At The Guardian Sebastian Mallaby presents what I presume is an extract from his recent book on Alan Greenspan, illustrating rather neatly how experts are failing. Here’s his peroration:
Two decades ago, in his final and posthumous book, the American cultural critic Christopher Lasch went after contemporary experts. “Elites, who define the issues, have lost touch with the people,†he wrote. “There has always been a privileged class, even in America, but it has never been so dangerously isolated from its surroundings.†These criticisms presciently anticipated the rise of Davos Man – the rootless cosmopolitan elite, unburdened by any sense of obligation to a place of origin, its arrogance enhanced by the conviction that its privilege reflects brains and accomplishment, not luck and inheritance. To survive these inevitable resentments, elites will have to understand that they are not beyond politics – and they will have to demonstrate the skill to earn the public trust, and preserve it by deserving it. Given the alternative, we had better hope that they are up to it.
In the past I’ve expressed my distaste for the phrase “rootless cosmopolitan” and my reaction was the same in this instance. It has a bad pedigree.
The whole article is a long read but well worth it.
I thought we previously had a disagreement on the usage of plain “cosmopolitan.” I don’t like this usage of “rootless cosmopolitan.”
The issue might be that some like Niall Ferguson, who certainly knows the pedigree, have embraced the phrase for self-description. I don’t know whether this is English irony, or an attempt to frame the discontents of globalism as a class similar to provincial anti-Semites. This passage doesn’t reflect anything but a straight reading that is critical of rootless cosmopolitans, whomever the reader decides they may be.
The ‘elites,’ like the poor, are always with us. Stage a revolution and guess what? You get a new boss, same as the old boss. See: Russia, where it doesn’t matter how you scramble the tiles because in the end the Scrabble word is still KGB. Okhrana to Cheka to NKVD to KGB to Vladimir Putin. If it’s Russia, there’s a thug in charge.
As for this country what more tragically comic example can there be than the Great Orange Savior of the middle class being nothing but a rapacious fraud who games the system to enrich himself while ripping off precisely the kinds of people he allegedly speaks for? Here’s your revolution, Trumpists: a nice, fat tax cut for me. I’m not great with math but it looks to me as if Trump wants me to have an extra $182,000 (based on 2015). Which I admit would be excellent, it would go straight into my various accounts and some day, when my daughter is out of high school, I can use the money to buy a nice villa in the Algarve with a view of the Med or ocean (depending.)
I don’t need any help to conclude that economics experts don’t really know what they’re talking about. The alleged science of economics is being used as a predictive tool and the base of knowledge simply is not there, and might never be. Systems involving humans defy accurate or useful predictions.
But as for experts becoming divorced from the working class, no shit. Experts tend to be well-off and come from well-off people and have the kinds of educations you get when you’re well-off. Thus always. All the way back to the tribal shaman and the court astrologer. The difference is not the disconnection of the elite but the involvement of the working class via cable news, internet, etc… The peasants have become aware that they are being treated like peasants. And with the brilliance that marks them as peasants, they figure the solution to their problems is . . . more money for me.
The experts are largely clueless, but the people are morons. Which is why the Who had it right.