I associate this phrase with losers and people trying to sabotage the US. You know who is not wringing their hands about “elite overproduction”? China, who are pumping out tons of smart and capable STEM PhDs, and have in a relatively short time caught up to and in some cases surpassed the US in production of scientific output and technology.
Completely separate from the substance of your point, this sort of language does not encourage constructive dialog, it frames the discussion in such a way that you are either going to get
a. People who agree with you, resulting in you not learning anything
b. People who are triggered into fighting with you, once again, resulting in you not learning anything
c. People ignoring you, resulting in you not learning anything.
My constructive suggestion to you is that you simply don't write that first sentence. I suspect you (and everyone else!) will have a much more fruitful time online as a result!
Thank you for giving him the lesson on etiquette. I was going to do the same but you beat me to the punch, so instead I will just upvote you and move on without further remark.
Yeah, you are not wrong. The topic is a bit like troll bait for me. Probably because I have a first hand view of how the current strain of anti intellectualism and resulting policy in the US is destroying jobs and eroding competitive advantage. My observation is that this type of rhetoric tends to be produced and consumed by “elites”, and is often used to advocate for policy that limits socioeconomic mobility.
The irony is that in limiting mobility and competition from the “non elite” out-groups to preserve status, they end up shrinking the overall size of the pie.
I've always taken the elite overproduction thing as an _analytical tool_ to help us make sense of why we have experienced the rise of an oppositional anti intellectual position in contemporary culture.
But you make the good point that it can also be a _weapon_, leveraged by those oppositional groups, to justify their oppositional position.
Perhaps this seeming tautology can be resolved with some systems thinking. Maybe there's some insight in the elite overproduction analysis, but that means that, as an argument for further polarising society it's a pretty effective tool. It's actually reinforcing the feedback loop! A fascinating example of a self fulfilling prophecy.
The Economist only wants what's best for China. (As the article is paywalled, do they discuss the positive externalities of this glut or only the difficult labour market?)
In my view, STEM PhDs are not members of the “elite.”
Historically, in the US the elite are the managerial class, the lawyers (future politicians), and the coastal dilettantes who are already wealthy enough to major in the social sciences.
When 1+ million students are getting MBAs every year in the belief they will be members of the C-suite, but there’s only a few thousand such positions, you have a case of elite overproduction.
Have you looked at the Wikipedia article? China is specifically addressed there, with elite (as in - highly educated people) overproduction and unemployment reaching such levels that government is now suggesting they should seek manual labor jobs.
It works in China because they have growth. In the west thousands of college kids thought they could land cushy management positions or at least highly paid expert jobs.
Then these kids realise these jobs don’t exist, that they should have gone to trade school instead, and that their student debt will cripple them for life.
Same thing will happen in China. For now their economy grows so fast it can absorb many intellectuals, but that won’t last forever.
We live in a globalized economy. Rapid transport of people, goods, and information necessitates it. The high paying STEM jobs will go to wherever there is an abundance of talent, and the network effects are quite significant.
Per Turchin model, the declining population in China has created conditions for more elite-adjacent positions for all those STEM PhDs, preventing overproduction
I think the solution to “elite overproduction” is, not to educate people less, but to promise them a decent standard of living that seems throughout and ultimately is reasonably attainable (don’t over-promise and do minimize FUD).
The massive shift in careers, not just due to LLMs but technology and society in general, threaten the promises given to prior generations. And this is also happening in China, see “tang ping” / “lying flat”.
