11 June 2012

Robert Michels returns - in The Nation. Christoper Hayes observes "The Iron Law of Meritocrcy."


"And we might ask what a society that has been corrupted entirely by the Iron Law of Meritocracy would look like. It would be a society with extremely high and rising inequality yet little circulation of elites. A society in which the pillar institutions were populated and presided over by a group of hyper-educated, ambitious overachievers who enjoyed tremendous monetary rewards as well as unparalleled political power and prestige, and yet who managed to insulate themselves from sanction, competition and accountability; a group of people who could more or less rest assured that now that they have achieved their status, now that they have scaled to the top of the pyramid, they, their peers and their progeny will stay there.
...It would, in other words, look a lot like the American elite in the first years of the twenty-first century."
Read the rest: Why Elites Fail

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