In a podcast with Richard Hanania, Marc Andreessen says,
I think there’s a real argument, and this is the most uncomfortable form of argument, there is a real argument that there are just a certain number of super-elite people. There are a certain number of people who are going to be really good scientists and it’s just not going to be that many. It’s some magical combination of intelligence, honesty, industriousness, integrity, the ability to recruit and build a team. In some ways being a top researcher is like being an entrepreneur, you have to actually pull all these different kinds of dilemmas together. And there’s only a certain number of people who can do that.
And then of course, the implication of that from a societal standpoint is that we’ve really got to know who those people are and we’ve really got to give them room to run. We’ve really got to make sure they have room to run and are not driven out. If someone’s truly a member of the elite, are able to generate elite-level results, if you wanted to demotivate them and draw them out of the field, what would you do? You would surround them with mediocrity and drown them in [baloney sandwich].
Sometimes it seems to me that the whole purpose of the woke religion is to keep true elites down.
Anyway, I recommend the whole interview. It comes with a transcript.
He sounds like WEB DuBois arguing for the ‘ten percent.’
What do we mean by “elitism”? It is something more than just commonplace notion that ability is distributed on a normal bell curve with a very few individuals in the highest degrees of ability. Although that may be part of it, the heart of the problem with elitism is the ideology that “that from a societal standpoint is that we’ve really got to know who those people are and we’ve really got to give them room to run. We’ve really got to make sure they have room to run and are not driven out.”
In other words, the normal rules don’t apply to these individuals and society owes them special liberties and freedom from material needs. Unfortunately in practice the number of individuals who style themselves as the super elite is just not very exclusive. Every sinecure-occupying tax eater on the planet believes they are the super elite. Hefty government-supported salaries, no accountability, tax exemption, and universal recognition that they are better than you. In other words, the mindset of every tenured professor, military officer, corporate manager, and bureaucrat in the US.
It might be a tenable philosophy if there were any plausible cost benefit ratio, but the US national debt was the inevitable product of its going on a century experiment with this social arrangement. But we are stuck with it.
The interview actually increased my sympathy for the woke. Perhaps the woke see that the notion of equality and freedom of opportunity have degenerated into a fantasy and democracy is dead. Consistent with the super elite rent seeking thesis, Mussolini said, “Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society.” In such a society Blacks quite reasonably might believe that rules prohibiting a white from having more than the average black and calling for reparations for ever is perfectly legitimate.
Political oppression is the only way to wealth, and I too would rather be an oppressor than an oppressed.
Thiel is a good example of the dynamic involved. Starts out a brilliant super elite innovator in an unregulated industry. Makes a bundle and switches over to being a government contractor selling CCP social credit spyware to the government. And if you look at the PLTR income statement you see negative taxes for 2020.
Bezos and Gates both ended up giving half their fortune to progressive wives to blow on NGOs. Even rich men that don’t get divorced usually die earlier and the wives give their fortunes away to prog NGOs.
I remember once being told why there are so many more elite girls schools the boys schools. Because the husbands die and the wives give the money away to girls schools.
That is to say that being a natural elite who builds stuff doesn’t guarantee that your works won’t get co-opted.
It is literally the definition of Obama’s “You didn’t build that.”
For women, almost all of the time, that is 100% true. It reminds me of Hillary Clinton, the woman whose greatest accomplishment was meeting Bill.
Maybe we ought to rethink the charitable contribution tax deduction.
–“We’ve really got to make sure they have room to run and are not driven out. If someone’s truly a member of the elite, are able to generate elite-level results, if you wanted to demotivate them and draw them out of the field, what would you do? You would surround them with mediocrity and drown them in [baloney sandwich].”–
Recent American military recruitment ads come immediately to mind. Although it’s probably part that, probably part a desire to avoid recruiting right-leaning regular men, as the current regime considers such men untrustworthy.
It seems to me a fundamental criteria of being a “true elite” is that you can’t be so easily bossed around.
Maybe the people who placed warriors above priests and merchants had some understanding of this. Good works are useless if you can’t defend them.
But there are “true elite” amongst the warriors, just as there are some amongst the priests and merchants.
I think the difference is that the “elite” get sinecures while the “true elite” get results. Furthermore, the tendency, over time is for the second group to drift into the first group.
I have always been a proponent of the idea that all of technological and material progress is generated by about 1% of the population. Without that 1%, we would still be living in mud huts.
This isn’t to say the other 99% don’t have a hand in it, but without that 1%, the other 99% couldn’t produce an advance.
Wow, awesome. Noticed that Andreessen used honesty twice in one sentence (“honesty” then “integrity”). I second the notion of the importance of that trait
I don’t find the first paragraph particularly elitist, no more so than saying that only a small number of athletes can play at the highest level. The second paragraph, when read in context with the rest of the interview is also not particularly elitist. Andreessen is just saying that the academic bureaucracy and system doesn’t identify well these top scientists and dilutes their efforts by allowing mediocre and unproductive scientists to prosper by gaming the system. I don’t know whether that’s true — I would think that a VC like Andreessen would understand that sometimes you need to fund 9 unproductive projects or people to fund the 1 productive one — but I don’t find the statement elitist.
To me, elitism is the belief that a select group of people are entitled to more influence and authority over society as a whole. Specialization, in this case in science, is not elitism. Specialization and trade is one of the best ways we have to improving welfare. Also, Andreessen is not even arguing that a certain class, say identified by some test or other criteria, should have exclusive rights to be scientists, independent of actual results or productivity. (He doesn’t really say how we would go about identifying the top scientists, just that the present system doesn’t do so.) He certainly is not arguing that scientists should have more power and influence generally even in non-scientific arenas. Meritocracy and elitism are not synonyms, quite the contrary.
I agree. I think by “elite” he meant “talent”. This was a conversation after all, so choice of words may not have been precise
When I saw the title, I became excited and hoped for photographs.
Alack and alas, ASK was not blogging about the world’s best-looking women unclothed, and snobbily flaunting it.
Please name an elitist that you would like to see unclothed. I’m at a serious loss for candidates.
Well…who is the elite among the naked is not the same as who is the elite in NY-Washington-Ivy League.
But years ago Playboy did run a “Girls of Harvard” edition.
Andreesen:
“And then of course, the implication of that from a societal standpoint is that we’ve really got to know who those people are and we’ve really got to give them room to run. We’ve really got to make sure they have room to run and are not driven out. …”
an old novel:
“The camera moved to Galt. He remained still for a moment. Then, with so swift and expert a movement that his secretary’s hand was unable to match it, he rose to his feet, leaning sidewise, leaving the pointed gun momentarily exposed to the sight of the world—then, standing straight, facing the cameras, looking at all his invisible viewers, he said: “Get the hell out of my way!”
“elite level of results” is the key elite. Like LeBron James in NBA, or Elon … in rockets.
In sports, it’s more clearly objective, yet also much more limited, so it’s not quite a ” magical combination of intelligence, honesty, industriousness, integrity, the ability to recruit and build a team.” Instead, it’s more: native talent for that sport, practice, coaching, and for team sports the ability to fit on a good team.
Marc is talking about elites in building an organization. Seems true for business, education, politics. Yet he fails to mention “winning”, despite multiple mentions of Uber. Who frequently violated laws in starting up. Is that part of “honesty”? Sadly, Marc fails to note that part of what makes (result) elites is their ability to overcome the mediocrities around them, and deal with the baloney. He wants them to have more freedom, meaning fewer obstacles, but in practice that degenerates into contempt by so many ‘pseudo-elites’ for the rules and laws which constrain all normal people.
Most rich, famous, and politically powerful people are such ‘pseudo-elites’, not really getting elite status based on their results. Any Dem who advocates for masking but has a big birthday party without masking is living this “better than the little people” unequal treatment elitist privilege. But there’s no good way to differentiate the ‘real’ or ‘super’ from the ‘pseudo’, so merely “elites” will continue be used for both. And the majority of elites do NOT deserve the special exemptions from laws and rules, so it’s better for society if none get exemptions. Even if that, occasionally, means results from the super elites are less, or even far less, than the unconstrained potential of those super elites.
I recall Peter Drucker’s idea of a great manager – getting superior results from an average team.
Hanania’s earlier essay was also great:
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-liberal
“to steelman the populist position, democracy does not reflect the will of the citizenry, it reflects the will of an activist class, which is not representative of the general population. Populists, in order to bring institutions more in line with what the majority of the people want, need to rely on a more centralized and heavy-handed government. The strongman is liberation from elites, who aren’t the best citizens, but those with the most desire to control people’s lives, often to enforce their idiosyncratic belief system on the rest of the public, and also a liberation from having to become like elites in order to fight them, so conservatives don’t have to give up on things like hobbies and starting families and devote their lives to activism.”
Hanania here identifies the control-freak activists as elites, who I’d call elite-wannabes.
These ideas are devastating to any Libber who “just wants to be left alone”.
There was an Ayn Rand quality to the essay you quoted.
It sounds like our woke religion wants Atlas to shrug.
I think that the big problem is that a large fraction of the technical super elite do not have skills and personalities compatible with being super elite at politics and general people management. It means these elites are not ideal creators of policy. Conversely, creators of policy often don’t get along with super technical elites, and hence often exclude the people who have the knowledge to help them make policy.
Worst case are those elites in non-useful fields who also become policy makers due to their verbal skills or ability to mold themselves to the fashion of the day (wokeness).
A person who thinks that concern about catching AIDS was a moral panic is way out of touch with reality.
I often see pundits lamenting why we don’t see innovation in the physical realm like we do/did in information technology and now software. The answer is simple, the physical realm is buried under a mountain of bureaucratic nonsense. If you are a someone who can innovate, possibly change the world, you avoid areas where you have to fight city hall. You go where you can get a head start on the bureaucrats.
Now, if someone came along whose talent was overcoming city hall and getting things done in a bureaucratic morass, well….
Sadly, the US is becoming a tyranny of the bureaucrats. Conformity is the rule of the day. Progress is not a priority to Progressives.
“All mankind’s progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all.”
Mises, Ludwig von (1927). Liberalism