The Three Types of Elites

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I'm occasionally accused of elitism, and this raises a socially relevant question: what do we mean by "elite"?

Let's start with a taxonomy of elitism: how many types of elites are there?

It seems to me there are three basic types:

1. Elites defined by birth. This includes those born to privileges unavailable to commoners, and those born with extraordinary physical-intellectual capabilities.

The first type includes royalty / nobility and influential, wealthy families who pass land, wealth and productive enterprises on to their offspring: in both cases, a privileged status is acquired at birth.

Examples of the second type include gifted athletes such as Jim Thorpe and Joe Namath and intellectually gifted polymaths and savants.

2. Elite status earned via an institutionalized meritocracy. The classic example is China's Imperial system of rigorous exams that identified the most capable commoners to perform the demanding work of the Imperial bureaucracy. In the present era, credentials earned from prestigious universities open the doors to employment in top institutions--the equivalent of the institutionalized Imperial meritocracy.

These are the elites that historian Peter Turchin identifies as being "overproduced" in the sense that there aren't enough jobs of the expected status for the graduates of the merit-based institutions.

3. The third type of elitism is self-created, as it is based on acquired knowledge and skill, not on institutional recognition or birthright. it's an elitism gained by real-world experience in the crucible of unforgiving feedback / results, trial and error.

This process is what author Donald Schon described in his book The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action: the difference between the kind of learning that can be formalized (and thus automated)--what he called technical rationality--and the process of gaining knowledge we cannot describe with any precision, nor explain how we gained it, which Schon called "reflection-in-action."

Michael Polanyi's 1958 book Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy described this experiential knowledge base as tacit knowledge, the sort that doesn't lend itself to formalized databases and rules (algorithms).

This level of ability gained by diligence and experience is described by the Taoist Zhuang Zhou (Chuang Tzu in a previous era) in stories of butchers whose blade never dulls because they never hit bone. These reflect that the Tao manifests in skills mastered by years of discipline and effort in unique situations with uncertain solutions--precisely what is beyond the reach of formal learning or rules-based systems (i.e. AI).

As I noted in last week's Musings, at this level, your hands do the work "all by themselves," without conscious guidance. Your mind isn't wandering, it's observant, but no more than that. You let the work get done by staying out of its way.

In other words, this third type of elitism is acquired by gaining abilities that are in the upper reaches of the trade or profession. These tend to follow the Pareto Distribution, where the top 20% of the salespeople sell 80% of the volume, the top 20% of landowners end up owning 80% of the land, and so on.

The 80/20 Pareto Distribution boils down to a even narrower 64/4 distribution (80% of 80%, and 20% of 20%) in which the top 4% generate 64% of the results.

The big difference between the first two types of elites--status gained by birth or institutionally accredited merit--and this third type is that it is often unrecognized, as reflected in the classic book The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty (1972).

We all have examples of the difference between institutionally accredited merit and high abilities that go unrewarded. For example, two artists have creative skills, but the one who achieves institutionally accredited recognition becomes a tenured professor with all the perquisites and security of that institutional position while the other artist teaches a few classes and lives in his car because that's all he can afford.

The artist living in his car may well be the more gifted, but without an elite credential / institutional position, earning recognition and a livelihood are much harder.

There are many interesting complexities in this third type of elite. Those with skills valued by the economy can do very well for themselves, while those whose achievements have little economic value will have to earn a living doing some sort of work that is valued.

One of my favorite examples is composer Philip Glass, who supported his family by working as a plumber, furniture mover and taxi driver. He was finally paid for composing music in his 50s. Glass was institutionally recognized as talented, but this didn't lead to a position or income equal to his talent.

Fashion, personality, prejudice and luck all play into how the third type of elite fares. Some remain "unknown elites" their entire lives, while others get a chance to show what they can do and achieve conventional success.

"Elitism" is often tossed around as an accusation of undeserved privilege. When applied to elitism gained by institutionally credentialed merit, the accusation widens to being disconnected from the realities of the non-elites.

This disconnect is reflected in this chart of trust in the institutions which distribute recognition and elite status.

The concentration of super-elites in a handful of institutions that create opportunities via networking is another source of disconnect not just from the bottom 90% but from the top 9.9%.

Paul Novosad (@paulnovosad) cited the research paper Where Did the Global Elite Go to School? Hierarchy, Harvard, Home and Hegemony by Ricardo Salas-Diaz and Kevin Young in this X thread. (via Tom D.)

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