The Tree of Excellence

Chapter 12 of The Information Class

This is chapter 12 of a book called The Information Class, which I'm self-publishing on a serialized basis through Substack, with the intent to publish later on digital platforms and in print. As such, it's not a play-by-play commentary on current events. And yet it's a tract for the times nonetheless. As the populism-racked West faces its greatest crisis since the 1940s sure to the betrayal by tens of millions of voters of the West's heritage of freedom, the information class, the people with college degrees who work with their move using computers, and who mostly voted against the demagogue in 2024, have work to do in our political exile.

Only we have the skills to save Western civilization from the pit of ruin, disgrace, and unraveling into which the mad king is driving it. America needs the broad populace to revolt against the mad king and restore constitutional order and competent leadership, and the task of the information class is to stand ready to supply it. And yet there is a reason we've lost so much of the public's trust. Many reasons actually, but one in particular that has merit. Our habits are good, our skills are valuable, but our moral ideas are rubbish, and that’s why information class leadership has given way to nihilistic populism.

My quixotic solution to the current crisis is that the information class needs to reconnect with the tradition of the virtues so that it can provide wholesome, inspiring leadership. If that happened, a lot of other things would fall into place. Meanwhile, while I admire the literary resistance to Trump in the writings of Andrew Sullivan, Robert Reich, Bill Kristol, Richard Hanania, Paul Krugman, Noah Smith, Matt Yglesias and others, and while they have good reason to emphasize how shockingly far and fast the moral fall has been for a nation that was once the admired leader of the free world, doom isn’t my mindset just now. Before the election, I foresaw a “fascist farce.” I think that take has held up well, and I’d add to it that the Trump II regime is on track to serving as “freedom’s fire drill,” where we find out whether the country has the civic and patriotic resources to successfully resist dictatorship. And while it’s disgraceful that Trump got this far, I think the resistance has critical mass. The media, the universities, public opinion, big business, and protestors in the streets are signaling they won’t be pushed far enough

The push for dictatorship is the essence of Trumpism. Writers like Rod Dreher and Ross Douthat have sometimes projected onto Trump an alternative vision of the common good that they hoped he would champion, but that was always wishful thinking. His character puts give-and-take, power-sharing, respect for constitutional norms, due process and all that out of reach, and ensures that dictatorship has to be the goal. But he won’t get there. The country won’t submit, and won’t be silent. So while I stand ready to fight as needed, I also want to look past the fire drill to what freedom will look like on the rebound. But we don’t want to go back to what got us here. We need an establishment restoration; but the establishment needs to come back changed, with new resolve and new virtues. Those are the seeds I hope to plant by these chapters.

To get up to speed, read the intro, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 9, chapter 10, and chapter 11. And sign up to get future chapters in your inbox.

Up to this point, I have been using the metaphor of the specialization “tree” merely to convey the concept of branching or ramifying. However, I've already once dropped a hint that the tree might get “taller.”

That's important.

Let's dwell on the metaphor a bit. Shrubs and vines also ramify, getting complex, and positioning a lot of leaves to catch a lot of sunlight, without going up much. But trees are different. Young trees disproportionately channel most of their growth into the central upward thrust of the trunk. In this way, they rise far above the shrubs and grow far stronger than the vines. And height duly enables them to capture more of the ambient light.

All this has its parallel in class stratification. Indeed, the phrase “class stratification” that I've used throughout the argument may seem so far to have an unwarranted connotation of higher and lower, when what has been described so far is merely class differentiation. Differentiated classes aren't always stratified. Sometimes a priestly class and a warrior class, or a merchant class and a scholarly class, coexist without clear social superiority on either side, jostling each other a bit for status even as they need each other. But often there is a clear hierarchy of classes, higher and lower, and that's because education often directs human capital to grow like a tree and not like a shrub, channeling much of it into a central upward thrust and not dissipating it too much into mere ramifying differentiation.

To understand the trade-offs involved, think of people's people's prime productive hours as split between learning and working, or between preparation and production. Occupations have their natures and their needs. Some jobs need little preparation. A day's training is plenty. Other jobs take years to prepare for. But if people are being educated so as to give them range, then they'll have more education than they need for any specific job. All in all, what fraction of one's productive time is it prudent to devote to learning, either in pursuit of specialized excellence or range of skills? How much learning versus working best serves the common good?

Again, there's not just one answer to that. Just as a well-shaped tree has both upper and lower branches and leaves, a well-ordered society has some people whose work lives involve simpler tasks and little learning, and others for whom much of their adult lives is dedicated to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, ethos and professionalism for specialized excellence and/or range.

Learning versus producing isn't just about how much time you spend on education. On-the-job training is also important. There are unpaid internships where there is no formal instruction, yet the whole purpose is learning and building connections. In other cases, the company has to fully invest a week or more of a new employee’s time in formal training. But even more important is “learning by doing.” Ambitious people often choose jobs in ways that sacrifice immediate income for the sake of opportunities to gain valuable experience. Some work, even some paid work, is more about learning than producing. Such are the nuances of the trade-off between production and human capital investment.

With that in mind, again, how should the balance be struck? How much of one's productive life should be focused on learning versus focused on doing?

Some crude math can help clarify the question.

Suppose you have fifty productive years. If you can devote one year to learning, and raise your productivity by over 2% for all the rest, you come out ahead. Likewise, ten years of learning for a 25% gain in productivity looks like a good deal. A more realistic version of the math would take (a) the tuition and other costs of schooling, (b) interest rates, and (c) risk into account and demand a somewhat higher ROI on educational investment to deem it worthwhile. On the other hand, education also tends to lead to more comfortable, less physically strenuous and dangerous work, so these nonpecuniary benefits raise the ROI on education, holistically understood.

Even taking the time value of money into account, actual educational wage premiums tend to be high. But that's misleading because many who went to college couldn't have gone to college– they're not smart enough– and many who did go to college would have earned more than others by mere native intelligence even if they didn't. There may be room for doubt at the moment about whether college pays off. But the larger pattern over many decades and generations is that it usually does, on average. If that's become doubtful at present, that has much more to do with dysfunction in the university system than with society being maxed out on useful investment in human capital.

The same kind of crude math can be pushed further, into numbers that seem at first glance to defy common sense.

Thus, twenty-five years of school for a 100% gain in productivity, or somewhat more when tuition costs and time value of money are taken into account, pays off. It could make sense to spend half of one's life in school.

Even forty years of school (!) are worth it for a five-fold increase in wages, or a little more considering tuition and time value of money. Credit constraints would put this out of reach for many. But given the massive differences in people's earnings in today's capitalist societies, forty years in school might be a price well worth paying to go from near the bottom of the wage distribution to near the top. If forty years of school sounds implausible, it's not because the human capital investment isn't worth it, but because the schools run out of ideas for what to do with people's time.

Most PhDs are better off as academics pursuing their own research than studying under any kind of tutelage that the universities are currently configured to provide. More generally, at some point the optimal path of human capital investment involves a good deal of learning-by-doing along with some formal study. But successful specialized professionals master the art of lifelong learning. And some careers do look like decades of preparation to achieve one big breakthrough.

Now, hitherto, I've emphasized the role of class in promoting, or you might say fast-forwarding, specialization. But class cultures and education systems also resist specialization. They direct people where and when to specialize, but especially, where and when not to specialize, but instead, to do something different, to get out of one's comfort zone, and to become well-rounded. In the tree metaphor, they prevent branching off too soon, and channel the energy of human capital investment into the central upward thrust of the trunk. Class cultures and education systems try to meet people's future need for range, and future society's need for people with range, by pressuring people to stay in school, and to study a wider range of subjects than they would have chosen spontaneously.

Students often complain that they're made to learn things in school that they'll never use. They're often right. Why are they made to do so? Part of the answer is that they're being equipped to outgrow the specialized niches into which they will be pigeonholed along the way. An entry level employee is often most productive in some narrow, repetitive role. But even if that job keeps existing, it probably offers little scope for growth. And such jobs are often outsourced, automated away, or rendered obsolete. A good career involves change, adaptability, learning and advancement.

College seeds a person with many latent potentialities. There is likely no career path that would use them all, but a good career will frequently tap into skills, interests, knowledge, and habits of mind that for years have been dormant, or perhaps have lingered as sources of distraction and dissatisfaction, until they suddenly become the key to success in the face of some surprising crisis or opportunity.

To the frustrated student, society can say, in effect: “Yes, you may never need this. But we need leaders. You may turn out to be a good leader. Leaders need range. So we're investing in expanding your range, just in case. It hurts a bit, but there's a higher purpose involved.”

Again, this central upward thrust of well-rounded education distinguishes class stratification from mere class differentiation. In an occupational caste system, although it's inevitable that some occupational castes will be more esteemed than others, specialization merely ramifies like a shrub, limiting the amount of human excellence that can be achieved. But classes with well-rounded educations can explore whole new realms of excellence. Things are connected, and past a certain point, getting better and better at x usually involves getting better at y, where x and y originally seemed completely different. The apprentice farmer might go a certain distance to excellence by working with a shovel and watching plants with the naked eye, but at some point, he probably needs to become a scientist, knowing soil chemistry and microbes and machines, if he wants to attain productivity breakthroughs by innovative excellence. A new MBA may start out spending half his time on budgets, but to become a great CEO, he needs to understand virtue and to inspire people.

College education can be like the tree trunk, the great central upward thrust of human capital investment, concentrating it, preventing it from all branching out too soon into premature specialization, and elevating men and women above their fellows in the power of their minds. As the trunk keeps rising, branches spread out at higher and higher levels. There is specialization again, sometimes in quite new forms, sometimes in forms that resemble the lower branches of specialization, except that new kinds of excellence have been brought within reach. Ultimately, the height of the tree is the height of its topmost branches. And in the same way, we tend to measure the achievements of a society by its greatest geniuses, by the Isaac Newtons and the William Shakespeares, by what Richard Hanania likes to call “elite human capital.” And elite human capital likes to stick together sometimes. It's good to work with someone who understands you, who can rise to your level.

The topmost branches do not compete for space with the lower branches. They do compete for light, a little. But they give back, through the sap they feed with the light of the sun. If need be, they keep out the topmost branches of hostile trees, and often trees grow tall only because they're competing with other trees. The topmost branches provide a little shelter from hostile weather. And plenty of sunlight still comes through for the lower branches to use, or comes in from the side.

Likewise, elite human capital doesn't capture all the opportunity, and it gives back, through the power of example, through cultural creativity, through invention, through job creation, through political leadership in both government and opposition, through philanthropy, through teaching and medicine and law, through disproportionate tax burdens that fund welfare for others, and through raising children to carry on the traditions. Elite human capital enables a society to stand tall and hold its ground in the arena of the nations. Elite human capital captures some of the opportunities, but makes some too, and there are probably more to go around as a result. The upper branches of elite human capital usually, on balance, makes life better for those inhabiting the lower branches of the specialization tree.

I heard a bitter joke at the expense of Richard Florida and his notion of the “creative class”:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I'm a creative
I'm here to replace you

Yet it's not usually true. The creatives don't replace the uncreatives. They do new things that the uncreatives could never dream of. Where others make more of the same, the symbolic capitalists, the Belmont educated elite, the information class adds new things to the world. The great composer makes a symphony, and all of us can listen. The great scientist’s discovery becomes the knowledge of everyman. And the inventor’s gadgets get mass produced and land in every home. The tree of excellence grows taller, and most of the other branches flourish more.

There is such a thing as creative destruction, but it's not a zero-sum game. The progress of culture, art, and technology is always making losers and leaving people behind, but it also creates opportunities to recoup losses and catch up, and it makes society so much more versatile, productive, resilient and interesting. And progress is possible because someone is ahead. Progress needs scouts, leaders, trailblazers, just as the trunk of a tree is its leader, blazing a trail towards the sky.

Class stratification is not at all like a pie, getting split into slices, with bigger pieces for some. It's like a tree, ascending new heights, while the lower branches are still there. If you cut off the top of the tree, the lower branches probably get more light, but they may not benefit on net. They certainly don't gain all that that the upper branches lost, and the tree is poorer. It may grow tall again, or it may be overshadowed by other trees and die. Sometimes the upper branches are sickly, or too vulnerable to drought and wind, and it is good to cut them off. But that's a special, pathological case. In general, trees and societies thrive best when the lower and the higher alike are in health. Let the pursuit of excellence ramify and grow tall.

With all that in mind, how far, after all, should education and learning go, for the sake of the common good? The main limit on formal education is simply how far institutions have managed to structure the learning process so that more and more knowledgeable people can still benefit from it. To PhDs, it has nothing left to teach in the formal, classroom style. There's far more to learn, but they have learned to learn better than they can be taught. But if good minds outgrow tutelage, they never outgrow conversation. Long after learning ceases to depend on teachers, it still depends on peers.

It might be a good thing if educational paths became even longer. From kindergarten to terminal degree is about twenty years. What if it were twenty-five or thirty? Would the smartest be still smarter? If it were the custom for new PhDs to bounce around from postdoc to postdoc for five or six years to maximize their exposure to the leading ideas and minds of their field before they started to apply for academic jobs, would the professoriat be even more knowledgeable, with better connections for collaborative ideation? I see no reason to think we've exhausted the possibilities for enhancing productivity and innovation by pushing elite learning and pursuit of excellence even further. The tree of excellence could grow taller yet.

The modem West may be the best educated society in history, yet we still fall short of the educational program that Plato prescribed in his Republic for his guardians. Plato would have fostered miscellaneous knowledge until age 18. Then his young guardians would embark on ten years of studying mathematics, followed by five studying dialectical philosophy, and fifteen years getting practical experience. Finally, at around age 50, they would be ready to serve the republic as philosopher-kings.

It's interesting to think about what would happen if the West tried to adopt Plato’s template for training elites. A caste of frugal, brave, loyal warrior mathematician philosophers might come in awfully handy from universities to C-suites to the Pentagon. It would be against our principles, of course, to force people to stay in school till age thirty-five. And the whole configuration of our society would need to change unimaginably to make the respect of one's peers as powerful and compelling a motive as it was in Plato's imaginary republic, as well as in the real, historical Sparta that seems to have helped inspire it. And yet I think there might be ample candidates for such a platonic ideal education, after all, if it could be organized.

There's a sense in which class stratification is a laissez-faire phenomenon. When people are free, they tend to sort themselves into classes. At the same time, there is typically an element of intentionality in the way classes form, both on the part of individuals, especially upwardly mobile ones, and on the part of institutions and their sponsors. Government usually plays a role, but private patronage can do just as well or better, if the right kind of ethos prevails. All in all, government can reinforce or resist the tendency to class stratification in various ways, but that's limited by its own need for class ethos and class solidarity as an input to its own operations and stability. For after all, government of the people, by the people, for the people, though it can have some reality, is never the whole truth. Government relies on some kinds of people more than others to function.

As a general rule, government is downstream of class. Various forms of government are possible because certain classes of people exist. Government derives its character from ruling classes. The rare cases in history where a people is virtuous enough to be really self-governing are the exception that proves the rule, for that can only happen because a certain ethos infuses the whole people. The people become a class. That it used to be common in America to regard virtually everyone as “middle class” is a case in point. Even then, the character of law in classless societies is still generally an inheritance from more class-stratified times. For example, democratic Americans have always been heavily indebted to aristocratic Britain for the common law tradition that provided the basis for their political liberty. A class culture is the typical context in which good governance practices emerge and mature.

When considering the justice of class stratification, we should bear in mind that it emerges and persists spontaneously, and helps to meet society's need to educate the young and match people with specialized jobs. The emergence of new, more elite classes through the pursuit of excellence need not, and isn't particularly likely to, come at the expense of the flourishing of other classes, but helps them instead.