Innovating Institutional Cultures
Western executives (think CEO) may be having difficulty grasping the changes that Hagel describes because they run counter to cultural trends emerging among this generation of transnational elites ( not just big business). Increasingly, formerly quasi-meritocratic and democratic Western elites in their late thirties to early sixties are quietly embracing oligarchic social stratification and use political or institutional power to “lock in” the comparative advantages they currently enjoy by crafting double standards through opaque, unaccountable authorities issuing complex and contradictory regulations, special exemptions and insulating ( isolating) themselves socially and physically from the rest of society. It’s a careerism on steroids reminiscient of the corrupt nomenklatura of the late Soviet period.
As the elite cream off resources and access for themselves they are increasingly cutting off the middle-class from the tools of social mobility and legal equality through policies that drive up barriers to entry and participation in the system. Such a worldview is inherently zero-sum and cannot be expected to notice or value non-zero sum innovations.
In all probability, as an emergent class of rentiers, they fear such innovations when they recognize them. If allowed to solidify their position into a permanent, transnational, governing class, they will take Western society in a terminal downward spiral.
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Lexington Green:
January 11th, 2010 at 6:06 am
Brilliant diagnosis of the cancer eating our country alive.
zen:
January 11th, 2010 at 6:23 am
Thank you! I hope I am wrong though.
Joseph Fouche:
January 11th, 2010 at 7:29 am
Spot on diagnosis. To bad the condition is probably terminal.
Eddie:
January 11th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
At least campaign-finance reform is dead this year…. As well, the social and physical isolation by elites from the rest of society is far worse in most other countries than it is in the Anglo countries. "Off-worlds" are probably the best way to describe the new elite living arrangements from Seoul to Shanghai to Mumbai to Lagos. However, I agree with Lex… this is a phenomenal summary of much of what’s killing us.
J. Scott:
January 11th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Zen, Nomenklatura, indeed. Excellent post. What many outside of DC fail to "see" is the size of the bureaucracy–it is connected, well-fed, well-paid, and marching in lock-step under the banner of PC.
JV:
January 11th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
What happens to Rome when the bread & circuses run out? Do the hungry barbarians outside the circle of light take over.The fear is that America may not have fallen far enough and hard enough to learn what it means to be hungry again.
onparkstreet:
January 12th, 2010 at 12:12 am
This post – which is phenomenal and I will so re-read when I get a chance – kind of reminds me of the interview series over at National Review with Thomas Sowell. He’s discussing his new book about society and intellectuals. This quote is funny, "Thomas Sowell explains how the demand for public intellectuals is largely manufactured by the public intellectuals themselves. " Naturally. Typical. Classic. Another book for the massive, towering anti-library book pile!
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– Madhu
historyguy99:
January 12th, 2010 at 2:27 am
vultus sicco pro nos insisto Rome ut ashheap of history
Seven voices have already aluded to the same thoughts I share in the tongue of Ceasar.
jhagel at 01/12/10 12:06:08 | Exectweets:
January 12th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
[…] @zenpundit Latest post. https://zenpundit.com/?p=3305 Must be in a dark mood tonight…. <— I hope I did not put you there jhagel – […]
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January 16th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
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