I agree that the cohort effect deserves close attention. At the same time, I wonder what patterns might emerge if we tracked the wellbeing of “elites,” “counter-elites,” and “non-elites” across different phases of the long cycle.
It would be fascinating to see whether popular immiseration ever creates perceptible ripples for elites during periods when they remain economically insulated. Does collective angst ever bleed through to the polo club? And if it doesn’t—what forms of rationalization or symbolic containment are required to keep the psychic tremors at bay?
I suspect the costs of these insulation strategies—to those deploying them—are more than economic. What I’m pointing to, I think, is the porous membrane between your domain and mine: where structural-demographic stress meets the inner architecture of coherence and breakdown. It’s a boundary I’ve been exploring in my own recent work as you know.
Good question. Because the elites are always a small proportion of the population, any population-wide measure is approximately a measure of non-elite well-being. Thus, quantifying elite well-being would need to be approached with different methods. Actually, I don't know whether anybody has done it. As to how much popular immiseration "bleeds" into the elite consciousness, my guess is very little. Many historical Golden Ages were good times for the elites, while general population immiserated. And only a small minority of the rich and powerful were even aware of it. As an example, in Chapter 3 of End Times I report on my conversation with "Kathryn" -- her attitude, I'd imagine, would be quite representative of the Ancien Regime French nobility. "Let them eat cake", indeed.
Peter, I'm inclined to agree, which raises another question. What is the dynamic by which "Elite" Becomes "Counter-Elite"? Over-production, yes, and is it just the "failed elite" that become counter-elite, or is there a deeper psychological process at work here to explain this process? In the dying light of the Ancien Régime, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes transformed himself into M.Malesherbes. He was too prominent to be a failed elite. So what then? Trying to live in both worlds? Counter-elite convert? Too principled, I think to simply be "jumping on the bandwagon". In his case, it is muddy.
What I'm driving at here is the Psychic Cost of being elite during a period of popular immiseration. One can physically insulate behind the palace gates but the costs rise with every passing day. A sense of brittleness, of being cut off from reality that an elite in a rising society would not feel. "Hiding" behind the gates carries physical risks too; the mental defences cause blindness to reality. Out of touch, descent into ritual, fearful, long before the pitchforks are out.
The Bio-Psycho-Social model of this process is surely rich in potential insights.
Your framework has opened the door on new vistas of understanding if we have the courage to look. Harry Seldon would be proud.
Broadly. Yes. Victor Davis Hanson describes the current Trump Regime as a “counter-revolution” (he means against the earlier “revolution” where elites lost touch with the people and normalized revolutionary policies). It’s also worth noting what type of “counter elite” he represents which is firmly the fourth type in the taxonomy i propose in the essay. I believe that these taxonomies merit further development in the future as they are important in tracking our potential exit paths from the current polycrisis.
I spent concentrated social time with billionaires, titled and famous folk and found them to be the most desperate people I've encountered in my long life.
The people I see daily now are Norther Thais, who are among the happiest, most honest folk I've known, but whose material conditions are modest indeed.
Data point for you Peter: if you were a survey researcher you'd know that the Japanese give low answers to every survey scale, no matter what it is. It's just their culture. Likewise Latin Americans give extremely high answers to every survey scale. You can't compare scales across countries. So your last point thinking the absolute scores from Japan reflect something real is almost certainly mistaken.
Yes, I am aware of this and even said it in the post. For Japan there is a ton of evidence that they are immiserated -- wait for the details until we publish the study.
Respectfully, where in the post did you say this? As far as I can see, the only place you address the question of the absolute figures is the following:
“One other thing to note is the amazingly low overall level of flourishing in Japan. Note the scale (vertical axis). In Japan the flourishing index varies between 5.4 and 6.4, which is well below the ranges for the US and, especially, China.”
This does not seem to address my point at all, which is that the low absolute scores for Japan do not in fact mean that Japan has an “amazingly low overall level of flourishing”. You may well have other evidence for it, but this is not evidence for it and, if this has influenced your perspective, then you should check your intuitions about the other evidence in case you've been viewing it in a biased light.
As a long-standing survey researcher and statistician, I am telling you that Japan simply has a strong cultural norm whereby they answer very low on scalar survey questions. It doesn't matter what you're asking about: wellbeing; policy preferences; how much they like chocolate bars. Japanese respondents are extremely reserved and refuse to give high scores.
As an analogy to your other metrics, you could not compare straight across the heights of Japanese skeletons to the heights of Dutch skeletons. The Japanese skeletons would nearly always be shorter, even in times of plenty. You would have to normalise the distribution within the ethnos before comparing between ethnicities. What I am telling you is that responses to survey scales is a metric like height that needs to be normalised before you compare it across cultures.
There is even a global hierarchy that is well-known and discussed among many international market researchers. On average, it goes roughly as follows: Brazilians give the highest scores; then Indians and Hispanics; then blacks and Arabs; then Continental Europeans and Chinese; then Anglos and Scandis; then, at the very bottom, South Koreans and lowest of all Japanese.
(Amusing personal anecdote: a client of mine, a large global online brand, ran a survey in Brazil, the UK, and France. They were very pleased with the Brazilian results which showed that their favourability scores were very high—until they realised that they were lower than their competitors and it was just that Brazilians give abnormally high ratings to everything. Meanwhile, the British and French results that looked much lower than the Brazilian scores in absolute terms were actually stronger in relative terms compared to their competitors.)
These are not differences in the thing being measured, but merely cultural norms that affect how the survey is completed in the first place. So you shouldn't compare the absolute levels of a scalar survey response across different cultures—at least not without vast amounts of preparatory work to ensure that you have accounted for those differences. I have worked on a study where such work was done, and it is an immense effort—hundreds of statisticians working together worldwide for years—that, even so, never quite manages to eliminate the bias.
So if your upcoming study is based in part on comparing the absolute scores on scalar survey questions, then I urge you to revisit that section in this light.
Just a quick one. Cultural norms definitely matter, of course—but it's not just about comparing one country to another. We’re also looking at shifts within the same country over time. And honestly, some of the survey responses we’re seeing now are at record lows—not even the 1970s looked like this.
I’ve been living there long enough to get a feel for when people are just being polite on the surface and when there’s something deeper going on. Either way, the upcoming paper isn’t just based on surveys—it draws on a whole load of qualitative proxy data tied to the three biggest drivers of sociopolitical instability.
You are right -- mea culpa. What happened was that this statement was in a paragraph in the original draft, which I cut before posting the final version.
The seven "capitals" (Flora, Flora and co-workers) may be a useful lens for examining this. In the US, well-being depends more on the individual's circumstances, i.e., may be much ore variable – rich vs poor, isolated vs connected, employed vs not... In more collective societies, well-being may be more reflective of the "community" or society.
It would be interesting to get similar data for Europe. It is well known that people in Asia work 12 hours a day and often 6 days a week. Obviously, this can affect the level of happiness. I mean, first of all, the general level, not the age range. China may be an exception because of the pace of economic development they are experiencing. Japan could have had similar figures in the 60s and 70s. People in the United States do not work as intensively as in Asia, and this may be the reason for a higher level of happiness. But Europe can probably demonstrate an even higher overall level, because the welfare state there has not yet been completely destroyed.
So refreshing to see measures other than GPD per capita
I agree that the cohort effect deserves close attention. At the same time, I wonder what patterns might emerge if we tracked the wellbeing of “elites,” “counter-elites,” and “non-elites” across different phases of the long cycle.
It would be fascinating to see whether popular immiseration ever creates perceptible ripples for elites during periods when they remain economically insulated. Does collective angst ever bleed through to the polo club? And if it doesn’t—what forms of rationalization or symbolic containment are required to keep the psychic tremors at bay?
I suspect the costs of these insulation strategies—to those deploying them—are more than economic. What I’m pointing to, I think, is the porous membrane between your domain and mine: where structural-demographic stress meets the inner architecture of coherence and breakdown. It’s a boundary I’ve been exploring in my own recent work as you know.
Good question. Because the elites are always a small proportion of the population, any population-wide measure is approximately a measure of non-elite well-being. Thus, quantifying elite well-being would need to be approached with different methods. Actually, I don't know whether anybody has done it. As to how much popular immiseration "bleeds" into the elite consciousness, my guess is very little. Many historical Golden Ages were good times for the elites, while general population immiserated. And only a small minority of the rich and powerful were even aware of it. As an example, in Chapter 3 of End Times I report on my conversation with "Kathryn" -- her attitude, I'd imagine, would be quite representative of the Ancien Regime French nobility. "Let them eat cake", indeed.
Peter, I'm inclined to agree, which raises another question. What is the dynamic by which "Elite" Becomes "Counter-Elite"? Over-production, yes, and is it just the "failed elite" that become counter-elite, or is there a deeper psychological process at work here to explain this process? In the dying light of the Ancien Régime, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes transformed himself into M.Malesherbes. He was too prominent to be a failed elite. So what then? Trying to live in both worlds? Counter-elite convert? Too principled, I think to simply be "jumping on the bandwagon". In his case, it is muddy.
What I'm driving at here is the Psychic Cost of being elite during a period of popular immiseration. One can physically insulate behind the palace gates but the costs rise with every passing day. A sense of brittleness, of being cut off from reality that an elite in a rising society would not feel. "Hiding" behind the gates carries physical risks too; the mental defences cause blindness to reality. Out of touch, descent into ritual, fearful, long before the pitchforks are out.
The Bio-Psycho-Social model of this process is surely rich in potential insights.
Your framework has opened the door on new vistas of understanding if we have the courage to look. Harry Seldon would be proud.
Simon, do you see Donald Trump, for example, as an “élite turned counter-élite”? Is that the sort of thing you mean?
To clarify my previous reply: here’s the essay I’m referring to that includes the rough taxonomy of counter-elites. You will recognize it as a response to and development of Peter’s work i think. https://open.substack.com/pub/theliminallens/p/escape-velocity-part-i?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=dvftt&utm_medium=ios
Broadly. Yes. Victor Davis Hanson describes the current Trump Regime as a “counter-revolution” (he means against the earlier “revolution” where elites lost touch with the people and normalized revolutionary policies). It’s also worth noting what type of “counter elite” he represents which is firmly the fourth type in the taxonomy i propose in the essay. I believe that these taxonomies merit further development in the future as they are important in tracking our potential exit paths from the current polycrisis.
I spent concentrated social time with billionaires, titled and famous folk and found them to be the most desperate people I've encountered in my long life.
The people I see daily now are Norther Thais, who are among the happiest, most honest folk I've known, but whose material conditions are modest indeed.
Yet there is a clear positive relationship between wealth and subjective well-being (although it is non-linear). But this is within a cultural group.
Do you have any thoughts about why the well-off people you know seem so desperate? I'm very curious to understand why.
true a full structural-demographic perspective would distinguish well-being for elites, commoners, radicals, moderates.
Data point for you Peter: if you were a survey researcher you'd know that the Japanese give low answers to every survey scale, no matter what it is. It's just their culture. Likewise Latin Americans give extremely high answers to every survey scale. You can't compare scales across countries. So your last point thinking the absolute scores from Japan reflect something real is almost certainly mistaken.
Yes, I am aware of this and even said it in the post. For Japan there is a ton of evidence that they are immiserated -- wait for the details until we publish the study.
Respectfully, where in the post did you say this? As far as I can see, the only place you address the question of the absolute figures is the following:
“One other thing to note is the amazingly low overall level of flourishing in Japan. Note the scale (vertical axis). In Japan the flourishing index varies between 5.4 and 6.4, which is well below the ranges for the US and, especially, China.”
This does not seem to address my point at all, which is that the low absolute scores for Japan do not in fact mean that Japan has an “amazingly low overall level of flourishing”. You may well have other evidence for it, but this is not evidence for it and, if this has influenced your perspective, then you should check your intuitions about the other evidence in case you've been viewing it in a biased light.
As a long-standing survey researcher and statistician, I am telling you that Japan simply has a strong cultural norm whereby they answer very low on scalar survey questions. It doesn't matter what you're asking about: wellbeing; policy preferences; how much they like chocolate bars. Japanese respondents are extremely reserved and refuse to give high scores.
As an analogy to your other metrics, you could not compare straight across the heights of Japanese skeletons to the heights of Dutch skeletons. The Japanese skeletons would nearly always be shorter, even in times of plenty. You would have to normalise the distribution within the ethnos before comparing between ethnicities. What I am telling you is that responses to survey scales is a metric like height that needs to be normalised before you compare it across cultures.
There is even a global hierarchy that is well-known and discussed among many international market researchers. On average, it goes roughly as follows: Brazilians give the highest scores; then Indians and Hispanics; then blacks and Arabs; then Continental Europeans and Chinese; then Anglos and Scandis; then, at the very bottom, South Koreans and lowest of all Japanese.
(Amusing personal anecdote: a client of mine, a large global online brand, ran a survey in Brazil, the UK, and France. They were very pleased with the Brazilian results which showed that their favourability scores were very high—until they realised that they were lower than their competitors and it was just that Brazilians give abnormally high ratings to everything. Meanwhile, the British and French results that looked much lower than the Brazilian scores in absolute terms were actually stronger in relative terms compared to their competitors.)
These are not differences in the thing being measured, but merely cultural norms that affect how the survey is completed in the first place. So you shouldn't compare the absolute levels of a scalar survey response across different cultures—at least not without vast amounts of preparatory work to ensure that you have accounted for those differences. I have worked on a study where such work was done, and it is an immense effort—hundreds of statisticians working together worldwide for years—that, even so, never quite manages to eliminate the bias.
So if your upcoming study is based in part on comparing the absolute scores on scalar survey questions, then I urge you to revisit that section in this light.
Just a quick one. Cultural norms definitely matter, of course—but it's not just about comparing one country to another. We’re also looking at shifts within the same country over time. And honestly, some of the survey responses we’re seeing now are at record lows—not even the 1970s looked like this.
I’ve been living there long enough to get a feel for when people are just being polite on the surface and when there’s something deeper going on. Either way, the upcoming paper isn’t just based on surveys—it draws on a whole load of qualitative proxy data tied to the three biggest drivers of sociopolitical instability.
More on that soon 🍻
You are right -- mea culpa. What happened was that this statement was in a paragraph in the original draft, which I cut before posting the final version.
The seven "capitals" (Flora, Flora and co-workers) may be a useful lens for examining this. In the US, well-being depends more on the individual's circumstances, i.e., may be much ore variable – rich vs poor, isolated vs connected, employed vs not... In more collective societies, well-being may be more reflective of the "community" or society.
It would be interesting to get similar data for Europe. It is well known that people in Asia work 12 hours a day and often 6 days a week. Obviously, this can affect the level of happiness. I mean, first of all, the general level, not the age range. China may be an exception because of the pace of economic development they are experiencing. Japan could have had similar figures in the 60s and 70s. People in the United States do not work as intensively as in Asia, and this may be the reason for a higher level of happiness. But Europe can probably demonstrate an even higher overall level, because the welfare state there has not yet been completely destroyed.
What’s the link between Japan’s lack of flourishing and their GDP-to-debt ratio?
Japan is in a deep structural-demographic crisis. As usual, a multitude of indicators agree on the negative trend. Details in a forthcoming article.
Looking forward to it. Thanks for replying.
what's Japan's problem?
See above