Inbreeding and Leadership

Peter Turchin's "Elite Overproduction" in the Digital Age

There is a big difference between how capitalism works in theory vs how it works in practice.

In theory, capitalism allows talented people to rise to the top, while pushing less talented people down to the bottom. For example, if you have a great idea for a business, you acquire venture capital sponsorship, build a corporation, and eventually become a billionaire. Likewise, if you start out as a billionaire but are not a good businessman and fritter all your money away on stupid things like dinosaur skulls and unprofitable casinos, then you eventually have to declare bankruptcy.

In reality, this almost never happens. Once somebody is safely in the billionaire class, there is virtually no way for them to drop out of that class, due to an overwhelming abundance of laws that favor the mega-rich over the poor. For example, billionaires tend to be taxed at a lower rate than their own secretaries. They have access to all kinds of special funds and investment opportunities which are not available to the public. In a scenario like that, it is almost impossible for them to lose money, no matter how terminally stupid and inbred they are. The deck is simply stacked too much in their favor. This doesn’t just apply to billionaires, but also to their children as well. Do you think George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg will ever have their kids stop being obscenely wealthy and become part of the middle class? Even if they were dumb as bricks, it would never happen - the deck is simply rigged too much in their favor.

Because it is virtually impossible for billionaires to move down in the economic/class hierarchy, it is also much more difficult for smart and intelligent people to move up. Think about it rationally: there are a limited number of spots at the top of any society. According to true believers in capitalism, these spots in society deserve to be held by the smartest among us. But when those spots are held by idiots who refuse to vacate their positions, then the smartest and cleverest among us cannot rise to the top of society as they deserve. Those people are artificially held back from achieving their full potential in our society, which is bad for both them and for society as a whole. The vast gulf between this platonic ideal of capitalism vs. the gritty reality of capitalism is the thesis of one of Peter Turchin’s central concepts, known as “elite overproduction.”

It’s hard to simplify a complicated concept like elite overproduction in a way that can be easily summarized in a several paragraph Substack post, but I’ll try my best. Basically, our society has a limited number of roles for people to fill. Those roles operate in a system similar to the classic strategy game Stellaris. There are a handful of Ruler jobs - the people at the absolute top of society. These are people like politicians, billionaires, and religious figures like the Pope. They set policy for vast institutions. Below them are a large number of Specialist jobs - things like analyst, programmer, or banker. Finally below that are Worker jobs - things like farmer, miner, etc. People like to travel up the ladder, but not down. If you’re a janitor, you generally like to be promoted to a manager. If you’re a manager, you generally like to be promoted to an executive. However, downgrading is a huge blow to both your income and your social status, so people don’t like to do that, even if they are not competent enough to handle the role that they are in. For example, if you are an idiot who became President of the United States purely due to nepotism and your father’s influence, you can’t admit you’re an idiot, even when you fuck up considerably and cause many people to die as a result of your incompetence. Instead, you bluster about how being President is “hard work” and so mistakes are understandable. The idea that perhaps you should step down from the presidency if it’s so hard for you and let somebody more qualified take over the position is an idea that never even crosses your mind because most of our elites are selfish and they care more about what’s best for them than what’s best for society.

This means that in a society where there are too many incompetent elites, smart and ambitious Workers or Specialists are unable to rise through the ranks into Ruler positions because there aren’t enough “openings” for them. The only way for them to effectively rise to the upper class in such a stratified hierarchy which lacks upwards mobility is for them to actively undermine the Rulers of society so that the incompetent Rulers get killed or deposed, creating vacancies that the smarter Specialists and Workers can fill. This is beneficial for society as a whole (because we deserve to be governed by the smartest and wisest among us) but also beneficial to the individual Worker or Specialist (because they are rising up the class hierarchy and gaining money, fame, and power). Anybody who truly believes in the meritocratic ideals of capitalism would support a robust social Darwinism that brings down incompetent leaders who fail to adequately govern society, creating constant churn within our society so that the smartest individuals can consistently rise to the top.

However, we don’t truly live in a meritocratic capitalist society: we live in an increasingly Marxist society which pays lip service to the ideals of meritocracy and capitalism. Nowadays in woke Western society, your race or sexual identity is frequently more important to your promotion opportunities than your actual degree of intelligence. Basically, it’s all just a massive scam designed to keep the existing elites in charge and make sure that the plebs cannot rise to the upper class without first vigorously kissing the asses and stroking the massive egos of the elites (and even then, your chances of success are low). If you don’t want your advancement track to involve continually grovelling to a bunch of wealthy narcissistic oligarchs, then your best bet is to kill them and take what you want from their cold dead hands.

In some ways, this dynamic is unhealthy because it means that when Ruler positions are fully occupied, smart and intelligent Workers or Specialists can’t rise up the promotion ladder by contributing to a stable and harmonious society. On the contrary, the best way for you to rise up the promotion ladder is to sow chaos and disharmony, because only by destroying the idiots in charge of society can you vacate the positions that they unjustly occupy and rise to a new social class. This is what I tried to do with Qanon. I knew that my unique sociology theories would never be accepted by the elites because I don’t have their fancy degrees, nor am I willing to kiss ass to the right people. Why would a bunch of arrogant politically motivated academics allow me to rise above them in the social hierarchy simply because I was smarter than them? So instead, I decided to weaponize my theories in a practical way to destroy all the incompetent narcissistic elites who were interfering with my career growth, and in the process I also got the opportunity to run some fascinating sociology experiments which will undoubtedly contribute to the sum of human scientific knowledge.

This problem is what historian and social scientist Peter Turchin describes as “elite overproduction.” In his book Secular Cycles, Peter Turchin mentions periods of violent instability that seem to reoccur in human society roughly every 30-50 years or so. These periods of violent instability seem to coincide with the phenomenon that Turchin calls elite overproduction, namely a dysfunctional elite class that grows too out of touch with the needs of the people they govern and needs to be cut down and replaced with a smarter elite who are more effective and in touch with the needs of society.

The elites of our society might describe such a worldview as radical, subversive, or even treasonous. This is untrue. Such conventional opinions - that the smartest deserve to lead, and that inadequate or corrupt rulers need to step down or be cut down - have actually been part of our society for generations. It is only in recent times - now that the incompetence of our elites and the inequality in our society is becoming obvious to everybody - that our elites have begun normalizing an intolerance towards these uncontroversial viewpoints, because most of them benefit from the corruption in our society. In a world where the game of capitalism is rigged in their favor, they can never lose. Forcing them to compete on a level playing field against their intellectual superiors would deal a huge blow to many of these arrogant narcissists and would shake up the global power structure beyond recognition. This is why they try to distort the message that people like me are spreading and falsely label us as “radicals” or “subversives.”

To be even more clear and succinct, we live in a corrupt society where ambitious and talented people can’t get their fair share of the pie, so they instead devote their efforts towards collapsing the existing world order so that they can get their fair share during the ensuing restructuring of society. I did this with Q-anon because my talents were not being adequately appreciated, so I decided to take a short cut to the top of the societal anthill by stirring up anger against a bunch of incompetent elites who richly deserve to die. I make no apology for this strategy, because although it benefits me it also benefits society as a whole. If anything, I should be thanked for showing enough initiative to take out our society’s wealthiest and most inbred trash.

Some of the trash in question might call my ideology “socialist” (generally because they are propagandizing on behalf of the evil elites), but it is actually the farthest thing from socialist. Rather, it is the destruction of a corrupt and nepotistic capitalist system to replace that system with a truer and more ideal form of capitalism - a system where genuine talent rises to the top, while inbred incompetence sinks to the bottom. I seek to tear down the capitalist illusion that our nepotistic elites project and replace it with a true capitalism based on merit.