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Elite Overproduction

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Re: Elite Overproduction

#61

Post by oscaracso »

scrappyjoe wrote: post #14
pfisherman wrote: post #8

I associate this phrase with losers and people trying to sabotage the US. You know who is not wringing their hands about “elite overproduction”? China, who are pumping out tons of smart and capable STEM PhDs, and have in a relatively short time caught up to and in some cases surpassed the US in production of scientific output and technology.

> I associate this phrase with losers Completely separate from the substance of your point, this sort of language does not encourage constructive dialog, it frames the discussion in such a way that you are either going to get a. People who agree with you, resulting in you not learning anything b. People who are triggered into fighting with you, once again, resulting in you not learning anything c. People ignoring you…

Thank you for giving him the lesson on etiquette. I was going to do the same but you beat me to the punch, so instead I will just upvote you and move on without further remark.

Re: Elite Overproduction

#62

Post by ftmootnomoat »

atq2119 wrote: post #25
timmg wrote: post #2

I'm one of those people that goes by the "all models are wrong, but some models are useful" saying. I'm sure the "elite overproduction" model is mostly wrong. But I also think it is an interesting/useful way to look at some things happening in society recently. Certainly, you can think of the recent "cancel culture" phenomena as a great way to remove elites to make room for new ones. ( Maybe you could argue that some…

> DEI -- along with hiring quotas -- tended to bring new "officials" at companies and government orgs ("head of diversity") which is another great way of "creating" more elites. If anything, it's a way of placating existing elites. The elite overproduction idea is that there is a surplus of people who feel that they should have an elite status compared to reasonably available elite positions. Creating additional mana…

They have elite debt without elite position

Re: Elite Overproduction

#63

Post by aleph_minus_one »

ftmootnomoat wrote: post #37
alexpotato wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this partly what explained the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt? e.g. the government made university education free, lots of people went to university, there was now excess supply of college educated professionals, this led to unhappy young professionals, in turn led to unrest etc etc.

The problem with educated youth who understand the game is that if there’s no room for them to join the ruling class they become very angry. They will want to topple the elite so they can replace them.

> The problem with educated youth who understand the game is that if there’s no room for them to join the ruling class they become very angry.

My experience/observation is that only few (university-)educated people really do understand the game. Only a subset of them actually make serious attempts to understand the rules of the game, and of those, most get to believe in often very dangerous falsehoods about what the rules are.

Re: Elite Overproduction

#64

Post by pfisherman »

scrappyjoe wrote: post #14
pfisherman wrote: post #8

I associate this phrase with losers and people trying to sabotage the US. You know who is not wringing their hands about “elite overproduction”? China, who are pumping out tons of smart and capable STEM PhDs, and have in a relatively short time caught up to and in some cases surpassed the US in production of scientific output and technology.

> I associate this phrase with losers Completely separate from the substance of your point, this sort of language does not encourage constructive dialog, it frames the discussion in such a way that you are either going to get a. People who agree with you, resulting in you not learning anything b. People who are triggered into fighting with you, once again, resulting in you not learning anything c. People ignoring you…

Yeah, you are not wrong. The topic is a bit like troll bait for me. Probably because I have a first hand view of how the current strain of anti intellectualism and resulting policy in the US is destroying jobs and eroding competitive advantage. My observation is that this type of rhetoric tends to be produced and consumed by “elites”, and is often used to advocate for policy that limits socioeconomic mobility.

The irony is that in limiting mobility and competition from the “non elite” out-groups to preserve status, they end up shrinking the overall size of the pie.

Re: Elite Overproduction

#66

Post by oscaracso »

dkHasgrI12 wrote: post #24
pfisherman wrote: post #8

I associate this phrase with losers and people trying to sabotage the US. You know who is not wringing their hands about “elite overproduction”? China, who are pumping out tons of smart and capable STEM PhDs, and have in a relatively short time caught up to and in some cases surpassed the US in production of scientific output and technology.

China itself has a PhD and academics glut: https://www.economist.com/china/2025/11/19/china-has-too-man... Or maybe the Economist is "trying to sabotage China"?

The Economist only wants what's best for China. (As the article is paywalled, do they discuss the positive externalities of this glut or only the difficult labour market?)

Re: Elite Overproduction

#67

Post by PorterBHall »

NalNezumi wrote: post #43

I've discussed Elite Overproduction with some economists and the best way for me to conceptualize this in modern day is with software, UI/design specifically. UI and design is weird. There's a saying in fashion "there's no new fashion, just cycled old ideas" and things have a trend cycle. UI have a similar trend, as we can see with IOS pattern update and icon update for Google: they're just new, but we can't really t…

> When we ponder upon this, it boggles down to the fact that it's notoriously hard to distinguish "value creation" vs "value extraction".

This is an excellent frame to think about this. When we look at the increasing financialization of consumer spending (subscriptions, buy now pay later, rebates, club discounts, etc.), we can think of it as disguising value extraction as value creation.

Re: Elite Overproduction

#68

Post by keybored »

TrackerFF wrote: post #28

I've observed that when big waves of (labor) change washes over the working classes, it is met with "tough luck!" and some advice to seek a new profession, often starting again at the very bottom. But when this happens to the educated professional class, all hell breaks loose. The system has to change , because it is unthinkable for some professional with a master's degree to become a warehouse sorter. If AI really m…

Even people like me are getting masters degrees (working on it). I don’t understand how to square this with the inflation that these degrees have got.

Re: Elite Overproduction

#69

Post by armchairhacker »

Ekaros wrote: post #7

I have largely gotten to idea that education never made elites. It was just signal most of time for someone who already belonged to elite class. From this people started to think that getting education would mean to become elite. But this was reality only for a few. And even with many of those it was questionable were they elites or only more skilled and more professional groups like say doctors and lawyers.

Education does increase upward mobility. But 1) you have to pay attention and use the education to find opportunities, and 2) it doesn’t guarantee it, you need opportunities in the first place.

You can get more upward mobility by skipping education - but only if you what you do instead enables lots of upward mobility. For example, if you skip education to work in trades, you’ll have a reliable career and upfront cash; but the career’s growth is capped, so to become really successful, you must figure out how to use the upfront cash and reliable income (which probably involves research i.e. education).

Re: Elite Overproduction

#70

Post by aleph_minus_one »

terminalshort wrote: post #60
Ekaros wrote: post #7

I have largely gotten to idea that education never made elites. It was just signal most of time for someone who already belonged to elite class. From this people started to think that getting education would mean to become elite. But this was reality only for a few. And even with many of those it was questionable were they elites or only more skilled and more professional groups like say doctors and lawyers.

Universities were just elite finishing schools. It's a status signal to be able to afford to spend 4 years of your youth not working, partying, and paying tuition to "study" subjects that have no economic value (studying practical things like medicine and law was not elite because it shows that you need to work for a living). This stopped being a status signal with the advent student loans because it removed the excl…

> Universities were just elite finishing schools.

Quite some time ago, I read the claim on HN that in the USA, elite universities rather serve the purpose that

- "rich/elite" kids, and

- highly smart and ambitious kids

get mixed together so that when they finish university, these groups become (mostly) indistinguishable. The reason why this a central purpose of elite universities is that these two groups need each other.

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