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ELITE

                                                   September 6, 2012

Elitism, considered over four domains:

  o  politics
       utilitarian, pragmatic                  PROTO_ELITE
  o  propaganda/marketing
  o  cultural
  o  professional

We favor democracy over elitism in the political realm,
for roughly two (or three?) reasons:

   We have no way of reliably
   evaluating human beings,
   and so go for a universal
   franchise (utilitarian)

   The universal franchise reduces
   the risk of revolution or
   civil war (though perhaps not      Heinlein made the clever (if
   military coup): everyone           perhaps not exactly moral)
   feels like they have a stake       observation that you could perhaps
   already, they're represented,      get away with extending the
   if rarely entirely happy.          franchise solely to those likely to
   (pragmatic).                       fight-- Heinlein's Starship
                                      Troopers scenario restricted it to
                                      military veterans.  No point in
                                      worrying about the gutless sheep.

                                                     Head off the problem
    You might add in an aspect of                    of military coups by
    propaganda here-- you pay lip                    putting the military
    service to democractic attitudes                 in charge in the first
    in order to appeal to the vanity                 place.
    of the mob.                                      
                                                        TROOPERS

       But in my taxonomy, I'm
       arbitrarily breaking
       propaganda out as a fourth
       domain...



In the cultural domain, there's somewhat
less agreement-- is there anything wrong
with an elite of the intelligent (or
at least, educated) having a different
set of tastes (or just affecting to have        HONEST_JOHN
a different set of tastes?) than the
democratic hordes, the mass audience?

   Different people break in different
   ways on this one, and it seems to be      It might be most interesting
   little more than a matter of tribal       to look at the cases of
   affiliation.                              of class traitors... elitists
                                             that acknowledge the art
                                             of the masses; the members of
                                             the mass that regret their
                                             lack of access to the high
                                             culture...

Then in the professional domain, we
are all happily elitists.  We want
doctors trained as doctors, ranked
and graded by the university testing          There are other areas,
mills; ditto for engineers; and               such as programming,
ditto for lawyers (to the extent that         where it's not entirely
we want lawyers at all).                      clear we want to trust
                                              the experts.

                                                   GENTLE_ART_OF_PROGRAMMING

And my fourth domain is
propaganda and marketing:

We are all required to at
least profess our respect for
the common whatever our
private beliefs might be.
                                              MASS_DISAPPOINTMENT
   Unless of course, you're happy
   selling to the niche market of
   an "elite".


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