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Hello everyone, I am Dan Miao.

I recently read a book by Daniel Markovits, a professor at Yale Law School.《Meritocracy Trap》(The Trap of the Merit System, no simplified Chinese version yet).

The timing of reading this book just happened to coincide with my job change from a large law firm. The data and theories in the book shone into reality, as if they were a wake-up call for me at the right time. It felt magical.

Meritocracy and elitism can also be called "meritocracy."

As the name suggests, meritocracy means selecting the best people in a system, and only those who meet this standard can be called elites.

This set of values ​​is very consistent with the social Darwinism of the survival of the fittest, and can basically encompass the mainstream values ​​of contemporary society.

Compared to the backward era when one’s fate was determined by birth, the values ​​of contemporary social elitism actually mean that fate is determined by heaven, and destiny depends on hard work.Your bloodline cannot determine your life, but your efforts can.。

It sounds inspiring, but the book "The Arrogance of the Elite" actually delivers a cruel conclusion:

Elitism is destroying American society, the middle class is sinking, and social antagonism is imminent. Whether you are an elite or not, life is becoming increasingly difficult and painful.

What’s even more frightening is that this system is in a constant self-reinforcing cycle. If it is not stopped, everything will get worse and worse.

Moreover, the reality on the other side of the ocean also symbolizes our future fate as we are trapped in internal competition, exhausted, over-stressed, and unable to communicate with each other.

How are elites formed?

To understand this conclusion, we need to first outline three social realities:

How are elites formed?

What is life like after becoming an elite?

What kind of life do those who fail to become elites live?

What is an elite?

From the perspective of income level alone, if a young person who has just completed his studies and entered society wants to be in the top 10% of income level, he can basically only engage in a few fixed high-paying jobs:Doctors, lawyers, finance, consulting, auditing, IT。

So how do you enter these industries?

Young people must first receive a good education and face fierce competition from childhood to adulthood. In American society, if you want to enter a prestigious school,In fact, it is no longer just a competition of personal ability, but an investment of the entire family's resources.。

If we say that fifty years ago, the operating model of American social economy was capital, land, machines, and manpower, now basically the only important resource is the minds of the elites.

The family has become the new factory, responsible for producing the most precious resource of this era。

In this era, what does it take to cultivate an elite offspring?

1. Both parents are elites：

After 1960, interracial marriages became less and less common in the United States.

In 1960, only 3% of marriages involved a college degree. By 2010, 25% of newlyweds involved a college degree. Educated couples tend to stay married longer and are less likely to have children before they settle into a stable marriage.

Therefore, children from the elite class are more likely to grow up in a stable family relationship than those from the middle class or poor class.

■ According to the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, children whose parents both have at least a college degree are more likely to obtain higher education and earn higher incomes.

2. Full-time education by one parent:

In families with elite parents, when the child is between 0 and 3 years old, one of the parents often does not work and devotes full-time to education.

Elite parents also provide a higher quality of education, and they will specifically cultivate their children's abilities to become elites. On average, three-year-old children from elite families can recognize 49% more words than three-year-old children from middle-class families.

This kind of education enables children from elite families to have more emotional control - they are open-minded, confident and self-disciplined from an early age.

Studies have shown that emotional control has a greater impact on these children's long-term performance than cognitive ability.

■The New York Times once published an article discussing that many female graduates from elite universities have become full-time mothers. In 2000, the Yale University Office of Institutional Research conducted a survey of Yale alumni from the classes of 1979, 1984, 1989, and 1994, and found that only 56% of women in their 40s were still working, while the proportion of men was 90%.

3. Elite Preschool Class:

The real competition to enter a prestigious school begins in preschool.

Elite preschools in major American cities are taught by Ivy League graduates at a ratio of 1:7.

Competition for this elite preschool is fierce, and the parents' occupation and education level, as well as the child's own qualities, are taken into consideration. Tuition is also expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars a year.

■This book vividly describes how elite parents in the Upper East Side of New York City work hard and strive for a place in an elite preschool class.

4. Comprehensive elite training ：

Until the stage of graduating from high school and applying for college, a family must continue to invest a lot of resources and experience to raise their children.

In order to get their children into elite schools such as the Ivy League, parents will do everything they can to send their children to elite private schools. At the same time, they have to take extra-curricular tutoring classes for standardized tests and cultivate several interests and hobbies related to music and sports from an early age.

Elite copies the next generation of elites

The key to this training model lies in the training time and training efficiency that can be provided to future generations.

The elite class devotes all their family resources and energy to their children's education, taking every step ahead, leaving children from lower-class families far behind.。

Generally speaking, by the eighth grade, children from wealthy families are, on average, four grades ahead of ordinary children in intelligence.

This trend continues into the children's adulthood.

By age 18, children from elite families have, on average, spent 5,000 more hours on training than working-class children—including literacy training, cultural activities, visits to museums, and various sports hobbies.

By the time children from ordinary families turn 18, they have spent all this time watching TV or playing video games.

Cultivating elite offspring is an investment, which is purely using money to buy educational resources., and then use the best resources to maximize the ability and level of future generations. The investment of wealthy families in education directly produces better human capital.

This investment in education for future generations isIt is actually an inheritance of wealth and status.。

The traditional aristocracy would leave their lifetime wealth to their children when they died, allowing their children to directly obtain aristocratic status by inheriting the estate.

The modern elite class invests this wealth in education to ensure that their children can become "elites" with elite labor value recognized by society.

In the book, Markovits did a calculation. If the money invested in elite education is added up along the way, taking inflation into account,This is roughly equivalent to a modern elite family giving their children $10 million at death.。

This money is a modern version of "meritocratic inheritance."

This almost exclusive way of creating elites in contemporary society makes cross-class mobility extremely difficult.

If you want to enter the elite industry, first of all, a person's parents must be elites themselves and have a lot of wealth. They must also convert their wealth into education and invest it in their children at every right time.

The meritocratic system now judges us not by our ancestry or how much wealth we legally possess, but by our brains, our thinking abilities, and our vision.

Therefore, in order to pass on their class attributes to the next generation, the elites can only do so through a dynamic method such as investing in education.。

Markovits believes that compared to the direct transfer of wealth,This dynamic succession of the elite class is more stable, the "wealth cannot last for more than three generations" in the traditional economic situation is no longer a problem.

Under the systematic and mechanical elite education system, each generation will be trained to become the best human capital and the most powerful money-making machine. Capital will not be easily lost from heredity and inheritance, because it is transformed into a more stable form and becomes part of personal ability.

Before 1960, Yale University basically only admitted children of alumni. After that, it began to introduce SAT scores and entered an era of "merit-based admissions" that it was proud of.

This admission policy seems to be fair in terms of opportunity and merit, but after a generation of adaptation, elite families quickly invested large amounts of educational resources to ensure that their class attributes were passed down dynamically and stably.

Resources and wealth are still monopolized in the hands of a few people, and society has not seen increased class mobility or become more equitable.

but,It is indeed more difficult to become an eliteEven children with excellent and wealthy parents need to make persistent efforts from childhood to adulthood.

■ At the end of July, a group of professors from elite universities such as Harvard published a paper that shocked the world, using precise data to quantify the advantages of wealthy children in climbing the Ivy League: students whose family income ranks in the top 0.1% are 1.5 times more likely to receive high scores in non-academic subjects in the college application process than middle-class students.

So what if you become an elite?

When I was reading a book, I came across some statistics that shocked me.

For example, in 1982,The average lawyer only works 1,300 hours per yearAs we all know, the average annual billable hours in large American law firms is around 2,000.

In the last century until 1962, banks closed at 3 p.m. and the stock exchange closed at 3:30 p.m., and Wall Street traders and executives went home immediately after get off work.

At 5pm, the subway enters its evening rush hour, at 6:30pm, the empty offices are cleaned by cleaners, and at 9pm, the city's busiest stockbroking firms close their doors and go home.

In that era, cleaners were the busiest people on Wall Street.。

The situation has probably been slowly deteriorating over the past 50 years.

Investment banks began working 80-120 hours a week, large companies promoted a wolf-like culture of working hard from management to grassroots employees, and Apple required executives to check emails even when on vacation.

The extremely high work intensity does not change with social class or years of work. Partners need to spend 2,000 to 3,000 hours each year on billing time, developing business, or otherwise managing the law firm.

More than half of the richest 1% work 50 hours a week.

■Foreign media Medium has counted the sleep of super successful people, and most of them sleep between 6-7 hours. Among them, Trump sleeps the least, only 3 hours a day

Recalling the early days of the Industrial Revolution, the upper classes of society consciously reduced their workload and devoted more "leisure" time to music, culture, and art.

Having enough time to enjoy and relax is an important identity indicator for them.The symbol of nobility is that one can spend time on "useless" things instead of doing productive work.。

Marx believed that capitalists could exploit the lower classes of labor and reap profits by controlling capital. However, there are no capitalists in contemporary life, and those who control more social resources are exploited more severely.

■A classic work in the field of economics and sociology, which mentions that the psychology of the "leisure class" is different from that of the working class. They regard labor as something dishonorable, and only by living a leisure life can they show that they are superior to others.

I used to think that lawyers have this kind of working environment because they are in the service industry as the first party, but in the entire commercial capital society, investment banks, auditing, listed companies, funds... extremely long working hours have become the norm for the entire industry.

Even buyers who have funds in the capital market still need to invest a lot of intensive labor to make a profit when conducting capital operations.。

Over the past few decades, more and more wealthy people have come from such "labor-intensive" industries rather than "capital-intensive" industries where they can sit back and reap the fruits of their labor.

In 1982, only 9% of the people on the Forbes Rich List came from finance, and 15.5% came from manufacturing; in 2012, 24% came from finance, but only 3.8% came from manufacturing.

Data shows that for the top 1% of people in terms of income, 2/3 to 3/4 of their income comes from their own labor and knowledge, rather than "capital" such as land and machines that can generate passive income once owned.

Wealth is indeed rapidly concentrating in the elite class.But their lives didn't get easier, they got busier.

In addition to extremely long working hours, the elite class also faces unprecedented competition and pressure.

They have to compete, fight, and overcome difficulties from childhood to adulthood to enter the so-called elite industry, but it is not a one-time thing once they graduate from school and enter the elite class.

At the top level, the classification of people becomes even more obvious.A small difference in ability means a huge salary difference。

The income levels between the 99% and 99.9% classes may be the difference between the traditionally accepted middle class with a car and a house and the financially free people with a mine at home.

In the era of classical aristocracy, once you stepped through the door, there was basically no possibility of being expelled. In the Middle Ages, people could enter the aristocracy at birth, without competition or thresholds, and basically did not have to do any work.

But in modern society, even if humans have entered the elite class, they cannot relax for a moment. They may be squeezed out of the game at any time because of a mistake.

The elite class has formed a culture and discipline of working hard, and only individuals who fit the general environment can be recognized by the system.

But at the same time, individuals must always maintain this work attitude in order to continue to gain recognition from the elite class in terms of social relations.

Because the competition and "inter-class mobility" among the elite class are so intense, children from the elite class will be anxious from childhood to adulthood, and will never have a time to rest and relax.

Data shows thatThe suicide rate among students at elite private schools is much higher than that of students at ordinary schools。

In modern society, cross-level mobility has indeed become more difficult, but that does not mean that children from the elite class automatically gain elite status. Instead, they have to engage in dynamic and sustained efforts and competition from scratch.

While facing extremely long working hours and work pressure,The way the elite class motivates themselves is to give meaning to their work。

■This book exposes the false label of the meaning of work. The author discusses with sharp strokes: Who is creating these meaningless jobs? How does it reduce efficiency, hinder the realization of personal value, and aggravate unfairness?

The elite class does not work for meaningful work, but for the class status and "dignity" that comes with high-intensity work.

Another helpless reality is that as the owner of human capital,The only way they can earn income is by exploiting themselvesHard work brings high salaries and promotions, and in order to justify this recognition of value, one has to accept longer working hours.

Because of the nature of class competition, people have to work hard, and because of the particularity of human capital, they can only exploit themselves continuously.

This kind of magical transformation of reality has become a kind of sweet magic, making many people in elite industries believe that everything they manipulate through hard work is meaningful and worth devoting their life's energy to.

The elite class psychologically accepts the glory and satisfaction brought by this work model. They are also in an industry where they are pervasive, closely monitored by peers, and require high-intensity work. They are driven by both carrots and sticks and strive to move forward.

The elite class becomes an isolated workforce。

■The Financial Times published a report in 2021: "Obedience and Fear: The Cruel Working Conditions Behind China's Tech Boom", describing the brutal internal competition in several major Chinese tech companies. High salaries are accompanied by a 996 work system, and these elites seem to be trapped by their jobs.

So what if those who cannot become elites?

Since life is not so easy for those who become elites, what about those who fail to become elites? How do they live?

Over the past fifty years,The traditional middle class is gradually disappearing from American society.

A portion of the middle class is moving upward, entering the elite class that works extremely long hours, while also intensifying competition within this class.

Some of the middle class moved downwards, work has become increasingly simple, repetitive, without room for advancement, and even meaningless. In 2010, low-income Americans worked 30% less hours than high-income Americans.

At its root,Or is it the development of technology that has polarized the labor market?。

Because humans can create centralized systems capable of managing large-scale labor, the role of middle management positions is replaced by information technology, allowing a small elite class to manage larger-scale, low-level production work.

The centralized flow of information allows management to easily understand and direct situations at the grassroots level.

The ratio of managers to grassroots employees gradually expanded from 1:5 to 1:30.

After the 1980s, regardless of the economic situation or profits, all companies in the United States were laying off employees in order to get rid of these middle-level managers, save costs and pursue greater profits.

Companies have also begun hiring more and more contract and temporary workers for the pure purpose of exploiting their labor without any room for advancement.

Technological development and changes in production management structures have led to the US economy needing two types of talent the most:

1. Elite talents with highly abstract thinking ability who can use complex data and information to command business development at a macro level.

2. Grassroots employees who only need to master simple repetitive work.

The careers of these two types of people are vastly different, and basically, the careers they enter determine their entire lives.

In the 1960s, McDonald's also provided "Hamburger University" for grassroots employees, allowing employees who made hamburgers in the store to have the opportunity to learn knowledge and leap all the way to management.

Ed Rensi, who became the CEO of McDonald's in 1991, was just flipping burgers in the kitchen when he joined McDonald's in 1966. However, in that era, people could achieve class mobility through their own efforts.

Such opportunities are no longer possible in modern times.

The company's management is required to be pure Ivy League elites who graduated from prestigious universities and have never done grassroots work and are purely engaged in management.

At the bottom of the food chain, hamburger makers make the federal minimum wage, require no education to do their job, and have no chance of advancement to a management position.

From the perspective of the elite,Changes in the economic structure have increased their wealth and workload.

On the one hand, as economic development places higher technical requirements on top-level labor, the number of people able to engage in top-level jobs is greatly reduced, and each person can get more profits.

On the other hand, most of the middle-class jobs that were replaced or transferred downward have been transferred to the elite class through technological means, making their workload even greater.

This polarization and class gap between the top and the bottom also shows that American society is developing a huge gap.

The difficulties in recent years can be traced back to economic reasons.The people in the middle disappeared, either moving up or being relegated to the bottom。

■ Harvard professor Raj Chetty found that with the same academic performance, children from middle-class families are less likely to be admitted than students from the wealthiest families, and to a certain extent, are also less likely to be admitted than the poorest students. The middle class has "disappeared" in this way.

Management jobs have not disappeared; they have simply become concentrated in the hands of a small elite.

These top-level managers and the lowest-level contract workers are no longer just different in level.It's almost a species difference.。

In the 1960s, CFOs earned 20 times more than ordinary workers, but now it is 300 times more. The fundamental reason for the widening income gap isThe elite class replaces the jobs of the middle working class。

On the whole, American society has formed a kind of "time isolation":

The top class works hard and has no time to rest, but can accumulate a lot of wealth and define themselves by their work and wealth.

The middle class has lost a lot of jobs and has plenty of time to rest, but has lost the meaning of life.

All kinds of modern technologies developed to facilitate life and save time have not reduced the workload of the elite class or made life better for the middle class.

In 1930, Keynes predicted in his book that within a hundred years, due to the advancement of productivity, human beings would reach a state where they would hardly need to work, and ordinary people would only need to work three hours a day.

Now, the bottom two-thirds of the class do work much less hours,But the meaning of "work" has changed。

In Keynes' time, only the aristocrats did not have to work much and had plenty of free time to kill time. But in today's technologically advanced world, working hard has been given the meaning of an elite class, and work itself is a symbol of class.

"Elite" is not a logic, but an ideology. The pursuit of excellence and excellence is integrated into everyone's blood and bones, and it also makes people justify the inequality of social wealth from the bottom of their hearts.

This pursuit of excellence directly destroys the middle class who have lost their jobs spiritually.

Unemployment not only means the loss of economic source, but also the loss of equality and dignity, and the complete loss of the meaning of life and the motivation to live.

How can we escape elitism and live a better life? We will talk about this next time.

Note: This article is reprinted with permission from Aiyu Planet. It has been edited and deleted by Guyu Planet.