During this pandemic, elites have greatly enjoyed getting to feel important by weighing in on big pandemic policy questions, such as masks, lockdowns, travel restrictions, vaccine tests, vaccine distribution, etc. Each elite can feel self-righteous in their concern for others, and morally outraged when the world doesn’t follow their recommendations. Don’t people know that this is too important for XYZ to get in the way of the world believing that they are right? Unconsciously, they seek to
Yes, elites steering government [social]-media gave us a robust but noisy covid response; unfortunately elites cannot be made to respect prices and so we took many wrong+costly actions. In the future, their advice should be made voluntary only for this reason.
This is a great point.Some of these people are wrong over and over again without losing status. For example anyone who said the Iraq war would lead to a Democracy in the middle east with little pain, should not be listened to at all. Yet Purdue Pharma is being punished even as more and more evidence shows that the opioid crisis is/was not due to people being prescribed opiods for real pain.
I talk often about elites, and I've added a few more links at the start of the post to such discussions. I don't feel like explaining it all again in each post.
Coming in blind, I find myself needing to to do quite a bit of inferring about your meaning of "elites," now that I try to write down my questions about it.
First of all it's plural, and each elite can have multiple members, so I guess each elite is roughly focused on an "area of policy?" Or also they can be in groups that differ with other groups on policy in the same area?
Mainly book and/or periodical authors, professors, media people? Bloggers? Consultants? Experts who media like to interview?
The power of this kind of elite is influencing people who make important decisions, whether public, private, general nominal policy goals, high-level omnibus/blunderbuss plans, or implementation details? (But they're not evenly focused on all of the above because of incentives.) Also... the power of intimidating decision-makers into paying attention to elites in general.
Or, wait, influencing people who influence decisions, like, say voters?
Elite seems to be a somewhat self-maintained distinction. It reminds me of the one between famous people and celebrities, sometimes defined by saying people become famous by doing things, but celebrities are known for being known, and celebrities work at staying known... But it's not exactly that.
Are elites people who are *considered* experts? Known for being considered experts? Paraded as experts? (Actually being expert at something may be irrelevant?) But at least part of their being actual elites has to do with successfully convincing people that they act like elites. (Or maybe that's actually all of it, any other things are just means to that.)
When you say many people consider themselves elites, you mean consider themselves experts worth listening to. But then some local people (local in physical or network sense) may actually get respect or even influence over things happening, or influence over what people think of as elite, so does it make sense to say there's a fractal hierarchy of elites? (Where "hier" actually means higher on the totem pole.)
- for example: some "elites" action you mentioned come from legitimate political authority, even if proven false later, its action is legitimate and approved by society - Business competition : Facebook is winner over MySpace or Friendster, but even if Facebook fails, society would not lose anything. So Zuckerberg can't give benefit to society - On other hand we judge paying damage (to society) by whose profiting from it, so Facebook is the one responsible. - etc.
You can't just randomly groups various actor into elites and private actor, and act like they both independent groups within society.
This feels like it hits the nail smack on the head. I wonder if this sort of message would resonate with the public during a political campaign. Maybe the public also wants to be shown “conspicuous care” through regulation and intervention.
You are ignoring entirety of society, public support/public approval, political legtiimacy, damage/benefit to society, business competition, etc in your analysis of inter-elite competition.
Yes, I agree. I was trying to raise the question of whether elites just happen to have an issue with certain solutions/approaches, e.g., prediction markets, for unrelated reasons or if they are going to be opposed to any mechanism which separates the claims about moral virtue from the factual claims.
Specifically, it seems to me particularly valuable to try and figure out what factors render prediction markets undesirable to elites. Is it just that they are weird and are associated with a certain technocratic approach that raises the relative status of STEM types relative to liberal arts and journalist types? Or is it an essential aspect of the decoupling, e.g., maybe by decoupling in this way you make it hard for elites to have the kind of legible effect on outcomes they desire (controlling A if the overall policy is set by A xor B might be unsatisfying in some way).
private actors, who are much less visibly eager than public officials to slavishly follow elite adviceI don't think it's merely a personality difference in public officials, but that we give more discretion to private actors. In that respect, as with differential regulation of small vs large firms, I think enforcement costs on a large vs small number of actors makes more of a difference than you've emphasized.
Yes, elites steering government [social]-media gave us a robust but noisy covid response; unfortunately elites cannot be made to respect prices and so we took many wrong+costly actions. In the future, their advice should be made voluntary only for this reason.
This is a great point.Some of these people are wrong over and over again without losing status. For example anyone who said the Iraq war would lead to a Democracy in the middle east with little pain, should not be listened to at all. Yet Purdue Pharma is being punished even as more and more evidence shows that the opioid crisis is/was not due to people being prescribed opiods for real pain.
I talk often about elites, and I've added a few more links at the start of the post to such discussions. I don't feel like explaining it all again in each post.
Coming in blind, I find myself needing to to do quite a bit of inferring about your meaning of "elites," now that I try to write down my questions about it.
First of all it's plural, and each elite can have multiple members, so I guess each elite is roughly focused on an "area of policy?" Or also they can be in groups that differ with other groups on policy in the same area?
Mainly book and/or periodical authors, professors, media people? Bloggers? Consultants? Experts who media like to interview?
The power of this kind of elite is influencing people who make important decisions, whether public, private, general nominal policy goals, high-level omnibus/blunderbuss plans, or implementation details? (But they're not evenly focused on all of the above because of incentives.) Also... the power of intimidating decision-makers into paying attention to elites in general.
Or, wait, influencing people who influence decisions, like, say voters?
Elite seems to be a somewhat self-maintained distinction. It reminds me of the one between famous people and celebrities, sometimes defined by saying people become famous by doing things, but celebrities are known for being known, and celebrities work at staying known... But it's not exactly that.
Are elites people who are *considered* experts? Known for being considered experts? Paraded as experts? (Actually being expert at something may be irrelevant?) But at least part of their being actual elites has to do with successfully convincing people that they act like elites. (Or maybe that's actually all of it, any other things are just means to that.)
When you say many people consider themselves elites, you mean consider themselves experts worth listening to. But then some local people (local in physical or network sense) may actually get respect or even influence over things happening, or influence over what people think of as elite, so does it make sense to say there's a fractal hierarchy of elites? (Where "hier" actually means higher on the totem pole.)
I don't see how anything you are saying is in conflict with anything I've said.
- for example: some "elites" action you mentioned come from legitimate political authority, even if proven false later, its action is legitimate and approved by society - Business competition : Facebook is winner over MySpace or Friendster, but even if Facebook fails, society would not lose anything. So Zuckerberg can't give benefit to society - On other hand we judge paying damage (to society) by whose profiting from it, so Facebook is the one responsible. - etc.
You can't just randomly groups various actor into elites and private actor, and act like they both independent groups within society.
https://momas.ru/bitrix/red...
Interesting. That isn’t my impression of people I know. Is your assertion anecdotal or based on data?
A majority of voters self-identify as elites, even if they are not in fact elites.
This feels like it hits the nail smack on the head. I wonder if this sort of message would resonate with the public during a political campaign. Maybe the public also wants to be shown “conspicuous care” through regulation and intervention.
I don't see how I'm neglecting these; you'll have to give a more detailed critique for me to understand.
You are ignoring entirety of society, public support/public approval, political legtiimacy, damage/benefit to society, business competition, etc in your analysis of inter-elite competition.
Yes, I agree. I was trying to raise the question of whether elites just happen to have an issue with certain solutions/approaches, e.g., prediction markets, for unrelated reasons or if they are going to be opposed to any mechanism which separates the claims about moral virtue from the factual claims.
Specifically, it seems to me particularly valuable to try and figure out what factors render prediction markets undesirable to elites. Is it just that they are weird and are associated with a certain technocratic approach that raises the relative status of STEM types relative to liberal arts and journalist types? Or is it an essential aspect of the decoupling, e.g., maybe by decoupling in this way you make it hard for elites to have the kind of legible effect on outcomes they desire (controlling A if the overall policy is set by A xor B might be unsatisfying in some way).
I didn't at all mean to attribute this difference to personality.
private actors, who are much less visibly eager than public officials to slavishly follow elite adviceI don't think it's merely a personality difference in public officials, but that we give more discretion to private actors. In that respect, as with differential regulation of small vs large firms, I think enforcement costs on a large vs small number of actors makes more of a difference than you've emphasized.
Of course.