What, Precisely, is the Issue with ‘Elites’?

Several factors seem to me to be at work…

1)There is a perception that the multiple ladders of success which have existed in American society are increasingly being collapsed into a single ladder, with access tightly controlled via educational credentials

2)It is increasingly observed that these credentials actually have fairly low predictive power concerning an individual’s actual ability to perform important tasks and make wise judgments about institutional or national issues. The assumption that school-based knowledge generally trumps practical experience seems increasingly questionable as the sphere of activity for which this assertion is made has expanded, and is indeed increasingly viewed with suspicion or with outright disdain.

3)It is observed that people working in certain fields arrogate to themselves an assumed elite status despite the fact that their jobs actually require relatively little in terms of skill and judgment. Ace of Spades cites a history writer on class distinctions in Victorian England:

She noted, for example, that a Bank of England clerk would be a member of the middle/professional class, despite the fact that what he did all day was hand-write numbers into ledgers and do simple arithmetic and some filing work and the like, whereas, say, a carpenter actually did real thinking, real planning, at his job, with elements of real creativity. And yet it was the Bank of England clerk who was considered a “mind” worker and the carpenter merely a hand-laborer.

Ace suggests that “that distinction has obviously persisted, even in America, with the ingrained sort of idea that a low-level associate producer making crap money and rote choices on an MSNBC daytime talk show was somehow 'above' someone making real command decisions in his occupation, like a plumber. And this sort of idea is very important to that low-level producer at MSNBC, because by thinking this way, he puts himself in the league of doctors and engineers.”

(The same prejudice can be seen in terminology currently used in discussions of community colleges and technical schools: that these institutions are needed to train people for “mid-skill” jobs, with the implication being that people with 4-year degrees automatically have higher-skilled jobs than people with fewer years of seat time. Really? An undergraduate sociology major performing some rote job at a “non-profit” is doing something requiring higher skills than a toolmaker or an air traffic controller?)

4)Marriage, and even serious dating, seem increasingly to follow class boundaries, with “class” being defined very largely by educational credentials. Part of this is due to expanded educational and career opportunities for women—the doctor who once would have married his receptionist may now marry a female doctor—but I think a good part of this is due to the very high valuation placed on educational credentials. This phenomenon, of course, tends to lead to the solidification and perpetuation of class barriers.

5)People who have achieved success in one field too often assume a faux expertise in unrelated fields, as with the actor or singer who is credited with having something worthwhile to say about foreign policy or economics, irrespective of lack of study/experience in those fields.

6)People who have achieved success via the manipulation of words and images have increasingly tended to discount all other forms of intelligence…for those who attacked George W Bush as “stupid”, for example. The fact that he learned to fly a supersonic fighter (the F-102, not the most pilot-friendly airplane ever designed) was a totally irrelevant piece of data.

Increasingly, many of these word-and-image-people seem to feel that they should have control over the government and its policies, or at least have veto power over which candidates are acceptable to be offered to the voters for their tightly constrained choice. See my posts Living in the Hate of the Common People and Hate of the Common People, continued for examples of the kind of arrogance that I'm talking about.

7)Markers that have played a role in assessing class status in many societies—accent and manner of speech, in particular—seem to be becoming increasingly important. This factor has a lot to do with the hostility directed toward Sarah Palin as well as that directed toward George W Bush. Had these two individuals spoken in the manner expected of one who has attended boarding schools and expensive eastern colleges—regardless of the academic quality of those schools and colleges—their critics would still have probably disliked them, but the hostility would have lost much of its hysterical edge.

8)There is concern that those providing direction to institutions increasingly bear little of the burden for their own failures. This is especially true of government—particularly the legislature and the courts, where a bad decision will generally have no negative consequences whatsoever for the individuals making it and of those who run the K-12 government schools—but also to a disturbing extent in the business world, especially with regard to those corporations with close ties with government and those in the financial sector.

9)There is concern that the people directing institutions increasingly have life experiences totally different from their employees and customers. Many of the “robber barons” of yore had actually started as low-level workers, and regardless of how much they exploited their own workers, they could understand and identify with them in a manner that is very difficult for someone whose path has involved 6 years of college followed by a series of fast-track corporate assignments.

10) There is a perception that members of one profession—lawyers—play a vastly disproportionate role in our political process, resulting in public policies which benefit that group and often fail because they reflect an excessively narrow worldview and set of life experiences.

11) It is increasingly recognized that people in some fields claim levels of expertise that are not really justified by the actual state and results of those fields. The predictive power of sociology, for example, is not equivalent to that of physics.

12) Many institutions have lost respect because the criteria for entering those institutions are unrelated to merit, and/or there is significant fraud going on in the process of getting in and gaining promotions... Consider those parents who were caught creating fake records of sports accomplishments for their children to improve their chances for the Ivy League.

13) There is a sense that too many Americans in prominent positions have little identification with their fellow citizens, identifying primarily with their peers in other countries. And an increasing proportion of them get their incomes directly or indirectly from government, and hence have little sympathy for people who operate without such subsidies and security blankets.

14) People observe that individuals in positions of power often impose restrictions on other people which they have no intention of abiding themselves—the case of the French Laundry restaurant-going during Covid lockdown in California being a case in point.