
A New Aristocracy: Yale Law School Commencement Address (2015) [pdf] - js2
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/department/studentaffairs/document/markovitscommencementrev.pdf
======
nytesky
My school and work experience span working class coal power plant techs (a
friend used to climb through exhaust channels) to Ivy League educated lawyers
and founders.

Most people’s career trajectory will be set by the time they are in high
school, so the importance of secondary school education and resources of your
parents is paramount.

Also, wealth from family of origin allows risk taking, funding for law or
medical degrees, which for lower income students represent a huge risk so they
go to safer less lucrative fields.

~~~
cm2187
I agree but I am not convinced wealth plays a big role. In France, higher
education is pretty much free, and you see probably an even larger lack of
social diversity than the US in the most ellitist programs (medecine,
engineering, business). In the US there are always ways to finance education
if you are a good student.

I think family culture, peer pressure and the school pushing you to go the
hard path is by far the most important factor (for equivalent skills).

~~~
kace91
As a European from a poor-ish lower middle class background, I can tell you
that even free university doesn't cut it economically.

The thing is, every year you stay at school is a year that you're a financial
drain to your family and a year that you're not being an active money earner.
For many, it's simply not affordable to be in their formative years until they
are 22 (likely even longer if studies take more than 4 years, they in practice
need a masters/phd in their field to succeed, or if they fail and have to
retake some subjects).

At least in my country, the system is simply not made in a way that can
support a person studying and working at the same time, for a variety of
reasons (lack of part time, weekend or flexible jobs, amount of work that one
has to do at home, uni schedules that don't account for job-study balance,
etc).

On top of that, there's the apparently less important, but in practice
enormous psychological pressure of not having an actual adult paycheck until
well in your adult years.

A life where your friends that went through a fastest route to the job market
are living with their SO, spending money in life experiences and traveling
while you're 24 and still have to ask your parents for money to have a beer,
eat at mcdonalds or go to the movies (knowing they can't afford much on top of
that), or where you can't take a girl to your house because you still live
with your parents... it's basically assuming that you'll have to live like a
teenager until you're almost 30.

~~~
saiya-jin
Whoa, you _don 't_ need to drain your parents for 100% of the costs when on
university. I was never very good student because it took me long time to
memorize things compared to most peers, but even lame partying me was able to
get a part time side job, was able to go to work&travel programme to US during
long summer break etc.

It might be hard to finance all your university expenses by yourself, but you
can definitely cover a lot without any real impact on your studies. Just be
more effective with your free time, which is an invaluable lesson for rest of
the life on its own.

~~~
kace91
I was not talking about my current situation, mind you. I made a career as a
software developer, which is one of the few professions that allow for
flexible schedules and working before completing your formal education.

Europe is quite diverse, so your experience might be very different, but here
part time jobs are really scarce, and as I said even if you find one it is
quite likely that you won't be able to fit it with your uni schedule.

Most degrees have a schedule where theory is taught in the morning and
practical classes in the evening or the other way around: For chemistry
students for example that would be theoretical classes and laboratories, but
an ill-conceived attempt at uniformity made it so that even for fully
theoretical degrees like math you still have those "practical laboratories"
where you'd basically just be going through exercises. Attendance is mandatory
for everything.

> It might be hard to finance all your university expenses by yourself, but
> you can definitely cover a lot without any real impact on your studies. Just
> be more effective with your free time

While you are right that you can ease the load (summer break jobs are
certainly doable), even if you're able to do that, for many people just taking
care of part of the cost (or even all) isn't enough. It's not only about
higher education having a cost, it's also about the cost of opportunity, since
their potential income is _needed_ at home. A year studying might be a year
that the family can't afford turning the heating on in winter, or mom being
unable to go to the dentist, or your sister not having new clothes. The
student sees that every single day while knowing that if they just forget
about uni and get a job wherever, they can start solving those problems
straight away. It's clearly not the best long term decision financially, but
the humane factor is crucial and hard to explain unless you've been there.

~~~
thfuran
>even for fully theoretical degrees like math you still have those "practical
laboratories" where you'd basically just be going through exercises.
Attendance is mandatory for everything.

That's nuts.

------
Ancalagon
There is a lot of commentary in this thread about the speech being self-
congratulatory in nature, but I think the actual overall tone for it is much
darker. The speaker is essentially congratulating all of the graduates for
working extremely hard for their entire lives, and that, despite all that hard
work, they and everyone else around them will continue to work extremely hard
with no end in sight. This is especially true for any of the graduates that
want to earn lots of money or that want to make big changes to the system.
All-the-while the speaker says that everyone else - the 99% - have essentially
already lost the rat-race, and lost it before they were born. The rich are
stuck in a laborious 'gilded cage' of their own creation, and everyone else is
struggling to pay rent.

I highly recommend you read the entire article. It presents a lot of very good
points that are relevant with regard to the macro-structure of the new
American economy.

------
toasterlovin
FWIW, the issue with life experience anecdotes is that they don't control for
genetic confounding. Most rich kids have both the environment their parent
created for them, as well as the genes their parents gave them. So it's
impossible to tell which is more important in determining the life outcomes we
see.

There is a whole discipline called behavioral genetics that uses twin and
adoption studies and, increasingly, genome wide association studies (GWAS) to
tease these things apart. Most of these studies seem to point to most outcomes
being about half genetic and half random (that is, something other than the
environment created by the parents).

~~~
leto_ii
I think this line of thinking can take you dangerously close to the realm of
eugenics and social darwinism. I recommend Taleb's take on IQ as some food for
thought: [https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
pseudoscientific-...](https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39)

~~~
toasterlovin
A) facts don’t somehow become invalidated because a subgroup of people wants
to use the facts to push an agenda.

B) Taleb is the exact embodiment of the “intelligent, yet idiot” description
that he so loves to level against others. He is ridiculed by pretty much every
intelligence researcher and behavioral geneticist who is aware of his take on
IQ. Recently I witnessed him arguing on Twitter that the Justinian plague was
not the Black Death. They’re both caused by the same bacteria, yersinia
pestis. Find a better intellectual hero.

~~~
leto_ii
...ok, Wikipedia it is:

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Criticis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Criticism_and_views)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms)

3\. You can also find various comments on ideas of intellectual superiority in
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.

My bottom line is that I see no reason to believe humans can diverge in terms
of intelligence over the span of a few generations. Social darwinism is a
ridiculous pseudo-scientific idea that gets traction only with people that
think they fall on the right side of the IQ divide.

Btw, could you give some examples of researchers that treat IQ seriously and
consider it has a strong genetic component?

~~~
toasterlovin
"Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57%
and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as
80%[7] and 86%.[8]. IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for
children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and
adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at
18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This
phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect.[9] Recent studies suggest that
family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to
variation in IQ scores;[10] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition
and disease can have deleterious effects."

From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ)

This is not "some researchers" who hold the opinion that IQ has a strong
component, it is literally the entire field of behavioral genetics (basically
the only field that seriously studies the genetic basis of human behavior and
psychology).

Regarding how long it takes for significant evolution to occur: human
generations have historically been about 20 years long, which makes 1000 years
about 50 generations. As a point of reference, humans have created entire new
breeds of domesticated animals in as short as 50 years (a similar number of
generations). Darwin has several examples in The Origin of Species and a
Russian scientist bred tame foxes in about the same amount of time. The speed
of evolution is dependent on a lot of factors, but on its face, the idea that
groups of humans facing different selection pressures would not somehow
differentiate is silly (and they clearly have; that's why you can look at
someone and have a pretty good idea of what part of the world their ancestors
come from). But for a more concrete example of a shorter time period, the Han
Chinese have been rice farmers for several thousand years, whereas African
pygmies have been foragers and hunter-gatherers during that same time. Both
groups would face significantly different selection pressures. Hunting and
foraging skills would be essentially useless to rice farmers and a propensity
toward uncontrolled violence would likely get them killed by a local ruler
trying to maintain peace among his tax base. Hunter-gatherers would have no
use for the ability to keep accounting records or a class of women made
economically unproductive via the practice of foot binding.

------
gpestana
If you prefer to listen the speech:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCfe8VrCX4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCfe8VrCX4E)

------
akhilcacharya
Are my biases deceiving me, or has the Overton window on criticizing
“meritocracy” shifted? A few years ago (including in 2015 when I missed this
speech) I believe it would have been unthinkable in my social circles.

I’ve become convinced that meritocracy as the Yale Law elites would know it
has utterly failed 99% of Americans.

~~~
EliRivers
Apropos of the theme, when "meritocracy" was coined it was a warning;
something damaging to society that was to be avoided. At some point, the term
was hijacked and pushed as a force for good (I suspect, but cannot prove,
mostly by those who were benefitting from it) and now we seem to be coming
back around the circle.

Meritocracies are insidious. We can see it in some societies; "this is a
meritocracy" therefore rich powerful people deserve their wealth and power and
the poor and powerless have only themselves to blame and deserve no help. A
positive feedback cycle through the generations that leads to a stratified
society of nobility and peasantry.

~~~
Nasrudith
The original context always struck me as regressive and it is no wonder it
fell flat.

While meant to criticize the tri-tracked educational system as a potential
given that the dystopia was a replacement for the class system even if bad it
fails to make a case for it being worse than literal nobility and connections
to posh schools and old money.

It falls utterly flat like calling Oliver Cromwell the first military dictator
in England while ignoring the kings.

Self perpetuating in negative ways is certainly a problem (there is a vast
difference between being ahead because your family taught you and being aheas
because competing with you is illegal) but it needs to be taken in the context
of the now. What is the alternative is the real question of importance.

------
est31
This was a really inspiring speech. The entire speech is very valuable to
read, but to give a TLDR: the new aristocracy is defined as the elite that
gains their wealth through their labour rather than their assets. It's new
because 50 years ago, the elite was more based on capital than their own work.
It points out that you can exploit your capital without damage to yourself,
but you can't exploit your own capacity to work as then you use yourself up,
but that's precisely the trend as work amount expectations for elite lawyers
have doubled in recent decades. The consequence of this situation is pointed
out this way:

> To live in this way is, quite literally, to use oneself up. Such a life
> proceeds under a pervasive shadow: at its worst, it squanders the capacity
> to set and pursue authentically embraced, intrinsically valued, goals; even
> at its best, this life invites deep alienation.

With alienation they probably mean something like not seeing your parents,
friends, family, etc for years. The proposed solution to this dilemma is then
presented in the key paragraph:

> The new aristocracy promotes human flourishing for no one: certainly not for
> the excluded rest; nor even for the ensnared rich. We are trained to think
> of economic inequality as presenting a zero sum game: to suppose that
> redistribution to benefit the bottom must burden the top. But this is not
> such a case: reforms that democratize training and talent would benefit
> _everybody_. Such democratic reforms would restore the bulk of Americans to
> full participation in an economic and social order from which they have
> been, for several decades now, increasingly excluded. And democratic reforms
> invite the elite—you all—to accept an almost costless diminution in wealth
> and status in exchange for a massive, precious increase in leisure and
> liberty, a reclaiming of your authentic selves.

~~~
leto_ii
The speech also points out that most people who achieve meritocratically do so
because they have access to enormous amounts of resources, since birth. In
essence the rich used to just hand their wealth to their children (and most
still do that too), but now some actually dedicate part of their wealth to
training their children to excel in a process that is often nothing more than
a dog and pony show.

------
jchallis
I found the link on archive:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191023044540/https://law.yale....](https://web.archive.org/web/20191023044540/https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/department/studentaffairs/document/markovitscommencementrev.pdf)

If one is to feel good about meritocracy, it is that the ambitious, talented
and hardworking have the greatest chance of changing the system for everyone's
shared benefit.

~~~
jdkee
If only there was evidence to support that assertion.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The opposite of that is the stereotypical Soviet style, shoemaker working as a
mason, carpenter working as the prime minister. There's a room in between for
something sane, but anything sane will also be discriminatory with respect to
skills.

It seems to me that this pileup against meritocracy is primarily about
personal rewards, and not about utility to society.

------
js2
Markovits came to my attention when he was a guest on Ezra Klein's show:

[https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-
show/e/6...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-
show/e/64086855)

He's also now published a book, The Meritocracy Trap:

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2019/10/24/20919030/...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2019/10/24/20919030/meritocracy-book-daniel-markovits-inequality-
rich)

------
fergie
I think that was the best speech I have ever read.

------
astrofinch
Graduating from Yale Law sounds like it's for suckers. Let the elites have
their crazy working hours and stressful hoop jumping--I'm not envious.

~~~
natalyarostova
Their cohort effectively sets the vision for American legislation and justice.
You may not be interested in them, but they're interested in you.

~~~
aexq36
Do they really set the vision, though? Did they start the #MeToo movement and
bring down Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men? Are they leading the push
for transgender acceptance? Are they the reason why reparations and universal
healthcare are now mainstream policy proposals in the Democrat party?

It certainly makes _sense_ for the wealthy, elite lawyers of a society to set
the course of policy. But I'm not sure what the empirical evidence from 2019
America says. I think a lot of these Yale graduates end up becoming cogs in
the existing system without actually changing it, and I think other forces
might be equally as or more impactful in terms of shaping political currents.

~~~
natalyarostova
I mean, go look at the professors leading these policy pushes, the journalists
writing about metoo, and the policy wonks pushing for healthcare or trans
changes. You're going to see a lot of JDs from top schools -- a lot of Yale.
You won't see any self-taught coders or mathematicians from CalTech, you know?

------
baybal2
Sounds very posh to me. Giving top government position to people like that
will not lead to any good.

------
knolax
There was a dead comment in this thread that I can't respond to now. It came
from legitimate grievances but embodied what I think is a dangerous and now
popular sentiment.

It seemed to have been mocking the language of the speech when there really
isn't anything objectively wrong with the speech. The speech was in a high
register but I thought it was very concise. The parody in the comment on the
other hand seems to try to immitate religious language, and didn't attack the
speech but the speakers and their values. It's as if the commenter perceives
the academic register used in the speech as marking its contents unworthy of
engaging with, the ivory tower ramblings of the elites as nonsensical and
contemptible as religious rhetoric. This sort of contempt for everything
associated with the upper class leads to the kind of cultural destruction we
saw in Communist revolutions.

Hate the elite all you want but the culture they embody is also your culture;
don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

