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What Happened to Society's Life Script
In the fifties, the American dream was, for the vast majority of people, pretty obvious. You find a job with the main employer of the town, whether that was a coal mine or a factory or a railyard or whatever the case may be. You marry, if not literally the girl next door, then something close; maybe a high school sweetheart. If you were a woman you were then expected to stay home and be a housewife, and except for a few very highly-female coded jobs, that's just what you did. If you were a man you might have been required to serve in the army beforehand, but few people went to college; only if you were wealthy and/or very, very smart. It mostly wasn't your decision either way, about any of it. 'Should I go into the military, or skilled labor, or go to college?' wasn't a question very many people had to ask; usually what you did next after finishing high school was readily apparent, often literally by having only a single option or a very small set thereof. If you did have the opportunity to go to college- most people didn't- both the university and your parents had much more say in what you did there. And I think we should note- the vast majority of people here could find respect as a worker bee. This is important because the vast majority of people have to be worker bees to have a functioning society.
Today, that is not the case. Everyone who wants to can go to university, or near enough. Many people stay in university long past the point at which it does any good, in point of fact. The military is 100% volunteer, and few people live with access to a single major employer. Young people can't find spouses, and these days don't seem to be able to blunder into relationships either. Every individual can, with certain reasonable limits, do what he wishes, and nobody with institutional power seems keen to say no, that's stupid, do this instead.
And it seems that we have lost something, there. Occasionally conservative pundits will start talking about the success sequence- finish high school, work full time, get married, and then have children. There's some other obvious things that go along with it, like 'don't do drugs'. But the gist of the success sequence is, well, a (somewhat vague)life script. And realistically the success sequence is the sort of thing our culture should be putting more effort into promoting; it isn't the default message despite every idea therein being a good one.
I think the youth agree with me, here. Jordan Peterson's popularity, notoriously, came from offering boomer dad advice. Recently there's been discussion of positive male role models to replace Andrew Tate; Andrew Tate's pitch isn't much different from tons of other redpill influencers. What's different is he's selling 'you, too, can be like me, just do x, y, z'. Obviously he's a lying grifter, but his fanbase are mostly teens. What replacement for his (dumb)life script are these positive male role models offering? The pro-social version of Andrew Tate isn't the male feminist activist. It's Mike Rowe.
Unfortunately, "work hard, at a quite possibly unpleasant job" isn't a great sales pitch. But I want to circle back to the point I made ending my discussion of the fifties- most people have to be worker bees. In a functioning society there are few girlbosses because there simply are not very many bosses- the average person will always make the median income, live a not particularly impressive lifestyle, and live in flyover. To put it more pithily, average people will always be average. And being average isn't, well, a flashy and appealing thing. In the past, lack of options meant people became average worker bees. Today, people have the option not to do that; they may not be Indian chiefs and fighter pilots and surgeons and other high status jobs instead, but they're being something, and usually that something is below average, gig workers and basement dwellers. It has to be said, therefore- most people can't figure it out on their own. For every unrecognized genius there's a dozen schizos. Boring middle-aged advice serves a useful purpose; to throw out the social pressure to follow it was a mistake. The question becomes, then, 'how do we bring it back?'
Snobbery is not the contempt of the upper class for the lower. In fact, snobbery is the insecurity of the middle class striver who thinks he might be found out.
Prior to the modern age, there was a fundamental disconnect between the classes. A nobleman was better than a commoner. He wasn't necessarily smarter, or better looking, or more talented. He was better as a condition of his birth and nothing could change that.
Now we live in a meritocracy and things are much more brutal. Nowadays, the rich are actually much smarter and better looking and more talented than the poor. They studied hard, got into an Ivy, and then got the big job at the bulge bracket bank. Do you suck? It's not because you were born poor, it's because you actually suck. That's a bitter pill to swallow.
What's worse, we are constantly bombarded with images of the successful. We watch Sex and the City, and see women gallivanting around the city, boasting fake prestigious jobs, gigantic apartments, and dating tall, handsome successful men who are far out of their league. And these women weren't born rich (except Charlotte). They just moved to New York with a dream. So what's wrong with you?
Comparison is the thief of joy.
We live in a society where we are constantly being bombarded with images of the fabulous life. The life that we could obtain if we only worked a little harder. It's almost in reach.
This is highly contentious. You've got a lot of work ahead of you still to think it's that easy to adduce the claim that we live in a meritocracy. Birthright status may not be a formal doctrine of our political thinking anymore, but informal relationships, connections and patronage networks still by 'far' play the largest role out of any single variable in success. And thinking Ivy League schools and large bank accounts are a sufficient proxy for merit leaves a lot unaccounted for. Even books like the Bell Curve couldn't adequately control for and factor out the importance of 'luck' as far as their analysis goes. And luck matters far more than talent.
Any ideologies that depend on any version of Just World Theory are false and should be abandoned.
There is a large industry devoted to proving that the rich are undeserving, but it doesn't seem to be true. Let's go over the richest Americans.
Jeff Bezos: Born to teenage parents. His dad was a "unicyclist" according to Wikipedia.
Elon Musk: Born to a dysfunctional family. Dad was absent. Mom raised family on a small income.
Mark Zuckerburg: Upper middle class. Probably 95-99 percentile but not spectacularly rich.
Larry Ellison: Born to an unwed mother. Raised by a middle class family in Chicago.
Warren Buffett. Minor gentry. Father was a U.S. congressman
Bill Gates: Father was a wealthy layer. 99-99.9 percentile.
Steve Ballmer. Upper middle class.
Larry Page. Upper middle class.
Obviously, these people are much more privileged than average, but nothing unremarkable. Only Buffett and maybe Gates could be considered true aristocracy. The most remarkable aspect is that 50% are Jewish. IQ is the true aristocracy in the 21st century.
If you read the biographies of any of these men it's clear that they possessed an exceptional intellect from an early age. Honestly, I doubt any of these 8 have an IQ below 145.
I think we can cherry pick the data and have it any way we want in picking our specific cases to compare that make our points. I'm not saying talent is irrelevant to success. What I'm saying here is that society-wide, resource distribution is the most important variable to what's being addressed here.
You can try and change the distribution of talents all you want. But that still doesn't override the effects of resource distribution. Whenever any misfortune befalls you, it's increasingly difficult to get back up; whereas if you have better luck as far as initial conditions go, you'll more quickly accumulate enough resources to be able to weather the effects of later misfortunes down the road. This fundamentally is why it's almost impossible to escape poverty no matter how talented you are or how hard you work, and consequently there's a lot that can be said about lazy and useless rich people.
And this phenomenon is pretty well attested to, especially amongst experienced investors. If you simply go and fund one business with a ton of money in hopes of leveraging profit from it, you're highly prone to losing your shirt, and that's because the average rate of business failure simply becomes your probability of losing everything. But if you fund ten businesses with a tenth of that same money each, you'll get ahead, even when several of those businesses fail; since then the average rate of business success simply becomes your return on investment. You have to invest in failure to increase your probability of success.
The same thing rings true when you have ideologues who hold up the failure of the solar panel manufacturers like Solyndra as a reason the government shouldn’t “pick winners and losers” with things like loan programs, and yet they ignore the fact that in this is what 'all' investors do, the net effect of the government’s investments can only be positive if several plays are bet. You expect to lose some, because that’s the only way you win some. People hold up Solyndra as proof of their ideology, by ignoring all the companies funded by the same program that didn’t fail. The government is making a profit on that program.
To your point about IQ, there's actually a respectable body of literature that shows that there is no causal relationship between IQ and wealth; and although there 'is' a correlation between IQ and annual income, the correlation is pretty small and flat. The truth is rich people aren't actually that much smarter than poor people. Once you control for factors like 'being raised in a wealthy household', there's no statistically significant correlation between IQ and wealth. The simple fact is, luck actually produces most of peoples fortunes.
Are you new here? Not only is there a nearly perfect correlation between IQ and income, there is no ceiling. A person with an IQ of 150 will (on average) be wealthier than a mere simpleton with an IQ of 120.
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2023/02/there-is-no-iq-threshold-effect-also-not-for-income/
You can argue about causation all you want, but how could higher IQ not be correlated with higher wealth? That just doesn't even make sense. I mean, seriously read about the 8 billionaires I linked. All are EXTREME outliers in intelligence. At least +3 STD.
Without re-litigating the HBD debate, consider that the academic literature on this subject is extremely compromised and dishonest. Throw it into the dumpster and start from first principles.
If this is going to be a discussion where we're simply hurling academic papers at each other that neither of us are going to read, then I see little point in continuing it.
Read the links provided and your question will likely be answered.
My entire point is that I reject your framing of the matter that IQ spells out an aristocracy as well as the proposition that we live in a meritocracy. My counter-narrative to that is that luck matters more than talent. Since you don't directly deny that outright or do much to address it, I suppose I'll take the concessions. But I'll add further on the matter for anyone who isn't satisfied with a dismissive sneer.
To reiterate again, when it comes to wealth, rich people simply aren’t that much smarter than poor people. Zagorsky pointed out that “people with above-average IQ scores are only 1.2 times as likely as individuals with below-average IQ scores to have a comparatively high net worth,” which means, “relatively large numbers” of people with low IQs are rich. And even to the extent that there are more rich people with high IQs than poor, this is 'entirely' explained by luck, not talent. Rich people are only that 1.2 times more likely to be smarter insofar as they were advantaged to develop more of their potential IQ by the fortunes of their environment (like “growing up rich” for example). Once you control for all that, no correlation remains.
Instead of a 1:1 correspondence, high IQ barely helps and the curve is pretty flat. So yes, there is 'some' correlation, but it’s weak. Zagorsky said “the average income difference between a person with an IQ score in the normal range (100) and someone in the top 2% of society (130) is currently between $6000 and $18,500 per year,” or roughly on average just $12,000. That isn't actually a lot. And he says, “the relationship is not very strong.” There is a stronger correlation at the highest incomes, few are so lucky, and the correlation is only notable for any IQ above average, after which more IQ makes little observable difference. “People with above-average IQ scores (> 100) are three times as likely as below-average IQ individuals to have a high (> $105,000) income,” that describes almost no one (only 10% of individuals earn so much), and all one needs to have so good a chance at that is any above-average IQ.
And so I'll reiterate again. Those who end up at the top will be mediocre or slightly above mediocre; not the best and brightest. Look at Zagorsky’s table. Look at how many high IQ people earn less than $30,000 a year, which is less than the U.S. national median. Look at how many earn less than $40,000, the national median for those holding a full time job. Almost all high-IQ people earn less than $60,000 a year, which is below the U.S. national median household income. And yet see how many low IQ people earn more than these amounts. Again, you'll see that luck matters more than IQ. We even know that skills matter more than intelligence (though even what skills you are taught is largely a function of luck, e.g. what social class you get born into, what schools you get sent to, what learning disabilities you're born with, etc) but when studied we find even skills are overwhelmed by luck in any correlation with success.
IQ is a bell curve, which means there's a lot more people in the middle than the ends. So that figure is greatly influenced by the mass of people near the center of the bell curve; that is, a randomly selected person is most likely (by a factor of more than 2:1) to be within 1SD of the median. It speaks to the strength of the correlation that, even considering that, a randomly selected person in the top half is 20% more likely to have high net worth than a randomly selected person in the bottom half.
$12,000 is indeed a lot, if the median is $40,000.
10% is not "almost no-one" and that claim does not mean "all one needs to have so good a chance at that is any above-average IQ"; that is, it does not mean that someone with an IQ of 101 is as likely to have a > $105,000 income than someone with an IQ of 120. And further, note that these graphs left off the "very rich".
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