
Why Our Elites Stink - bejar37
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-elites-stink.html?hp
======
js2
This is an old argument, and I frankly think it was better made by the man who
coined meritocracy:

[snip]

 _The business meritocracy is in vogue. If meritocrats believe, as more and
more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own
merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get.

They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had
achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as
somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers can
actually believe they have morality on their side.

So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards
they arrogate to themselves. The old restraints of the business world have
been lifted and, as the book also predicted, all manner of new ways for people
to feather their own nests have been invented and exploited._

[/snap]

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment>

~~~
excuse-me
Well what do they expect if they kick out a perfectly good elite hereditary
monarchy and try and run their little colony with a bunch of meritocratic
presidents!

------
awkward
He manages to hit a lot of the terrible points that normally make his essays
unbearable - comparing the 50s favorably to today, and an abject worship for a
poorly defined patriarchal elite, but this part was spot on:

"Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true
establishment, which is always somewhere else. This attitude prevails in the
Ivy League, in the corporate boardrooms and even at television studios where
hosts from Harvard, Stanford and Brown rail against the establishment."

Or in the tech press, where multi-billion dollar companies are "disruptive".

------
bediger4000
Weird. David Brooks in person: rather interesting. David Brooks on paper:
easily dismissable.

In this case, I dismiss what he says because he's making exactly zero attempt
to control for exogenous variables. There's a lot more going on than just
changing from a WASP-only aristocracy to a meritocracy of sorts. Vast cultural
shifts have necessitated the change, and cause other things to happen as well.
Just to pick a few examples, birth rates have dropped, the US population grows
only through immigration, basically. Cell phones happened. That changes a lot.
Did the WASP-only aristocracy have computers on their desks? No? Did they have
The Internet?

~~~
wdewind
I think you missed the point. The problem is in having a system which labels
itself meritocratic, because it lacks the concept of an elite. When you have
such a system, those who rise to power do so with the personal story that they
earned it. Brooks is arguing that while we used to have social values that
allowed some classes to project themselves as "elites," at least in those days
the elites had a sense of responsibility for the culture, and for the
institutions they guarded. We had the downside of people legitimately feeling
they were better than others, and the upside of a more tightly run ship.

I do agree that he's full of shit. He's being nostalgic for a time he did not
even live through, and he makes ridiculous sweeping statements like, "Wall
Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not
experience and character."

~~~
ritchiea
I agree that he's nostalgic and full of shit but you're putting words in his
mouth when you say the problem is "those who rise to power do so with the
personal story that they earned it." Brooks is arguing that they DID earn it,
he says the mechanisms that put people at the top tend to be honest and that
people at the top work more than others. What he's saying when he's being
nostalgic is that the old people at the top had a sense of responsibility to
society. You could call it a patronizing attitude.

But as we seem to agree that's bs for a number of reasons. Most notably that
Brooks even says the old "elite" were sexist and racist (at least anti-
Semetic). But if you're a racist, sexist leader, you probably don't really
have the benefit of those people you're racist and sexist to in mind. Or if in
some weird contradiction you do, your bigoted attitude likely makes you a poor
steward even with the best of intentions.

~~~
majormajor
Yes, he asks if we would say government is working better now than 60 years
ago, and given (just for starters) the huge difference in opportunities
available for women and minorities, I'm not seeing why I shouldn't say that.

The whole thing rests on a premise that, in some vague and mostly-unspecified
way, "things used to be better," or at least "people used to think things were
better." But this doesn't seem backed up by anything. And on the contrary, one
of the more interesting things I learned in one of my history electives in
college was that people have been cynical about their leaders for a long, long
time, including at the very start of the US.

Personally, my hunch is that we simply have quicker/more effective means of
disseminating information about corruption now.

~~~
ericd
There are a many, many more axes for government performance than just equality
of opportunity for people under it, though. Simply comparing the reaction of
the government to the recent financial crisis to the past reactions makes it
easy to see that something has been lost. In previous financial crises,
significant regulations were brought to bear to patch the bugs. This time,
despite some extremely significant structural problems that are easy to
identify (complete regulatory capture of the ratings agencies and the SEC, for
example), relatively little has been done.

~~~
majormajor
I agree that more should be done with regard to the financial crisis and
corruption, but I'm also very skeptical of comparisons made in the middle of
it, trying to answer the question of "how did the government perform during
it" before the final outcome is known. I realize that that's an unsatisfactory
answer in many ways, but government often moves slowly and I'm not sure that's
a bad thing—i.e., I don't want the outcome of this whole mess to be the TSA of
the financial industry.

------
paulsutter
"Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true
establishment, which is always somewhere else"

This is a fascinating point, and predicts the crticisms here about how
"elites" are defined. All the successful people i know in the tech industry
feel like outsiders and rebels. And as such, it's an interesting question
whether the tech industry feels more of a motivation for success than we feel
a responsility to society. I don't know that we don't, and I don't know
whether some "elites" of the past did. But it's an interesting perspective on
meritocracy.

In the tech industry we can be dismissive of bankers, but what an interesting
thought if they too feel like rebels and outsiders, rather than being the prep
school squares we might envision. When I think of the finance folks I know,
they really are more similar to tech folks than different.

I can't help but feel that much of the criticisms here are semantic in nature
and result from zeroing in on sentences and phrases rather than the central
idea of the article.

I certainly dont have the answer, but David Brooks is making an interesting
point. Values are important. And this reminds us of Peter Thiel and Max
Levchin advocating for real progress rather than quick wins.

~~~
crusso
_I can't help but feel that much of the criticisms here are semantic in nature
and result from zeroing in on sentences and phrases rather than the central
idea of the article._

'Who the elites are', 'how they got where they are', and 'what their natures
are' are the kinds of topics that people tend to think of in quasi-religious
terms.

Breaking through the semantic quibbling and getting past the default set of
political assumptions isn't easy -- even on a reasonably contemplative forum
like HN.

Like you, I don't know the answer. Brooks' conclusions are a little weak since
there isn't any way to gather statistics on the subject that would mean much.
Interesting to think about, though.

------
lindowe
I would love to know by what metric 1950s & 60s elites were 'better'. Brook's
seems to be ignoring the fact that elites in these times were more effective
because they could ignore other interest groups. It's easy to get a highway
built when you can override the largely poor or minority groups who live in
these areas (i.e. Robert Moses). Also the widespread lack of transparency
meant that the crimes of elites were far less apparent, and so popular
conception is that they were a far more 'honorable' bunch. I don't deny that
there is a lot wrong with the ruling class today, but that problem emerges
from our institutions, and the concentration of power and lack of
checks/balances, not because of some mythic, WASPy noblesse oblige that no
longer exists.

~~~
rubashov
Fair point on the disastrous social engineering and urban redevelopment
schemes of the 20th century. But, what about sending men to the moon or
designing and building the sr-71 in a few years? Or for that matter conquering
Japan and Germany in the space of a few years.

I argue these are all things our society today would simply not be able to do
if placed in the same circumstances. We are less effective.

~~~
brown9-2
_I argue these are all things our society today would simply not be able to do
if placed in the same circumstances. We are less effective._

What is this based on? Our society today is still capable of great
accomplishments - look at what Google has built in 10 years, the amount of
knowledge organized there.

I would argue that we seem to be able to accomplish less because as a society
our ambitions are smaller. Large government programs get nowhere today because
everyone fears socialism.

~~~
drumdance
That, and there really are constraints now that did not exist then. Building a
dam back then did not require environmental impact statements and the like.

------
freyr
The current system favors easily quantifiable performance metrics (GPA, SAT,
ranking of degree-granting academic institution) and social networking. We end
up with socially-adept individuals who look good on paper running the show. As
we have seen in some stunning recent displays, individuals can rise within
this system and succeed despite an off-kilter moral compass or a sense of
purpose beyond their own personal gain. Hayes claims that elites are corrupted
by meritocracy when they attempt to preserve their power. Brooks argues that
the rise of morally bankrupt elites are a cultural byproduct, rather than a
inherent issue with meritocracy itself.

It's a potentially interesting distinction, but Brooks doesn't justify it
coherently or delve into the implications at all. He compares and contrasts
yesterday's elites to today's, but these comparisons hold under either
hypothesis. It would have been more interesting if he provided a coherent
argument for his claim, or offered any prescriptions to treat the underlying
problem (or even to quell the symptoms).

~~~
bediger4000
I like your answer, and maybe, just maybe, that's what Brooks wanted to say. I
also agree that "Brooks doesn't justify it coherently". But that's because
you're making the distinction that Brooks did not.

Please take over Brooks position as editorial writer.

------
brown9-2
Here is an excerpt of Chris Hayes' book for anyone interested:
<http://www.thenation.com/article/168265/why-elites-fail>

I think David Brooks is over-summarizing Hayes' thesis and also making it
sound like he is interested in violent overthrow of "the elites" by comparing
him to the French Revolution.

~~~
bwanab
Thanks for that. Hayes' actual arguments are much more subtle and thoughtful
than Brooks gives them credit for.

~~~
brown9-2
That seems to be true for any subject Brooks writes about.

------
liber8
Our Elites have always stunk. Even during perhaps the most creative,
innovative, and groundbreaking period in the history of political science (the
time around the American revolution), our leaders ran smear campaigns, created
laws to freeze out their competitors[1], and even killed each other[2].

But, those great men actually realized, at least to some extent, how much they
stunk. They crafted a limited government because they recognized how easily
corrupted people in power are.

This fantasy that everything will be okay if we simply pick the "right" elites
has been persistent since FDR's administration. There's no such thing. Brooks
argues that we just need to inject some ethics into the process. Good luck. If
you can figure out how to do that, we don't need prisons, we don't need 99.9%
of the laws we have, and we don't need 99.9% of the government we have. Of
course, humans don't work that way. Which is why our government was set up the
way it was in the first place.

[1] Our beloved Ben Franklin became postmaster just so he could scoop other
peoples' stories for his own newspaper.

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_burr>

~~~
freyr
"Of course, humans don't work that way."

Whenever I find myself in doubt regarding liberal viewpoint, it usually can be
traced back to this, a fundamental disconnect with the way the majority of
humans actually behave.

In fairness, strong conservatives draw from an even crazier palette of false
assumptions.

~~~
liber8
The problem is definitely on both sides. Some of the most visible and
hilarious examples come just in the last four years. Obama the constitutional
scholar (rightly) lambasts the Bush administration for accumulating
unauthorized and unchecked executive power. Of course Obama the president
doesn't view those newly acquired powers as such evil things. Why would he?
Once those powers are in the hands of the "good guys" or the "right elites",
it makes it so much easier to do "good". No need to deal with any of the
bureaucracy and red tape that would otherwise exist.

And of course the right is now "terrified" that the same powers they enjoyed
so freely just four years ago are in the hands of the "bad guys" or the "wrong
elites".

It's easy to disconnect yourself with the way humans actually behave when
you're the one in power because you believe you won't act the same way that
everyone else would.

------
niels_olson
> today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist,
> sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess.

This nicely sums up something that has plagued me for years now. I grew up on
the lower middle class side of WASP. My dad is an engineer and my mom waited
tables at Zarda BBQ to cover the mortgage. I went the Naval Academy and got
the live-in-spartan-quarters treatment and went out into the fleet and felt
the responsibility as I looked in a man's eye and said things he didn't want
to hear.

When I went to medical school, married with two kids, having completed two
tours on ships and a tour on staff back at the Academy, everything got turned
on its head. Here were strivers, but, and I remember thinking then "There I
was running with a wolf pack. Now I'm swimming with sharks".

------
tryitnow
This is why I don't pay for access to the NYT.

Brooks is comparing the best elements of the old elites to the worst elements
of the new elite. There's certainly a leadership ethos among the new elites.
Try walking around an Ivy Leagure campus without being reminded of some
politically correct "cause." Even top ranked business schools eagerly embrace
"corporate social responsibility" and other concepts implying a sense of
"stewardship." They do use the same old-timey language Brooks would prefer,
but the basic ethos is still there.

Ignore Brooks's arguments, the book he refers to actually sounds like the real
deal. I've long thought that meritocracy has some inherent problems. That's
not to say we should throw it out, but rather that we should be aware of the
practical and moral limitations of meritocracy.

~~~
drumdance
"Brooks is comparing the best elements of the old elites to the worst elements
of the new elite"

Well said.

------
ubasu
This is the NYT equivalent of blogspam. Also comes with standard patronizing
rhetoric about how today's uppity nouveau riche elites cannot compare with
what he knew when he was growing up (as others have also pointed out).

------
ChuckMcM
From the article: "They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did
believe in restraint, reticence and service."

Its been my experience that people who believe in service, which is to say
they believe they are there to serve the organization/community/nation in
order to help it achieve its goals, are the people who make great
institutions.

People who believe in wealth acquisition and power make corrupt institutions.

The former live to empower everyone else, the latter live to dis-empower
everyone else.

------
bejar37
The interesting point that I got from this article is that the old aristocracy
had a sense of responsibility to society and acknowledged the fact that they
were privileged. Now that we're in a society where people tend to not think of
themselves as wealthy or privileged, how does this self-ignorant meritocratic
elite know that they do have a responsibility?

~~~
bediger4000
Is there any objective indicator (or "proxy") for this sense of
responsibility? I'm thinking there isn't, but maybe someone can suggest
measures that show it.

I can offer a specific counter-example:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2008/10/they_made_a_killing.html)
Looks like someone on the inside of the CIA's coup-planning process made a
killing in the stock market, as well as in Guatemala. That's not aristocracy
with a sense of responsibility, it's cold hearted money grubbing.

~~~
tomjen3
It is the way the aristocracy has made money for centuries (stealing it, since
they couldn't make it themself).

But the fact that his wealth is stolen may make him more caring of his
subjects, knowing that he didn't deserve his fortune, and so they may not
deserve their misfortune, whereas someone who build themself up from nothing
may very well look down on these people as lazy.

------
johnmichaeleden
You knew it was bound to happen. You knew, in your gut, that once David Brooks
read Twilight of the Elites (Twilight), he’d have some fundamental quibble
with Christopher Hayes’ latest. (Brooks’ piece is here:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-
eli...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-elites-
stink.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120713.))

In Why our Elites Stink, Brooks argues that our elites are failing to live up
to a “self-conscious leadership code” that a now vanquished vanguard once had.
Before we get to whether such a code even makes sense (I think it does, but
not in Brooks' sense), consider Brooks’ general critique of Twilight:

It’s a challenging argument but wrong. I’d say today’s meritocratic elites
achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by
being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families.
They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment. They work much
longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano
lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room.

To invoke Seth Meyers from Saturday Night Live, really? I can see why this
complaint might play well with a certain demographic. After all, successful
Americans, especially members of the upper-middle class, do spend an
inordinate amount of time shuttling their kids to piano lessons, ensuring that
their children gain entry into the best high schools and colleges, and
generally putting in serious hours at work. They also spend a lot of time
ensuring that their own work product exceeds the prevailing standards of their
respective fields. They are killing it, I can assure you. These folks are
sweating blood everyday to ensure that they don’t lose their place in our
economic biosphere, a system that perhaps has less in common with a biological
environment – where ecological balance is at least possible – and more with an
oil-soaked incline that very much prefers culling over cultivating.

What Brooks does not realize is that the elites Hayes has in mind are not the
folks killing themselves to excel as line-contributors at management
consulting firms, law firms, and technology companies. Hayes is talking about
people who, through a mix of talent, political maneuvering and luck are able
to ascend to the top of the mountain and defend it against those (i.e., the
line-contributors) who desperately need access to capital and the other
resources (political connections, e.g.) to climb further up the mountain. Yes,
I am saying that Brooks’ has conflated (deliberately?) upper-middle class
strivers with the real elite. And for that reason alone, his direct assault
against Twilight fails.

But what of Brooks’ positive argument, the idea that elites today are sorely
lacking a code of honor? Consider Brooks’ own words:

The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were
temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly
ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct
and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did
believe in restraint, reticence and service.

Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership
code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language
of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on
the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their
problems can be traced to this.

There is some “truthiness” here. It is true that if you read about the Libor
scandal, you will get the sense that a bunch of immature brats are now playing
skipper atop large vessels that they do not quite comprehend.

Yet it is also apparent that Brooks does not understand the preconditions to
creating and maintaining a self-conscious code of stewardship and honor. That
code is only possible where a number of preconditions have obtained. First,
wealth and earning disparities between capital and labor have to be
reasonable, a point that Hayes repeatedly makes in Twilight.

Second, such a code is possible only where the word “merit” does not mean
something like “best able to enrich Zeus and his favored demigods.” Brooks in
fact touches on this, but only obliquely. He observes that “Wall Street firms
. . . now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and
character.” Presumably Brooks would agree that experience makes someone truly
more meritorious in the world of banking, since experience would inculcate a
broad sense of social responsibility.

I don’t know if this is true of executives in the banking world; it’s quite
possible that senior bankers are just as prone to take huge risks as their
younger counterparts, given the willingness of Congress to wash away billion-
dollar gaffes through bail outs. Nonetheless, I would generally agree with
Brooks that experience and character are characteristics relevant to a
recruiting or hiring decision. But I digress. The point here is that merit
must actually be something genuine and (wherever and whenever possible) immune
from manipulation. Where such an immunity is impossible, merit must be
something that ordinary people can fight to have reinstated, followed or
respected within the key institutions that structure and reproduce society
over time.

Defining genuineness is not easy. It doesn’t mean gauged by standardized
tests, which are suspect as tools of exigency and manipulation (see the
history of military recruiting, which I think of as the sordid incubator of
modern standardized tests). Ensuring that merit is a “genuine” concept is
simply a way of saying that this word should not become co-opted by an
existing regime to justify its own immoral conduct. Put another, perhaps
stronger, way: Merit must be defined independently of what happens to be
beneficial for the existing elite. Is that hard to do? Absolutely. Should we
strive to attain this lofty goal? Without a doubt.

The third precondition is related to the second: There must be mechanisms and
institutions in place to prevent Zeus, as well as his favored demigods, from
(1) controlling the very definition of “merit” – though controlling access to
key institutions and capital and (2) living a distant life, a life immune to
the fears, concerns, and hopes of those who do not live at the top. In Hayes’
parlance, we need to dismantle the “autocatalytic” infrastructure that allows
elites to rig the game in their favor. We need less, not more, social
distance.

In a nutshell, then, Brooks’ positive diagnosis fails because he hasn’t done
any rigorous thinking about the core problem. Hayes is right: It’s not just
that the people in power don’t happen to have a code of honor, it’s that our
most important economic and political institutions are architected to reward
only those people who are willing to forever flush that code of honor from
their psyches. That dear friends, is, unfortunately, today’s price of
admission to Mount Olympus.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
If you'd like, I'll write a letter to the editors of the Times and see if they
can replace Brooks with you.

~~~
johnmichaeleden
I'd never get through their gauntlet.

------
moron
As far as whether Wall Street is working better than it used to, depends who
you ask.

But, really, this talk of "elites" tends to put me on edge, because a lot of
times it's _really_ about who you define as the elite. I came of age
politically at the time when anybody to the left of Rush Limbaugh was an
effete "latte liberal", and the word "elite" basically referred to anyone who
had a college degree and saw through the insane rhetoric of the time. Who you
call "elite" becomes part of your agenda, essentially.

~~~
sp332
I think "elites" are people who consider themselves elite, or more
specifically, any one who thinks: 1. They can make better life choices,
financial decisions etc. than "other" people, _and_ 2\. Therefore they should
be in charge of other people's lives.

~~~
freyr
This definition is entirely dependent on the internal mind state of the
individual. The guy behind the counter of the local 7-Eleven may think he's
smarter than everyone, and may think he should be in charge, but nobody thinks
of him as an elite.

I'd guess most people today consider an elite as somebody who wields influence
within a political, corporate, or other type of entity that itself is highly
influential within society, and who is well connected to other people of
influence.

~~~
sp332
Exactly, elitism is basically empire-building on a personal level. You can of
course wield influence while still being strongly meritocratic. But feeling
some entitlement or ambition to control aspects of other people's lives is
elitist.

~~~
freyr
We're defining two different things here, elitists and elites. An elitist is
defined by their state of mind, and how they classify themselves and others.
You do not need actual power to be elitist.

Society's elites, on the other hand, have real influence (and may not even
have an elitist mindset).

------
rubashov
The assertion that "elite" status is more meritocratic today than in the past
(in America) is highly questionable. Go look at 100 year old university
admissions tests. Note that they didn't care what "clubs" you were in.

Brooks goes on about diversity and the decline of WASP dominance as an obvious
sign of the shift to meritocracy. This out of hand dismisses the possibility
the WASPs just actually were/are elite. Why is this a fair assumption?

<http://blog.jim.com/culture/not-the-cognitive-elite-3.html>

~~~
drumdance
Yes, but they cared very much whether you were Jewish, black or female. And
they _still_ care if your parents went to school there.

~~~
rubashov
On black and Jewish I'm not going to take your point as granted. I'd need an
unbiased analysis.

~~~
pak
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States)

President Lowell of Harvard tried to impose a 12% quota on Jewish admits in
the early 20th century, and also attempted to exclude African American
students from residing in the freshman dorms. You can find similar behavior at
other universities until well after WWII ended. For example, Georgetown's
first black student enrolled in 1950.

~~~
rubashov
OK, so some colleges in the 20s and 30s discriminated against Jews and others
(vast majority?) didn't. Your link goes on about Feynman and Salk going to NYU
and MIT instead of their first choices. These men both easily found their way
to the elite.

~~~
mturmon
The question is not, "were some geniuses able to surmount discrimination", but
"was there discrimination".

Your intellectual dishonesty is showing.

