Some topics covered:
Americans (and Brits) love stories of upward mobility. We celebrate the child from poverty who becomes a success story. But we’re uncomfortable with the opposite story: a child of privilege who slides downward
The link between downward social mobility and political radicalization
Turchin’s idea of intra-elite conflict; how a surplus of elite aspirants contributes to political tension
The psychological tax of living among overachievers: constant social comparison, status anxiety
How Brits feel when they hear how high American salaries are (e.g., U.S. physicians earn on average around $300,000 a year compared with $150,000 in the U.K.)
Connecting globalization to intra-elite competition: your peer group is now every smart and ambitious person on Earth
Downward mobility as a risk factor for depression
Gregory Clark’s “A Farewell to Alms” thesis: elites had more kids than the poor which led to mass downward mobility in England, diffusing bourgeois virtues (industriousness, patience, impulse control) as elites sank into the lower rungs of society
Britain, despite all its internal tensions, remained unusually peaceful for centuries. Louise suggests that mass outmigration functioned as a psychological and political safety valve for ambitious elite aspirants
This migration helped resolve “elite overproduction.” Too many ambitious people chasing too few elite roles is destabilizing. Sending them abroad turned potential rebels into settlers
Writers often rail against capitalism when what they’re really upset about is that their books don’t sell. The market is a cruel but honest mirror
The provocative theory is that elite whites support affirmative action not out of altruism, but because they believe it gives their own children a competitive edge against high-achieving Asian applicants
Asian Americans are sometimes referred to in left-leaning spaces as “white adjacent.” In practice, depending on the context, institutions treat them as if they belong in either the white or nonwhite column. Schrödinger’s whites (a concept that has also been applied to Jews, another high-achieving minority group)
Quotas exist outside of the western world. In Malaysia, for instance, affirmative action laws were enacted to limit the number of Chinese-descended students in universities and thereby protect the interests of the dominant Malay majority
The danger of “market-dominant minorities”—groups that succeed disproportionately in education or business. Such groups attract admiration but also resentment, and in some cases, violence
Much more in the discussion
