Jefferson and America's Lost Idea: Natural Aristocracy
blog.joelonsdale.com
blog.joelonsdale.com
"Is this principle or opportunism?" is an extremely pertinent thing to ask when confronting any kind of proposal or plea. In other words, does the person really believe in this on its merits, or have they ran the simulation in their heads, taken note of where that would put them, and are now pushing the idea that would get them there?
For example, an ardent supporter of tax reform who strenuously argues that the cutoff should be such-and-such is someone who should be paid much more attention to if they're advocating to increase taxes on the rich in such a way that it results in their paying more, over the rich person who argues we shouldn't be taxing the rich.
Not completely unrelated: In the bad days of the late aughts when software designers were beginning to be deified and given way too much inscrutable power to make dubious decisions, I came up with a simple litmus test that could be applied to determine whether one's stated justification was horseshit* or not: it's to ask them, "In all your time as a designer where you have justified your decisions on the basis that the new way is better for the userbase as a whole—and so individuals who don't like the new defaults need to sacrifice for the greater good—are there any instances where you have undertaken a change where the result was you being among those in that instance who were negatively impacted by the change?"
(I think your taxation example is great, and it’s one I’ve used before to test myself on my own stances. More generally, that sort of test roughly rhymes with Kant’s universalization test.)
Wisdom is a funny thing. It isn't knowledge per se, but it is the ability to navigate the "space of knowledge". One who is wise is one who can strip the noise out a context, (or recognize that a context stripped by another is missing noise unjustifiably cut).
You can teach people knowledge til the cows come home, wisdom comes only through the act of living and navigating through it. Given that, it is no surprise that given Jefferson's umwelt, ge had opinions on the topics he did. Note, however, how in spite of that there, the mechhanisms and processes built originally still included measures specifically tuned to spoil the natural tendency of wealth centric aristol to arise and dominate above those that could actually do the work of leading well.
Which worked just fine right up until the public threw out the benefit of that wisdom with the implementation of national political parties, and resorted to wealth accrual as the primary metric of success rather than other works.
>Does it improve the User Experience?
>Are you willing to martyr yourself for the sake of improving everyone else's lot?
are your bullshit filters.
Not trying to downplay you for it, just, figured I'd help tighten it up to be more concise. I also apply that set of heuristics, and boy, do those two little points there razor the population of software devs into 4 bloody piles.
Sounds like a good question for philosophy, too bad we live in a world where it plays little role beyond amusement/mockery.
(Everybody wants competence. This is a universal human desire; it should be separated from a political structure that reifies power in those who think that they’re the most competent.)
The point was simpler than that: virtue, ariste, etc. is already a shared human value, one that people apply to their decision making processes already (including in democracies). Anybody asking us to consider it a “lost idea” is trying to sell something other than the thing we’ve already bought.
Do you think he pined for the establishment of and recognition of an American aristocracy?
I took from the reading less that Jefferson was desirous of it, and more that he recognized the inevitability of something indistinguishable from it arising, and wishing to somehow thumb the institutional scales as it were to amplify the "aristocrat by virtue" rather than merely the "aristocrat that came into it by heritance". He was very concerned with the tendency of heritable wealth to snowball, but, also to result in increasingly incompetent wielders thereof.
Remember, this is the same guy who wanted a new Constitutional Convention every 19 years when the next generation came of age, and mandatory sunsets on all acts of government. To be clear, if you were an aristocrat in charge of things/in a position of power in Jefferson's imagined world, you were not in for a fun time. Wielding that power would be a hell of a lot of retread ground over and over and over and over. In fact, the only way to exercise power in that circumstance, would have been knowing how to use it effectively. There'd simply be no room for maintaining your personal capricious self-edifying precipises of power, because of the sheer effort of keeping them in place against the march of time, and the agreeableness of those you're sharing the world with, and who ultimately bear the burden of doing the work.
The system we have now, (First pass the post, and once it's in it's in forever) is quite the opposite.
> The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.
It doesn't seem like he's advocating for new special powers for a new special in-group so much as waxing thoughtfully about what better to do with what they already have. It's easy enough to be cynical about his motivations. Maybe the distinction of being a "natural aristocrat" is merely self-serving and conceited. But we have aristocrats whether we like it or not. Perhaps a subset of the modern aristocracy might be more naturally aligned with his idealistic notions, and thus heed a calling to transformatively serve the public out of which they rose. I personally can forgive a bit of hubris if it is wielded responsibly and aimed at lofty, altruistic goals (because I'm a total sucker for that kind of rhetoric).
Am I really better, morally, ethically, or spiritually, than someone who _doesn't_ know how to patch an Oracle database? Even the landscapers blowing leaves into the street next door know that forcibly asserting ownership of another human being is wrong, yet this seems to have escaped the superior intellect of "the Founding Fathers" (who my own ancestors, having emigrated as impoverished peasants from Italy at the turn of the last century, had no connection with: something they sadly later forgot). Jefferson was a slaver, an oppressor of the weak, and a rapist, and the majority of high society and Congress were (and are) accessories before and after the fact.
The US Civil War was an aberration, because it was one of the few times that the schemes of one part of the oligarchy coincided with the growing disgust of the commons with a horrendous institution (chattel slavery). The moral outrage over slavery seen in the diaries of Union soldiers didn't disappear with the Confederacy's defeat, but the interests of the oligarchs worked against the success of Reconstruction and the later imposition of Jim Crow (whose legal framework provided inspiration for 20th century fascism in places like Germany).
We loosely categorize ancient Rome as a civilization. It was an oligarchic slave state, as were the later European and American empires. The main difference between them seems to be the mechanisms of slavery employed. In 21st century America we still have a feudal model of governance in most workplaces, and in governments bought and paid for by unfettered oligarch cash, the will of the common people, to the extent that its expression is able to pierce the corporate media bubble, is mostly ignored or explained away.
As far as I can tell, the linked article in fact makes exactly the same point:
> They [the founders] also knew that merit was not enough; merit without virtue to accompany it could produce tyranny. They knew this, of course, through history.
There is one sustainable solution to that: make sure that holding power is inconvenient and uncomfortable, something that brings disadvantages rather than inherent advantages to the power holder. Much like how jury duty is viewed today, and perhaps with similar mechanisms involving random sortition. "Natural" aristocracy works well with this, because one defining characteristics of a virtuous, talented, meritorious person is that she has way better things to be doing with her life than holding tyrannical power over others.
> A daughter of a green Grocer, walks the Streets in London dayly with a baskett of Cabbage Sprouts, Dandelions and Spinage on her head. She is observed by the Painters to have a beautiful Face, an elegant figure, a graceful Step and a debonair. They hire her to Sitt. She complies, and is painted by forty Artists, in a Circle around her. The Scientific Sir William Hamilton outbids the Painters, Sends her to Schools for a genteel Education and Marries her. This Lady not only causes the Tryumphs of the Nile of Copenhagen and Trafalgar, but Seperates Naples from France and finally banishes the King and Queen from Sicilly. Such is the Aristocracy of the natural Talent of Beauty.
Hoppe offers an interesting perspective on, "Natural Elites" and how they relate to democratic institutions.
>While the state fared much better under democratic rule, and while the "people" have fared much worse since they began to rule "themselves," what about the natural elites and the intellectuals? As regards the former, democratization has succeeded where kings made only a modest beginning: in the ultimate destruction of the natural elite and nobility. The fortunes of the great families have dissipated through confiscatory taxes, during life and at the time of death. These families' tradition of economic independence, intellectual farsightedness, and moral and spiritual leadership have been lost and forgotten.
>Rich men exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortunes directly or indirectly to the state. Hence, they are often more dependent on the state's continued favors than many people of far-lesser wealth. They are typically no longer the heads of long-established leading families, but "nouveaux riches." Their conduct is not characterized by virtue, wisdom, dignity, or taste, but is a reflection of the same proletarian mass-culture of present-orientation, opportunism, and hedonism that the rich and famous now share with everyone else. Consequently — and thank goodness — their opinions carry no more weight in public opinion than most other people's.
>Democracy has achieved what Keynes only dreamt of: the "euthanasia of the rentier class." Keynes's statement that "in the long run we are all dead" accurately expresses the democratic spirit of our times: present-oriented hedonism. Although it is perverse not to think beyond one's own life, such thinking has become typical. Instead of ennobling the proletarians, democracy has proletarianized the elites and has systematically perverted the thinking and judgment of the masses.
A lot of what happened appears to be people solving for the -cracy part, and when you have that, who cares what kind of -crat others think you are. In that view, power is its own justification and end, and an aristocracy of occupiers is a contradiction.
Nobility is still possible in a kakistocracy where there is the possibility of some freedom and dissent, but I think what defined the dystopias of the 20th century was that the societies were so deeply compromised that even individual dignity was almost impossible. For a consensus to emerge that someone had any dignity at all made them an immediate target because it reminded others that they were reduced to crabs in a bucket, and so they policed themselves.
Jefferson's natural aristocracy was an ideal that encouraged people to have dignity and develop nobility, with the hope that they can prevail in their own governments - and establish an aristocracy that has the legitimacy of popular desire. It's pretty far off today, but it's a useful reference point for what's possible. The foundation for that dignity was the American concept that you can achieve dignity by taking liberty and preserving it.
We get concerned today about efforts to crush dissent, but without understanding why it's so important to the people doing it. The reason they crush dissent is to liquidate any dignity that could yield a consensus of nobility that stands as a counter-example to their undesirability and illigitimacy. Nobility acts as a waypoint and ideal that reveals and coordinates honest desire in others. This is the thing tyrants and technocrats hate and fear the most because their whole understanding of winning is when they prevail over the desires of others. It's a kind of sickness, but unless you can choose some individual dignity that yields nobility and organize to establish a legitimate and desirable aristocracy, you get the government you deserve. I still think there is the possibility of a natural aristocracy, but they've got a very steep climb ahead of them.
If only Jefferson could have upheld his own ideals, but, like the author, the only aspect of his life that could equal his self-regard was his hypocrisy.
For an example, I do not subscribe to any particular denomination, but on average I can see long tail benefit to society as a whole from people trying to be better humans than they were yesterday.
Jefferson’s business was enslavement. Lonsdale’s business is killing people. Lots of words about ideals can’t paper over those facts.
This is self-evidently true. One of the problems in current society is fetish for equity, the idea that everyone should be treated the same, regardless of their talents and virtues. Some people are smart, some are dumb. Some are generous, some are narcissistic. Those who are talented and virtuous are the one we need in charge of society. It is important, indeed essential, to discriminate: to prefer the smart and virtuous over the dumb and selfish.
"There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth."
Unfortunately, these are the actual people currently in charge of society. The wealthy, political elite - be it the Kennedy clan of Massachusetts or the Dassault clan of France - they wield the levers of power, sometimes openly and sometimes behind the scenes. Far from any feeling of noblesse oblige, they wield this power for their own purposes.
On the other hand, I’m not really sure I’d place the blame same as you do. In fact, a focus on equity is meant to eliminate the factors that get in the way of meritocratic hierarchies (such as inherited wealth, for instance). I’ll admit, I would rather we pursue justice to eliminate the source of these factors, but the powerful are not interested.
Either way, I’m not sure what the answer is. Democracy in all its forms is imperfect, and even terrible at times. But there aren’t really any good alternatives in the real and imperfect world of imperfect human beings. Philosopher kings are great on paper and on paper only. So that always brings me back to better education, less corruption, democracy, and a culture of respect towards those more virtuous and to experts in their respective fields.
> Democracy in all its forms is imperfect, and even terrible at times. But there aren’t really any good alternatives in the real and imperfect world of imperfect human beings.
Hmmmm.
> Philosopher kings are great on paper and on paper only.
Hmmm.
> So that always brings me back to better education
In?
I agree that some go overboard with it to the point of being ridiculous and often self defeating, but the fundamental idea that society is riddled with bias and hidden mechanisms of privilege is kind of obviously true.
Nobody really believes that everyone is equal in all measures of ability. That’s a straw man. It would imply that everyone is identical.
Many including myself are skeptical of attempts to tie this to categories like race or culture in broad ways. I also think that ability is very multidimensional and am skeptical of any attempt to flatten that into things like IQ. Fitness in evolution in nature has millions or billions of dimensions.
A 'natural' aristocracy is inherently less dependent on achieving a position of power, so overproduction is inherently mitigated. It's not clear that the privilege conferred by a seemingly "equal" mechanism of strenuous competition is any less objectionable than the overtly unequal privileges of wealth or birth that Jefferson rightly objected to.
This sounds reasonable at first glance, but I would challenge you to describe a society in which the "smart and virtuous" are elevated over the "dumb and selfish" that does not rely on an external power structure to enforce this hierarchy.
One conceit of a "natural aristocracy" is that it should be self-organizing. In practice, we know that this process will ultimately prize traits that consolidate power. Some people are stronger than others, some are willing to use physical strength to bully others, and those who are in both groups will rise to the top of a "natural aristocracy" that prizes brawn.
> The American founders put Cicero’s framework into practice, and they created the most successful mixed constitution in history, whereby the people would frequently elect representatives from among themselves to the House of Representatives.
By "the people" you mean the leaving aside the ~600,000 enslaved along with all the women and native people who could not vote.
Could you expand on what you mean here, particularly as regards the comment you're responding to?
On cell so I don't really want to write a whole essay.
The poster focused exclusively on the excluded without considering that the exclusions that were made with defaults that do not align with today's values. It is almost like complaining about Romans severely puniahing their slaves for disobedience. It completely ignores the reality of the world the person lives in and judges them based on today's expectations.
The 600k op mentioned were not relevant to his 'constituency' or one he seemed to speak for, and, arguably, Jeffeson himself.
From his perspective, they were not more capable set of men.
Personally, I am skeptical of the “natural aristocracy” idea, but I think advocates of such a system have to reckon with the systematic biases present at the time that lead people like Jefferson to perpetuate slavery and genocide despite their personal merits.
I became more skeptical of this piece of propaganda when I saw the top comment from prominent COVID origins conspiracy theorist and statistics misuser on Substack (who evidently uses the pseudonym Yuri Bezmenov?) on the post, as well as likes from Academic Capture extroidinaire Richard Hanania, of the Salem Institute at UT-Austin (a business school whose name is emblazoned by a now dead billionaire to whom I as a Minnesota citizen, personally pay taxes to his estate to every time I buy food, in the form of subsidies to his Vikings stadium).
Basically I'm sitting here being lectured by people about Aristocracies while I, as a nobody schlub, pay taxes to a private party they are friends with every time I get groceries, and meanwhile see schools nearby me go on strike, there is no free daycare in Minneapolis while there is in other cities nearby because, "it's not fiscally responsible?" Ok, well I'm not an "economist," at an, "institute," so what do I know?
Anyway, I was very confused after reading this by the claim that Jefferson would not have considered himself part of the Artificial Aristocracy so I had to read about his family history. From Monticello.org:
https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...
> The origins of Jefferson's ancestors might be uncertain, but there can be no doubt that within a couple of generations the family had risen from the humble rank of "middling planter" to the county elite, and within another to the very pinnacle of society. Their spectacular rise in fortune was the result of hard work, advantageous marriage, and sheer good luck
So what I read this is, is his family were not part of the English Aristocracy, (like Washington) but go in early on Virginia Real Estate in the 1600s, which allowed Jefferson to become part of the Colonial Aristocracy (though not the formal English Aristocracy). So Jefferson is saying, "no, that Aristocracy is not cool, bro, our Aristocracy is the cool one."
It also seems that some of Jefferson's ancestors were very anti-monarchy during the English Civil War, and lost a lot of fortune upon the restoration of the monarchy, so it's super understandable why Jefferson would take this position.
The thing is, I believe Jefferson may have become a dinosaur in his own time, writing letters to Adams to re-assure himself, but actually just discussing the types of ideas that would have appealed to some of the characters straight out of Barry Lyndon. E.g., he probably was witnessing Aristocrats getting their heads cut off in France and going, "no we're not those guys, we're a natural Aristocracy, it's totally different man!"
Jefferson was a huge Ancient Rome nerd because he was interested in creating a society that was durable, where other societies had failed an while I believe that some of his ideas that lead to a sort of weighting of rural areas does provide stability, because cities always end up being more powerful than rural areas, I'm pretty sure that the 1800's and early 1900's was a round rejection of Aristocracy, but of course there's no way he could have seen that. Venture Capitalists, pretend Professors from UT-Austin business school who are hired help to form an intellectual framework behind Rick Scott's agendas, they know better than this, and they should do better. This is basically a circle jerk with almost zero self-awareness about how Universally hated Aristocracy of any kind is, it's like how John Bolton has been talking about running for President in 2024, there is absolutely zero self awareness about how hated and loathed a particular idea is.
Edit: Oh yeah, and also, you can't mention that Jefferson owned slaves and so maybe not every idea that came off of the top of his head should be celebrated because evidently just acknowledging that fact might be considered, "woke" according to Hanania, most likely.