The attitude of the left toward elites might be blamed on\nKarl Marx, but Conan the Barbarian is the true villain. He started the Age of Empires, a form of\nhuman organization not known for its liberal values. The classless system of hunter-gatherers was\nreplaced with a two-class system of oppressors and oppressed. That segued into an aristocracy, which was a\nbit more polite, but still elite villains, according to Marx. But Marx put business moguls in the same\ncategory, which is totally uncalled-for. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moguls don\u2019t coerce, which was the stock-in-trade of the barbarian upper class.\u00a0 They offer value.\u00a0 They are the elites in organizing people to accomplish things.\u00a0 They merge matter, energy, and information to produce things that we want.\u00a0 They operate in the positive sum game game of trade, compared to the barbarian zero-sum game of theft.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We need to reexamine what we mean by elite.\u00a0 In a meritocracy we should be able to acknowledge superior performance in any category.\u00a0 Just as a statistical exercise, we can use standard deviations to find people well above average, say from one to two standard deviations above average. Better than that and you\u2019re in the top 2-1\/2 percent of, to put it as generically as possible, successful people.\u00a0 Or we may reserve the word “elite” to that one in a thousand person who\u2019s just got it together, at 3+ SD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The purpose of culture is to convey information through\ntime, especially information about survival. \nThe agricultural age birthed a new meme, \u201cWe can survive by raiding the\nsiloes of our neighbors!\u201d The Barbarian\nmeme is one of the Great Memes of Humanity \u2013 though \u201cgreat\u201d only in the sense\nthat Valdemort was a great wizard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next Great Meme was far more liberal, \u201cWe can trust\ntotal strangers!\u201d It exploited the\nnon-zero-sum game of trade. It also\nintroduced a middle class, which is one reason it\u2019s \u201cgreat\u201d. Not all the cultures in today\u2019s world have\nembraced the more modern meme. Nor have\nany modern societies completely evolved past the barbarian meme. To some extent, we\u2019re all still stuck in the\nBronze Age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Barbarian meme is the backbone of empires and kingdoms. Coercion still works. Modern dictators are a continuation of a long line of abuse, usually among people who didn’t catch a lot of modern memes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The basic mistake Marx made was to equate the new elite with\nthe old. The aristocrat\/barbarian became\nwealthy using force. The new elite\ndidn\u2019t force anyone to buy their products. \nThey created wealth from raw materials by altering them into more useful\nforms. They added wealth to the world,\ninstead of just transferring wealth from one coffer to another via armed\nrobbery. In addition, lives are\ninevitably lost in a raid, so barbarians are really playing a negative sum\ngame. But since the winning King\/chiefs\nprofit, the losses are acceptable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The attitude of the left toward elites might be blamed on Karl Marx, but Conan the Barbarian is the true villain. He started the Age of Empires, a form of human organization not known for its liberal values. The classless system of hunter-gatherers was replaced with a two-class system of oppressors and oppressed. That segued … <\/p>\n