[HN Gopher] The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class ___________________________________________________________________ The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class Author : jger15 Score : 121 points Date : 2021-01-24 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (danco.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (danco.substack.com) | djohnston wrote: | I see myself in here, particularly w.r.t. learning about other | cultures and histories and using that knowledge as talking | points. I guess the only thing to do is break out of 3 tiers | entirely, like Creed Bratton. | ErikAugust wrote: | Who is an example of a barbarian? | | Also, I'm a Michael Scott, AMA. | fitzroy wrote: | If you're interested in this stuff, the book, Class: A Guide | Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell is an | entertaining and insightful book (from 1983, so a bit dated in | parts but well worth it). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class:_A_Guide_Through_the_Ame... | moralestapia wrote: | Michael O' Church has written some amazing blog posts. If you | tolerate his style, I highly recommend reading him. | | Too bad he fell out of grace from the SV elite (and I can totally | see why). I wish he continued writing as much as he was back in | the time. | 6chars wrote: | I don't think the author really understands the characterization | of Michael Scott. I can't imagine the hypothetical scene of | Michael Scott taking pride in knowing how to use chopsticks. That | sounds way more out of character to me than having him not know | how to use them. Hard for me to take the article seriously when | it has to make up character traits for Michael Scott to make its | point. | | I believe that the type of person the author thinks Michael Scott | is exists and sucks (and I'm probably one of them), but I don't | think Michael Scott is one of them. | vlunkr wrote: | The other part is that Micheal doesn't posturetalk to his | employees. He desperately wants them to be his friends, because | he has none. It's one of his defining characteristics. | redisman wrote: | Right, Michael Scott would tell someone he of course knows how | to use them and then end up in a Japanese restaurant with that | person and be found out to be the fool once again. | gibb0n wrote: | Michael Scott would make fun of the chopsticks, use them to | play drums etc. say something racist, and then search for a | fork or spoon. | 6chars wrote: | That I can see. Or he would fixate on the fact that someone | else does know how to use them and get competitive about it, | trying and failing hard to show that he's also worldly. | croissants wrote: | I agree, this bit in particular seems wrong to me: | | > Posturetalk is everything said by Michael, Dwight and Andy, | to anyone: the staff, the execs, or each other. Everything they | say is some form or another of meaningless, performative | babbling. | | I only really remember the first four seasons of _The Office_ , | but I remember Michael as being a very skilled salesman and a | very unskilled manager. But Michael's skill as a salesman comes | from a genuine desire to connect with people and form | relationships --- recall the episode where he takes a second | job as a telemarketer and keeps deviating from the call scripts | to ask people about their lives. In that sense, a big chunk of | what Michael says is pretty close to the _opposite_ of | performative? | bigwavedave wrote: | I agree that his desire to connect on a personal level isn't | posturing and is very much a huge piece of who he is- as | such, it's wrong of the author to say that everything he says | to everyone is posturetalk. At the same time, I'm not sure | it's fair to dismiss the author's point entirely. One of | Michael's other defining features (which goes hand in hand | with his desire to connect personally) is his absolute need | to be liked. His desire to connect on a personal level often | feeds into this need to be liked, and attempting to satisfy | this need is where a lot of his posturetalk comes from. He | sees traits in others that he admires and he will do whatever | he can to convince other people he has those same traits. | Example: during performance review time, Pam mentions that | she doesn't know what to expect from hers because her | previous review began with Michael asking her where she sees | herself in five years and ended with him telling her how much | he can bench press. Heck, there was a whole episode about him | trying to prove to the office that he was the toughest | fighter around. Not to mention the paper conference where he | pretended his $100 per diem was just what he would tip | normally; or the time he said that anyone who could do more | push ups than him could go home early; or like when he takes | Jim to Hooters and says to the waitress that he's doing it | because he's the boss and he can afford it but then we see | when he gets back to the office that he's trying to get it | expensed as a business cost because he can't pay for it; or | when he tells Oscar to tell Jan that he's a financial guru | who cut their debt in half; or when he buys his condo and | brags about having two microwaves; or any interaction he has | with a woman he finds attractive. These are just a couple | easy ones off the top of my head. | | My point is that it's not one or the other- Michael is a | great salesman because he wants to connect on a personal | level, but man alive he sure spouts off a whole lot of | posturetalk. | H8crilA wrote: | You just wrote it yourself - he has an enormous desire to be | praised, so much so that he completely fails to notice just | how much he lacks a connection with literally anyone or | anything (Michael is of course a comically over-emphasized | example). This is the key to understanding the "clueless" or | the "educated gentry" ladder, they are unhappy with being in | "labor" but lack the balls/intelligence/true | desire/luck/whatever else to be the "elite", so they come up | with alternative scoring rules. Why do you think writing an | op-ed in the NYT is so highly desired in that ladder? The | other ladders don't dabble in praise, they either want their | jobs to satisfy basic life needs (labour) or want ever- | growing power with minimal regard to others opinion (elite), | more specifically others opinion is only relevant insofar as | it is a stepping stone on the path to more power. | leetcrew wrote: | michael's desire for connection does make him a lot more | genuine than most of the other characters on the show, | although this might be because he just isn't capable of the | subterfuge and even the casual sarcasm employed by the | others. | | a lot of michael's behaviors are pretty naked attempts at | gaining status. the irony is that he latches onto things that | no one else actually respects. a good example is when he | bought the sebring. michael did not buy that car because he | liked it; he bought it because he wanted other people to see | him in it, purely a flex. as is often the case, the joke was | on him. no one thought the sebring was a cool car. just | continuing on the car theme, look at what pre-breakdown jan | was driving: a volvo, a nice vehicle befitting someone of her | stature but not flashy. | monkeycantype wrote: | There are disagreements here about whether the details are | correct, but if you stick to the concept of _languages_ , I think | this is brilliant. I work in an environment with extreme wage | disparity between the stratified layers described here, with me | in the clueless zone, and the languages described here are | mandatory in order to deflect analysis and discussion of the | power structures and the trivial and grotesque ways they are | routinely abused. | themodelplumber wrote: | This kind of social class theory is unfortunately not one that | yields a lot of leverage, while simultaneously promising to cause | a lot of hurt. (It also reads as if it betrays some hurt feelings | on the part of its creator, IMO). I think this is why it's | traditionally, historically, so incendiary to talk about class | theory. | | Also, here we are at the point in history when even reclusive | billionaires are starting to change and improve the way they | contribute to the world. Some are even giving away all their | money before they die, which was once seen as a feat the bible | itself couldn't envision. | | Michael Scott is also given occasional but shy credit on the show | for being someone whose values freely interconnect with those of | his workers, which to me was an understated win of the series. | | The fact is, Michael can't be the best of everybody, even though | he tries. But he can sure reflect their good back onto them, even | when he's completely exploding an otherwise harmless situation! | It's an underrated gift. We need more of that good-reflecting in | the world, and less criticism of the kind that reflects a | hopeless situation. | MilnerRoute wrote: | See also "The Peter Principle," which famously argued that | everyone eventually rises to their level of incompetence. | | The more interesting question is what do you do in response to | that? The Peter Principle books actually argued you should turn | down that last promotion. But how do we avoid becoming Michael | Scott? | neom wrote: | Can you recommend some good "The Peter Principle" books? I'm | unfamiliar, would love to learn. | mathgeek wrote: | "The Peter Principle" by Laurence J. Peter | greesil wrote: | Keep doing actual coding at least some of the time. Unless you | care about income, in which case try to ascend the ziggurat. | the-dude wrote: | How do you know it is your last promotion? | sokoloff wrote: | The thing about the Peter Principle is _how do you know_ which | is the "last promotion" that you should turn down? No one | should turn down the first promotion (from "fresh into the | workforce" to "basically competent developer" [or journeyman | welder/electrician/plumber or whatever the equivalent is for | your field]). | | After that it gets murky because everyone has their own | abilities and willingness to do what it takes to compensate for | their own flaws and take advantage of their strengths. | vidarh wrote: | Making secondments and mentoring a more integral part of the | process, perhaps, so you promotions happens because of | demonstrated skill at what you would be promoted into, rather | than demonstrated skill at what you would get promoted out | of. | karaterobot wrote: | I've seen a few developers get pushed into a management due | to their leadership on engineering teams, and do an okay job | in that role, but return to development after a year or less. | One of them told me he recognized he had reached the level of | his incompetence and did not want to be That Guy. I suspect | that was true for some of the others as well, and I wish it | was more common. | LordDragonfang wrote: | I think we just need to make it more acceptable in corporate | culture to go, "hey, I'm no longer growing or thriving in | this role, perhaps I should return to my old one", preferably | _without_ receiving a pay cut. | l3st2o wrote: | This article itself is Michael Scott. | the_local_host wrote: | The author missed a genuine opportunity to wrap it up with | "Wrote _The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class_? Definitely, | _definitely_ Michael Scott. " | croissants wrote: | This would kind of weaken the argument, because there's no | way that Michael Scott would ever come up with a codified | analysis of human class and interaction and put it on the | internet. (It seems like a thoroughly Dwight move, though?) | thatguy0900 wrote: | Funnily enough, Dwight did have an in character blog during | the running of the show, and something like this actually | would fit pretty well onto it https://web.archive.org/web/2 | 0090225001105/http://www.nbc.co... | creddit wrote: | I found myself mildly nodding along to this waiting for the | moment of clarity where he describes more fully the elite ladder | but he doesn't and so I have no idea how to contrast this middle | tier with the upper tier to see distinctions. What's an example | of the Elite behaviors/language? How would I know Powertalk when | I see it? What would an Elite do/have to show their true status? | | I definitely accept that I'm not an elite. I am "wealthy" in a | strictly relative financial sense but I have no political | power/connections derived from it and have never tried to gain | any. This has always been my personal distinction between say | myself and the true elites. Wealth doesn't inherently get you | power and I don't really even know how I would leverage what | wealth I have to gain power despite this being a potentially | viable avenue. Is this not a much better distinction? | krrishd wrote: | The Gervais Principle (which this article is a riff off of) | covers what you're looking for (and what the author here left | implicit): https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- | principle-... | | specifically the "Sociopath" as described in the Gervais | Principle == the elite | totemandtoken wrote: | This was an interesting take but I'm a little disappointed that | the author didn't take the language idea further. As in, in this | author's conception of class based language, what's an example of | "straight talk"? How do the elites "babytalk" to the Michael | Scott-gentry middle class? Most interestingly, what would | "powertalk" be in this conception of class? Would it be raw | datasets and financial spreadsheets? Because that seems at odds | with the "barbarians" he posits via Church are at the top of the | elite ladder. Or are the "barbarians" ruthless state-leaders who | only speak in intelligence reports and legal/military briefs and | those types of documents are "powertalk"? | | Interesting classifications nonetheless... | nexthash wrote: | This article and the theory it presents has some interesting | intersections with how society actually works (i.e. the elite | being anyone who has real leverage). I liked the depiction of the | intellectual classes, but I believe that rather than hiding from | reality they are commenting on it and influencing society's | culture, not having to worry about material security. | | Also, the categories/ladders are looser than one would assume. | Cultural and labor leaders, if determined, can seize power for | themselves, as seen with the rise of the Soviet Union and Islamic | Republic of Iran. I personally don't believe in the "babytalk" | notion: this depends on individual character, and any common | lingo would be based solely on the pressures of position the | individual is in. | dash2 wrote: | Meh.... This has a real "I'm 14 and this is deep" vibe. Like a | teenager who thinks their dad is a loser, and that the real men | are the guys at the bottom in tough blue collar jobs, or at the | top in power suits being Wolves of Wall Street. Insights like | this can be fun, but they're for the third beer with your | buddies, not for writing down. | TameAntelope wrote: | > they're for the third beer with your buddies, not for writing | down. | | I would love to hear more about what you think the difference | is. | s5300 wrote: | Very correct Michael Scott. | brighton36 wrote: | It's very odd that 'baby talk' is professional. I don't think | society was always this way. I also respect anyone who | questions why this is the case. Assuming it's an efficiency, we | should be able to justify this behavior. | monkeycantype wrote: | I worked as a software developer, in a non software company, | I sat in an odd spot off to the side half way up the org | chart. | | The non software people climbed the hierarchy not because | they are competent at their jobs, in fact a highly competent | person will often be passed over for promotion because they | are useful where they are. | | A senior manager, my manager at the time felt that with very | little skill to separate the people working at the company, | ascendancy was about positioning yourself in bullying | networks, and he described this this kind of 'baby talk' as a | subservience signal in which you were surrendering to and | accepting a manager as your patron and any further | advancement you made was by their grace. | | If you chose to do the 'honest talk' with someone senior to | you, it came with a risk and a potential reward, you had to | do it well enough to convince them you were a worthy | formidable peer and an ally. If you did it unconvincingly you | would be struck down. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | I'd be surprised if there was any place or time where people | didn't placate and humor those with power over them. The | article's label of "babytalk" for this behavior just obscures | the observation; it would be like calling typical code review | language "fussytalk" and then expounding on how fussy | programmers are. | ditonal wrote: | Pretty ironic take given that the site you're writing the | comment on was founded by pg writing a bunch of essays breaking | the world down into "nerds" vs "jocks" with VCs being "high | school girls". pg decided to write those down rather than share | them over a third beer and it seems to have spawned a bunch of | billion dollar companies. | | The author refers to michael o church who had much clearer | takes on the subject, not-withstanding a lot of other craziness | that undermined some of his interesting opinions. He certainly | was one of the first people to publicly call out that companies | like Google and VC-backed startups spend a LOT of effort on PR | that they are "social good" despite being as ruthlessly money- | making oriented as any conventional companies they claimed not | to be. He coined one of my favorite sayings that "Silicon | Valley is just Wall St for people who can't wake up early." | Those takes are a little less novel in 2021 now that everyone | realizes how morally bankrupt companies like Google are but | credit's due where it's due so I'd recommend checking out his | old blog posts. | yrimaxi wrote: | This is a very Reddit-esque response. | whymauri wrote: | The degree to which I agree with this comment is inversely | related to the probability that the author is just joking. | H8crilA wrote: | This (the OP) is absolutely not a joke. | mr_cyborg wrote: | The Gervais Principle is a great read for fans of The Office | and/or people who work at large companies. Nice to see it get a | shout out. | | https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... | perrygeo wrote: | This. The OP is effectively a re-wording of the Gervais | principal - same idea with slightly less words in blog form. | It's a bit ingenious to claim a whole new theory. | midasuni wrote: | Did you mean ingenious or ingenuous? | whoisburbansky wrote: | Disingenuous would make more sense in the context of GP's | comment, but I too have a hard time seeing how ingenious | works here. | oxfeed65261 wrote: | The essay itself is of course an example of posturetalk. | TameAntelope wrote: | I see it as an attempt at self reflection... | stephc_int13 wrote: | There are at least two very different things mixed in this text | and no logic reasoning. Paraphrasing an idea a few times is a | very weak proof, to say the least. And mixing a few random | opinions on top is not improving the whole... Pretty poor | article. | f430 wrote: | Oh good god, I hope nobody on HN takes this seriously and that | they can read between the lines that this a joke. | porb121 wrote: | if it is a joke, it pretty soundly failed to be funny. | z5h wrote: | Interesting perspective. Without agreeing or disagreeing, I | wonder where, on which ladder I'd want to be. Old Money is | probably best, but, I don't really have a choice. Seems Michael | Scott is the next best option. | giantg2 wrote: | My theory is that social structures only fuck me over. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | While climbing the middle ladder, something snapped in me, or | perhaps covid accelerated the process. | | A year or so ago, I was working on my undergraduate thesis | project in deep RL, I had been working on the project for 8-9 | months at the time. Due to covid, lack of support and | computational resources from the university, I was behind, and | making progress was difficult. | | Shortly after I submitted the thesis, I felt an eerie | disillusionment with the absurdity of the middle class, the | pretentiousness, how we are all stuck in our own little bubbles | where we find ways to feel special and 'serious' about things. | About how we all advertise our lives in social media and so on. | | Sam Esmail put it greatly in the first episode of Mr. Robot in | Elliot's monologue on what in society disappoints him so much [1] | and concludes that the reason is that we are all cowards, we are | looking to be sedated. Which is absolutely true, capitalism feeds | on that, bought something?, bam dopamine rush, got a promotion to | the same shitty position but with more responsibilities ? | congratulations, another dopamine rush. Buying overpriced sushi | and eating it with that chopstick skill you have mastered, | another rush. Sharing our lives on the internet bam rush, and you | know what, of course we need to share pictures with our friends, | it's the contract, we scratch each other's back here, and the | funny thing is, it is never enough, and it will never be enough | [2]. | | Deep down, we all know that the world is utter shit, but living | in these bubbles allows us to pretend that it is not so bad, | because that is easier, it allows us to live with the situation | instead of taking the roads and demanding that things change, if | anything, why should we demand a change if "it's working for us", | if whatever we have gives us a dose big enough to forget but | small enough to function? Heck, even if we start fixing the | world, Machiavelli argues that given the opportunity, the middle | class will bring it back [3], because the new state of affairs | will not enable that kind of detachment. | | The problem with this disillusionment is that you aren't willing | to be sedated, not anymore, you realize how shit the world is, | how everyone is pretending and is unwilling to accept it that we | are not in control of anything. | | But what the f do I know. All I can say is that I have seen and | experienced the 'Michael Scott' behaviour from the people the | author mentions, but again, I live in my own little bubble. | | [1] https://soundcloud.com/flibber/mr-robot-101-elliots- | monologu... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_adaptation | | [3] In "il prince", when a new prince conquers a region with the | help of aristocrats, if he changes the norm, he needs to squash | any chance of future opposition as the previous norm worked for | the aristocrats and they will try to revert back. | | Edit: | | I must have hit some nerves. Sorry for telling the silent part | out loud, Michael. | ilikeerp wrote: | You should seek a really good therapist, you're far too young | to be 'over it' already. | | You can live an authentic life, you just don't know how because | 1, you're a kid with zero wisdom and 2, you don't yet know what | is important (related to point 1). | PartiallyTyped wrote: | I lack the funds to do that. | | I found that reading philosophy helps, even just a little | bit. The absurdists figured it out I think. Absurdism also | helps with coping with the belief in determinism I guess, but | I am still in conflict. | paulbaumgart wrote: | You may enjoy this. I certainly did when I first came | across it: https://vividness.live/charnel-ground | blt wrote: | Deep RL is a soul-sucking research field. | jariel wrote: | It's neat although I'm not sure how 'right' it is. | | This is also possibly just a re-articulation of age-old | delineations between working/middle and upper class sentiments. | | I think the working/middle class are the same ladder though and | most of them share the same values in that they are no psychopath | barbarians. | | The right-hand ladder is actually 2 parts: | | The ibankers belong squarely in the middle class rung. They are | just workers like everyone else, and frankly, as preformative. | Most of them are regular people and not sociopaths. | | The difference with some 'banking' roles - is that they are | playing in games of 'dealing and leverage' - not so much value | creation. | | So they're naturally going to acclimate to a different way of | viewing thew world. They play zero-sum games whereas everyone | else is doing work, or trying/pretending to. | | They have access to the 'old money' class and they see the | potentiality. | | But really - the lower rungs of banking are just upper-class | elite. | | The 'old money' are not necessarily sociopaths - they are often | quite nice people, they vary from down-to-earth to detached to | egoist. Maybe not nice enough to give up their money but not | necessarily bad people. And living off of a stipend of limited | wealth can give a sense of the limitations of money and these | people are not wagging their money in your face. | | There is a hugely fundamental difference between 'barbarian' like | Donald Trump, or Putin, and kids from the Bertelsmann family | because those who are 'out of the game' and living off old money | are super effete, it's not like they are going to be that | important or influential. They are useless and they know it. | | I also dispute the morale differentials etc. I think there's some | truthiness there, but it's a function of aspiration: the 'working | class' have more likely than not accepted their lot while the | 'middle class' are competing for surpluses. | | Finally, I'm not so cynical. Those 'middle class' people do | important things. It's not easy to be a dentist, doctor, write | software, manage people etc.. | nicbou wrote: | I think it boils down to having enough free time and money to | care about dumb things. Your basic needs are covered, so you have | spare energy for various causes and weird hobbies. | | I suspect that baby talk is just how you answer to someone you | can't relate to. I answer just the same when someone tells me | about sports, or their racing horses. It's just what you default | to when there's a cultural disconnect, but the desire to show | respect. | leephillips wrote: | This made me uncomfortable. So it's probably accurate. | anm89 wrote: | Every person not in the bottom rung is a "sociopath"? Honestly I | get a little tinge of joy out of the bitterness of these whiners | sometimes. | | If you think every person in life that has gotten a different | outcome than you is a "sociopath" your are probably something a | lot closer to a sociopath than average (ie a seeming total lack | of ability to empathize with a vast swath of people based on | superficial differences) | ludston wrote: | I really enjoyed this comment, because it managed to say both, | "I take joy from other peoples suffering", and "I'm not a | sociopath, you are." | greesil wrote: | If you stare at clouds, you might see patterns in them. That | doesn't mean that's the governing principle behind their | formation. | vlunkr wrote: | Perhaps the most annoying thing about this article is the built- | in defense that "if you don't get it, you're a Micheal." I see | many people in the comments making comments like this. | themodelplumber wrote: | Intriguing point. I'd add that the "if you don't get it" phrase | seems a lot more like a Michael Scott character's take on | things (meanwhile--do they really get it? Or is there more than | one perspective to get?). :-) | pk_kinetic wrote: | I was hoping for some payoff, like if it was possible for me to | somehow hop over to the elite ladder and ascend to the level of | barbarian. | superbcarrot wrote: | According to the article you can be a loser, a sociopath or | Michael Scott. And the harder you're trying, the more likely it | is that you're Michael Scott. | 29athrowaway wrote: | I have a simpler model in my head. My dichotomy is: problem | solvers vs problem makers. | | You can either make a living solving problems, or finding the | right problems for others to solve (usually by breaking down a | large problem into smaller problems). | ryan-duve wrote: | This is a really well-written article. I am not sure if this spin | on the cited references is novel but it is the first I am seeing | any of it. I am jarred how well it describes the "middle" of | society, including how many of my own behaviors/beliefs are | captured. | | One thing I am having trouble with is the connection between | Michael and the "educated" ladder, even though a big portion of | the article is dedicated to that. I will have to mull on it more | before I can convincingly respond to "So you think Michael Scott | represents the PhDs of the world?" | | If you are the author, kudos to you. | paultopia wrote: | Yeah, I really want to know where the author is getting their | model of PhDs. Are we talking about literature departments or | chemistry labs? | walshemj wrote: | Its interesting seeing this formal non American pov and how the | American Office is very denatured compared to the UK one. | | So "the good place" is prestige TV! would not that be more like | discussing the latest "in our time" about the plague of | Justinian over the water cooler ? | redisman wrote: | The metaphor definitely breaks in the middle ladder. Why not | just do labor, middle management, owners like in the first part | of the piece? I get that everyone hates NYT opinion writers but | that's like 20 people - not a social class. | | Also do software engineers fall into upper middle class or high | skilled labor? I think they're in both. Or maybe I just don't | have any interactions with the middle ladder in real life and | I'm clueless | superbcarrot wrote: | > Why not just do labor, middle management, owners like in | the first part of the piece? | | I think the idea is that the communication styles from the | first part carry over to the second. Which means that if | you're an university-educated professional or a cultural | leader, you mostly communicate through baby-talk and posture- | talk. At least that seems to be the author's point, I'm not | sure to what extent I agree. | akhilcacharya wrote: | I'm convinced software engineers can be part of either of the | 3 ladders, but most are in the upper middle class set. | bradleyjg wrote: | The tops of the ladder are there to show what people further | down aspire to be. The idea is that if you are a building | super you daydream about owning a general contractor | business. If you're a VP at an investment bank you dream of | being a billionaire hedge fund manager. | | The conceit is that random lawyers and doctors wish they | could be the kinds of lawyers and doctors that could get an | Op-Ed published, but I don't think it works. Maybe most Econ | PhDs secretly want to be Paul Krugman. I doubt it, but maybe. | But no way I buy most doctors secretly want to be Anthony | Fauci. | gibb0n wrote: | High skilled labor. A lot of Software Engineers think they | are highly educated intellectuals but are in reality skilled | tradespeople on the tools. | cbozeman wrote: | What's weird about software engineering is you can | literally be on all three ladders. | | That high-paid 60 year old man working for his state's | labor department keeping the COBOL churning out | unemployment checks? High-skill labor. | | That university researcher who's working night and day to | design a new machine learning paradigm? She's an elite | creative (Hell, she might even be a Ph.D. _and_ a blue | check mark nowadays). | | The Stanford / UCLA / MIT dropout who builds the next Uber | / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook? Working rich. At least | until he/she sells the company to someone and bails out. | cbozeman wrote: | It doesn't mean "Just NYT opinion writers". It means all the | people who think they're leading culture around on a leash by | pushing their articles in _The New Yorker_ , _The Atlantic_ , | _Mother Jones_ etc. and so forth. | | And that very much _is_ a social class, or more accurately, | its a specific subset of a social class. Another subset of | the same social class are book editors at the major | publishing houses. Look around on LinkedIn. You 'll find that | easily 1 in 4 of them are female, went to a small-to-medium- | sized liberal arts college, etc. They literally gatekeep both | fiction and non-fiction, and its why self-publishing and | alternative publishing outlets are on the rise. | | There are likely other subsets of this same social class that | I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't generally give it much | thought, because I don't care and I don't have to care. | javajosh wrote: | I believe America has 4 Great Games, with 4 traditional city | centers: Knowledge (Boston), Money (New York), Fame (Hollywood), | Power (DC). (Arguably there is a fifth, Tech (Silicon Valley), | which is Knowledge, Money & Power, all rolled together, and in | that order). | | The Office _only_ takes place inside a small, mundane part of the | Money game, and I think the middle ladder in the OP 's post | muddles Money and Knowledge. Note that all the games are used as | backdrops, Power being the more usual pick: all | legal/police/crime content inhabits that space. | | Its also important to note that the Office takes place in the UK | and America, winners of the second world war, and so the ones | where the Games have grown in size and complexity monotonically | for over 100 years, and the players are fat, rich, and lazy | (characteristic of late stage capitalism). The lack of external | stressor (e.g. competition, frugal clients, and so on) is what | enables the company, and its employees, to be detached from | reality and still survive despite these costly distractions. This | detachment is the inevitable cost of great wealth and long | periods of uninterrupted success, and is the mechanism by which | large scale structures, like civilizations, regress to the mean. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-24 23:00 UTC)