Three words on this "race to irrelevance": lead versus leave.
Our society is in a state of secessionism. Much of the escalating economic inequality comes from that impulse. The rich of yesterday (1945-73) saw themselves as leaders of the society. The rich of the new Gilded Age (1974-2014+) have given up and just want to escape it. They want private schools, country clubs, and closed social networks. They don't want to lead the masses, they want to leave them.
Silicon Valley has been making its secessionist impulse visible of late, but HFT and "high finance" show a different secessionist tendency: the desire to get outside of any given industry or company and "float among" them as a financier. The brightest young people are being told not to join the regular economy with the proles, but to become part of an elite system of hedge funds, private equity shops, and overcapitalized "startups" whose products are meaningless other than advertising expenses to get middle-management positions, 10 years earlier than otherwise, for the founders.
The smartest people have given up, sadly, on leading. This makes "leave" the attractive option. If you become a management consultant or investment banker, you don't have to commit to one industry or business. You float around until you make friends who can place you at high levels.
After spending 8 years in a number of places but much of it in "the real economy" I can't say that I blame the leavers. The leavers are now ahead of me, career wise, as venture capitalists and the like; and there isn't much out here in "the rest of the economy" to lead. Perhaps paradoxically, the world ends up being run by leavers, because average people don't want to be led by the highest level of talent; they want leaders they can relate to.
Our society is in a state of secessionism. Much of the escalating economic inequality comes from that impulse. The rich of yesterday (1945-73) saw themselves as leaders of the society. The rich of the new Gilded Age (1974-2014+) have given up and just want to escape it. They want private schools, country clubs, and closed social networks. They don't want to lead the masses, they want to leave them.
Silicon Valley has been making its secessionist impulse visible of late, but HFT and "high finance" show a different secessionist tendency: the desire to get outside of any given industry or company and "float among" them as a financier. The brightest young people are being told not to join the regular economy with the proles, but to become part of an elite system of hedge funds, private equity shops, and overcapitalized "startups" whose products are meaningless other than advertising expenses to get middle-management positions, 10 years earlier than otherwise, for the founders.
The smartest people have given up, sadly, on leading. This makes "leave" the attractive option. If you become a management consultant or investment banker, you don't have to commit to one industry or business. You float around until you make friends who can place you at high levels.
After spending 8 years in a number of places but much of it in "the real economy" I can't say that I blame the leavers. The leavers are now ahead of me, career wise, as venture capitalists and the like; and there isn't much out here in "the rest of the economy" to lead. Perhaps paradoxically, the world ends up being run by leavers, because average people don't want to be led by the highest level of talent; they want leaders they can relate to.