Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy

'Twilight of the Elites' lays out some very compelling ideas, adding to the conversation a unique and valuable perspective on what ails an American society broadly believed by the public to be "on the wrong track". It's also full of vivid anecdotes and compelling analysis that made it a pleasure to read.The narrative starts by pulling together the apparently disparate major scandals we all watched unfold over the first decade of the 21st century ("the Fail Decade") into the generalized theme of "institutional failure". I hadn't looked at it quite that way before and I think viewing Congress, corporations, Wall St, the Catholic Church, MLB, academia, the press, etc. all under the umbrella of "institutions" and looking at trends over time across institutions and institutional leaders ("elites") is a good framework. Survey data is presented, showing that trust in virtually all the core American institutions polled on has declined steadily over the last four decades (and presumably before the surveys started, in the wake of Watergate, as well).Chris Hayes attributes this mistrust to the spectacular failures of these institutions - failure, I'd say, to live up to the role we expect them to play in our society. He blames this institutional failure on the "elite failure" of the people who've succeeded in the American "meritocracy" by securing positions of authority and power atop one or more of society's institutions. Hayes then puts forth his thesis that at the root of this trend is what he calls the "Iron Law of Meritocracy" which I would summarize as the idea that because of human nature, excessive inequality of outcome cannot remain compatible with equality of opportunity. The "winners" who earn a spot in their generation's elite will ultimately wind up using the power and money they've "won" to secure their own privilege and to skew the rules of the game for the next generation in a way that favors their own children and social circles. The bigger the resource gap between privileged families and everyone else, the more the "opportunity" that is supposed to justify the inequality becomes a purchasable commodity. A blatant example is the official preference given to the children of large donors at the top private universities. Informal but probably more lucrative are the "connections" enjoyed by those with family and friends in high places.There were a few tensions in the book that felt unresolved:1) "Meritocracy", the key concept in the book, was implicitly defined in a way that I think obscures some extremely important distinctions. Etymologically and historically - as an ideal to political philosophers seeking to design a competent system of governance for the sake of the entire society - the term "meritocracy" is about producing competent leadership that will best serve the greater society. On the other hand, the idea of creating an economic system that's designed to lavish extravagant economic rewards on society's most deserving by virtue of their "merit" is conceptually distinct; we could call it "meritonomy". Clearly, it's hard or impossible to totally separate meritocracy from meritonomy in practice - both for incentive reasons and because some degree of self-dealing probably inevitably follows from concentrated power. But I would've liked separate discussions of the cultural ideas that: a) meritocracy is designed to funnel people based on merit in order to produce the best leaders and thus best institutions, with money serving as an incentive, and b) meritocracy is a competition, and you more or less earn what you justly deserve according to the natural rules of the "free market". That we tend to accept as natural the idea that Wall St's speculative traders make far more money than bank regulators or civil engineers - and don't object to this order as long as they're good at trading and aren't getting directly bailed out with taxpayer money - seems to me a pretty strong indicator of how far our cultural notion of "meritocracy" has veered from the idea that merit should function, directly or indirectly, to serve society. On the other hand, the idea of "elite failure" implies that elites do have some obligation to the rest of us.2) What really offends me about the Hunter College High School Chris describes - more than the fact that admission chances can be marginally improved by having parents able to pay for test prep - is that the life trajectories of those who don't get in, even just barely, is likely to be so dramatically inferior. In a country with no shortage of productive capacity, there's no excuse for "making it" to be viewed as an exclusive prize. That, to me - more than the un-level playing field - is the most fundamental problem with our system of "meritocracy". Yet Hayes' criticism of the lack of socioeconomic mobility almost seems to imply - probably inadvertently on his part - that if extreme inequality were the result of some mythical "level playing field" that would justify it. My problem with that as the primary critique of meritocracy is as follows: Even if we accept the idea of a "level playing field", why would a system of "meritocracy" justify someone in the 99.9th merit percentile reaping rewards orders of magnitude great than than someone in the 90th percentile? Not even the most unapologetic cognitive snobs depict an IQ curve, for example, that remotely resembles the shape of the income distribution. Yet Hayes - however rhetorically and with disapproval of the whole "cult of smartness" - tosses out the question: "Could there be something similar [to the fractal inequality we see in incomes] with intelligence?" My reaction was: Huh? Not even Charles Murray (co-author of "The Bell Curve") believes any such thing. To be fair, Hayes does mention the winner-take-all nature of the economy (if the best soprano can sell her recordings worldwide, that spells trouble for the fifth-best soprano) and explains how access to one form of social capital (money, platform and networks) - once acquired - can be easily traded in for another. That for Hayes to use his TV show to repeatedly pitch his book is the perfect illustration... is an irony I think Hayes intended the reader to pick up on. Appreciated would have been a more explicit acknowledgement that - while exponentially more successful measured by income, platform and networks - Hayes knows he's not, by anyone's definition, orders of magnitude smarter (or any other trait-er) than his readers; nor, in turn, are his readers and audience orders of magnitude smarter than the average person. This, to me, would be a deeper critique of meritocracy as justification for extreme inequality.3) Hayes often casually equates "meritocracy" with "high levels of income inequality". Yet in practice, there are countries with a much more structured, Hunter College High School-esque form of "meritocracy" or of funneling than we have in America - I'm thinking of the make-or-break college entrance exam in South Korea or the early school tracking in Germany - and yet with lower levels of pay disparity between the relative "winners" and the "losers" in this sorting process.4) I would've liked more of a conceptual distinction to be drawn between a) elites using their "on-the-job" authority to FAIL in the context of that role, and b) elites using their money and connections off the job to buy - directly or indirectly - competitive advantages for their kids. Eroding social mobility and institutional break-down are different phenomena. The Iron Law of Meritocracy refers to the former while the Fail Decade blow-ups refer to the latter. The two seem to alternate as the central indictment of meritocracy.There were many insightful ideas in the book.1) I particularly appreciated the discussion of high stakes. Hayes talks about the incentives they create, and the environment that breeds. His conclusion is: "It's harder than it looks to devise a system that greatly rewards success - and punishes failure - that isn't also a system that rewards cheating." I would extend the definition of cheating to include tactics that violate the spirit of the law or of common decency, whether or not they conform to the letter of the law. The extreme levels of income inequality we see are not only unfair and socially corrosive, they up the stakes in a way that can not only induce cheating, but eventually turn casual corruption into the norm.2) The self-justification provided to "elites" by the notion that they're operating within a "meritocracy" is another important insight in the book.The book's title - while evocative - is a bit misleading. First, I wouldn't have known going in that the title was "aspirational" - rather than descriptive of a post-meritocratic state - if I hadn't happened to catch Chris Hayes saying so himself in one of his media appearances around the time it came out. Second, the book is overwhelmingly a social critique rather than an outline of Hayes' aspirations for an alternative system. My interpretation of Chris Hayes' call for a "twilight of the elites" - and I'm projecting here - is something akin to the following:- a call for his fellow "elites" to get over themselves already- that money and power alone are not self-evident proof of their holder's "merit" and certainly not of their contribution to society- for everyone to carry with them the understanding that despite the lack of hereditary aristocracy, luck of many kinds still plays a huge role in life outcomes- for people to view their jobs not just in terms of competitive achievement and personal reward, but as a way to use their talents to play a positive role in society- that "smartness" alone isn't enough- that making it in the world shouldn't be seen as an exclusive and scarce resource- and that extreme inequality can not only turn people bad but is ultimately bad for all of us

This is a critically important book, and you should read it. You should buy it if you can, because to the extent it sells, it creates "platform" for Mr. Hayes. "Platform" is one of the types of power he discusses in the book. And, our country needs his influence.The core premise of the book is this; gross inequality of outcome leads to elite behaviors which are ultimately destructive to the society. Mr. Hayes begins with the thesis that the last 12 years have been a "fail decade". He cites Bush v. Gore, 9/11, the Enron Scandal, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, MLB's steroids scandal, the enabling of serial pedophiles by the Catholic Church, the Financial crisis and Jerry Sandusky's institutionally protected reign of child molestation as some of the evidence of this failure. That's a pretty compelling string of fail. He attributes these disasters and others to incompetence and corruption in our elite institutions, and he blames the sharp increase in inequality we've seen in this country for elite failure.The case he makes is hard to rebut. Mr. Hayes begins his discussion with "The Iron Law of Oligarchy" which is the idea that any group, regardless of its purpose or values, will inevitably split into elite members and mass members. Elite members, by virtue of their innate characteristics (drive, ambition, talent) will come to exercise greater influence on the group's decisions and actions than the mass membership. Subsequently, they become more concerned with the groups internal hierarchy, and their place within it, than with the group's putative goals.Americans are comfortable with this type of inequality, provided that it is the outcome of "merit". The key element of American political mythology is that all of the participants enjoy "equality of opportunity". Subsequent inequality of outcome and circumstance is then (theoretically) attributable to the actions of the individual. If the playing field is level, the outcome of the game is legitimate. Equality of outcome is not desirable because it limits the best and most talented individuals. This is not only detrimental to the individual, but also to the larger society, which is deprived of their talents.Mr. Hayes then proposes a corollary to the Iron Law of Oligarchy: the "Iron Law of Meritocracy". This posits that any group of elites will act to secure and extend their privileged position in society. They are able to do so because of the inequality of outcome their exceptional talents has created. Meritocracy is thus inherently unstable; it's beneficiaries will act to undermine it on behalf of themselves, their friends and their families.The results of this "self-dealing" are seen in the string of catastrophes listed above. Inequality of outcome has reached a level in this country that our elites have successfully eliminated equality of opportunity. Consequently our elites are no longer competent. They are no longer incented to benefit the mass membership through their actions. Elite interests have become divorced from the interests of the larger society."three decades of accelerating inequality have produced deformed social order and a set of elites who cannot help but be dysfunctional and corrupt."The author offers a typology of power wielded by elites including Money, Platform (access to mass audience) and Network (access to other members of the elite). He then makes the important point that while these "types" of power are conceptually different, they tend to reinforce each other and go together. Mr. Hayes goes on to chronicle the reasons why elites become dysfunctional. Beneficiaries of the system of elite selection and recruitment are of course convinced of the legitimacy of the system that put them at its apex. They work to preserve it.At the same time, they work to subvert the "principle of mobility" that lies at the heart of meritocracy, by providing their friends and family with perks and advantages not enjoyed by the mass populace. Mr. Hayes documents this tendency with some depressing statistics regarding social mobility and income stagnation in the United States since 1980. Elites, convinced that they've earned their perks, enjoy those perks to their fullest. Among those perks is increasing isolation from the mass society they rule. They're less likely to ride the bus, less likely to encounter the poor and more able to avoid the daily headaches that plague most of us. Mr. Hayes refers to this as "social distance". This deprives them of critical feedback regarding the consequences of decisions they make which affect the broader society.One particularly poignant example cited by Mr. Hayes is the ruthlessly punitive nature of our criminal justice system. The consequences of that particular holocaust are avoided entirely by elites, but have devastated segments of the larger society."...the closer those in charge are to the consequences of their actions, the more responsive they'll be and the better decisions they will make."Protected from the worst consequences of our justice system, elites are not deterred from self-serving actions which, while illegal, are unlikely to result in incarceration, or even meaningful fines. The internal values of elite subculture have become so hyper-competitive that a myopic focus on profitability, or electoral success, or winning baseball games excludes every other consideration. And this pathology is magnified by the enormous rewards our acceptance of inequality offers to the successful. Finally, once "cheating" has taken root in the system, not cheating becomes impossible. Mr. Hayes demonstrates this with a particularly cool and intellectually playful application of Gresham's Law. The results of this corruption of our elites have been listed above. Having watched institution after institution betray its public trust, the mass membership has grown almost entirely skeptical about the motives and public pronouncements of the elites. This delegitimation of our decision makers has created "a crisis of authority" in which there is no consensus on what our problems are or how they can be solved. We cannot agree on what the facts of our circumstances are, because the determination of "fact" is a function of elites whom we no longer trust.The book ends with some suggestions for reforming the system. Such reform is straight-forward, at least in its basic form; reduce inequality. This will have the effect of increasing the pool from which elites are recruited, reducing the incentives for elites to cheat and improving their awareness of the consequences of their decisions. The authoritative case Mr. Hayes makes is enhanced by his prose; he writes with both elegance and directness. The book is extremely accessible. I can even call it a "page turner" with perfect accuracy, adding only the caveat that I get more excited by this type of material than is sane and normal. While Chris Hayes is something of a "darling of the Left" and makes no attempt to hide his ideological predispositions, the book itself is not ideological. Readers with a conservative viewpoint will find themselves in perfect agreement with most of what he has to say.This is mandatory reading for those of you serious about citizenship, and concerned with the direction of our country.

When in San Francisco, I heard Christopher Hayes speaking at a a Lecture on the radio. I found a copy of his book there and made the mistake of lending it to a friend. So, I had to buy another copy. This chronicles the failure of the 'American Dream,' based as it is on the idea of 'equality of opportunity'. This, he argues may have been taking place, but there is no 'equality of outcome', in that the the elite, whether with their financial or political power, have become detached from the mainstream and how they have forgotten the base that supports the whole structure of American Society, the ordinary American citizens. He details this failure by exploring how Enron failed, how the drug use destroyed the Baseball League, with other interesting examples. He demonstrates how those with the power and influence have shown that they are more interested in feathering their own nests, rather than having any sense of their moral duties and responsibilities towards others. His argument is that there is more to life than money and power.

A touch tedious but informative.

No problems. Book as described. Would buy from seller again.

A BRILLIANT analysis by Chris Hayes; erudite, well considered and thought out, and most accessible, easy to read, as to be expected by him. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in contemporary US politics, and how we have arrived at the current status quo.

I enjoyed the book for its approach and content. Quite good from a young author. I will no doubt read others of his books. Well researched.