The Dictatorship of Talent

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04brooks.html?em&ex=1197003600&en=11676006ac944c4e&ei=5087%0A

by robg • 19 years ago

59 60 19 years ago

rms4• 19 years ago

Great article, this is a good quote:

>You try to tell them that China isn't a communist country anymore. It's got a different system: meritocratic paternalism. You joke: Imagine the Ivy League taking over the shell of the Communist Party and deciding not to change the name. Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an army.

It's true, except recently in China it's no longer Harvard alums with the army, it's MIT (Tsinghua) alums.

mxh• 19 years ago

William F. Buckley wrote: "[I'd] rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty."

Posted without comment.

michaelneale7• 19 years ago

fantastic quote.

Unfortunately all I have to offer is an episode of the simpsons where the intelligentsia take over the town for a while

The funniest bit being Comic Book Guy saying there will be forced mating only once a year, "for some, this will be much much less, for me, much much more".

DaniFong• 19 years ago

You can watch a famous debate between Buckley and Chomsky on YouTube. On the whole, I disagree with Buckley. But I still wonder about this. I'd have faith in the faculty that I have met, but I'm afraid they're mostly physicists.

robg3• 19 years ago

Glad you liked it. Brooks is sometimes controversial because of his politics (and I hesitated to post it because of that), but I usually find his social commentary refreshing. And I thought this was just an interesting, and very well-written, observation on China's society.

mattmaroon• 19 years ago

Wish I knew enough about China to know how accurate that is.

staunch• 19 years ago

I'm sure the author does too.

ivankirigin8• 19 years ago

Brooks isnt exactly a lightweight. Nick Kristof, who lived in china for years, has written similar articles.

cglee3• 19 years ago

It's a good observation, but of course, not a complete one. China is still mired in thousand year old traditions and the country as a whole is more analogous to a diverse Europe than an evenly developed country like the US.

This article obviously focused on the city dwelling folks, while some other articles I read focus on the poor, undeveloped countryside. On the whole, all views of China are correct - it's simply that diverse.

robg3• 19 years ago

Chomsky once wrote about how the founding conditions of a country determine the eventual outcomes. They're extremely resistant to change because they're so deeply embedded with the fabric of the culture. And that seems especially true of this country with the constant social tension between freedoms and Puritanism.

ntoshev• 19 years ago

This cannot possibly be true about the "founding conditions" of European countries, for example.

byrneseyeview• 19 years ago

The easiest way to illustrate that is to note that our 'founding' conditions probably involved an extended mammoth hunt. At what point is a country 'founded' in Chomsky's model? Is he talking about when a dynasty begins, or when it achieves independence, or when it's first settled, or what? If your American example is from Chomsky, it's hilariously un-Chomskian "Since America began -- by which I mean, when Europeans got there..."

michaelneale7• 19 years ago

oookkaaaayy... so how does this explains chinas "manufacturing" "talent" ? As in, shameless shifting of the lowest quality goods legally allowable (and no drive for improvement or automation, contrasting with Post WWII Japan).

icky2• 19 years ago

> and no drive for improvement or automation

How necessary is automation in a country with a billion people?

michaelneale7• 19 years ago

yes, it isn't for economic reasons. But perhaps consistency,quality, producing non toxic goods etc...

if their one child policy sticks, it will be a rapidly aging and shrinking population one day.

ivankirigin8• 19 years ago

very

pixcavator• 19 years ago

>How necessary is automation in a country with a billion people?

Just as much as in a country with a million people, or a thousand. Imagine, China needs two billion shoes!

run4yourlives• 19 years ago

Depends entirely on how much those billion people are paid.

ivankirigin8• 19 years ago

You clearly have no idea why US companies make things in China. They excel at it. It is all about quality, customization, and efficiency. Talk of cheap goods from China is an easy way to spot someone who has only read the talking points.

michaelneale7• 19 years ago

Oh come on, there is so much rubbish. Maybe in the US the better stuff gets there but I see tons of the rubbish.

Maybe this is like japan was seen post WWII - as inferior "clone" makers, but then things change. Maybe, I hope so.

I certainly have no problem with China "doing a Japan" at all, so it not out of fear or anything (which is probably the fuel behind the "talking points" I guess you are talking about). I think it would be great- a big, peaceful successful country producing great products that make life better, what's not to like !

Well its only anecdotal, but my log book of consumer good that fail about 18 months into use from basic fatigue problems and general shoddiness would say otherwise (all made in china). But then again, we don't have a choice now.

scylla• 19 years ago

> and no drive for improvement or automation

How does that explain your iPod?

michaelneale7• 19 years ago

How did you know I had one? ;) yes, there are examples of really good stuff. That is very encouraging. So its not all bad, I am probably just paying more attention to my bad experiences and ignoring the good (despite statistically being wrong).

Alex39172• 19 years ago

"They instill in you ... the values of hierarchy and hard work."

Rule of thumb: Any organization that allows you to level up is out to fuck you, take your money, or both.

Examples: School, business, military, computer games, government, religion, etc.

cglee3• 19 years ago

I get the feeling from traveling there fairly frequently and talking to some of the yuppies there that, unlike 5 or 10 years ago, all is not lost if you don't attend college and follow the hierarchy. There is a growing creative class who were not mechanical enough to get into college, but are smart enough to channel their efforts to the arts, entertainment, literature and entrepreneurship. I think this is only true in big cities though, as I have a hard time imagining country folk being very hip at all. But who knows.

I'll give an example: my cousin is 17 and lives in Beijing. He's exceedingly intelligent but hates schoolwork. He knows more rappers (in the US) than I do and knows NBA scores before I do (I live in the US, I should clarify). He wants to attend college, but knows it's very difficult, but has backup plans as he's already making decent money as a web developer by day and a DJ by night.

Sure, "they instill in you ..." blah blah blah, but I get the sense that there's a strong undercurrent creative subculture emerging and we're going to see a lot of results come from that in the future in the form of movies, arts, music and, of course, startups.

nostrademons• 19 years ago

Dunno about that. One of my former teachers is over there now setting up schools (and doing some management consulting on the side - he's a former startup founder), and he said that it's very different than the charter school I went to. China's educational system is great for the 1% that makes it into a top university, but they really don't care about the 99% that don't, and there are few opportunities available for them.

His information is current (as of last year), but as part of the "establishment", he might be unaware of an underground subculture, so it doesn't necessarily contradict your cousin's experience. As far as the official system is concerned, though, it's still a vicious meritocracy with few opportunities for niche players.

andreyf• 19 years ago

Rule of thumb: Any organization that allows you to level up is out to fuck you, take your money, or both.

Well put, I wish yet again for a feature that lets me modup*10 once a day...

Alex39172• 19 years ago

That was going to be my college thesis but I got shot down by the man.

JohnN• 19 years ago

An interesting question here, is whether China can convert to a service economy, which is much more information based. If they can develop a big enough internal market with high levels of consumer demand (the Chinese are savers unlike the west) then I cant see why they wont be able to rival the west in the service business.

In which case we are all stuffed, lets learn mandarin and move to Shanghai.

pageman• 19 years ago

"In which case we are all stuffed, lets learn mandarin and move to Shanghai."

You don't need to. There's probably a Confucius Institute just around the corner.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/mandarin_pr.html

eru3• 19 years ago

China getting rich does not mean us getting poor.

DanielBMarkham2• 19 years ago

The article failed to mention one thing -- corruption. In a chaotic, churning society, corruption is kept lower because you never know who's going to be in power next year. In China you always know. That makes it too tempting for little side deals to be set up. Every one of those side deals takes a little something from the rest of their society. That's why corruption is so officially scorned in China, although it is pervasive.

I don't see them overcoming this problem with their current system, much less moving to a service economy. But I wish them well.

robg3• 19 years ago

It mentions it - indeed it's built around the concept. It's just not corruption in terms of paying off A or B (such as in developing or modern - if you take the extreme view - democracies. It's corruption in terms of A (an academic elite) looking out for it's own interests.

I'm not qualified to judge the accuracy of the perspective. But the argument says a specific type of corruption is there and it's deeply rooted in the social fabric (even as he implies payoffs). If that's not corruption, what would you call it?

cglee3• 19 years ago

Yea, corruption is a big problem. Bribery, or gift giving, is a way of life for many Chinese people. When I was in elementary school, my mom made me bring food over every time I went to a friend's house. I'd show up ready to play Nintendo with a bowl of fried rice. It's part of the culture. It's a problem the Chinese government needs to work on.

BTW, bribery is alive and well in the US too, but it's wide open (suppose to be, anyway) and it's called "lobbying" or "campaign contributions".

DanielBMarkham2• 19 years ago

I don't know what to call it -- corruption seems to be the best word for now. For our purposes an academic elite is the same as a political party -- it holds political power.

Whatever it is, the problem it presents is that there is not a single amount of predictable payments that can be made to create an economic transaction -- it's all up to the whims of the people who are involved. I guess it's possible to predict to some degree if you know all of the players, but there is no competition for doing it another way without the payments -- the same party owns the game, the tables, and all of the cards. I'm no expert either, but it seems that corruption in the states is of such a lesser degree to be of a different type altogether, at least as far as startups go. Likewise, corruption in some third world countries is so bad to make even the most trivial of enterprises fraught with hidden expenditures.

Here, if I want to make a startup to, say, sell fried chicken on the street corner, I've got 2 or 3 political people to meet and make happy. Now there might be lots of crooks in the local government, but each local government can be of a different political party, as can the state and federal governments. Even in a completely crooked world, that provides incentives for each section of political power to lower corruption, at least in sections controlled by the other guy. You simply do not have that somehow-it-works setup in China. And I think it's going to be a limiting factor in their growth.

Kaizyn• 19 years ago

I would be willing to bet you that they have no interest in becoming a service economy. The US built its power up by having a mighty manufacturing sector - it's what let us build tanks and planes and all the other instruments of war so well in WWII. Another point to consider is that manufacturing jobs produce many more jobs to support the work than than do jobs in the service industry.

felipe2• 19 years ago

> I would be willing to bet you that they have no interest in becoming a service economy.

I completely agree with you. More so, I believe China (and other developing nations) is pursuing a knowledge economy. We were pursuing it too, until neocons like Brooks took over 7 years ago and got us stuck in the middle of the transition.

eru3• 19 years ago

When economies 'de-industrialies' industry does not decline in absolute terms. Just the opposite is true. It's just that we became so damn good at manufacturing that with competition and all that - that we do not need so many people in the factories.

People have reacted to those market pressures and got into services. And so the share of industry went down in relative terms.

rms4• 19 years ago

China really is ruled by academics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_clique

ivankirigin8• 19 years ago

I liked the article, but thought the note about the communist party not being Communist was a bit naive. It has always been this way: every communist country has been ruled by dictators who like power. Only the useful idiots in the west believed the ideology.

The ending note is interesting. I'd like to hear more about expectations of change in China. The growth of a middle class could help out a lot. The inevitable failure of the Great FireWall will help.

The biggest push will probably come from the top, as insightful leaders see the need for independent thinking and creativity -- the opposite of rote memorization.

anamax2• 19 years ago

> The biggest push will probably come from the top, as insightful leaders see the need for independent thinking and creativity -- the opposite of rote memorization.

Many leaders have talked about that, but how many have actually done so? (Is it even possible to "push" for that or is the required action fundamentally different?) Why will China be any different? ("Because they must" isn't enough - lots of orgs have died rather than make changes required for their survival.)

ivankirigin8• 19 years ago

Letting people start businesses and reap the rewards is probably all that is needed. A great deal of business in China is either state owned or heavily invested by the state (which are effectively the same). The banking sector that could power an entrepreneurial caste doesn't exist. Credit in China is extremely bad.

Opening China to foreign banks would help a lot. The first consumer banks move into China on 2009, I think, but that might be pushed back.

People are smart there. Given the choice between a state owned bank which had 25% non-performing loans just a few years ago, and a citibank, they will choose the citibank almost every time. This transition could be blocked by the people on top.

sethjohn• 19 years ago

I was thinking the other day about why American scientists are so successful, given that they tend to work much less diligently than the Chinese or Indian scientists I've known. Of course issues of funding and infrastucture have a lot to do with it, but I think there's something else as well...

As a lazy American I spend a lot of time wandering around campus or at home not-working, instead I dream up new ways to adjust my methods so that they take less time and effort. In the long run, tinkering with methods leads to a lot of innovation. It's this link between a tolerance for laziness and creativity that has made American science so successful.

kirse• 19 years ago

You order the delivery of millions of lead-based children's toys and poisoned toothpaste. You grin mischievously; it is a small sacrifice the consumerist Americans must pay for your country's increasing economic power. You know because of your pegged currency, they have no choice but to buy everything you produce.

gills• 19 years ago

This writer (http://www.oftwominds.com/asia-crises.html) has some interesting perspectives on the challenges China will face such as availability of energy and water, and the impediments to advancement posed by corruption in the current industrial-government system.

I don't know if the author I linked to is knowledgeable, just something I read a couple days ago which seems quasi-relevant.

The Dictatorship of Talent

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