PROMOTING MANAGERIAL CLASS BOOT CAMP?

OR, THE SOCIAL BENEFITS OF NOT GETTING CANCELLED?

Here’s a thought. Universities are obviously the training ground of the managerial class. It is where they gain their credentials and develop both the necessary skill set and acculturation to managerial class values. It is where the (curated) habituation of the naturalistic fallacy (as I discussed in a recent post) is normalized as the justification for their ethos of social engineering, bureaucratic paternalism, and technocratic rule.

So, while universities can act as the training institutes for the ruling faction of the managerial class, they also serve as indoctrination camps that bring in ever more people into the cultural and political assumptions underpinning the hegemonic rule of the ruling faction of that class. Getting people into university has an indoctrination value that exceeds any prospect that those people will be become a functional member of the ruling faction of the managerial class. That insight I don’t imagine is especially revelatory for most readers of this substack. But did you expect them to go this far?

How about research arguing that even people with well below average intelligence still gain the social benefits of a university education.

Picture is hyperlinked.

And incidentally, despite the serious statistical limitations of their study, which they acknowledge, it’s perfectly plausible that inculturation through managerial class boot camp probably does provide some social benefits. But that’s at least partially because the graduates of the camp are increasingly likely to be locked-in as adherents to the dominant ideology of managerial liberalism. These days, obvious to those who have been paying attention: being managerial liberalism dissidents is going to increase your likelihood of being fired from your job, having your bank account frozen or cancelled, and even of facing criminal persecution by the managerial class’s administrative state. (See January 6th and the Canadian Truckers.¹)

So, yes, there are real social benefits to going through managerial class boot camp — even if you have a sub-90 IQ.²

Translation: you may not have a hope in hell of joining the intellectual pantheon of the ruling faction of the managerial class, get to exercise our god-like powers of social engineering, or possess our profound technocratic insights, but don’t let that stop you from going to university. It’s good for managerial class rule. (And, wink-wink, good for you.)

And this is not a purely hypothetical consideration. According to the authors: “Although most individuals with IQs ≤ 90 did not have a college degree, the rate at which they completed college had increased approximately 6-fold in men and 10-fold in women relative to rates in the previous generation.”

The interesting question of course is whether this dynamic is feeding into the growth of Turchin’s surplus elite; is the ruling faction of the managerial class contributing to the conditions of their own subversion in this pushing for massively expanded enrollment in their indoctrination camps? The mystery will continue to unfold.

And if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of that unfolding…

1. I’ve written several pieces on the Canadian truckers. If you’re interested see: here, here, here and here.

2. For readers familiar with the intelligence literature, this is not my mistake. While the authors refer to g (general intelligence) in their title, throughout the paper they reference instead IQ scores. They use a construct called “general cognitive ability,” but base this on IQ. For those unfamiliar with the intelligence literature, while a g score can be derived from an IQ test, it is not the same thing as IQ; it is a more rigorous measure. That the journal Intelligence lets this slide is further indication of the decline of that once important journal.