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Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

Every time I hear someone talk about "the elites", I immediately think "bat shit crazy" person.

If such a thing as "the elites" exists, you can be sure they are as fractured as any other part of humanity. Put two people in a room, and they will likely disagree on a variety of things. Put a group of people in a room, and good luck with consensus.

And these 'elites' are supposedly world wide, drawn from all countries, religions, cultures, languages which exist.

Yeah. Sure. They all have a plan, work together, etc, etc.

If consensus and action was that easy, then the poor would work together, and remake the world their own.

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I think you are attaching a lot of connotations on to a word. Simply by labeling a group of people does not suggest that this group "all have a plan, work together" or will not disagree or be fractured.

Prefer steelmen over strawmen.

The whole crazy WEF conspiracy movement won't shut up about "the elites", so forgive me if I immediately draw the crazy vibe when mentioned.

>The whole crazy WEF conspiracy movement

Isnt the World Economic Forum a real organization?

Why do you call the WEF a crazy conspiracy movement?

I call the "WEF is a conspiracy, they are secretly out to get us all" movement, a bunch of crazies.

Isn't the WEF the same group that published that video saying "you'll own nothing, and you'll be happy"?

What is your opinion on the WEF?

My opinion is that the WEF is the champagne version of TED talks. It would be wrong to say they're irrelevant, but their primary output appears to be organizing conferences, and I've never seen a decisionmaker say they have to do suchandsuch or not do suchandsuch because the WEF told them so.

> poor would work together, and remake the world their own

Are you saying socio economic status has no relation to ability to organize and execute? It seems obvious that a large portion of elites are elites because they’re able to execute, and poor are poor because they can’t.

That being said I agree elites are not coordinated (for now) and it’s mostly chaos - but I think elites have the capability to coordinate under the right circumstances whereas the poor likely don’t.

It's as if you deny there is any such thing as reindeer because you heard "bat shit crazy" people tell you a story about about a man in a red suit living at the north pole.

Don't conflate an entire socio-economic class with a conspiratorial cabal.

Replace the word “elites” with “politically powerful” or “privileged” and re-read your statement.

The result is the same. You legitimately think the PM of New Zealand thinks and acts like the US president?

What about the CEO of Fujitsu, and Musk?

The very idea is a joke.

Nobody said they think and act alike, the concept is of a division between people who comment on hackernews and people who influence anything.

One way to think of the elite is they are the people who can easily get those in power to actually listen to them. The typical person in the US, for example, has great difficulty getting their elected leaders to actually talk to them.

Large CEOs, the very wealthy, etc do not have such issues.

Under that definition I'm skeptical that elites constitute a group that could be meaningfully analyzed as the article claims to do. Is it really true that Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul, and Mark Zuckerberg all read public opinion in similar ways? Even if it is true, "elites" seems like a very unhelpful term for the phenomenon, because I don't think anyone but a practicing political scientist is going to be happy if we go around calling all the popular politicans and major activist groups "elites".

No, the result is not the same. The comment I replied to said “if they even exist”.

> If such a thing as "the elites" exists

They definitely exist and they are definitely worth talking about as a group that wields immense power. Nobody ever implied they had homogeneous views though except for the person I replied to.

They are worth talking about because it’s a group of people that does not live within the normal constraints of the rest of society (making ends meet, having to be happy with the laws with no means to make chances, etc).

The politically powerful and privileged can be quite diverse in their political views.

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