In Support of the ELITE
And being an “Elitist”
Inspired by the outrage growing toward elitists all around the world. Sometimes it’s directed at the right people, but because it’s become a blanket term, it’s not very intelligently used, and more often than not, I see otherwise smart people throwing the word around like idiots.
In this article I’d like to make a clear delineation between elitist and parasite, so that when those of us who actually support freedom, liberty & the rights of the individual have someone to call out, were not-mislabelling them ‘elite’ and thereby giving the parasites a designation they do not deserve.
Elite
The word “elite” comes with a whole series of connotations, and conjures up some interesting mental concepts; from top end wall street bankers in suits at charity balls, through to crooked CEO’s mingling with politicians, and of course “rich white men” & lizard people who apparently control the world from behind the scenes.
I find these conceptualizations & associations with the word “elite” to be ignorant at best, and frustratingly moronic at worst.
The word “Elite” actually means “the best, the select or choice, world class, best of the best, top of the class, the cream of the crop, a person or group that is superior in qualities or capabilities than the rest”.
I’m not sure this is something any of us should be against. If anything, this is something we should be for, and should aspire toward being!
A contradiction
Over the years I’ve subscribed to the idea of “screw the elite”, driven by my anti-authoritarian bent, my support of personal liberties, listening to Rage Against the Machine (fuck you I won’t do what you tell me…) all against the backdrop of coming from ‘the bottom’ — at least in the relative sphere I was born in.
The “pushing back against the elites” is also a very strong theme in the Bitcoin circles I’m a part of, and if anything, it’s them who I’d like to speak to when writing this, because it’s the not the elites we’re against; it’s something else.
I want to remove the contradiction between our inherent support for being elite & how we’ve conflated the term elite with the rent-seeking parasites that people envision when that word is used.
Let me explain….
On the one hand, we support freedom, liberty & rewarding the best of us, which naturally creates Pareto-type distributions (80/20, which is also fractal each time we magnify).
On the other hand, we’re running around saying “down with the elites”, which at times makes us sound like Bernie Sanders socialists trying to bring down capitalism & the billionaires.
There is a real contradiction in using the word elite to describe that which many of us are against, whilst also supporting core values of freedom & free markets.
Now….I know that may sound like semantics, but the use of the word elite begins to conflate a lot of what is being said in support of freedom & true capitalism that some of us can get caught up in default collectivist biases which are not only dangerous, but make us look hypocritical.
I want to settle this here, and lay claim on the word Elite once more.
So let’s start by blowing up the notion of equality as a ‘good’ thing.
Against Equality
Power law distributions are perfectly normal in nature, evolution and everywhere else we look in the known universe.
This notion of ‘equality’ is a human perversion, fomented by collectivist sociopaths seething with jealousy and envy who would like to infect the rest of us with it too.
There is nothing ‘equal’ in the world, nor anywhere else in the universe.
Yes, we can probably break it all down & argue that we’re made of the same atoms, and therefore subatomic particles, energy, etc — but that doesn’t change the fact that for all intents & purposes, the combination of those core ingredients, residing in a universe that does have some real constants (eg; c), produces unique representations of said base ingredients.
Life, as we know it, is the ultimate expression of this uniqueness & inequality.
In fact, without inequality, you do not have life. Equilibrium is the lack of movement, the lack of energy, the endpoint of entropy, and therefore death.
Life is the struggle against equality.
It’s the fight against entropy.
True Elitism is an expression of our greatest attempts at furthering life, and it’s why we’re in awe of the greatest of us, whether that be minds like the Newtons & Einsteins of the world, or sports stars like Federer or Ali, or Entrepreneurs like Jobs & Musk.
The greats are the elites. They show us what is possible, and through their example, we push the human race forward.
The freedom of the individual is paramount to our survival & prosperity.
The equalization of the collective is the death of the human spirit, and in turn, will bring about the death of the collective that enforced it.
Opportunity VS Outcome
Enough has been said about the equality of opportunity VS equality of outcome argument. You have to be a deranged megalomaniac to think equality of outcome is something any of us should strive for unless of course, you believe that a 1984 Authoritarian style dictatorship is the solution.
So that aside, what about equality of opportunity?
Well, it sounds great in theory, but I for one will be the first to put my hand up & say “I have no idea how it would work, what it looks like or what that even means”.
Equal compared to what?
How would this be measured?
How would it be enforced?
Who gets to decide?
They’re really hard questions and the answers may or may not even exist.
And furthermore, I think we’re looking in the wrong place.
I don’t believe any of us want equality anyway. I think what we’re after is fairness, and that is a very, very different thing.
Fair > Equal
Fairness means that if we both willingly choose to play a game, and that we’re both subject to the SAME rules.
If we don’t like those rules, we can go off and play another game.
We don’t tell one person who’s faster they can run that fast, while the other who’s stronger that they can’t kick that hard.
So in order for there to even exist ‘a game’, there is going to be inequality amongst the players. There is going to be a winner and a loser, a better and a worse.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
This is where rules, boundaries & constants come in.
They’re useful because for those of us who choose to play the said game opt-in, we know what we’re all doing.
A great rule in the real world is that gravity travels at 9.8m/s/s, so if you think stepping off the side of a building is a good idea, you may learn otherwise.
A universal constant like the speed of light is another interesting example of how the Universe, matter & time themselves bend and warp in order to remain within this reality.
Bitcoin itself is an incredible mechanism/system/concept (I don’t know how to even classify it anymore because it’s so broad) that encompasses both fairness via transparency (we all know the rules), specific constants (10min blocks, 21m Bitcoin, etc), and is a naturally occurring power law distribution in many ways (holders, liquidity, early winners, etc).
Free markets are yet another example. Profit happens when you produce more than what you consume and in the process add more value to the market than what you’re extracting. If it’s the other way around, market forces should send you bankrupt.
Another way to look at it is good decisions lead to rewards, lead to capital accumulation, which if followed by more good decisions can create a virtuous cycle, that compounds on itself. This is fine. This is fair. This is the reward for consistently producing more than you consume.
The problem happens when those at the top are no longer producing, but are extracting, or sucking dry everything around them, but are able to remain there. This is no longer natural, and this sort of behaviour can only happen when the game is rigged.
This sort of behaviour is not of elitists, but of parasites. BIG difference.
And this is what the Bitcoiners, libertarians, etc are fighting against.
We’re not fighting the elitists.
What we want is to make clear what the rules are on the playing field of society & economics; ie; Money.
In doing so, we can remove things like the Cantillon effect, seigniorage and the inherent advantage the “rulers who write the rules” get.
Elitists: The Best of Us
I must admit, Atlas Shrugged helped really sharpen my thinking around this notion, because Ayn Rand does an incredible job of delineating between the hero’s of the story, “the men of the mind”, the “producers” versus the bureaucratic slime who stand in the way of progress & live to leech in the name of the collective.
I’ve always had an admiration for the best of us, and always felt a bit conflicted when I would shout out against the elite, but simultaneously strive to be the best at something myself.
This separation is incredibly important.
Complaining about elites & elitism not only carries with it an air of victimhood, which is neither attractive, nor something anyone respects, but furthermore, for those with a brain, it’s a complete contradiction.
We of all people should be supporting the best of us.
Being elite is about being the best, being courageous, being outstanding, being willing to give it your all, being unique, being a contrarian, it’s about stepping up when others may be afraid to. Elite’s are leaders, and they lead by example, from out in front.
So if you’re a true capitalist, a free markets proponent, a person who believes in freedom & liberty, someone who agrees that nature, physics and the universe/world around us has a way of calibrating itself via complex systems, then you are a proponent of elitism.
Elitism is a natural, power law.
It’s a perfectly normal result of life, and all complex systems that are similar to or are extensions of what we know as life.
Elites VS Parasites
History is remembered mainly through stories about the best of us. Here are a few of who I personally admire, and in reading, I hope with your own re-categorization of the word “elite”.
- Bruce Lee
- Einstein
- Newton
- Usain Bolt
- Tesla
- Muhammad Ali
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Aleksandar The Great
- John Lennon
- Steve Jobs
- Elon Musk
- Stephen Hawking
- Hal Finney
- And yes, Satoshi Nakamoto
The people are all incredibly unique and they all had an incredible impact on the world.
Do they have their flaws?
Does a bear shit in the woods?
Of course, they have flaws!
But by & large they were or are net positives in society because they chose to hone their craft & show us what’s possible by leading from the front. But being elite.
Now…in stark contrast to the greats, here are some examples of rent-seeking parasites, which some people often mislabel as ‘elite’.
- Ben Bernanke
- Mario Drahgi
- Bernie Sanders
- Clinton (Bill & Hillary)
- Jeffrey Epstein
- Christine Lagarde
- Paul Krugman
- Jamie Dimon
- Joseph Stalin
- Barrack Obama
- Piers Morgan
And the list obviously goes on & on…
There is nothing elite about these people.
They’re scum.
They exist not to produce, but to leech.
Do they have special privileges that many others don’t have?
Yes of course.
Is that right?
No
Can we change it?
Yes
How?
Defund the institutions that support the equalization of many via the redistribution of the few producers, whilst in the process lining their pockets & writing the rules that the rest of us must follow.
What does that mean?
Go buy some Bitcoin.
We fix this by bleeding them dry of the resource via which they can rig the game.
Conclusion
I dedicate this to the best in all of us. To that which is elite in all of us. To those who strive to be the best of us, and the best they can be.
It is an HONOUR to strive to be elite.
It is with PRIDE that you should do it.
Inequality is the greatest gift we have because it’s the spice of life. The differences make us who we are, they make us unique, and in a broader “collective” context, it’s differences that allow for the system to correct itself by incentivizing the good & disincentivizing the bad.
The elite, the special, the 1%, can, should and MUST get a disproportionate amount of the reward because that’s how nature works.
Being outstanding, being exceptional, being the best. These are all things we admire at the core of who we are as humans because deep down we all aspire to be that in our own unique way.
We are not “all the same”.
This is not “Brave New World”, and nor should it ever be.
Fuck Average.
Fuck “Same”
Fuck Equal
Our uniqueness & inequality is a gift, and one that we should cherish.
Those of us who choose to make the sacrifices required to take our unique gifts to the very extreme, should be honoured & respected.
They are the elites.
The people whom we attribute the word “elite” to today, the banker wankers, corrupt politicians & scumbag IYI heads of stale, monolith corporates are not elite. They are parasites.
Let’s take back the word elite.
It’s a privilege that the parasites & rent seekers do not deserve.
Written by:
I write stuff. Mostly on Bitcoin, but also other things that interest me.
I like to be provocative, and question broadly accepted notions which I believe are stupid (ie; dogmas).
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