[bsenftner]

In undergrad I did a formal Philosophy / Sociology study, where we were looking at human motivations. The research indicated that prestige is the number 1 driver of human motivation. Gaining prestige "trumps" ethics. Nobody likes to hear that.

[derbOac]

I think this is one reason it is important to cast unethical behavior in terms of lack of competency — that someone has to break the rules to get ahead because they're not competent enough to do things fairly or ethically.

Empathy, while important in my opinion personally, often doesn't matter to certain people. So you have to decrease the prestige associated with unethical behavior, above and beyond it being unethical per se.

[DFHippie]

This. I think so much of the fascism and corruption afoot in the world comes from people who believe they deserve things they are incompetent to get. Their sense of entitlement is in conflict with their competence and unrestrained by concern for others. To soothe their ego wound they project their faults onto the person who has what they want. "It isn't my failure; it's your trickery!" Now instead of shame and impotence they feel righteous anger.

[bsenftner]

I think you are correct. I've spent extended time in uber wealth circles, and this describes the offspring mindset of the generations after wealth acquisition. Their incompetence matches their entitlement, and then they walk into nepotism.

[macintux]

I don't know that it's necessarily incompetence. The idea of "overproduction of elites" pops up frequently:

https://www.niskanencenter.org/are-we-overproducing-elites-a...

You may be supremely competent but unlucky enough to be born at the wrong time, to the wrong family, competing with the wrong people, to rise to the level that you feel you deserve.

[bsenftner]

I look at this re-occurring overproduction of elites concept, and feel like it has good points but seems to be welded like a weapon, soon followed by statements like "you're just unlucky, get over it."

[lo_zamoyski]

We must begin with the presuppositions. Begin with the questions:

1. What are elites?

2. What are elites for? Why do they exist?

We can't really talk about "overproduction" of elites without knowing the answers to these questions.

Elites are meant to be guardians and servants of the common good. This is why traditionally, we spoke of the nobility: they were supposed to protect the common good for the good of society and model virtue so that others had a point of tangible reference. In order to do that, you needed to be properly educated. Not technically trained, but educated, which is something relatively rare in proportion to the vast numbers who are pushed through compulsory schooling and even university.

So, are we "overproducing elites"? Given how mediocre our "elites" generally are, I would suspect that we have rather an underproduction of them, and instead an overproduction of the vacuously credentialed.

One obstacle, of course, is that in a modern liberal culture, we are forced into a kind of impotence when speaking about the common good. On the one hand, modern liberalism imposes its own measure of the good life that elevates liberty for its own sake - divorced from any tradition and any objective measure - as the end of human life. Indeed, tradition is caricatured as an obstacle that impedes liberty rather than as a liberating dialogue spanning centuries and millennia that helps us orient our lives by sharing with us the wisdom of out predecessors.

On the other, this very hostility toward tradition or any objective normative claims (which are unavoidable; see first point) acts as a corrosive agent that impoverishes and constrains the scope of legitimate political discussion. Over time, this scope has been whittled down to economics. Everything else is privatized. Of course, the inevitable effect is that economics them begins to swallow up everything else. Everything is recast as an economic issue, and the human good is confined to economic categories. This explains the rise of consumerism, because a society whose common good can only be a matter of economics, and one that recasts all of life and reduces it to economics, can only comprehend the good life as a matter of consumption. This is a recipe for misery and delusion, of course, but the is the necessary result.

In such a culture, wisdom and what counts as elite are measured in economic terms. Universities become institutions not for liberating human beings by developing reason, virtue, and understanding, but ostensibly tickets to "economic success". Billionaires are our aristocracy, not because they are excellent or virtuous or duty-bound to serve in that capacity by virtue of their rank, but because in a consumerist society, money is magical. This is interesting, because traditionally, the nobility was often prohibited from engaging in trade and commerce. It was seen as beneath their position. If an aristocrat was wealthy, his wealth was not what conferred onto him his rank.

An elite only exists in order to serve the common good. That is its only legitimate reason for being.

Now let us return to the original question...

[DFHippie]

I'm skeptical that the nobility were ever particularly noble in the eyes of the commoners.

[direwolf20]

What if elites are more like cancer cells? They were not designed into the system — they spontaneously appeared, then metastasized.

[lo_zamoyski]

> I think this is one reason it is important to cast unethical behavior in terms of lack of competency

That will result in feigned virtue and Pharisaical letter-of-the-law sophistry. You can't secure morality by system and incentive alone, as important as these may be (the law is a teacher). Indeed, if you try to attain virtue by appealing to crooked desires, then you've already subverted the very preconditions of the moral life.

But I will say this: today, we often view morality as some made-up "rules" and artificial constraints that usually don't have anything to do with much of life. Being intelligent is often seen as opposed to being good: the good man is imagined as a chump, while the intelligent man is crafty. But that's just an expression of ignorance, including ignorance of what is actually good for human beings. It is not good for a man to be immoral. Immorality is self-harm.

Morality is a matter of every decision we make. Ethics is practical philosophy concerned with how one lives. Every decision is a matter of morality. When making a decision, why choose one way or another? Well, at the very least, we make what we take to be a good or the best choice. Of course, the immoral man presents something bad or worse as good or better in his own mind in order to be able to choose it. That's why people rationalize the evil choices they intend to make. But the aim and orientation of the will is the good, and so the evil man must first bullshit himself.

In that sense, to choose the good is to choose wisely which is indeed a kind of competence that requires knowledge, wisdom, and humility (which is to say, a sober view of reality, and that includes oneself). Indeed, the first classical cardinal virtue is prudence, which is the habit (as in possessed and actualized excellence) of being able to determine the right decision in a situation. And the right decision is always a moral one.

Prudence itself is the cornerstone of the remaining cardinal virtues: one cannot be just without first being prudent; one cannot be courageous without first being just; and one cannot be temperate without first being courageous. You need to know what is right before you can be just, as what is wrong is never just; you need to be just before you can be courageous, as bravado or recklessness are not courage; and you need courage to be temperate, as you cannot act as you ought if you don't have the courage to do so.

So, what we really need is an authentic moral education and a culture that ceases to fear a robust and sound morality rooted in the objectively real, because it sees it as a threat to its misguided notion of "liberty". We must reconnect with classical tradition so that we can profit from its insights and its wisdom and return to a dialogue spanning centuries and millennia. We cannot do it alone, and things will never be perfect, but this will give us strength to face the immorality of the world - and above all, in ourselves - and a foundation for a healthier culture.

[derbOac]

I agree with the fundamentals of what you're saying.

I don't mean to suggest that corruption should only be cast in terms of lack of competency, or that there aren't other issues of importance. But I also think sometimes the lack of competency perspective on corruption is overlooked, and people forget that appeals to empathy and similar values are of no relevance to certain individuals, for whatever reason.

Corruption is problematic for a number of reasons; I think it's important to keep all of those reasons in mind.

[mjburgess]

Or not. Or what is in the flourishing of all living things, and especially in our species of ape, is evil. That only what is called "good" is the accident of there being a boundary up against you to stop you; or the imposition of a boundary which will destroy or constrain your living too much.

Perhaps morality is just the playpen boundaries of enfeebled apes, playing amongst themselves in luxury, thinking they've overcome some aspect of their nature since they barely need to move around at all.

[altruios]

Meh to this misanthropic disregard for other's experience. If you need external alignment to prevent you being evil your internal alignment is f'ed. Considering morality an arbitrary boundary is a major red flag for antisocial behaviors.

Structured interactions lead to better results, chaotic actions lead to chaos. Ethics/morality is part of that structure that lets us achieve more together than individually.

if you think living in that structure is enfeebling: I highly question what you desire to do that results in that feeling.

[bsenftner]

Fantastic logical analysis.

[watwut]

This will just make fraud by skilled people more likely. Having skill will insulate them from the accusation - they cant be unethical, because unethical people dont have skill and they provably do.

[neutronicus]

In my opinion you've drawn exactly the wrong conclusion.

Raising the stakes just increases the pressure to cheat (and not get caught).

[fellowniusmonk]

Did that ever replicate?

Is prestige the number one motivator only statistically?

In other words is it the number one motivator for 31% percent of the college students that were tested and lets say empathy was at 29%?

Misanthropy and bald self interest gets overplayed I think. Often times because it allows bad actors to normalize and justify their own misanthropy.

Presenting this kind of unbacked, unqualified anecdotal data is great for "edgy truthtellers" but also deeply poisoning the well.

[bsenftner]

Scientific studies, particularly within the fields of evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and behavioral economics, identify prestige: the striving for respect, admiration, and high social rank; as a primary driver of human motivation. Unlike dominance, which relies on fear and coercion, prestige is based on the voluntary deference of others toward individuals who possess skills, knowledge, or success in locally valued domains. Key scientific studies and theories supporting this include:

    The Dual-Strategies Theory (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001; Cheng et al., 2013): This foundational theory posits that humans have evolved to use two distinct strategies to gain social rank: dominance (fear-based) and prestige (respect-based). Studies show prestige is a more stable, long-term motivator, associated with higher intelligence, conscientiousness, and social skills.
    "The Big Man Mechanism" (Brand et al., 2020): This study demonstrates that prestige-based hierarchies are a unique human adaptation. It shows that people willingly grant influence to high-prestige individuals in exchange for knowledge and skills. The research indicates that individuals are highly motivated to gain this respect to secure social capital.
    Evolutionary Perspective on Social Status (Maner & Case, 2016): Research suggests that the desire for prestige is an ancestral mechanism designed to boost social standing, leading to better access to resources and reproductive success.
    Prestige vs. Dominance Health Outcomes (2022 Studies): A study comparing the two paths to status found that prestige-seeking is associated with better physical and mental health, higher life satisfaction, and lower stress, whereas dominance is associated with negative health outcomes. 

Prestige is a Major Driver due to Cultural Learning: Humans are "prestige-biased" learners, meaning they are motivated to copy successful individuals to acquire "informational goods" (knowledge, techniques). Right after that is social capital: High-prestige individuals receive voluntary deference, including gifts, aid, and social opportunities, motivating others to achieve similar status. And then coming in like a reinforcing ram we have prosocial motivation: Because prestige is maintained by being liked, individuals are motivated to behave generously and competently to maintain their high status.

These studies indicate that because prestige provides a mutually beneficial social structure, humans are heavily driven to obtain it through the demonstration of valued skills.

[sigwinch]

No, but I don’t think ethics is #2. Someone intrinsically motivated might be technically competent, autonomous and self-confident about his/her goals. I might skip your meetings about ethics; I might be too busy.

[EdwardDiego]

I see what you did there with your choice of verb, and you're spot on.