Feb 28, 2020, 10:07 AM
Elite universities open the door to cushier jobs – meaning they don’t have to work with commoners – without having to compete in the ‘real’ market. Top universities are, to some degree, a test of character – which is why governments prefer to hire from them when possible. Not because people are more capable, but because they are less likely to take risks that would jeopardize their investments in their privileged and high status positions. This strategy has worked in china and in europe. It has worked less well in the USA for reasons well understood.
Creative, innovative, high agency, high risk takers are not suitable for the top universities and the ‘academic grind’.
This is the hard wall that I didn’t hit, but Taleb did. It’s why he went off the deep end. Its because it turns out that there is a very good reason those people from good schools get those jobs and more ‘dynamic’ people don’t.
Because the more responsibility the higher the risk to those one is responsible to. And europeans do not seize non-productive opportunities.
There are opportunities for profit that men of character do not seize because they are unproductive. Taleb did. So did Soros. And Bernie Madoff’s don’t go to Harvard or Yale.