A few comments:<p>Another reason that elites often feel like losers is that they are at the very tail end of the bell curve when it comes to whatever skill or talent they are elite at. At the end of the bell curve you have a huge variance between people, in a way that you do not in the middle of the bell curve. So the chances are very good that you are in close proximity/competition to someone who is not just better than you at something you are supposed to be good at, but <i>much, much</i> better/smarter/faster/etc. I experienced this phenomena in college and grad school.<p>As for what is to be done, the best thing I can think to do is to produce more elite slots by devolving our increasingly consolidated world to more local control. This will produce more elite slots at the cost of some efficiency, but that's probably the right trade off for "loser" elites, as well as for non-elites for whom the elites would become more accessible/more closely aligned.
Three thoughts:<p>First, elites feel like losers because they define themselves as elite. "Elite" is a comparative description - <i>better</i> than almost everyone else. But that's a game where you can't win; you can only lose. If you're in the top 10%, you know someone who's in the top 1%. If you're in the top 1%, you know someone who's in the top 0.1%. If you're in the top 0.1%, you know someone who's in the top 1000 worldwide. And even if you're in the top 1000, you still lose as you compare yourself to others: "He's better at law. She's better at mathematics. He's got better connections." If you define your worth by comparison to others, all you can do is lose, because there's <i>always</i> someone to whom you lose.<p>Second, it's both a rigged game and a stupid one. The elites have created a game of competing to see who's elite. And they wrote the rules, and they wrote the rules so that <i>they win</i>. That means that you get to lose. But it's a stupid game anyway. Take social status, for instance. If you crack into the 400 who rule New York society, then you get to attend a bunch of social events so you can feel like an insider. That's great, I guess, but... if you don't accept the premise of the game, then it becomes very difficult to explain why you should care about playing. It's like Santa Claus. Once you don't believe, people have a really hard time convincing you that you <i>should</i> believe.<p>And third, part of this may be because many people think they're elite when they're not. They've been given participation trophies, and told that they're special, but in terms of elite competition, they're not. Then they get out of college and run into real elites with 30 years of experience.
... and tonight, I put out my post about (among other things): Reverse Imposter Syndrome!<p>Regular "imposter syndrome" is people who find themselves in elite company, and "suffer" from the nagging feeling that they're not good enough.<p>Reverse Imposter Syndrome is when you <i>think</i> you're good enough to be at an elite institution, but you're really not. cf. Google, Apple, Meta.
I think that it's wonderful that we live in a world where people can actually aspire to being an "elite", rather than the feudal world mentioned briefly in the article in which there is no glut. It's unfortunate that supply in the "elite" labor market takes many years to respond to actual market conditions, since the pipelines here are inherently longer, but I see this as a side effect of living in a world where those pipelines exist. Demand control is a hard subject, and the graduates of law school who don't get into Sullivan and Cromwell will probably find some other relatively decent job.
When I pay for one artist’s output, there likely were nine others who tried and failed in a similar style.<p>It’s like how drug companies have to try nine different drugs (actually many more) before the stars align around one which is safe and effective. For the business model to work, someone has to pay for those other nine.<p>In pharma, it is the patients (through high prices on successful drugs). In creative industries, it is the failed artists who put in a huge amount of work with essentially no compensation. It was totally their choice, but I can understand the frustration.<p>I do wonder about the moral culpability of art schools, though…
TLDR: "The concept of “elite overproduction” has attracted a lot of attention in the past several years, and it’s not hard to see why. Most associated with Peter Turchin, a researcher who has attempted to develop models that describe and predict the flow of history, elite overproduction refers to periods during which societies generate more members of elite classes than the society can grant elite privileges. Turchin argues that these periods often produce social unrest, as the resentful elites jostle for the advantages to which they believe they’re entitled."
It’s hard to know what to do. Seems to be the nature of the upper middle class rat race; everyone is looking for a leg up, competition is fierce and there’s no end in sight.<p>It feels depressing to toil for years and end up mid.<p>On social media all we see are people living extraordinary lives, traveling, looking gorgeous, spending money, being successful entrepreneurs, etc.<p>Must really suck to think that’s all possible for you but somehow it’s always out of reach.
Does this all just come down to comparative self-worth?<p>What if you judged yourself not against others, but rather against your own (perceived) potential? I may not reach the same levels as some others, but I may be reaching a higher percentage of what's realistically achievable with my means. Add to add to that that the axis I'm applying myself has some meaningful value to society, and there's not much room to recognize oneself as a loser.
I get the point the author is trying to make (which is mostly about saturation in skilled employment) but the choice of words left me with a very strong vibe of the author having a lot of bitterness and unresolved personal complexes projected into the text.<p>Then I spotted the url and realised I was probably right :p
"Elite overproduction" is a neat semantic trick.<p>When the word "elite" expands from "toxic billionaire" to "everybody with a liberal arts degree working at Starbucks", a target is taken off the backs of those toxic billionaires.<p>In this case, it's not the Starbucks baristas calling themselves elite. It's <i>actual</i> toxic elites (via media they control - national review, bloomberg, etc.) calling <i>Starbucks baristas</i> "elites". Implying that they are perhaps a little <i>too</i> entitled - wanting typical elite stuff like affordable healthcare, housing, education, etc.<p>It parallels the way that people earning $600,000 / year call themselves "middle class".<p>Or the wonderfully named "baumol's cost <i>disease</i>", which is what some consider to be a frankly disgusting tendency of wages to go up in more productive societies.