Extractive Elite
The Extractive Elite, also known as Rent-seeking Elite, Kleptocratic Elite, Unethical Elite, So-called Elite, Anti-Elite, or Fake Elite, stand in contrast to the public-spirited, insubordinate, sustainable, scientific, True Elite, which have been driven out of and are now almost non-existent in our current institutions.
On X
2009
Q: Cost(Collapse) >> Cost(Protected Dissenting Scientific Elite) ---> Cost(Cheap Academic Life) >> Cost(Expensive Academic Freedom)
2010
The subordination of the insobordinate elite: "That Feynman is becoming a real pain" http://bit.ly/moDE (as appendix F)
2016
Why do I always target "the rent-seeking elite" rather than "the elite"?
B/C the two groups are bitter rivals & we need the latter to win.
2019
Overcentralization, elitism, and in the case that concerns me with you and the "IDW" is replacement of elites with other elites instead of dismantling of the structure that distorts bottom-up processes.
How do you feel about elite surgeons?
Elite special forces?
Elite athletes?
Elite pilots?
Elite Scientists and Researchers?
Forget the word elite. Yes, we need to recognize outliers rather than have the fake & rent-seeking elite privatize the true outliers who threaten them.
Your true elite want to do a lot for the world. The rent-seeking elite find this terrifying. You donât want me doing amateur brain surgery on your child because you want to democratize everything. Iâm just not an elite musician so I let the top rise.There are limits to inclusion.
the elite who "Want to do a lot for the world" are precisely the ones who worry me
seduced by abstractions, they pave the road to hell with their good intentions.
Yeah. Hate that.
But stop romanticizing the bottom up too. The bottom is a mess. The top is a mess. The best we can do is sort out what makes sense the best we can. Thanks for engaging. Hope it helps.
Last thought: think about failure modes and always about systems of selective pressures. Ciao.
@EricWeinstein the kind of elitism that worries me is not "high performers" within a given domain, it is a social system where some are set up to decide for others what is "best" for them.
Well, I do want my generals to decide what is best for me as I donât know the military. But I want them accountable. But not overly so. You see where Iâm going? We have to trust elites. But they canât be private rent seekers and they canât be incompetent or wholly unaccountable.
The entire planet has become sick of unelected elites who are actually nothing of the kind.
O baĆlıyor...
A Turkish rap video on YouTube, #I CANâT STAY QUIET, has been watched by 8.5M in one day, more than one-tenth of Turkeyâs population. The video has touched a deep nerve. Vast numbers are yearning to speak freely and honestly about the regimeâs rottenness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5K3IxINr7A
2020
At its core our last 50 years is the story of two Elites:
A) A Sustainable Elite. B) An Extractive Elite.
and over that 1/2 century, the story was how B drove A out of our institutions newly unable to keep growing at the dizzying post-war rate to which they had wed themselves.
I cannot live in societies that spend trillions on nuclear weapons yet are incapable of delivering COVID testing to their populations. The world's pseudosophistication & misallocation of resources have been increasing...
Our incompetence is coda: the extractive elite trying to come to grips with a virus that canât be beaten by signing pieces of paper in Manhattan, lobbying in Wash DC, or issuing sober consensus statements out of Cambridge.
It took an organized effort we couldnât muster anymore.
2021
If youâre an expert loyal to the system there are now almost always second chances. Even your second chancesâ second chances get second chances.
If you question that system, there are almost never first chances. Even w/ the right credentials.
It wasnât always this way however.
Iâve been obsessively paying attention to the news for about 15 years now and the most infuriating thing to me is that âexpertsâ can get things completely wrong, mock the people who get them right, never apologize or even acknowledge it, and continue being âexperts.â
This has everything to do with the political economy of elite overproduction and the extractive economics of rent seeking under lowered growth.
Thereâs no better way to destroy elitism than calling our unethical rich âthe eliteâ.
Soon folks will want average relatable folks for their kidâs brain surgeon or good-enough hostage rescue units. Anyone else will remind them of a partner at Goldman conspiring at a fund raiser.
Then listen closely.
A) You stop giving CEOâs an ear when they whine about labor shortages. Cut off the visas.
B) You *spend* on STEM R&D. Sky-High Compensation w High Standards.
C) You purge *everything* that says âDiversity, Equity & Inclusionâ anywhere close to a STEM kid.
D) Kick the CCP out of US labs. Make them do their own scientific research, as to do it well requires freedom. Force CCP towards freedom through science & STEM rather than letting them pick the fruits of our freedom to challenge and question orthodoxy.
E) Hire our own heterodox.
F) Incentivize the leadership of our most critical institutions to promote people who wonât play well with others who are captured by groupthink. Earmark money to promote those who wonât easily get along with co-workers when their co-workers are standing in the way of progress.
More or less we have to kickstart the American dream. And to do that requires a public spirited elite.
We need to purge ourselves of our fake elite. We are coming to hate fake experts.
We need real ones who are well paid. By us. Not by some revolving door baksheesh arrangement.
But I was cheering when Blake said one income. Because raising kids is about the most important job in the world. And if we are going to get rich enough to do it we need innovators worried about their next family vacation, not how to find two adjunct positions in adjacent states.
Moral: take care of the innovators you task to make you wealthy & secure. Particularly the heterodox leaders that wonât always get along with others. Then get out of the way w the social engineering. Share the STEM benefits with your NATO allies before giving them to your rivals.
The cognitive tools for understanding any rationale behind NIH funded Gain of Function Research in China are almost certainly being withheld.
Look at it from the point of a true believer in the system. âWe have to not lose the bioweapon arms race & should keep our rivals close.â
âBut the public will never understand a partnership with our main rival as being safer than being frozen out of all CCP decisions. On the other hand we canât be seen as engaging in a bioweapons arms race. So we had myriad ways to evade the optics of what we were actually doing.â
âThen COVID got out. Suddenly the whole world was talking about zoonotic bat respiratory Corona viruses: a subject the public had never heard of before. Our excuses & proxies for what is essentially military strategy for containment of CCP biowarfare ambitions were center stage.â
âOnly we canât talk about this. And our strategy that worked well enough when no one in the public knew âGain of Functionâ, âSpike Proteinâ or âZoonoticâ terms stopped working when everyone on the planet was forced to become amateur scientists. Then we lost âLab Leak is racismâ.â
âSo what do we do? Do we have an open town-hall to explain all things that are part of delicate multi decade Wash DC political insider theory like âConstructive engagementâ, âIranian Nuclear Containmentâ, âTwo State Solutionâ? Of course not. Thatâs why we have an expert class.â
So we sit around with the expert class withholding all the cognitive tools âwe the peopleâ need to figure out whether we have the CORRECT public spirited Elite. Which we do not.
Thus the âeliteâ get more and more resentful that we are meddling in âtheirâ strategic endeavors. Ha.
The idea that itâs time to come clean about Epstein, Iran, the West Bank, Strategic Engagement, Nuclear Bluffing, Climate & Wealth, internal spying, Assange and Snowden, simply never occurs to a class that believes it is acting in a way that can NEVER be open to public scrutiny.
Start from this insider premise that is never said out loud, âThe purpose of democracy is to give the public the most minimal choice over multi-decade cryptic strategies that must be managed by insider classes, so that they can only slightly course correct from expert consensus.â
The populist premise is simpler: âYou insiders seem to be incompetent at your jobs & more than competent at your extraction of wealth & obfuscation of all with which you have been entrusted. How can we force you âeliteâ to account for your non-elite malfeasance and incompetence?â
Thatâs how I see it. We have to stop talking about this in the exact terms we are handed by the very âeliteâ who donât want us talking about the real issues. We need to stop using the framings weâre handed.
For example, âGain of Functionâ is largely a euphemism for âweaponizedâ.
Do I believe in an actual Elite that cannot share everything with the public. Yeah. Think about it; It cannot be otherwise.
Do I believe in this *elite*? This is the Keystone Cops meets Mr Magoo.
So I am neither a populist nor a defender of the system as it is currently found.
We should join the populists in demanding answers based on pathological extractive, unethical and incompetent behavior.
But you cannot âburn it all the fuck downâ, put it all on the blockchain or vote for complete transparency either.
We need a well paid actual public spirited elite public servant class.
And no one I know is willing to say this. They either defend the system as is, or want some radical revolution.
We need new folks in their 20s-50s. Not Fauci. Not Biden. Not Trump. Not Pelosi. Not McConnell.
If youâve been in power for a long time and are now in your 70s & 80s? It is simply time to go. Thatâs not ageism.
Thatâs an IMPLICIT part of the system. Weâve never before remotely had a President & core group this out of touch, this old, and this technically over their heads.
Soapbox speech over.
As always, thanks for listening and letting me try out these ideas at scale. đ
2025
It is the damndest thing.
We are, for example, decades in to a MASSIVE campaign by employers to portray American cititizens and Europeans as incapabale of doing what we are better at than anyone else on earth: science.
Itâs a multi-decade lie, broadcast 24/7 in surround sound.
This is not the elite behind the lie.
The actual elite are the American and European scientists. Itâs the anti-elite that hate our own elite STEM people who demand to be cut in.
Beware of calling our *anti-elite*, the elite. The elite are the ones taking the abuse full force.