A little bit about the transnational elite

[Pointedstick]

I was reading an article about Trump the other day that referred to "transnational elites" and I suddenly realized that I am a willing refugee from this echelon of society. For those who do not personally know any transnational elites, let me provide some illuminating information.

In a nutshell, here's how to spot a transnational elite:
- Lives in a city you've heard of
- Frequent foreign travel, usually to other cities you've heard of
- Other people seem to pay for a lot of their goodies
- They (ostensibly) produce or contribute to the production of knowledge, not goods or services
- What they ostensibly produce is not anything that seems particularly in-demand, and most of the demand seems to come from government or price-insensitive millionaires and billionaires
- If they own any corporations, the corporations are trusts or thin veneers around their private lives (e.g. "$lastname LLC") used to shelter assets from government attention and taxation
- No religious affiliation, and usually active contempt for Christianity coupled with patronizing affection for all other religions
- Frequently employed in the realm of academia, politics, law, defense, media, publishing, or art.
- Frequently have articles published in the media, even if not employed by the media
- Their peers are extremely ethnically diverse and well-educated--elites from their own countries


My parents are both squarely members of this class, being tenured professors in the humanities with enormous government-guaranteed taxpayer-paid pensions for life and free health care. They both grew up poor or middle class Americans, but by middle age, the wealth, prestige, and culture of academia have allowed them to graduate to the ranks of transnational elites. They fly to foreign countries at least once or twice a year, usually more, and this year I think between the two of them they visited more than a dozen foreign countries. They are paid to give talks to "crowds" of 5 people or less so that the institution paying the bill could put their names on their website. They receive lucrative grants from government and private agencies that basically subsidize idleness in idyllic settings, usually on the pretense of writing a book (that nobody will read). Members of their social circle are doing the same kind of things all the time.

Other members of the social circle I grew up in--including a couple of my high school friends--are in politics now, climbing the ranks of government. One is a Capitol Hill reporter, and another works in the State Department. My wife and I joke that he's the one who got the rotten job of shredding Hillary's documents. A college buddy of mine is currently running for state representative somewhere with a campaign that, because my wife and I know him, is hilariously disingenuous (his only work experience is working for failed political campaigns). Another friend works in the New York art world, selling $30,000 pieces of art to millionaires and billionaires (yes, actual billionaires). I heard recently that she sold a bunch of art to a Saudi prince a little while back. She has not been in the USA for months.

Transnational elites have no loyalty to their country. Their horizons are so broad that they see the entire world as their playplace. New York is nice, they think, but so are Tokyo, Berlin, and Athens. And Cairo, Jakarta, and Lagos are pleasingly exotic, suitable for an exciting safari vacation. Transnational elites have no love for their place of birth because the culture they identify with is global, borderless, unbounded--the culture of the transnational elite. It is a culture defined by access to wealth and power, and accordingly, to the full range of the entire world's resources. Transnational elites have no respect for borders, national identity, laws, religion, or any of the things that most members of their nations find to be important. They take their money and their bodies wherever they please whenever they please. They are actively contemptuous of everyone who is not a member of the transnational elite and this othering leads them to have no compunction against mercilessly exploiting them in a variety of ways. They are terrified of the people who they understand in the dark recesses of their minds that they are royally screwing over, and they desperately hope that the gravy train will not end during their lifetime. They are absolutely petrified by Donald Trump and other nationalist movements.

If this does not sound like you, then they are your enemy, because everything about the way their lives are structured oppresses and exploits your world. They skim off the top of what you produce. They take money from the public coffers that are supposed to benefit you. They will remorselessly use the system to take more than they give, convincing themselves that they've earned it, or that the people they are taking from are uncultured swine who deserve to be harmed. Their conception of "the public interest" does include you except to the extent required to keep you supplied with distractions and baubles so that hopefully you do not from openly rebel and shoot them all. They are the kinds of people who are branded as bourgeois and get killed in Communist revolutions.

These are the people who have rigged the game in their favor and screwed over the middle class. Trump can't be elected president soon enough.

[jafs]

So your family and friends are your enemies?

Sounds like a real problem to me.

[Pointedstick]

So your family and friends are your enemies?

Sounds like a real problem to me.

Politically, yes. It is a problem. IMHO the existence of a class of people that is largely unproductive but grabs a huge share of wealth by manipulating institutions and changing the rules to favor themselves is a major problem--the kind of problem that, if un-solved, has frequently lead to revolutions throughout recent history.

[jafs]

I'd say it's a very personal problem, actually.  How can you be friends with people you consider enemies?  And what kind of relationship can you have with your family?

I agree with your following sentence, but wouldn't necessarily apply it to humanities professors.

[Mountaineer]

I was reading an article about Trump the other day that referred to "transnational elites" and I suddenly realized that I am a willing refugee from this echelon of society. For those who do not personally know any transnational elites, let me provide some illuminating information.

In a nutshell, here's how to spot a transnational elite:
- Lives in a city you've heard of
- Frequent foreign travel, usually to other cities you've heard of
- Other people seem to pay for a lot of their goodies
- They (ostensibly) produce or contribute to the production of knowledge, not goods or services
- What they ostensibly produce is not anything that seems particularly in-demand, and most of the demand seems to come from government or price-insensitive millionaires and billionaires
- If they own any corporations, the corporations are trusts or thin veneers around their private lives (e.g. "$lastname LLC") used to shelter assets from government attention and taxation
- No religious affiliation, and usually active contempt for Christianity coupled with patronizing affection for all other religions
- Frequently employed in the realm of academia, politics, law, defense, media, publishing, or art.
- Frequently have articles published in the media, even if not employed by the media
- Their peers are extremely ethnically diverse and well-educated--elites from their own countries


My parents are both squarely members of this class, being tenured professors in the humanities with enormous government-guaranteed taxpayer-paid pensions for life and free health care. They both grew up poor or middle class Americans, but by middle age, the wealth, prestige, and culture of academia have allowed them to graduate to the ranks of transnational elites. They fly to foreign countries at least once or twice a year, usually more, and this year I think between the two of them they visited more than a dozen foreign countries. They are paid to give talks to "crowds" of 5 people or less so that the institution paying the bill could put their names on their website. They receive lucrative grants from government and private agencies that basically subsidize idleness in idyllic settings, usually on the pretense of writing a book (that nobody will read). Members of their social circle are doing the same kind of things all the time.

Other members of the social circle I grew up in--including a couple of my high school friends--are in politics now, climbing the ranks of government. One is a Capitol Hill reporter, and another works in the State Department. My wife and I joke that he's the one who got the rotten job of shredding Hillary's documents. A college buddy of mine is currently running for state representative somewhere with a campaign that, because my wife and I know him, is hilariously disingenuous (his only work experience is working for failed political campaigns). Another friend works in the New York art world, selling $30,000 pieces of art to millionaires and billionaires (yes, actual billionaires). I heard recently that she sold a bunch of art to a Saudi prince a little while back. She has not been in the USA for months.

Transnational elites have no loyalty to their country. Their horizons are so broad that they see the entire world as their playplace. New York is nice, they think, but so are Tokyo, Berlin, and Athens. And Cairo, Jakarta, and Lagos are pleasingly exotic, suitable for an exciting safari vacation. Transnational elites have no love for their place of birth because the culture they identify with is global, borderless, unbounded--the culture of the transnational elite. It is a culture defined by access to wealth and power, and accordingly, to the full range of the entire world's resources. Transnational elites have no respect for borders, national identity, laws, religion, or any of the things that most members of their nations find to be important. They take their money and their bodies wherever they please whenever they please. They are actively contemptuous of everyone who is not a member of the transnational elite and this othering leads them to have no compunction against mercilessly exploiting them in a variety of ways. They are terrified of the people who they understand in the dark recesses of their minds that they are royally screwing over, and they desperately hope that the gravy train will not end during their lifetime. They are absolutely petrified by Donald Trump and other nationalist movements.

If this does not sound like you, then they are your enemy, because everything about the way their lives are structured oppresses and exploits your world. They skim off the top of what you produce. They take money from the public coffers that are supposed to benefit you. They will remorselessly use the system to take more than they give, convincing themselves that they've earned it, or that the people they are taking from are uncultured swine who deserve to be harmed. Their conception of "the public interest" does include you except to the extent required to keep you supplied with distractions and baubles so that hopefully you do not from openly rebel and shoot them all. They are the kinds of people who are branded as bourgeois and get killed in Communist revolutions.

These are the people who have rigged the game in their favor and screwed over the middle class. Trump can't be elected president soon enough.

Very interesting post.  The first words that came to my mind were "Satanic inspired hedonism". 

... Mountaineer

[Pointedstick]

I'd say it's a very personal problem, actually.  How can you be friends with people you consider enemies?  And what kind of relationship can you have with your family?

We pretty much agree not to talk about politics. And I have plenty of friends who aren't members of this elite.

I agree with your following sentence, but wouldn't necessarily apply it to humanities professors.

Why not?

[jafs]

That sounds like a good strategy for avoiding conflict.  But if you really think they're your enemies, that's got to make it hard to really be friends with them.

After all, the words are antonyms of each other.

Because my world view includes an appreciation of higher education, not just for practical things, so the fact that they're not making cars or building something concrete doesn't mean they're not contributing.

I also have a lot of respect for people who build cars, fix plumbing, etc.

[Libertarian666]

Without the "visible fist" of government, these people would have no power and cause no trouble.

With the visible fist of government, but without these people, another group of people would have power and cause just as much trouble.

Hmm, I think I detect a pattern...

[WiseOne]

I was reading an article about Trump the other day that referred to "transnational elites" and I suddenly realized that I am a willing refugee from this echelon of society. For those who do not personally know any transnational elites, let me provide some illuminating information.

In a nutshell, here's how to spot a transnational elite:
**- Lives in a city you've heard of
**- Frequent foreign travel, usually to other cities you've heard of
- Other people seem to pay for a lot of their goodies
**- They (ostensibly) produce or contribute to the production of knowledge, not goods or services
**- What they ostensibly produce is not anything that seems particularly in-demand, and most of the demand seems to come from government or price-insensitive millionaires and billionaires
- If they own any corporations, the corporations are trusts or thin veneers around their private lives (e.g. "$lastname LLC") used to shelter assets from government attention and taxation
- No religious affiliation, and usually active contempt for Christianity coupled with patronizing affection for all other religions
**- Frequently employed in the realm of academia, politics, law, defense, media, publishing, or art.
- Frequently have articles published in the media, even if not employed by the media
**- Their peers are extremely ethnically diverse and well-educated--elites from their own countries

Interestingly enough, most of these points apply to me (the ones I've starred).  That's if you count medical research (motivated by simultaneous clinical work) as "knowledge not particularly in-demand", requiring academic & government grant support.  I'm aware your parents were/are humanities professors, and perhaps that is what you had in mind here.

When I travel to give talks though, there are generally more than 5 people in the audience (max was about 5,000 last December).  And usually the purpose isn't just to give talks but share ideas with the handful of other people working in the same area, and also let my students network since I want them to get jobs eventually.  I consider these conferences to be nothing more than a tax on my time and grant funds otherwise - i.e. I wouldn't go.

The issue of government grant support (i.e. NIH) is interesting.  Are you taking the position that abolishing the NIH would not harm the progress of medical knowledge?  It is certainly true that a lot of the stuff that NIH funds is dumb, but when I look at what, say, drug companies fund, it's typically even worse.  The truth is that science is a messy business, and there is no perfect arbiter of what is and is not worthwhile to do.  Unless you're taking the position that all science is not worthwhile, and we only benefit from industrial/commercial advances?  (Not trying to be judgmental here - really want to know your opinion).

[Pointedstick]

I think scientific and medical research--even taxpayer-funded research--is generally great since a lot of it can and is eventually turned into useful things for people. I do have a problem with publicly-funded research being locked behind private paywalls. If you get government money to do it, it should go into the public domain, IMHO.

By contrast, an absolutely enormous amount of the research in the social sciences is blatantly wrong, affected by severe political bias, or simply inapplicable to anything. So much of it is really low-quality. And government support for the humanities generally involves paying people to make art and literature that there is no market demand for--a fancy way of saying "that nobody likes." I think art is great--but art that people actually like! In the past, art that lacked market demand was generally supported by artists' wealthy private patrons, and that seems vastly preferable to a system in which the government taxes everyone else to pay for it.

[WiseOne]

Ah, I see.  Can you expand a bit about "private paywalls"?  Not familiar with that. 

NIH has very stringent requirements that products of research it funds be made public:  all articles have to be free/open access by 1 year after publication, and the data produced must be shared on request or contributed to public databases.

One of my criteria in grant review is whether the investigator has posed a hypothesis that can be disproven, and whether their experiments will prove or disprove it.  If they're just making up a story that sounds nice and works with their data, then it's not science, and I rate the grant accordingly.  Sounds like this happens a lot in social sciences, but perhaps not always.

[jafs]

Social sciences are less rigorous, generally speaking, than hard sciences.

But that doesn't mean they're useless, in my opinion.

[Pointedstick]

Ah, I see.  Can you expand a bit about "private paywalls"?  Not familiar with that.

A lot of scientific papers are published in journals that are not free and public--you need to pay like $40 per article to access them unless you belong to an institution that has a subscription to the journal. Some libraries have subscriptions to some journals, but they've paid too. It is offensive to me that papers which were funded with public money shouldn't automatically be available to the public at no cost. A classic case of socializing costs and privatizing gains.

[jafs]

Isn't Trump a member of that very group?

[WiseOne]

I think scientific and medical research--even taxpayer-funded research--is generally great since a lot of it can and is eventually turned into useful things for people.

When you get right down to it, though, even scientific, engineering, and medical research has a pretty low probability of being turned into useful products and/or processes.  I'd bet it is 1-5 for the sum of privately and publicly funded work.  I'd bet this number is lower for government-funded research, because it is research that no private sector entity wants to fund.

That's part of the nature of the beast:  before you do the research you don't necessarily know if it's going to turn out the way you think it will.  Like I said earlier...if you know the answer already, it's not science.

Also note that private foundations do often fund medical research.  I hold two foundation grants right now.  The problem is that they tend not to pay overhead, which universities don't like since they live on overheads from federal grants.

Also also note to both of you:  if the work is NIH or NSF funded, wait a year and the article will be open access if you go through pubmed (look for an NIHMSID number). Or just send a note to the corresponding author and ask for a reprint.  I get those requests all the time and always honor them.

[jafs]

Also, traditionally, adding to humanity's store of understanding has been seen as a positive thing, even if there aren't any obvious/immediate concrete benefits.

It's possible that we're coming to a point where that's no longer true, at least in some fields.  I saw an intriguing article about physics that suggested we're coming to the end of our ability to further understand the physical universe, and that there is an underlying mystery we'll never fully solve.

I've always thought something like that, so it's interesting to me to see that.

[Pointedstick]

In the past when the store of human knowledge was extremely limited, expanding its horizons was very important. In our world, we are awash in information, so the key problem is generally sorting through it. There are so many smart brains out there that outside of the small number of really cutting edge fields, the knowledge you're looking for probably exists already; you just need to find it! For the cutting-edge fields, I think research to push those boundaries is great! But for the mature fields, there seems to be a lot of make-work as desperate grad students and lazy professors publish papers that mostly re-tread well-worn subjects, adding little knowledge to humanity's store of it and in the process exacerbating the problem of information overload leading to search and retrieval difficulties.

[Jake]

here's how to spot a transnational elite:
- Lives in a city you've heard of
- Frequent foreign travel, usually to other cities you've heard of
- Other people seem to pay for a lot of their goodies
- They (ostensibly) produce or contribute to the production of knowledge, not goods or services
- What they ostensibly produce is not anything that seems particularly in-demand, and most of the demand seems to come from government or price-insensitive millionaires and billionaires
- If they own any corporations, the corporations are trusts or thin veneers around their private lives (e.g. "$lastname LLC") used to shelter assets from government attention and taxation
- No religious affiliation, and usually active contempt for Christianity coupled with patronizing affection for all other religions
- Frequently employed in the realm of academia, politics, law, defense, media, publishing, or art.
- Frequently have articles published in the media, even if not employed by the media
- Their peers are extremely ethnically diverse and well-educated--elites from their own countries

There is a much simpler name for this group though. They are called "intellectuals". A couple more key characteristics:
- They think that regular folks cannot possibly manage their own lives, and that the intellectual elite have a historic responsibility to decide who gets to do what.
- They are sworn enemies of the marketplace, because intellectuals have very little value in the market (hence their need for the State-subsidised jobs or for rich patrons).

I think you are mistaken about one thing though:

They are the kinds of people who are branded as bourgeois and get killed in Communist revolutions.

Actually, historically this group were ones leading the communist revolutions. The people who got branded "bourgeois" and killed were, first, the property owners (entrepreneurs) and then anyone who disagreed with the intellectual elite.

[jafs]

I think you guys are off-base about who's running away with the money and power.  It's not the "intellectuals" or "transnational elites", it's the folks with the money.

Professors don't usually make that much money, relatively speaking, compared with CEO's, for example.  And although they probably vote, they're not the ones injecting huge amounts of money into politics to influence it.

And, although intellectuals may be involved in revolutions, the core forces seem to me to be the sort of vast inequality PS comments on, and the inevitable and strong frustration those at the bottom feel about it.

[MediumTex]

I think you guys are off-base about who's running away with the money and power.  It's not the "intellectuals" or "transnational elites", it's the folks with the money.

Professors don't usually make that much money, relatively speaking, compared with CEO's, for example.  And although they probably vote, they're not the ones injecting huge amounts of money into politics to influence it.

And, although intellectuals may be involved in revolutions, the core forces seem to me to be the sort of vast inequality PS comments on, and the inevitable and strong frustration those at the bottom feel about it.

At the risk of hurting someone else's feelings this evening, I think that your typical liberal intellectual is probably perfectly content to have a medium-sized teat reserved for them on the belly of Big Government.  They don't want to be a Master of the Universe (though they wouldn't mind--see Dick Armey, Phill Gramm and Woodrow Wilson for examples).  They just want to travel in the same circles as those people and have a small audience of people to tell them how smart they are.

If Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dixon are the rhinos (real rhinos, not RINOs, though they are often that as well), then the people we are talking about are the birds that ride around on their asses.

[MachineGhost]

One wonders how cynical PS will be in another 12 years like most of us! 

Its fun to watch him uncover the rocks, though.