A New Aristocracy [pdf]

http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/News_&_Events/MarkovitsCommencementREV.pdf

by foobarqux • 11 years ago

76 86 11 years ago

law.yale.edu

rhino3693• 11 years ago

Missed a huge chance to take on law schools for their absurd price structure. They have been increasing tuition at break neck speed, even as lawyer salaries have shrunk since the recession.

/bitter ass lawyer who's working at 1 am to pay dem SOFI bills.

shostack• 11 years ago

Why do you think this might be? Hasn't demand for law degrees shrunk considerably at schools that aren't top tier since students aren't getting jobs?

rhino3693• 11 years ago

Demand has definitely shrunk but prices keep going up. The demand curve for schools aren't rational.

jycool• 11 years ago

"At Harvard College and here, at Yale Law School (two places where students have skillfully and bravely compiled data that their Universities suppress), as many students come from households in the top one percent as from the entire bottom half of the income distribution."

Stunning. But no surprise you invest in your kids credentials if you can afford it.

Can someone propose a way the free market can be considered fair without the definition of 'fair' being defined as 'market-determined'?

plonh• 11 years ago

Also, those 1%ers pay for the scholarships that send the 50%ers to Harvard free and move those 50%ers into the 1% shortly after graduation

shoo• 11 years ago

One of the preceding sentences phrases it well:

But although it was once the engine of American social mobility, meritocracy today blocks equality of opportunity.

This reminds me somewhat of the phrase "kicking away the ladder" that Chomsky mentions, in a different context:

Well, that’s what the intellectual property rights are for. In fact there’s a name for it in economic history. Friedrich List, famous German political economist in the 19th century, who was actually borrowing from Andrew Hamilton, called it “kicking away the ladder”. First you use state power and violence to develop, then you kick away those procedures so that other people can’t do it. [1]

Here is my poorly paraphrased version of the idea:

  1. use whatever means are available to obtain
     a position of advantage (the ladder).
  2. now, let us change the rules so from this
     moment forth we shall compete upon our equal
     merits, without resorting to such ugly means
     as "ladders" to obtain advantage.
  3. note however, that i still remain in a
     position of absolute advantage, due to my
     previous use of the ladder, which you now
     cannot access.
  4. ho ho ho, "meritocracy" / "free trade" / etc.

[1] http://www.wsm.ie/c/noam-chomsky-intellectual-property-kicki...

rancur6• 11 years ago

sounds a bit like game theory...

that is also what I have independently observed, though not phrased as eloquently.

(slightly off topic)

I have to say I'm very thankful to have found HN. I grew up in a decent, moderately sized city (300k) going to a private religious school with children whose parents were similarly strongly interested in the intellectual development of their children.

I had access to all the sports teams. I played soccer through Varsity, played with the golf team [but note I was not on the golf team...lol], and basketball in middle school. I played piano for 8 years. I attended one of the top 5 schools of my field in the nation, and graduated into a small company with other graduates from my school, MIT, etc. From 'good places'.

Because of this, education was always something I always took for granted. I always valued it, but always took it for granted. Some of my education, however, took humans for granted. Your value to society was sometimes considered limited by what you could produce. Additionally, many of those I highschooled and undergraduated with (mainly other purported Christians who I have since determined were not living congruently with stated beliefs) held little reservation filtering people out of their life based on, I'll call it,

'being dumb'.

This always bothered me. As fruit of my religion [mainly 'made in God's image', combined with looking at the life Jesus lived] I believed in the intrinsic value of the human, so I always sought to correct for it: because I always tried my hardest, it never occurred to me how people could willfully and knowingly not aspire themselves to something greater than what required minimal effort. Everyone I grew up with did [though, in hindsight, for different reasons than I], I did, and my parents did, so naturally I assumed everyone else did, too. As such, I was regularly perplexed at the value judgements certain colleagues would place on other members of humanity...like me...because they miscategorized generational challenges I was facing as 'being dumb'. Damaging prejudice.

So I left that company, and struck out on my own. I have since discovered what a rare breed my background nurtured, and now understand the wisdom in filtering those you spend time with. Instead of a prideful superiority [which I certainly observed], I exercise with a cautious respect for, and in protection of, talent and time. I exercise without placing value judgements on the people I come in contact with, but I do judge the values of the people I spend time with. In this way I safely continue to respect their humanity, and avoid pride. It's only since I moved and became aware of my need to protect that I became aware of how hard it is to find knowledge seekers. And so, when I come across someone from a different field but similar excellence, who carries with them persuasive content helpful for advancement, I am thankful. I also realized I need to stop spending so much time trying to argue with people-- because most people aren't actually listening, aren't actually seeking.

And so I am thankful to have found HackerNews, this article, and shared insights like yours.

It's very important to surround yourself with excellence. You'll become the ones you're around, and believe their idiocy, if you're not careful.

Be careful.

bmir-alum-007• 11 years ago

Let's face it. What's most important in life/business is social access and maintaining trust/confidence/respect to stay in those relevant circles in order to keep it. IOW, staying in the members' clubs, secret societies, party circuits, etc.

Example: Could Luci have met Larry anywhere other than a Stanford party? Probably not.

civilian• 11 years ago

It's fine to include meritocracy in #4, but why free trade? I know that free trade is often a fiscally conservative issue, but it simply helps all of us by removing barriers to trade. The wealth of the world increases from it.

///edit: And actually, I want to continue and make a claim.

Barriers to free trade _are_ an act of Kicking Out the Ladder. If we look at import taxes, they're just national protectionism. Which is possibly understandable if we're protecting a vital-to-war industry. But the U.S. has sugar import tariffs and makes our sugar ~40% more expensive than the rest of the world. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/06/us-trade-po... (I know heritage is a conservative thinktank, just using it for the graph.) Our sugar tariffs just protects a small handful of cane sugar farmers/refiners in the US, at the cost to everyone, and with lost business to poor countries in the caribbean, who could probably use some more sugar sales. We're helping people with this tariff, but they're well-off americans we're helping. We could be help caribbean economies!!

And if we actually did want to protect vital resources, then why don't we ban hard-drive imports? You saw how Thailand's flooding knocked over hard drive production. What if a hostile government took over Thailand's hard drive production?

And furthermore, most of the government's foray's into regulating the economy are, or eventually become, acts of Kicking out the Ladder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture By even giving this kind of power to the government, you're asking for it to be abused.

nickff2• 11 years ago

If you clearly define "fairness" as you see it, you can test whether free markets or government controlled ones are the ones which come closest to satisfying your preferences. There are a number of paradigms, Haidt describes two visions of fairness: one of equality and another of proportionality.[1]

Under most definitions of social justice (though not all the ones focusing on relative income distributions), the free market has better outcomes than more socialist systems. Free markets allow for liberty and greater prosperity, and this results in healthier, richer citizens with the freedom to pursue a good life. Free markets also encourage sympathy, trust, and fellow-feeling.[2]

Focusing on a measure of equality such as national GINI coefficients, the USA is closest to Phillipines, Peru, Uruguay, and Cameroon.[3] Does the GINI translate to "fairness"? Which country of the five would you prefer to live in if you were at a given position of the income distribution? Which has the freest markets? Which is most "fair"? Does the GINI convey much information about being rich or poor in a country?

[1] http://www.democracyjournal.org/28/of-freedom-and-fairness.p...

[2] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18762452-why-not-capitali...

[3] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

Steko2• 11 years ago

I think you've mistaken two desireable dimensions as a choice. A country like Norway beats the U.S. in both GDP per capita (PPP and nominal) and in all measures of inequality.

waterlesscloud• 11 years ago

OK. Sure. The deck is stacked against you. And me too.

And?

What now?

That's the only question that matters.

zachrose• 11 years ago

Shuffle the deck?

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

Converting metaphor back into real life, I'm pretty sure shuffling the deck usually involves a whole lot of violence.

chinathrow• 11 years ago

Don't privatize education.

Yes, there are lots of countries where higher education is available at reasonable costs, including all top universities.

yummyfajitas13• 11 years ago

It's interesting how this article undermines most modern narratives about inequality while simultaneously maintaining a proper liberal mood affiliation.

According to the article, the "aristocracy" preserves itself by educating it's children well and teaching them to succeed on their own merits. Even then, those children must work extremely hard in order to maintain their position. And there are no real barriers to entry; in principle, anyone can do this, it's just that the wealthy are the ones who actually wind up doing this (probably because they are the ones who recognize the value of it).

In short, the 1% are the 1% because they are better than the rest, and through hard work and good parenting the same is true of their children.

Yet somehow, the article makes these exact same claims in a manner that will probably avoid anger by left wing sorts. I'm impressed.

cup• 11 years ago

in principle, anyone can do this.

Anyone with the money. It's important that we don't forget how significant financial capital is on the outcome of childrens lives.

A good case study is on those two Colombian twins that were separated at birth.

pen2l• 11 years ago

And there are no real barriers to entry

There are barriers to entry. Children taught with care, with consistent discipline, attention, etc. will do better.

When mom and dad are out working and unavailable to lend a hand with homework, children will not do well. When mom and dad work blue collar jobs where they don't use skills that are marketable for the world tomorrow, children are left on their own to do things children do. When mom and dad are angry and bitter because of their misfortunes, children will very possibly be on the receiving end of unwarranted yelling.

Time, stress-free lives, roof on your head -- these are increasingly luxuries that even middle class folks cannot afford. Not having them is the barrier.

yummyfajitas13• 11 years ago

First of all, a barrier to entry is a barrier which would prevent a high human capital poor person from entering. The fact that poor people don't have high human capital is a separate issue.

Also, your narrative explaining why poor people have low human capital directly conflicts with the evidence. It's the hard working, highly stressed, wealthy people who's children are raised well.

https://www.nber.org/digest/jul06/w11895.html

In contrast, the lower income people living a life of leisure are the ones who's children are raised poorly.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/a-profile-of-the-working...

I have no idea what you are talking about with "roof on your head". If you google statistics on working hours (you probably need to multiply annual hours worked and labor force participation), you'll see that hours worked per capita hasn't changed drastically since the 70's.

choppaface2• 11 years ago

The narrative assumes that working hard necessarily creates value and thus merit, but that's not always true. For example, the Oracle Java lawsuit vs. Google, or SCO vs. IBM were immensely expensive, surely involved many of these grads, and yet created very little value to the majority of society. There are plenty of other frivolous lawsuits out there.

This narrative only escapes liberal disapproval if liberals fail to question the value of the legal process. So no better time to deliver this speech than a Yale Law commencement.

kyletl• 11 years ago

The narrative assumes that working hard necessarily creates value for oneself, by investing in oneself as an asset. It makes no claims to one's effort building value for society as a whole.

analog314• 11 years ago

According to the article, the "aristocracy" preserves itself by educating it's children well and teaching them to succeed on their own merits.

Disclaimer: I may have to plead "guilty as charged" here, if I'm allowed the conceit of placing myself in this aristocracy. Educating our children well has been a defining theme of the culture of my family, going back generations.

With that said, however, a strong factor in educating children to join any "ocracy" is wealth. This can't be overlooked. This aristocracy is not only providing education, but also the environment within which kids can receive that education continuously from birth through young adulthood and possibly beyond. This environment is safe, engaging, surrounded by educated and education-loving adults, and free of violence.

Also, I tend to prefer saying something like "valuable work" rather than "hard work." From my vantage point, hard work is something like carrying a hod, working in a call center, or some other kind of physically or emotionally stressful labor. I hope to never do hard work if I can avoid it.

cissou• 11 years ago

The article states "The excess educational investment [...] that children born into a typical one percenter household receive is equivalent, economically, to a traditional inheritance of between 5 and 10 million dollars per child": it _does_ cost money to provide this kind of environment. This is why the 1% gives birth to the next 1%, not because they're better than the rest (again, according to the article).

sawthat• 11 years ago

The middle class can't afford tutors, private school and the time to shuffle kids around to various enrichment activities.

badsock5• 11 years ago

For a moment let's say that you're correct: the 1% indeed worked harder and smarter than the 99% to get there. Even given that, I think the important point that you're missing from the speech is that they are being rewarded much, much more than they used to for that. I don't believe that they are working much, much harder, or that they are much, much smarter, it's just that the reward Pareto curve has gotten that much steeper.

And what I think the author is arguing is that that's not necessarily a deserved, or good, thing.

yummyfajitas13• 11 years ago

I very rarely hear people complaining that the rewards for hard work and good education are too high.

Usually the claim is that the people at the top inherited their position rather than earning it, and that others didn't have a fair shot at getting it.

Obviously the latter claim is a far better narrative.

severus_bro• 11 years ago

Places like Harvard and Yale used to educate the elites themselves, but no more. Today the elites are the billionaires and hundred-millionaires who own the country's capital. Harvard and Yale educate the people who work directly for the elites - lawyers, CEOs, financiers, etc.

Like the Praetorian Guard of Ancient Rome, they derive significant power and wealth from the fact that they take orders directly from the elites. But since they are not the actual elite, they must endure intense vetting and culling at every level, and work hard often in harsh conditions (also like the Praetorians of old).

So the comparison in the original PDF is not exactly apples to apples.

rhino3693• 11 years ago

I think it's wrong to believe the claims that Yale, Harvard, etc. have actually become meritocracies.

They absolutely are not. For undergrad, these ivy league schools are much more forgiving of grades from elite high schools.

"Well rounded" or "holistic" admissions also strongly favor upper and upper middle class activities and talents.

Admissions are gamed to such a large degree that it's all a game that is played out year in advance. And the middle class and poor students don't even know it's being played.

gritzko• 11 years ago

Every god is a true god.

Every ideology is not an ideology.

Every elite is a God-blessed meritocracy.

RobertoG3• 11 years ago

The most important point in the narrative about inequality is that big inequalities are bad for society.

You don’t need a cast of super-rich, and the rest deep in debt in order to motivate people to perform. But this is where we are going.

The 'no left wing’ narrative if this: ‘we deserve it because we are better’.

It’s not really a very original claim.

All the privileged ‘classes’ in human history say that. In medieval Europe, Japan or anywhere, there was a warrior cast. These people were trained from birth to fight. They were also better feed and, as result, they were bigger. What do you think this people thought about their rights?

That doesn’t mean that personal merit doesn’t exist or that we shouldn’t reward it. It just mean that we have to be very aware of what are the trends and where this kind of thing goes if there is not some kind of corrective force in the system.

yummyfajitas13• 11 years ago

The warrior caste probably were better warriors. The only question remaining is "is it just to reward people proportionally to warrior skills?"

Similarly, for the modern day US, "is it just to reward people proportionally to hard work, intelligence and the ability to produce things that people want?"

twayo• 11 years ago

In short, the 1% are the 1% because they are better than the rest, and through hard work and good parenting the same is true of their children. Yet somehow, the article makes these exact same claims in a manner that will probably avoid anger by left wing sorts. I'm impressed.

Why, no, actually we are impressed.

It takes extraordinary, breathtaking ignorance (or maybe just eternal self-serving bullshit) to overlook centuries of the discrimination and outright violence that the 1% have strangely required and thus perpetuated, when your smug little delusionary claim is that, shucks, it's all merit-based riches.

unprepare2• 11 years ago

And there are no real barriers to entry; in principle, anyone can do this

Does private schooling provide no benefit?

Private tutoring?

Family donations to elite schools?

Legacy admission?

Further:

Does food security provide no benefit to the ability to learn and retain information?

Does a violent environment offer the equivalent value as a non-violent environment, in terms of being able to focus on schoolwork?

Does a multi-parent child receive no additional educational advantage over a single-parent child?

Does having access to paid resources not offer any benefit?

Does attending better funded public schools not matter?

Does having better paid teachers not matter?

Does having the right cultural and social experiences not matter for forming networking relationships?

Does living amongst primarily successful and well educated people offer no advantage offer growing up amongst poor uneducated people?

You are missing the actual realities of trying to educate a poor child versus a rich child. Money grants you educational advantages in hundreds of ways.

You absolutely /can/ buy a better education. Full stop.

yummyfajitas13• 11 years ago

The only thing you've mentioned which is a barrier to entry (to elite schools, e.g. Yale) is legacy admission and donations.

The remainder are merely possible causes for non-elite people having lower merit. They are not barriers for a meritorious non-elite person to attend Yale or join the elite.

ZoeZoeBee2• 11 years ago

It is funny how the parasitic Aristocratic leaches of yesteryear have re-manifested themselves as blood sucking lawyers today.

hyperion2010• 11 years ago

The problem described here seems to come primarily from the fact that nearly every single "meritocratic" measure that we use is highly correlated with income in large part because income is a VERY good predictor of future success. Finding a predictor of future success that cannot be gamed by income is exceedingly difficult and of vital importance of we wish to continue this pseudoquantitative approach to measuring human performance as a criteria for admission to ever more elite opportunities.

ploxiln• 11 years ago

... or, for some of them, just correlated. Like expectation/demand of academic success in childhood.

omonra• 11 years ago

You're mixing things up.

Parental income can be seen as the result of parental traits that (if passed to the offspring) will help them in life - intelligence & industry.

Ie the parents are rich because they are smart and work hard. Those traits are passed to the children - who then follow suit.

teekert• 11 years ago

It is very difficult to leave things to the free market that you can't reasonably say no to. The same problem is true for health care. In a free market there is a transaction when both (all) parties agree on a deal, every party is free to say no. In education and healthcare a one-sided "no" means a less secure future or even death respectively. It means rich will continue to have better resources, live longer and be healthier. It means their children, who did no work to obtain their wealth have better chances.

I think a system where the schools/colleges/universities etc are paid with public money are more fair. Such a system provides a reset of opportunities for every generation. I think it will even lead to a better market as I can't imagine that "the top 1%" also provides the top 1% smartest and motivated children.

Of course everyone is free to vote for their own system, I'm just saying I would prefer to live in a country where I'm helped when I'm ill, no questions asked and where I have the same chances as any other kid of my generation.

Can you really blame Walter White for cooking meth when his life is on the line? Can you really blame a kid from a poor neighborhood when he ventures into crime? They are born with less chances than a kid that was born in better circumstances. The current American system judges and gives kids opportunities based on what their parents earn in stead of on their motivation and intelligence. It will be reflected in American markets. It will increase the gap between rich and poor because both are on a self amplifying course.

And don't start about Darwinism, this is past that, this is Darwinism of ideas: memes. And any brain can be "infected" by a meme, good or bad. Memes are not restricted to a set of genes and they are much more at the root of the economy than DNA is. And memes are perpetuated and destroyed by raising kids and giving them quality education.

I like the speech, it nicely points out the downsides of the current system for those on the inside of that system. Seems like the best way to start even though the people outside the system will probably shrug at the elites so called "problems".

ohazi• 11 years ago

If you'd rather watch/listen: https://youtu.be/jLtzbOupsEE?t=6049

forkandwait• 11 years ago

Modern aristocracies perpetuate themselves across generations by training at the school and in the family when young, and then so-called "competition" in the market place. The anthropology/ sociology theory that looks at these dynamics is generally known as Practice Theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_theory

The current system has the dual advantages of plausible deniability (anybody can, in theory, get into Stanford and become a master of the universe, but family income and culture radically boost your SATs and character), and it allows for new blood to enter the system more easily than when you needed a pedigree.

rancur6• 11 years ago

I have friends that fuss when I use the term 'white privilege' but what you describe is exactly what I classify as 'privilege'.

Buffett calls it the 'ovarian lottery'.

rce• 11 years ago

There's nothing inherently white about privilege. In fact, whites are under-represented at Stanford compared to the US population as a whole.

hueving4• 11 years ago

Perhaps they fuss because it's idiotic to tie it to race when it doesn't need to be. Just call it 'socioeconomic privilege'. It's completely unacceptable to call someone who is poor/uneducated "black disadvantaged", why would you think the inverse is okay? Stanford is rife with asian students from well-off families, illustrating that it has very little to do with race.

paulsutter• 11 years ago

The old-timey prose is more appropriate than the speaker can possibly imagine. He still thinks law is an elite path to success, rather than the soul-degrading billable hour hell it is.

He does get one paragraph /almost/ right. What a dick. Which is it? Is every incentive wrong? Or is that thought a chicanery?

I wish that I knew. I could tell you—and I would mean it—that when you find an opportunity to trade a little money or status for a lot of freedom, you should take it . . . you should take it every time. But that thought—although honest and heartfelt—is a chicanery, akin to insisting that the rat-race is over. The fact remains that, for each of you individually, all the forces that have brought you to this point remain in play. Every incentive is wrong.

cdi• 11 years ago

What this article ignores is that intelligence is at least 60% inheritable, and elite professionals are likely to merry other elite professionals. So wealth factor is not the only factor in this situation.

There is probably an ongoing process of genetic fitness based stratification of the society. At least to a certain degree.

A New Aristocracy [pdf]

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