. I played soccer through Varsity, played with the golf team [but note I was not on the golf team...lol], and basketball in middle school. I played piano for 8 years. I attended one of the top 5 schools of my field in the nation, and graduated into a small company with other graduates from my school, MIT, etc. From 'good places'.
Because of this, education was always something I always took for granted. I always valued it, but always took it for granted. Some of my education, however, took humans for granted. Your value to society was sometimes considered limited by what you could produce. Additionally, many of those I highschooled and undergraduated with (mainly other purported Christians who I have since determined were not living congruently with stated beliefs) held little reservation filtering people out of their life based on, I'll call it,
'being dumb'.
This always bothered me. As fruit of my religion [mainly 'made in God's image', combined with looking at the life Jesus lived] I believed in the intrinsic value of the human, so I always sought to correct for it: because I always tried my hardest, it never occurred to me how people could willfully and knowingly not aspire themselves to something greater than what required minimal effort. Everyone I grew up with did [though, in hindsight, for different reasons than I], I did, and my parents did, so naturally I assumed everyone else did, too. As such, I was regularly perplexed at the value judgements certain colleagues would place on other members of humanity...like me...because they miscategorized generational challenges I was facing as 'being dumb'. Damaging prejudice.
So I left that company, and struck out on my own. I have since discovered what a rare breed my background nurtured, and now understand the wisdom in filtering those you spend time with. Instead of a prideful superiority [which I certainly observed], I exercise with a cautious respect for, and in protection of, talent and time. I exercise without placing value judgements on the people I come in contact with, but I do judge the values of the people I spend time with. In this way I safely continue to respect their humanity, and avoid pride. It's only since I moved and became aware of my need to protect that I became aware of how hard it is to find knowledge seekers. And so, when I come across someone from a different field but similar excellence, who carries with them persuasive content helpful for advancement, I am thankful. I also realized I need to stop spending so much time trying to argue with people-- because most people aren't actually listening, aren't actually seeking.
And so I am thankful to have found HackerNews, this article, and shared insights like yours.
It's very important to surround yourself with excellence. You'll become the ones you're around, and believe their idiocy, if you're not careful.
Be careful.
Assume that this is their full-time job, and that they have no ability to attend a university due to a series of unfortunate events which left them saddled with debts they cannot hope to overcome unless they focus full-time on overcoming them. So they take what jobs they can. Are they talented or excellent?
It would seem that if one takes your value structure to heart, then you'll end up rejecting anyone from your life who aren't among the lucky few -- as you were -- of having no unfortunate events in their life, and would deem those people not worth allowing into your life, as they certainly aren't excellent.
A friend of mine used to work in a coffee shop. They often told me about people who would come in and act as if the workers existed only to serve them. I found this hard to believe. I knew such people existed, but it seemed improbable that that they were so common. Yet they were.
Is there a chance that if your mentality is to surround yourself with excellence, then you'll end up forgetting how to respect those who aren't, through no fault of their own?
Regardless, I still seek to show love and smile and courtesy when interacting with them, because they're human. That doesn't mean I have to spend time with them as serious friends.
Salt and light...
Example: Could Luci have met Larry anywhere other than a Stanford party? Probably not.
///edit: And actually, I want to continue and make a claim.
Barriers to free trade _are_ an act of Kicking Out the Ladder. If we look at import taxes, they're just national protectionism. Which is possibly understandable if we're protecting a vital-to-war industry. But the U.S. has sugar import tariffs and makes our sugar ~40% more expensive than the rest of the world. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/06/us-trade-po... (I know heritage is a conservative thinktank, just using it for the graph.) Our sugar tariffs just protects a small handful of cane sugar farmers/refiners in the US, at the cost to everyone, and with lost business to poor countries in the caribbean, who could probably use some more sugar sales. We're helping people with this tariff, but they're well-off americans we're helping. We could be help caribbean economies!!
And if we actually did want to protect vital resources, then why don't we ban hard-drive imports? You saw how Thailand's flooding knocked over hard drive production. What if a hostile government took over Thailand's hard drive production?
And furthermore, most of the government's foray's into regulating the economy are, or eventually become, acts of Kicking out the Ladder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture By even giving this kind of power to the government, you're asking for it to be abused.
Under most definitions of social justice (though not all the ones focusing on relative income distributions), the free market has better outcomes than more socialist systems. Free markets allow for liberty and greater prosperity, and this results in healthier, richer citizens with the freedom to pursue a good life. Free markets also encourage sympathy, trust, and fellow-feeling.[2]
Focusing on a measure of equality such as national GINI coefficients, the USA is closest to Phillipines, Peru, Uruguay, and Cameroon.[3] Does the GINI translate to "fairness"? Which country of the five would you prefer to live in if you were at a given position of the income distribution? Which has the freest markets? Which is most "fair"? Does the GINI convey much information about being rich or poor in a country?
[1] http://www.democracyjournal.org/28/of-freedom-and-fairness.p...
[2] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18762452-why-not-capitali...
[3] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
disclosure: I am neither American or Norwegian by country of birth or residence
[1] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/foreignborn...
As for stats we can attack a legion of asterisks to them but that misses the point: there are rich countries that are not unequal. Proportionality is not relevant to the discussion about what the US should do to restore truer meritocracy.
According to the article, the "aristocracy" preserves itself by educating it's children well and teaching them to succeed on their own merits. Even then, those children must work extremely hard in order to maintain their position. And there are no real barriers to entry; in principle, anyone can do this, it's just that the wealthy are the ones who actually wind up doing this (probably because they are the ones who recognize the value of it).
In short, the 1% are the 1% because they are better than the rest, and through hard work and good parenting the same is true of their children.
Yet somehow, the article makes these exact same claims in a manner that will probably avoid anger by left wing sorts. I'm impressed.
Anyone with the money. It's important that we don't forget how significant financial capital is on the outcome of childrens lives.
A good case study is on those two Colombian twins that were separated at birth.
There are barriers to entry. Children taught with care, with consistent discipline, attention, etc. will do better.
When mom and dad are out working and unavailable to lend a hand with homework, children will not do well. When mom and dad work blue collar jobs where they don't use skills that are marketable for the world tomorrow, children are left on their own to do things children do. When mom and dad are angry and bitter because of their misfortunes, children will very possibly be on the receiving end of unwarranted yelling.
Time, stress-free lives, roof on your head -- these are increasingly luxuries that even middle class folks cannot afford. Not having them is the barrier.
Also, your narrative explaining why poor people have low human capital directly conflicts with the evidence. It's the hard working, highly stressed, wealthy people who's children are raised well.
https://www.nber.org/digest/jul06/w11895.html
In contrast, the lower income people living a life of leisure are the ones who's children are raised poorly.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/a-profile-of-the-working...
I have no idea what you are talking about with "roof on your head". If you google statistics on working hours (you probably need to multiply annual hours worked and labor force participation), you'll see that hours worked per capita hasn't changed drastically since the 70's.
It just moves the barrier.
It's the hard working, highly stressed, wealthy people who's children are raised well.... In contrast, the lower income people living a life of leisure are the ones who's children are raised poorly.
To be charitable, I'm betting that "hard working" and "leisure" have special definitions in this context.
By "life of leisure", I mean a life in which one does not need to work at all in order to have the necessities of life provided. This is the traditional definition of the phrase, no?
Also, a person could have a seemingly easy job that pays a lot, or a hard job that pays little. In my view your distinctions are wrung to fit the point you're trying to make.
Basically no one in the US is living at a "bare subsistence level". People with $0 in market income still consume approx $20k/year in the US, which is more than 3x the mean income (after adjusting for cost of living) over here. If $20k is "bare subsistence" then I should be surrounded by at least 500M corpses.
With enough experts you can prove anything:
http://www.poverty.ac.uk/report-parenting-families-low-incom...
http://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/stress-in-low-income-fam...
This narrative only escapes liberal disapproval if liberals fail to question the value of the legal process. So no better time to deliver this speech than a Yale Law commencement.
Disclaimer: I may have to plead "guilty as charged" here, if I'm allowed the conceit of placing myself in this aristocracy. Educating our children well has been a defining theme of the culture of my family, going back generations.
With that said, however, a strong factor in educating children to join any "ocracy" is wealth. This can't be overlooked. This aristocracy is not only providing education, but also the environment within which kids can receive that education continuously from birth through young adulthood and possibly beyond. This environment is safe, engaging, surrounded by educated and education-loving adults, and free of violence.
Also, I tend to prefer saying something like "valuable work" rather than "hard work." From my vantage point, hard work is something like carrying a hod, working in a call center, or some other kind of physically or emotionally stressful labor. I hope to never do hard work if I can avoid it.
And what I think the author is arguing is that that's not necessarily a deserved, or good, thing.
Usually the claim is that the people at the top inherited their position rather than earning it, and that others didn't have a fair shot at getting it.
Obviously the latter claim is a far better narrative.
We're talking about the "New Aristocracy". In extremis that's where you're either in the elite, or barely subsisting. It doesn't matter how meritorious the admissions to the upper class are - it's an awful way to live for nearly everyone, and where it's been implemented it's been marked by abuse and stagnation.
From a motivational standpoint, of course the incentives of a great reward matter. But there has to be a reason for everyone from 2nd place downward to participate.
You are conflating inequality with poverty. To recognize that they aren't the same thing, come visit the highly equal society of India or Bangladesh.
Also, the more you make a curve convex (and increasing), the more incentives it creates for everyone. Proof: convexity = u''(x). Increasing u''(x) increases u'(x)=int u''(x) dx. Since u'(x) is incentive, the proof is complete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
And while alleviating absolute poverty is great, the point I'm making is that a large middle class is a tremendous driver of many positive societal outcomes - politically, economically, and socially.
You can't just take a steepening reward structure out of that context.
India UNR/P = 8.6, WB Gini = 33.6, CIA R/P = 8.6, CIA Gini = 42.8
USA UNR/P = 15.9, WB Gini = 41.1, CIA R/P = 15, CIA Gini = 45
I have no idea what you mean by "middle class" - there are many possible definitions.
Now that your claims about incentives and your conflation of poverty and inequality are debunked, you still believe that inequality is somehow bad? What facts (if any) would cause you to reject this belief?
And you really believe that you've "debunked" my claims by referencing what happens to a pure mathematical abstraction? I'm not even sure how to address that. You can't honestly believe that models have influence over reality, and not the other way around?
And I'm not claiming that inequality is bad. It's necessary, for example, to accommodate risk. All I've said is that it matters how much inequality there is, and having too much distorts things. The only claim I've made as to what constitutes too much is the level found in aristocratic societies.
Are you arguing the opposite, that the degree of inequality has no great effect on a society? Or that the repercussions aren't negative as a country approaches the level that is marked by the formation of an aristocracy?
You made a mathematical claim about a mathematical construct (incentive): From a motivational standpoint, of course the incentives of a great reward matter. But there has to be a reason for everyone from 2nd place downward to participate.
I gave a mathematical response. If you don't believe that incentives govern behavior, then why did you bring them up and make incorrect claims about them?
The only argument I make is that I've seen no convincing evidence that inequality matters much. At best I've seen a few cross-country correlations between inequality and other bad things. Even left wing types don't find such evidence very convincing, or at least they don't after I replace the X axis with "% single mothers" or "% black people" (increasing both the r^2 and social unacceptability of the conclusion).
You argue that, by mathematical definition, a steepening Pareto curve will increase motivation for everyone on it, and that: "Now that your claims about incentives and your conflation of poverty and inequality are debunked[...]"
Have you considered the possibility that in the actual world the curve doesn't strictly conform to the mathematical one? That it flattens early, or that the whole thing is translated downward? Or that it's not a Pareto curve but one that is similar? Or that (as has a lot of evidence behind it) that socially-based incentives are sensitive to relative inequality, not absolute? I pointed to an abstraction for illustration, and you made claims based on that abstraction and called it proof of the real world.
This is economics: there's no such thing as "debunking", there's no such thing as "proof". There's evidence, and there's models that maybe explain some aspects of it better than others, from a very narrow view. Models can't demonstrate anything, all they can do is suggest experiments to be carried out in the actual world, at which point what happens there trumps any claims that they may have made.
The only thing we really have is comparative studies, across nations and through time. Everything else is just fooling ourselves with our own metaphors.
So when you discard the only thing that we've got as "a few cross-country correlations between inequality and other bad things", what exactly are going going to replace that with, your theories? It must be nice to live in such a simple world.
No, I didn't. The pareto curve is not the reward curve, which is what we were discussing.
Have you considered the possibility that in the actual world the curve doesn't strictly conform to the mathematical one?
I was explicitly assuming your hypothetical was true, and showing it doesn't support your conclusion. That's a conditional claim.
I pointed to an abstraction for illustration, and you made claims based on that abstraction and called it proof of the real world.
No, I called it proof that your argument is bunk. If you want to make an argument based on some complicated theory of socially-based incentives, you need to actually cite such things.
So when you discard the only thing that we've got as "a few cross-country correlations between inequality and other bad things", what exactly are going going to replace that with, your theories?
Tell me; if I can dig up a graph with a better r^2 and a different label on the X axis, will you change your views on inequality? I.e., if I show you this graph, will you say "oops, I'm wrong, inequality is not the issue, I guess $new_x_axis_label is the real problem here?" (Note that I will of course make $new_x_axis_label something socially unacceptable.)
If not, then your argument is simply dishonest. You are criticizing me for being unpersuaded by evidence that you would also find unpersuasive.
Scaling u''(x) doesn't change inequality anyway (as defined by measurements of u(b)/u(a) or the Gini index) so it's a poor stand-in for the kind of convexity people are complaining about.
Inequality is most definitely NOT defined by ratios of a utility function. The convexity of the OP was in the utility function; he seemed to believe that convexity of reward (and hence of utility, assuming u(reward) is monotonic) would only increase the reward for those at the top.
Like the Praetorian Guard of Ancient Rome, they derive significant power and wealth from the fact that they take orders directly from the elites. But since they are not the actual elite, they must endure intense vetting and culling at every level, and work hard often in harsh conditions (also like the Praetorians of old).
So the comparison in the original PDF is not exactly apples to apples.
They absolutely are not. For undergrad, these ivy league schools are much more forgiving of grades from elite high schools.
"Well rounded" or "holistic" admissions also strongly favor upper and upper middle class activities and talents.
Admissions are gamed to such a large degree that it's all a game that is played out year in advance. And the middle class and poor students don't even know it's being played.
Every ideology is not an ideology.
Every elite is a God-blessed meritocracy.
You don’t need a cast of super-rich, and the rest deep in debt in order to motivate people to perform. But this is where we are going.
The 'no left wing’ narrative if this: ‘we deserve it because we are better’.
It’s not really a very original claim.
All the privileged ‘classes’ in human history say that. In medieval Europe, Japan or anywhere, there was a warrior cast. These people were trained from birth to fight. They were also better feed and, as result, they were bigger. What do you think this people thought about their rights?
That doesn’t mean that personal merit doesn’t exist or that we shouldn’t reward it. It just mean that we have to be very aware of what are the trends and where this kind of thing goes if there is not some kind of corrective force in the system.
Similarly, for the modern day US, "is it just to reward people proportionally to hard work, intelligence and the ability to produce things that people want?"
And in fact if you begin asking about justice the immediate answer is of course 'no'; anyone wishing to defend the status quo had better avoid framing the question in terms of justice, and rather try to take the more property-oriented tact common among libertarians: is it morally acceptable to prevent people from choosing exactly what to do with their property for the goals of justice and common good? Obviously yes, but how much?
Also, the definition of profit is price - cost.
But this is tangential -- for me the concern is that in the article the writer skims over what kind of hard work and ability is really needed to run this gauntlet of constant judgement and admission from ages 4-25. It is not technical skills or intelligence or even hard work necessarily, but rather an ability and willingness to transform oneself into the kind of person that wins admissions contest. Success doesn't track ability, we've designed a system where we take success as a sign of ability but it actually measures a willingness and ability to conform to admissions standards and do as instructed, and we use this willingness and ability to change oneself as a proxy for actual ability. My argument is that this proxy isn't necessarily a very accurate one.
And I'm glad we agree on the definition of profit. I of course know the economist's definition and agree with it, I just gave what I consider to be a more revealing and honest characterization of it.
I think your are missing the point. The warrior caste were better warriors because they were born in a warrior caste.
What that have to do with justice is left as an exercise for the reader.
You've reversed the causality. Remember, we're asking for a definition of merit that is not isomorphic to "whatever the current economy rewards". We're trying to ask if we can hold the current economy to an external, human standard of performance, rather than just taking it at its own word that "when the numbers go up, it's good" (with the associated problem that even by this standard, "the numbers" have been growing more slowly and crashing more frequently since the rise of inequality began again in the '70s and '80s).
Why, no, actually we are impressed.
It takes extraordinary, breathtaking ignorance (or maybe just eternal self-serving bullshit) to overlook centuries of the discrimination and outright violence that the 1% have strangely required and thus perpetuated, when your smug little delusionary claim is that, shucks, it's all merit-based riches.
Does private schooling provide no benefit?
Private tutoring?
Family donations to elite schools?
Legacy admission?
Further:
Does food security provide no benefit to the ability to learn and retain information?
Does a violent environment offer the equivalent value as a non-violent environment, in terms of being able to focus on schoolwork?
Does a multi-parent child receive no additional educational advantage over a single-parent child?
Does having access to paid resources not offer any benefit?
Does attending better funded public schools not matter?
Does having better paid teachers not matter?
Does having the right cultural and social experiences not matter for forming networking relationships?
Does living amongst primarily successful and well educated people offer no advantage offer growing up amongst poor uneducated people?
You are missing the actual realities of trying to educate a poor child versus a rich child. Money grants you educational advantages in hundreds of ways.
You absolutely /can/ buy a better education. Full stop.
The remainder are merely possible causes for non-elite people having lower merit. They are not barriers for a meritorious non-elite person to attend Yale or join the elite.
Yeah, wow now that you spelled that out - i can totally see your point.
Trump 2016
/bitter ass lawyer who's working at 1 am to pay dem SOFI bills.
He does get one paragraph /almost/ right. What a dick. Which is it? Is every incentive wrong? Or is that thought a chicanery?
> I wish that I knew. I could tell you—and I would mean it—that when you find an opportunity to trade a little money or status for a lot of freedom, you should take it . . . you should take it every time. But that thought—although honest and heartfelt—is a chicanery, akin to insisting that the rat-race is over. The fact remains that, for each of you individually, all the forces that have brought you to this point remain in play. Every incentive is wrong.
I think a system where the schools/colleges/universities etc are paid with public money are more fair. Such a system provides a reset of opportunities for every generation. I think it will even lead to a better market as I can't imagine that "the top 1%" also provides the top 1% smartest and motivated children.
Of course everyone is free to vote for their own system, I'm just saying I would prefer to live in a country where I'm helped when I'm ill, no questions asked and where I have the same chances as any other kid of my generation.
Can you really blame Walter White for cooking meth when his life is on the line? Can you really blame a kid from a poor neighborhood when he ventures into crime? They are born with less chances than a kid that was born in better circumstances. The current American system judges and gives kids opportunities based on what their parents earn in stead of on their motivation and intelligence. It will be reflected in American markets. It will increase the gap between rich and poor because both are on a self amplifying course.
And don't start about Darwinism, this is past that, this is Darwinism of ideas: memes. And any brain can be "infected" by a meme, good or bad. Memes are not restricted to a set of genes and they are much more at the root of the economy than DNA is. And memes are perpetuated and destroyed by raising kids and giving them quality education.
I like the speech, it nicely points out the downsides of the current system for those on the inside of that system. Seems like the best way to start even though the people outside the system will probably shrug at the elites so called "problems".
There is probably an ongoing process of genetic fitness based stratification of the society. At least to a certain degree.
And?
What now?
That's the only question that matters.
Yes, there are lots of countries where higher education is available at reasonable costs, including all top universities.