Full Twitter thread unrolled -> https://en.rattibha.com/thread/1792267464258048408
This person basically uses a bunch of graphs to argue that status of elite groups persist under even the most extreme cases. For example, the elites targeted in the PRC and the Soviet Union bounced back in elite status after a generation or two, how many elite southern planter families regained their status after the Civil War, how formally interned Japanese Americans reached the same homeownership rate as the non-interned Japanese Americans after a decade, etc.
But then they suggest that
So status persists throughout history even in the most extreme scenarios. What explains this? Genes play a major role. Consider how status persists when the status is accurized purely through chance.
Is this really a reasonable conclusion to draw? I saw one tweet criticizing this, saying
this information is very interesting, but it's nonsense to think this implies genetics/talent/effort causes success. i see this as evidence that social/human capital is persistent and important for economic development, so inequality on this dimension breeds economic inequality https://x.com/leonveliezer/status/1792413175301935124
Which seems like a good objection to me.
What do you all think?
Genes play a major role
SURPRISE! IT WAS A EUGENICS POST ALL ALONG!
This fascist belongs in a hole.
Yeah, I used to date someone from one of the richest families in Guangzhou (at least pre revolution). When the revolution came they hid a shitload of wealth, in the form of antiques, gold, and foreign assets.
Don't get me wrong. They got shipped off to camps, and lost most of their money. But those that survived the cultural revolution were still richer than almost everyone else.
Social capital is important, but real capital helps a lot too.
this pretty much. if anyone took a survey of how many manchu nobles are still rich despite all the shit that happened in the entire past century i'd put money on the number being upwards of ~80%
Genes play a major role
yeah... thats a fascist
Alternatively, basically everyone in the PRC wore something equivalent to denim for a while, jeans have nothing to do with this
- Show
Look at Russian/Soviet income inequality after revolution and counter-revolution
Elite is a nonsense concept. The "elites" of the Communist party in China or the USSR cannot be compared to western capitalists.
And yea inequality in China did increase drastically after liberalization but you can't compare modern China which is highly developed with high employment to pre-revolution China.
That graph is interesting but I think it's beside the point for this discussion. The question is not the level of income inequality but which families occupy the high status positions/accumulate the most wealth in a given society. In the case of China, 'elite' simply refers to the families that had status/wealth before the Cultural Revolution, lost it for a generation during the CR, and somehow got it back a generation afterwards.
cool, so what are the rich so scared of? Let's equalize everything, and all the wealth will just come tumbling back to its previous owners due to their superior rich white english speaking genes
Not that I've done the in-depth research, but I'm not sure his data is true. For one thing, I know the Pre-Putin oligarchs of modern Russia generally came from the upper-middle strata of the Soviet Nomenklatura class, because they had the easiest access to steal Soviet assets during privatization. They later got boxed out of power by Putin's Siloviki clique, and they were all middle-ranked KGB guys. None of these people have any connection to the pre-revolution Russian aristocracy, even if they kind of larp as them in their aesthetics.
Collapse by Vladislav Zubok (an indispensable book about the collapse of the Soviet Union), and I think I read about the Siloviki in this article by Anatol Lieven.
Imma say this, twitter threads are not worth the toilet paper you could print them on. Unless the source is an actual academic, with a specialized focus, then they are just spewing out random nonsense. For something this controversial, you’d want to see not just individual studies but meta analysis looking at genetics and “success” with clear definitions.
Anybody attributing familial success and status to genes is ultimately a eugenicist, and not much else.
This is complete nonsense. To prove even one of the points they're making, they'd need at least as much evidence and analysis as the entire thread. They're just cherry-picking random pieces of data and jumping from one case to the next, acting as if they've sufficiently proven each one in turn. It's just a gish gallop.
Probably the most absurd piece of "evidence" they present is the picture of the night sky of the USSR, which is correlated with the number of prisoners from various areas. Because both of those are correlated with total population, obviously. This is literally their sole piece of evidence regarding the question of whether "elites bounced back" in the USSR, before moving on to the next point!
The next point is about the landed gentry in the South after the abolition of slavery. Everything they say about this is irrelvant because there was never any attempt to eliminate these people as a class. There was no land reform or anything like that, and because of it, freed slaves sometimes found themselves in a position where they had little choice but to keep working for their former slavers, for a wage. Of course the rich "bounced back" from that.
This is how conspiracy theories work. You find one extremely tenuous piece of evidence that shows how a major event validates what you want to believe, then, without any consideration of other explanations for the evidence, or other evidence that might invalidate your conclusion, you immediately move on to the next thing.
"evidence" they present is the picture of the night sky of the USSR
don't you know, prisoners in the USSR were supposed to just bang rocks together their entire sentence and they instead built great cities, completely against the wishes of the government. this proves the white aristocracy had strong sperm
First of all this strikes me as the kind of study that would be very difficult to complete over this time period even in a country that was fully developed. There are so many places where judgement will have come into place.
Also, I feel the need to ask the obvious: did they actually measure the same families over time, or did they do something much easier, and much less indicative of the point they are trying to make.
Even then though obviously genetics is the stupidest explanation. Of the top of my head I would suggest education, contacts, retained wealth, or the same old bullshit: shit floats to the top.
Assuming that there is a "success gene" it means they're genetically predisposed to be a sociopath and this guy is framing it as a good thing.
This might not even be a real phenomenon, never mind the supposed causes. Several of those charts are very unclear about any relationships between the pre-Mao and post-Deng “elites” or other supposedly similar situations in the other regions covered. The definition of who “elites” are is also wildly different throughout the thread and fluctuates from income percentiles to “intellectuals” to feudal soldiers and beyond. This whole thing is dressed up as hardcore logic brainscience but is filled with nothing but shitty infographics that don’t say what the tweets claim they do, compare poorly with each other, and are used to justify a conclusion that is fucking eugenics. I don’t think there’s actually anything here except for a big stinking pile of bullshit.
When someone uses completely different types of handwavy analysis in different areas, it smacks of motivated reasoning.
