This is just about the best thing you've ever written. You should find a business periodical or website that does reprints. There's just too much insight to not share it outside the Substack community! You're breaking ground in an analysis of female power and how the newer female dynamics affect the corporate world. It's a reminder that just as men did a terrible job of running Business America during the Mad Men Days, too many chicks and not enough dicks isn't a good recipe for success.
Steve Sailer writes about how the civil service exam was scrapped due to all groups not testing the same.
Interestingly, college degrees and credentials represent even more expensive gatekeeping and inequality than these exams (and others such as IQ exam proxies), but the reason we do not use exams, even ones that were used extensively and cost a lot of money to prove out and standardize, is due to the threat of lawsuits.
ONLY the federal government can solve the issue to allow for the types of exams you envision. Until they change it, we are stuck with both extraneous credentialism AND the exclusion of cognitive skills based assessments:
Degrees - why not? All smart people get them, because smart people are curious.
Writing assignments. I approach this from the opposite angle. I am a huge writer and has always been. And I tended to send 5 page long emails someone sitting next to me.
But recently I am discovering the power of just talking with people, of listening, of empathy.
I think in the age of written social media, it is becoming rarer. I would much rather have a talking assessment.
I don't know about performance assessments because I work for small companies. Fuck big ones. People just know what I do.
I've hired a lot of people (and fired a few), so this is a subject I have a lot of opinions about.
One trend I don't like is that there are corporations in which candidates are interviewed by numerous people...and *any one of them* can veto the candidate. This is insane. My view is that it's good to have multiple people talk w the candidate, but the ultimate decision should be made by the hiring manager...by which I mean the person to whom the candidate will report and who will be ultimately responsible for their performance, not some HR person.
Michael Gibson, who co-managed the Thiel Foundation (funding for talented people who have chosen a non-college route) and who now-co manages the 1517 Fund (venture capital targeted at nonconventional founders) has given a lot of thought to the characteristics of successful startup founders and likes the Greek word Polytrops as a summary of those characteristics. It is a word used to describe Odysseus in The Odyssey, meaning something like "of twists and turns”, also “well travelled, resourceful, and crafty"...ie, a person who will figure out how to get it done, whatever It may be, rather than just banging his or her head against the wall. I think this characteristic is important in all kinds of work settings, not just startups, and will become even more important as AI takes over more of the rote work...and a lot of companies realize that they are just plain overstaffed for college-class white collar positions, AI or no AI.
On the contrary, if you have a small company and it is already staffed with people properly vetted, the approval of all in hiring discussions can be quite useful. I have worked for one place with very rigorous hiring, and no HR to butt into hiring decisions. The result was a very cohesive team where we hired based on everyone's enthusiastic approval, and we found rare talent, usually younger in their career, but FAR better talent than one could find at a large corporate HR led hiring process.
If you trust everyone on your team currently, it is rather important that everyone is in support of a new hire. Face to face interviews tell you more than check boxes and credential requirements. You can hire some very sociable, high IQ, high growth possibility people and get them early in their career due to the overly rigid hiring structure of large corporate environments that overlook amazing candidates.
I think you're fantasizing the grouping into herds of unique human individuals, each with a soul and a personality, talents and skills, that are never repeated twice in all of humankind, based upon a few haphazard characteristics that seem important to you for the purpose of your judging their value to you.
But you are not alone in doing this. "Class" is a pseudo-intellectual fallacy that is far more wrong than it seems to be superficially right, but it has been the crux of just about every cockamamie academic theory for the last 100 years; all of which have got it wrong and have never succeeded in predicting behavior or, where employed as such, improving the quality of human life. Why?
I have, for example, some things in common with those people you would classify together with me -- that is, organize into an analytical set based on randomly chosen schema of your own making. But I am not a cardboard cutout. Are you? I, and every person, am more extensive that just those few facets of life you specified. Besides, the depth and detail of one's life expands and becomes richer and more variegated with age and experience.
"Class" is a conclusion already arrived at, but offered as a postulate. But as a postulate that is its own conclusion, "class" is bankrupt of meaning; and where its use occurs in scholarly theorizing one see it as shorthand for myopia.
Ok, then I guess I’ll leave you alone with seeing everything as so unique that patterns can’t be ascertained. I’ll be over here trying to make sense of the world by applying, you know, pattern recognition, which is the basis of all knowledge we’ve produced. Enjoy.
Individuals associate in a myriad of ways. You have chosen a few characteristics with which to represent the whole, despite individuation that is beyond the capacity of human ratiocination to comprehend well enough to explain behavior in your own terms.
Address the issue at hand: you've specified a few characteristics which you've combined together into what you call a "class." Why these?
Do you mean to say that all of the members of your purported class experiences life in the same way? Expresses the same ideas? Behaves the same way? Of course you do, that is the effect of your classification, because your analysis proceeds on the basis of the insufficiency of this classification.
But you haven't made any argument why these are the characteristics that you have chosen. Presumably these are important to you, but they aren't necessarily to me and you haven't persuaded me. You have decided that you can only see the world through this prism.
But I am saying that your prism is distorted, short-sighted and mistaken, because you miss the individuals for the narrow groupings into what you claim to be meaningful patterns your perception has forced you into creating in order to gather a semblance of comprehension of human behavior.
Even German Shepards have individual personalities that make one very different from another. So much more so humankind.
5. Points (And I would like to hear your personal honest response, if it pleases you)
1. Your experience-based assessment of the glut of aspiring elites relative to the supply of "Good jobs" is reminiscent of Jim Clifton (Gallup CEO) and his landmark book "The Coming Jobs War". Have you read it? Please do. You complement him well. It's a quick, foundational read. I believe it has been deliberately suppressed by the Obama Administration's revolving door staff, after Clifton applied his theory from it to denounced the low unemployment rate put out by the Administration. He said the "Real" unemployment rate was closer to 18% - and promptly returned to CNN live to apologize (deer in headlights), stating directly that he wanted to go home alive tonight. Watch the Youtube recording, if me recount sounds exaggerated.
2. Please elaborate: What are analytical skills? I suspect that "Some" people have them, and don't know others don't or don't know enough to show off that this is how they think and solve problems, at interviews. They assume everyone is aiming to organize their thoughts along these lines. develop analytical skills. What exactly do you have as an example of "Data analysis" or "Thinking in systems"? People use those words alot; I hear them bantered around. But I don't think most people are using them to bring to mind something specific - rather, they seem to be glossing over an explanation of their point (which isn't clear to them), with terminology (No I don't think you are trying to do that - which is why I ask you to elaborate).
3. I detect a deep seated sense of inadequacy and panic among professional women (not of the technical science professions), that they are in fact useless women. And that because they are useless, they cannot defend why they should have their job. And so their security in their success comes from pleasing their boss and pleasing customers - both of which makes them vulnerable to exploitation at work and neurotic stress. I think they would be much happier if they could measure their competence in skills. They would also be alot less easy to manipulate and intimidate. Perhaps that is a reason why this workforce is not being empowered? Does your experience support this?
4. I have noticed when any American workforce in any profession these days, becomes dominant female, it seems to degrade in meritocratic excellence, ethical behavior, financial pay, and independence. I understand females are risk averse and prefer stable salaries - but so do professors and teachers. Once upon a time, they were considered intellectuals. So why do you think this is?
5. Can you introduce systemic thinking into a culture of a profession that is feminized and soft-skilled? I've found pushback (via lack of enthusiasm), for such a thing. It is interpreted as more work, with no immediate savings - or a requirement to hire someone else.
I meant the link to the terrified CNN apology video you referenced. I easily found the book and the media propaganda “debunking” thereof. But not that video.
Rob Henderson has a complementary article posted today.
I am not a fatalist and tend to believe that our system, although often too slow to adjust, will generally make needed course corrections. However, I am growing a bit more concerned about the tectonic shift from AI that will be required to realign society into a functioning model again.
We have arrived at a point of social and economic norms that are at odds with evolutionary biology and human nature. It worked for a while when enough people could attain what they reasonably desired... but more and more Wall Street and the massive corporations, in collusion with big government, have rigged the system to extract more and more and more, until they have tapped out the very consumer system they feed from.
Las Vegas and Hawaii visitors down 20%.
New cars are stacking up on the manufacturing lots.
Home inventories are high and growing in many markets.
On the positive side, the Trump administration is eliminating millions of illegal immigrants that drive down wages. They are also working to reshore more industry and manufacturing jobs with tariffs and other domestic industrial policy. The Trump admin is also forcing high learning to get their act together... to stop pushing bullshit degrees like Gender Studies, and to start delivering a product and service that actual helps students achieve economic success.
More young people are going to church.
More young people are rejecting woke and extreme feminism that foments hate for traditional family values.
I am less worried about where this will lead, because our system is self-correcting. I am more worried about the level of social and economic pain so many Americans will endure while the system is too slow to adjust.
With the Professional Managerial Class chasing more power and money leveraging the Global Order and globalism, we have all felt like we were riding enough of that opportunity wave to ignore the long-term negative consequences. But those negative consequences have all come home to roost now... and AI is the fox that got placed in the henhouse.
The system is correcting, but I fear that as Gen X and Millennials gain power it will stall in its self correction. I've become pro-capitalist lately because I finally see that it's the least bad system we have. But, it took a lot of reading and thinking to get there. That said, I think Trump's tarriffs are harmful and may lead to losses for him. The price of coffee, for example, has skyrocketed. I can afford it, but how many people who voted for him are hurting now? In my line of work, bookings are also very low, which is concerning, because businesses don't want to spend money amid uncertainty.
We are in a difficult position where globalism has benefitted the top 10% of the country but at the expense of the rest. The only real benefit for the rest had been cheaper goods. That did not stop with Trump tariffs. That stopped, except for TVs and iPhones, because of the corruption of capitalism that is corporatism... corporate consolidation of entire markets. Grocery inflation was almost hyper BEFORE Trump tariffs. It is amazing to me how short are our memories in consideration of this point.
Will tariffs cause more inflation? Short-term, yes. But the system will settle a new normal that includes increased domestic production... more competition on value. Countries are getting lower or zero tariffs by committing investment in the US for industry and manufacturing.
Use beef as an example, there are today beef cooperatives sprouting up around the country to circumvent the big corporate supply chain monopoly. Those competitive business models had been previously thwarted by Biden/Democrat environmental regulations that had been pushed and promoted by big corporate beef. Trump canceled those regulatory blocks.
Global trade is good when the goods cannot be produced domestically or cannot be produced in quantity needed. However, where we screwed up is to think that capitalism supported making jobs a tradeable commodity. Coffee should be free of tariffs because we cannot produce it domestically. However, implementing a national industrial policy to reshore jobs after the corporatist and PMC cretins have exported them for decades is not going to work using a scalpel to implement tariffs. The goal is complete economic disruption to get the US back to economic health for the bottom 90%.
"Performance in the jobs going to elite women can’t be measured by tangible outcomes, like in HR, marketing, nonprofits, and other people and process-oriented professions that require only communication and administrative skills".....how about Sales? It is people-oriented, does also sometimes require technical skills...and is one of the most measurable jobs within a typical company.
The most elite women don't tend to go into sales, but I also work in a world in which sales is considered prestigious so many do. And, women are often very good at sales too. But on the flipside, they deal in relationships so they, too, have policed me when I've come in to scope a deal or otherwise not pushed back against a bad one.
Sales often lacks a baseline salary (You are heavily dependent upon commission), so doesn't attract risk-averse individuals (like majority of females) who prioritize maintaining financial security - in the form of predictability. I personally, did not like Sales for this reason, so I can't disparage women for not being attracted to it. Although, my experience was limited to working for a financial planner - and I hated cold calling .
I was never into sales either until very recently, when I realized I can both build and sell. But first, I had to become more risk tolerant and ok with rejection.
I've known a lot of successful saleswomen...many of these were in fields requiring a fair amount of technical knowledge and did have a significant baseline salary.
The residential real estate field seems to be definitely majority-female, I don't know what the mix of salary vs commission in this world typical is. Commercial real estate seems to skew more male.
Real estate is heavily female not least because it's a catch-all fallback for those without skills. I know because I've seen several women in my family and friends go into it for lack of something else to do.
Thanks for telling me that! I guess I just had a rather bad job. I did not even know sales jobs typically came with baseline salary. I'd personally be alot more incentivized to be competitive, knowing that my basic salary and needs were taken care of, and I didn't need to worry about them, and could focus on "Winning". :)
As to real estate, how many of the successful FULL TIME real estate agents, do you think are women (as opposed to part time)?
A quick view that they've passed expected standards. Like licensed plumbers tell me that if they screw it up I have authority to get after them through the registrar of contractors vs. trying to sue them in small claims court for damages.
This is classic victim blaming. Was life so much worse under Biden? No not at all. In fact we don’t have the arbitrary chaos of random tariff mania. Bond investors weren’t running for the exit under him. Heck they have already priced in 2 percent inflation that will will cost average Americans around 2000 per year. I’m mad as hell at this joke of an administration and you should be too😡😆😄
There are several ingredients: degrees, parents' educational status, actual money your parents have, what you make yourself, your relative knowledge of social graces
I don't think these people are superior. So I don't think they truly constitute "High Class" - just "Upper class". I think they in general, are hoarding positions (financial and social) that reinforces the illusion of their superior taste, creativity, morality and ability (In terms of morality, I think that's what woke/DEI ideas are for - but no one's convinced of their relevant goodness by it, except for them). I think in terms of talent, intelligence and ethical integrity - American "Upper class" has fallen far. Most Valedictorians for example, are rejected from the Ivy League. So those people have to go somewhere. I no longer mistake "Class" for "Classy".
Thanks. I have trouble putting my finger on "Class" in America because we all know it when we see it - but the (Social) rules keep changing about how to be included, as well as the economic ones in the "Age of disruption" (I really hate Zuckerberg for popularizing that idea). We're not England with the concept of noblesse oblige. I wish we were. At least it codifies a sense of duty. The Judeo-Protestant work ethic from the Puritans did include a sense of duty to the people and to God, in one's wealth acquisition and social prosperity. But we aren't anchored by that now as a national identity. I'd say we are about 2 generations removed (In terms of real asset holders).
Awesome essay; I could restack sections of this all day. The part about 360 reviews being a method of enforcing conformity of behavior is particularly spot on!
This is just about the best thing you've ever written. You should find a business periodical or website that does reprints. There's just too much insight to not share it outside the Substack community! You're breaking ground in an analysis of female power and how the newer female dynamics affect the corporate world. It's a reminder that just as men did a terrible job of running Business America during the Mad Men Days, too many chicks and not enough dicks isn't a good recipe for success.
Jack or Jill of all trades and master of all
In practice, this has been true for me.
Me as well.
Women compete for jobs but don't create them.
I honestly struggle to rebut this.
Steve Sailer writes about how the civil service exam was scrapped due to all groups not testing the same.
Interestingly, college degrees and credentials represent even more expensive gatekeeping and inequality than these exams (and others such as IQ exam proxies), but the reason we do not use exams, even ones that were used extensively and cost a lot of money to prove out and standardize, is due to the threat of lawsuits.
ONLY the federal government can solve the issue to allow for the types of exams you envision. Until they change it, we are stuck with both extraneous credentialism AND the exclusion of cognitive skills based assessments:
https://www.stevesailer.net/p/trump-administration-does-something
Degrees - why not? All smart people get them, because smart people are curious.
Writing assignments. I approach this from the opposite angle. I am a huge writer and has always been. And I tended to send 5 page long emails someone sitting next to me.
But recently I am discovering the power of just talking with people, of listening, of empathy.
I think in the age of written social media, it is becoming rarer. I would much rather have a talking assessment.
I don't know about performance assessments because I work for small companies. Fuck big ones. People just know what I do.
I've hired a lot of people (and fired a few), so this is a subject I have a lot of opinions about.
One trend I don't like is that there are corporations in which candidates are interviewed by numerous people...and *any one of them* can veto the candidate. This is insane. My view is that it's good to have multiple people talk w the candidate, but the ultimate decision should be made by the hiring manager...by which I mean the person to whom the candidate will report and who will be ultimately responsible for their performance, not some HR person.
Michael Gibson, who co-managed the Thiel Foundation (funding for talented people who have chosen a non-college route) and who now-co manages the 1517 Fund (venture capital targeted at nonconventional founders) has given a lot of thought to the characteristics of successful startup founders and likes the Greek word Polytrops as a summary of those characteristics. It is a word used to describe Odysseus in The Odyssey, meaning something like "of twists and turns”, also “well travelled, resourceful, and crafty"...ie, a person who will figure out how to get it done, whatever It may be, rather than just banging his or her head against the wall. I think this characteristic is important in all kinds of work settings, not just startups, and will become even more important as AI takes over more of the rote work...and a lot of companies realize that they are just plain overstaffed for college-class white collar positions, AI or no AI.
On the contrary, if you have a small company and it is already staffed with people properly vetted, the approval of all in hiring discussions can be quite useful. I have worked for one place with very rigorous hiring, and no HR to butt into hiring decisions. The result was a very cohesive team where we hired based on everyone's enthusiastic approval, and we found rare talent, usually younger in their career, but FAR better talent than one could find at a large corporate HR led hiring process.
If you trust everyone on your team currently, it is rather important that everyone is in support of a new hire. Face to face interviews tell you more than check boxes and credential requirements. You can hire some very sociable, high IQ, high growth possibility people and get them early in their career due to the overly rigid hiring structure of large corporate environments that overlook amazing candidates.
I think you're fantasizing the grouping into herds of unique human individuals, each with a soul and a personality, talents and skills, that are never repeated twice in all of humankind, based upon a few haphazard characteristics that seem important to you for the purpose of your judging their value to you.
But you are not alone in doing this. "Class" is a pseudo-intellectual fallacy that is far more wrong than it seems to be superficially right, but it has been the crux of just about every cockamamie academic theory for the last 100 years; all of which have got it wrong and have never succeeded in predicting behavior or, where employed as such, improving the quality of human life. Why?
I have, for example, some things in common with those people you would classify together with me -- that is, organize into an analytical set based on randomly chosen schema of your own making. But I am not a cardboard cutout. Are you? I, and every person, am more extensive that just those few facets of life you specified. Besides, the depth and detail of one's life expands and becomes richer and more variegated with age and experience.
"Class" is a conclusion already arrived at, but offered as a postulate. But as a postulate that is its own conclusion, "class" is bankrupt of meaning; and where its use occurs in scholarly theorizing one see it as shorthand for myopia.
Ok, then I guess I’ll leave you alone with seeing everything as so unique that patterns can’t be ascertained. I’ll be over here trying to make sense of the world by applying, you know, pattern recognition, which is the basis of all knowledge we’ve produced. Enjoy.
Individuals associate in a myriad of ways. You have chosen a few characteristics with which to represent the whole, despite individuation that is beyond the capacity of human ratiocination to comprehend well enough to explain behavior in your own terms.
So nothing is knowable because people are special snowflakes, got it.
Address the issue at hand: you've specified a few characteristics which you've combined together into what you call a "class." Why these?
Do you mean to say that all of the members of your purported class experiences life in the same way? Expresses the same ideas? Behaves the same way? Of course you do, that is the effect of your classification, because your analysis proceeds on the basis of the insufficiency of this classification.
But you haven't made any argument why these are the characteristics that you have chosen. Presumably these are important to you, but they aren't necessarily to me and you haven't persuaded me. You have decided that you can only see the world through this prism.
But I am saying that your prism is distorted, short-sighted and mistaken, because you miss the individuals for the narrow groupings into what you claim to be meaningful patterns your perception has forced you into creating in order to gather a semblance of comprehension of human behavior.
Even German Shepards have individual personalities that make one very different from another. So much more so humankind.
Hi Ms. Pandey,
5. Points (And I would like to hear your personal honest response, if it pleases you)
1. Your experience-based assessment of the glut of aspiring elites relative to the supply of "Good jobs" is reminiscent of Jim Clifton (Gallup CEO) and his landmark book "The Coming Jobs War". Have you read it? Please do. You complement him well. It's a quick, foundational read. I believe it has been deliberately suppressed by the Obama Administration's revolving door staff, after Clifton applied his theory from it to denounced the low unemployment rate put out by the Administration. He said the "Real" unemployment rate was closer to 18% - and promptly returned to CNN live to apologize (deer in headlights), stating directly that he wanted to go home alive tonight. Watch the Youtube recording, if me recount sounds exaggerated.
2. Please elaborate: What are analytical skills? I suspect that "Some" people have them, and don't know others don't or don't know enough to show off that this is how they think and solve problems, at interviews. They assume everyone is aiming to organize their thoughts along these lines. develop analytical skills. What exactly do you have as an example of "Data analysis" or "Thinking in systems"? People use those words alot; I hear them bantered around. But I don't think most people are using them to bring to mind something specific - rather, they seem to be glossing over an explanation of their point (which isn't clear to them), with terminology (No I don't think you are trying to do that - which is why I ask you to elaborate).
3. I detect a deep seated sense of inadequacy and panic among professional women (not of the technical science professions), that they are in fact useless women. And that because they are useless, they cannot defend why they should have their job. And so their security in their success comes from pleasing their boss and pleasing customers - both of which makes them vulnerable to exploitation at work and neurotic stress. I think they would be much happier if they could measure their competence in skills. They would also be alot less easy to manipulate and intimidate. Perhaps that is a reason why this workforce is not being empowered? Does your experience support this?
4. I have noticed when any American workforce in any profession these days, becomes dominant female, it seems to degrade in meritocratic excellence, ethical behavior, financial pay, and independence. I understand females are risk averse and prefer stable salaries - but so do professors and teachers. Once upon a time, they were considered intellectuals. So why do you think this is?
5. Can you introduce systemic thinking into a culture of a profession that is feminized and soft-skilled? I've found pushback (via lack of enthusiasm), for such a thing. It is interpreted as more work, with no immediate savings - or a requirement to hire someone else.
Do you have the Clifton link? Google AI can't find it, but AI is lying biased trash that hides things, so...
Sure, I have the link.
It's not a secret. I didn't know "Google AI" is as bad as Google search parameters...
GALLUP NEWS REFERENCE
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/170483/listen-coming-jobs-war-available-audio-book.aspx
GOOD READS
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12596785-the-coming-jobs-war
SIMON AND SHUSTER
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Coming-Jobs-War/Jim-Clifton/9781595620552
AMAZON LINK
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Jobs-War-Jim-Clifton/dp/1595620559/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=1334809612345012&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.91lKofDN3YutxrrY61lE4qwYKtJzMtA9vkZEB16dlJr-4r0nD3zH8c0vXoe7epEr5Sti-4KDXBFPjTBb21mEqp2ziFq56edYwVuYxDP1m0waTHB3iPyIXhDrf1mHl8JaQm_dnl0SKr_f929q2JtAvFDzxzQmfPoOOtdOpfTaE5gfZL1V4q1FvG9W7L_fMZMBAGRSTVFuigJKvHMQ89ZjGp70y7uSoLJsM0xHZvJbEG0.DrXqQ6AWeXC2BGRT7B84DPpVBw0S4xTJJkFFKJficeU&dib_tag=se&hvadid=83425875830278&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=97018&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-83426732807748%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=22538_13494488&keywords=the+coming+jobs+war&mcid=c7d88f637e953290b61f7964a598a40c&msclkid=6602c77097f018fdcad1afe6326d6e8d&qid=1754703264&sr=8-1
I meant the link to the terrified CNN apology video you referenced. I easily found the book and the media propaganda “debunking” thereof. But not that video.
Working on it. I THINK this was the original interview he did, (With FOX Business, not CNN - oops), and I am looking around for the retraction.
https://youtu.be/_z98oK0m0JM?si=w-7HhnIlK4PC2PJc
Rob Henderson has a complementary article posted today.
I am not a fatalist and tend to believe that our system, although often too slow to adjust, will generally make needed course corrections. However, I am growing a bit more concerned about the tectonic shift from AI that will be required to realign society into a functioning model again.
We have arrived at a point of social and economic norms that are at odds with evolutionary biology and human nature. It worked for a while when enough people could attain what they reasonably desired... but more and more Wall Street and the massive corporations, in collusion with big government, have rigged the system to extract more and more and more, until they have tapped out the very consumer system they feed from.
Las Vegas and Hawaii visitors down 20%.
New cars are stacking up on the manufacturing lots.
Home inventories are high and growing in many markets.
On the positive side, the Trump administration is eliminating millions of illegal immigrants that drive down wages. They are also working to reshore more industry and manufacturing jobs with tariffs and other domestic industrial policy. The Trump admin is also forcing high learning to get their act together... to stop pushing bullshit degrees like Gender Studies, and to start delivering a product and service that actual helps students achieve economic success.
More young people are going to church.
More young people are rejecting woke and extreme feminism that foments hate for traditional family values.
I am less worried about where this will lead, because our system is self-correcting. I am more worried about the level of social and economic pain so many Americans will endure while the system is too slow to adjust.
With the Professional Managerial Class chasing more power and money leveraging the Global Order and globalism, we have all felt like we were riding enough of that opportunity wave to ignore the long-term negative consequences. But those negative consequences have all come home to roost now... and AI is the fox that got placed in the henhouse.
The system is correcting, but I fear that as Gen X and Millennials gain power it will stall in its self correction. I've become pro-capitalist lately because I finally see that it's the least bad system we have. But, it took a lot of reading and thinking to get there. That said, I think Trump's tarriffs are harmful and may lead to losses for him. The price of coffee, for example, has skyrocketed. I can afford it, but how many people who voted for him are hurting now? In my line of work, bookings are also very low, which is concerning, because businesses don't want to spend money amid uncertainty.
We are in a difficult position where globalism has benefitted the top 10% of the country but at the expense of the rest. The only real benefit for the rest had been cheaper goods. That did not stop with Trump tariffs. That stopped, except for TVs and iPhones, because of the corruption of capitalism that is corporatism... corporate consolidation of entire markets. Grocery inflation was almost hyper BEFORE Trump tariffs. It is amazing to me how short are our memories in consideration of this point.
Will tariffs cause more inflation? Short-term, yes. But the system will settle a new normal that includes increased domestic production... more competition on value. Countries are getting lower or zero tariffs by committing investment in the US for industry and manufacturing.
Use beef as an example, there are today beef cooperatives sprouting up around the country to circumvent the big corporate supply chain monopoly. Those competitive business models had been previously thwarted by Biden/Democrat environmental regulations that had been pushed and promoted by big corporate beef. Trump canceled those regulatory blocks.
Global trade is good when the goods cannot be produced domestically or cannot be produced in quantity needed. However, where we screwed up is to think that capitalism supported making jobs a tradeable commodity. Coffee should be free of tariffs because we cannot produce it domestically. However, implementing a national industrial policy to reshore jobs after the corporatist and PMC cretins have exported them for decades is not going to work using a scalpel to implement tariffs. The goal is complete economic disruption to get the US back to economic health for the bottom 90%.
….and I did want to mention, that articles like this, I save in a special e-mail folder
"Saved Substacks" - to revisit again
I appreciate knowing that
"Performance in the jobs going to elite women can’t be measured by tangible outcomes, like in HR, marketing, nonprofits, and other people and process-oriented professions that require only communication and administrative skills".....how about Sales? It is people-oriented, does also sometimes require technical skills...and is one of the most measurable jobs within a typical company.
The most elite women don't tend to go into sales, but I also work in a world in which sales is considered prestigious so many do. And, women are often very good at sales too. But on the flipside, they deal in relationships so they, too, have policed me when I've come in to scope a deal or otherwise not pushed back against a bad one.
Although people who are 'elite' college graduates don't generally go into Sales, unless it is a temporary ticket-punching kind of arrangement.
Sales often lacks a baseline salary (You are heavily dependent upon commission), so doesn't attract risk-averse individuals (like majority of females) who prioritize maintaining financial security - in the form of predictability. I personally, did not like Sales for this reason, so I can't disparage women for not being attracted to it. Although, my experience was limited to working for a financial planner - and I hated cold calling .
I was never into sales either until very recently, when I realized I can both build and sell. But first, I had to become more risk tolerant and ok with rejection.
Thanks for telling me that :) What do you mean "Build" and sell?
Architecting and building a system of software and selling the deal to build it and/or selling the software itself
I've known a lot of successful saleswomen...many of these were in fields requiring a fair amount of technical knowledge and did have a significant baseline salary.
The residential real estate field seems to be definitely majority-female, I don't know what the mix of salary vs commission in this world typical is. Commercial real estate seems to skew more male.
Real estate is heavily female not least because it's a catch-all fallback for those without skills. I know because I've seen several women in my family and friends go into it for lack of something else to do.
Thanks for telling me that! I guess I just had a rather bad job. I did not even know sales jobs typically came with baseline salary. I'd personally be alot more incentivized to be competitive, knowing that my basic salary and needs were taken care of, and I didn't need to worry about them, and could focus on "Winning". :)
As to real estate, how many of the successful FULL TIME real estate agents, do you think are women (as opposed to part time)?
"Calculus is an inspired response to the world." -- anon
Please elaborate
Newton and Leibniz already elaborated.
Credentials are important in many cases but can, and have always been, weaponized to block people out.
Why important? What do they tell you about a person, say, three years out of school that the person's resume doesn't tell you?
A quick view that they've passed expected standards. Like licensed plumbers tell me that if they screw it up I have authority to get after them through the registrar of contractors vs. trying to sue them in small claims court for damages.
This is classic victim blaming. Was life so much worse under Biden? No not at all. In fact we don’t have the arbitrary chaos of random tariff mania. Bond investors weren’t running for the exit under him. Heck they have already priced in 2 percent inflation that will will cost average Americans around 2000 per year. I’m mad as hell at this joke of an administration and you should be too😡😆😄
This has nothing to do with Biden but ok.
Class. What is it? Of what or whom comprised? And why? How measured? How assessed? Taken for granted? Based upon what, exactly?
There are several ingredients: degrees, parents' educational status, actual money your parents have, what you make yourself, your relative knowledge of social graces
You're sure of that?
I don't think these people are superior. So I don't think they truly constitute "High Class" - just "Upper class". I think they in general, are hoarding positions (financial and social) that reinforces the illusion of their superior taste, creativity, morality and ability (In terms of morality, I think that's what woke/DEI ideas are for - but no one's convinced of their relevant goodness by it, except for them). I think in terms of talent, intelligence and ethical integrity - American "Upper class" has fallen far. Most Valedictorians for example, are rejected from the Ivy League. So those people have to go somewhere. I no longer mistake "Class" for "Classy".
I'm not sure how better to explain class than I just did for Richard, but you're right that I actually missed taste as constitutive of class identity.
Thanks. I have trouble putting my finger on "Class" in America because we all know it when we see it - but the (Social) rules keep changing about how to be included, as well as the economic ones in the "Age of disruption" (I really hate Zuckerberg for popularizing that idea). We're not England with the concept of noblesse oblige. I wish we were. At least it codifies a sense of duty. The Judeo-Protestant work ethic from the Puritans did include a sense of duty to the people and to God, in one's wealth acquisition and social prosperity. But we aren't anchored by that now as a national identity. I'd say we are about 2 generations removed (In terms of real asset holders).
Awesome essay; I could restack sections of this all day. The part about 360 reviews being a method of enforcing conformity of behavior is particularly spot on!
your commentary on this is much appreciated