The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 36
Elite overproduction is a concept that was forwarded by the anthropologist Peter Turchin to attempt to explain some part of why we face growing social instability in today’s society. This is an insightful concept that deserves serious consideration in our present circumstances. It is characterized by a society engaging in practices, like sending too many people to college or for advanced degrees, that create conditions for potential elites to end up underemployed and underaccomplished in the existing socioeconomic power structure of society, and it breeds resentment in this class of people. Indeed, it generates a bourgeoisie, which in turn generates social instability due to the overproliferation of their values and, eventually, ressentiment. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay walks through the idea of elite overproduction to focus in on the operant problem that it leads to, bourgeois overproduction, and posits that this problem is the seat of the Woke menace and many of the large-scale ills that have arisen in similar form over the past few centuries in prosperous societies. He also discusses the ways in which the Marxian characterization of the bourgeoisie was imprecise in a way that led to identifying something akin to this problem while misdiagnosing its true foundations (or his own role in it). Join him for a detailed discussion of this phenomenon.
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6 comments
Very late to the conversation however I want to thank you for this. I have a degree in IT. I received a scholarship and have been attending an Ivy League school. Recently I have wanted to stop because the market is oversaturated with IT degree holders. Many are working on contract and paid low wages. The market is also oversaturated with international employees waiting to take those jobs for even less money. It is starting to seem like a pointless exercise particularly when the message I have received from potential employers is that I am overqualified. Now I take the Ivy League school off my resume just to get a job. I have considered lately why I don’t just take a lower level job and be done with it.
Interestingly my brother did not attend college and has effectively built a six figure career for decades on the untruth that he has a STEM degree. His last position was at one of the largest news organizations in the country. Bottom line is (unlike what we are hearing) that not everyone can code nor should they.
Very late to the conversation however I want to thank you for this. I have a degree in IT. I received a scholarship and have been attending an Ivy League school. Recently I have wanted to stop because the market is oversaturated with IT degree holders. Many are working on contract and paid low wages. The market is also oversaturated with international employees waiting to take those jobs for even less money. It is starting to seem like a pointless exercise particularly when the message I have received from potential employers is that I am overqualified. Now I take the Ivy League school off my resume just to get a job. I have considered lately why I don’t just take a lower level job and be done with it.
Interestingly my brother did not attend college and has effectively built a six figure career for decades on the untruth that he has a STEM degree. His last position was at one of the largest news organizations in the country. Bottom line is (unlike what we are hearing) is that not everyone can code nor should they.
I think that some leftists would label what you call the “bourgeois” in this episode as either the “petty bourgeois” or the “professional-managerial class”, and that you should have mentioned that in your analysis, otherwise it could seem like unfair semantics on your part. They might argue that what you refer to as the true elite is the “bourgeoisie”, the owners of the means of production, and that the false or wannabe-elite are the “petty bourgeoisie.” I think it’s also not entirely clear that you’re demarcating between the actual owners of means of production and the individuals who control what would now be called “cultural capital” (e.g., a bourgeois owns the studio, but it’s a petty bourgeois who make the movies/TV shows/news)
There are some leftists who criticize the petty bourgeoisie/professional managerial class, and who argue for “true” socialism as the answer for this problem. Obviously, you would argue that socialism is not the answer, and that many of the self-avowed leftists who argue this are hypocritical false elites engaged in ressentiment gamesmanship, but addressing this may have improved your argument.
Thanks for the critical engagement and have a good day!
I really enjoyed this podcast. I enjoy your work in general and glad people like you are speaking out. Also, this really brought together a connection which most people are aware of which is the Ponzi scheme of our current university system.
I think also there is a secondary problem that amplifies this overproduction of bad graduate students and that is the high rate at which foreign students have been brought in to occupy many places in STEM majors essentially forcing out native-born Americans.
There are also two small points that you make that I think may be incorrect. I am a serial entrepreneur and have worked in dozen of businesses. Psychopaths cannot build. Building something new is a creative force and it is something psychopaths lack along with empathy. Bezos may not be the nicest person but likely he is not a psychopath. Likewise, Steve Jobs was known for being quite disagreeable but likely also not psychopathic. However, the CEO that took over Apple in the 90s likely was psychopathic and nearly killed Apple. There is a fair amount of research on this. Psychopaths crave control, so they will often rise in a hierarchy but do not have the creative force to build one themselves. Actually, one of the key points for the big startup accelerator, Y combinator, to fund people is that they need to think you are generally a nice person that they would like to work with.
Instead, the corporate structure may create functionally psychopathic thinking from people that may be otherwise good. The logic of a corporation is simply money, and really forcing in other morality and injecting such morality makes it less competitive. The organization itself is strictly hierarchical and often oppressive although there are also “benevolent monarchies”. I do not believe there is much study on the behavioral implications of corporate systems on humans.
A second small point is mostly my own opinion as I have little research on this, although I know of some around universal basic income experiments. Allowing free riders in society likely doesn’t encourage more free riders because people are motivated by far more than money. You even mention this regarding the woke status seekers. Doing productive work is likely a basic psychological need for men in particular. And just economically, we only truly only need food and housing. We likely already have plenty of housing and only a few percent of the population can grow the food for the rest of us, as in something like 3%. So society can afford quite a lot of free riders. We just do not have the means to organize our society in a way that increasing automation distributes the benefits.
I always thought that the overproduction of the bourgeois was quite nicely explained by Marty Nemko in his video, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMr2BxA_HVU
Fantastic.
My husband has 2 Master’s degrees. When his academic job fell through, and it came time to support his wife and kids, he got certified as a long-haul truck driver. I couldn’t be prouder.
I am planning to steer my kids towards the trades. But I was considering veterinary medicine for one of them … Might have to reconsider.