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Originally, I found this page searching for how historians measured whether or not a particular era suffered from elite overproduction.

But an element that this post underemphasizes is "class" distinctions. The excess elite isn't just pushed down in some distribution relative to where they think they should be, there is a restricted number of positions defined by some class distinction. (One writer sorted jobs in Algeria as "government jobs", "the state oil company", and "Islamic clerics and scholars".) People whose status-conception is tied to being within a particular class are at risk of not obtaining positions within it at all.

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NFTs are a great example of "we now put more weight on many smaller lower-noise status markers, instead of fewer bigger noisier markers"

Like people are literally falling over themselves to buy jpegs of rocks and cars

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No, I don't think that's quite right.Why would things change from 1% believing they had a right to 1% of the top jobs to 10% believing they had that right?

(a) Change in the number of people with the "actual" qualification.(b) Change in the number of people who *believe* they have the qualification.

If elite is more or less "aristocracy", and peace+no colonization or similar means excess number of kids born, then we have case (a). The qualification is being born to the right parents, and more such kids have been created.

If elite is a degree AND the degree is especially demand to acquire, but lots of people are doing the work, then we also have a case of (a). That's probably something like over production of PhDs in Physics and Math.

But if people simply believe that having a degree (in anything!) makes them qualified for a 1% job, because they've been told this all their lives, then we have case (b).

(a) is, I think, fairly common in history, and ultimately not too catastrophic. The excess wannabe's do have the necessary qualification, after all, so if events swap out the current group for the replacements, no-one else should much care.

(b) is, I think, much more problematic because it's based on sheer fantasy. That's your French/Russian/Chinese revolution, or your post-colonial Africa.

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I suspect the debt is less important than the assumption by those acquiring the degrees that they would have a certain type of job and social status.

I base this claim on colonial history. I don't think I'm saying anything very controversial when I say that most of the 20th C anti-colonial revolutions (and their successors like the Iranian revolution) were actually instigated and led by elite wannabe's, people in the situation of having acquired a degree but feeling that "society" (for whatever reason) did not offer them status commensurate with that degree. Note that the cost of the degree, or debt incurred acquiring it, is not part of the story...

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"I often hear about how many elite areas have become more competitive, and more stressful. "

When you consider the details, the subject raises a number of specific points that I don't see as having been well addressed.

Let's start with the actual elites. Define those in some reasonable but time-invariant way (top 5% income?) Do THOSE people see increased competition and stress. As measured how? Society seems to love to make grand claims about the elite (cf the supposed unhappiness and discontents of the rich) based on very little actual knowledge, and mainly an assumption that "elite" means the same thing as "celebrity".

Next is the elite wanna-be's. My guess is that THIS is where all the action is. Of course that's the real meaning of "elite overproduction", not so much a change for elites as the creation of a massive pool of elite wannabe's. This pretty much defines their living a life of much more stress and competition -- but to a substantial extent that seems an issue of choices and expectations. For the purposes of sociology and politics, the overproduction is a real phenomenon. For the purposes of ethics and the individual choice of how to live a good life, it seems a much less important issue.

Third, are the demands on these elite wannabe's actually any different from people in their jobs in the past? Something I see constantly on Twitter, though not much in the mainstream media, is a resentment at the idea of having to work hard, and especially resentment at those who do work hard (and thus make everyone else look bad). In other words recent America seems to have coupled the traditional American value of "You can be anything you want to be" with a post-70s value of "And you don't even have to work hard to get it". A society in which 30% of the population believe they deserve to be the CEO, AND that they deserve it by the mere fact of their being human, seems likely to be a society that's going to be populated with a lot of people unrealistically believing they are working hard (whatever their level of effort and competence) *and* being discriminated against.

How this plays out most importantly is in a way that has not been raised by our host. Let me raise a hypothesis: - it is elite overproduction that is the primary driver of our bizarre return to neoVictorian morality.

What I mean by neoVictorian is the existence of an elite that publicly demands a very rigid and unforgiving morality (the details of that morality differ between then and now, how it is enacted does not), the existence of a class below the elite that enforces that morality by baying for blood every time a transgression is discovered (whether it's Lady M's letter of passion to Lord N, or a politician's unwise choice of a joke). All coupled to a 90% of society that considers this moral standard utterly insane and the behavior of the people contorted by it to be ludicrous.

My guess is in pre elite overproduction days both the elites and the wannabe's were willing to engage in understanding and forgiveness when colleagues made mistakes. But under circumstances of overproduction, *social* mistakes become a tool of attack. Being social mistakes is important because it means the game has no real rules; you can't appeal to a judge and the written law (when that has been tried eg impeachments, it usually fails), instead you can win by innuendo or even the construction of a whole new, never before imagined, class of social mistakes as long as you can persuade enough of your wannabe colleagues to play along. But it also means the game is just a game; anyone who refuses to play (Kavanaugh, Trump) can just ignore the baying -- as long as they have the social confidence not to care.

If true, this is a rather distressing conclusion, at least for anyone who wants to be part of the elite. It means the endless social policing and constant creation of new things about which to be outraged will simply grow worse and worse; at least until the excess of elites is ended (which, cool though it sounds, probably means a catastrophe even worse than a dysfunctional mainstream media).

How about an alternative hypothesis, that every generation alternates its moral policing extent in reaction to its parents? So the kids of the 70s and 80s, disgusted by the looseness of their parents moral code over corrected the other way, and their kids in turn will give us (eventually) a repeat of the 60s and 70s? I'd like to see it examined across space and time, but I'm less convinced than the story I am telling of elite wannabe's eager to tear down any competition on any excuse.I can even make a story as to why the earlier case of Victorian morality played out as it did, namely Europe's long peaceful 19th C. In the absence of *large* wars, and with large scale colonization of everywhere desirable played out by the middle of the 19th C, the traditional mechanisms for disposing of excess elite kids (death in war, shipped overseas) failed and we found ourselves in the same situation; a subconscious understanding by all the wannabe's that by exposing and attacking (rather than hiding and forgiving) offenses against an ever stricter moral code, there was a chance a slot at the top might be opened up for them.

But again, I'd love to see considerations of whether this explanation survives across multiple different societies and times.

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Particular status markers may sometimes come and go, but It think there is a lot of inertia in what counts as high status. And there is a tendency for these status markers to become more common. Noble ancestry obviously grows more common if the nobility has more than two kids on average. Other status markers also tend to be "inherited" to the extent that existing high-status individuals are well-placed to get them for their kids. And other people also have an incentive to somehow acquire them.

In new empires, this may not matter, because the number of high-status positions is also growing - those newly-conquered provinces need governors, after all. But once opportunities are static, there can be problems.

Or so that's the story. I'm not trying to comment here on whether this story is correct, just clarifying that I think there is a coherent story of elite overproduction" that might be correct.

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That's an interesting point. The marginal utility of status. Historically, there were methods of passing down the wealth at critical points; Bride or Groom prices etc. I expect these old norms to start returning.

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I think the critical overproduced elite is the non-STEM college graduate with student debt and no way to pay it off without patronage/clientism.

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The claim is that there are particular periods when elites are overproduced more than at other times. But at all times there are changes in the relative frequency of different status markers. That also happened early in new empires, for example.

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Let me try an example of class distribution.

Old state where # in each class match economy/society/social structure needs: 1% elite, 10% upper class, 89% low class.

New state: 1% elite, 6% upper class who believe they should be 1%ers, 4% upper class who are fine, 5% low class aspire to upper class or better, 86% low class with no hope of rising.

In this model, the aspiring elite outnumber available positions, and so we have overproduction of elite, which leads to conflict. It's all about those very upper class aspiring to be 1%ers who lead the fighting/conflict. It's not the lower class, they are angry, but hopeless of changing society.

More or less status mobility doesn't make people happy or sad. You can't argue society is happy by the amount of mobility. Total war has lots of mobility. That's also Turchin's point on cycles of society. Turchin points out war/chaos destroys mismatch due to class conflict leveling the playing field. Allows new stability of earned (small number) of elites.

What causes conflict is when many more believe they have met the qualifications for being elite, than the social structure of society affords. To be clear, I'm just arguing my understanding of Turchin's views, and the views of those who believe in elite overproduction. I also believe it, but perhaps not as strongly. You can't understand it unless you realize it's has some Marxist class conflict overtones.

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I've been interpreting "elite overproduction" as meaning that there are certain long-established status markers - such as noble ancestry or possession of a college degree - that in the past gave those with such status markers a good chance of getting actual high-status positions in society, but which no longer do, since there are too many people with such status markers for the available high-status positions.

One might think that what counts as a status marker would adjust to correct for the overproduction, but I think it's easy to see why that adjustment process might be difficult, leading to turmoil.

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On your first point: Dissatisfaction from the feeling that one is not sufficiently winning the competition for status may have increased with the extension of lifespans. There are now more old people than formerly, and they are relatively rich and in other ways of high status; consequently, young and middle-aged people are of lower status than formerly. And their dissatisfaction is more important than the satisfaction of the old, whose passions in general are weaker: old people are happy to have high status, but not as happy as younger people would be, so the success of the old is a drag on the general happiness. To put it another way, the dissatisfaction of the young and middle-aged is very upsetting to society, and is not at all compensated by the (relatively weak) satisfaction of the old.

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Sounds like you are saying there is more status mobility. which is threatening to the high status. Not clear to me that is true, but even if so that should be the opposite of threatening to lower status; we should hear joy and praise from them. Do we?

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A few central themes of status are missing here:

[1] Inter-generational status wars [2] Status in urban environments.

"The variance in money or popularity has changed."

Could it mean that the status wars between generations has amped up? After all, as life expectancy went up, so did the wealth held by the incumbents. -Re Urban Environments and Population growth; from Sapolsky's' book Behave:

"High-density living doesn’t make rats more aggressive. Instead it makes aggressive rats more aggressive. (This echoes the findings that neither testosterone, nor alcohol, nor media violence uniformly increases violence. Instead they make violent individuals more sensitive to violence-evoking social cues.) In contrast, crowding makes unaggressive individuals more timid. In other words, urban environments exaggerate preexisting social tendencies."

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The core idea of elite overproduction is that a larger % of the population feel they have a chance into top leadership positions. I think your examples are correct, but not always directly about elite overproduction per se.

In particular, when you say "if status is mainly about one’s percentile rank in some overall ranking, what could have changed?", that seems to me to entirely miss the point about elite overproduction.

Elite overproduct is about the threshold for having a shot of moving into upper elite has lowered, so maybe originally only 1% of the people were qualified for the top 1% of spots. But later, the ramp to elite gets easier to climb, so now 10% or even 20% believe they are qualified for the top 1%. And likewise if you want to be top 10%, at first only top 10% qualify to the threshold, but later maybe 50% do. So now 50% are trying for top 10% of spots. So it's about class conflict, in the sense that there are classes in society, and more feel they can move into a class above than before. It's not about percentile rank as such.

From your examples, the first about soldiers needing to become from elite families, overproduction is when a larger fraction of the population feels they are princes worthy of being king. Now this may be more stressful ALSO due to visibility being more clear. But that's an aspect that is related but different from elite overproduction.

Your second example is a better fit, since if schools give nearly everyone 100% test score, you get not only the stress of not making mistake being elevated above original thought. But you also have the overproduction dynamic, where a larger fraction of the students assume they are worthy of being on top since they all have close to perfect scores.

Your 3rd example about academia being more concerned with elite status of publication than with making real breakthroughs may well be true, but I think it's not directly pertinent to overproduction of elite academics. Or if it is, it's a consequence of more qualified professors feeling they have all the right qualifications to publish in top journals, but the number of top journals is fixed. So it's an observation of a *consequence* of elite overproduction of academics.

To sum up, I think all of your points are correct. But I'm pretty sure Turchin would say your examples of more visibility to status, etc, are downstream of the fact that society is throwing up more people who feel they are qualified to be in the upper class. Elite overproduction is about class structure in the end, not percentile.

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