It’s worth looking into Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca, both from the Italian school of elitism. The overruling theme being a well connected, organized minority will always rule over a disorganized and disinterested majority.
Machiavelli too had many interesting ideas, in particular how the elite moved through the various forms of government. A monarch decays into a despot and is eventually overtaken by an aristocracy of nobles which decays into democracy over a few generations which has a very short life and takes on the darker side of “rule by few” as an oligarchy. Eventually they become so decadent that a populist government (rule by many, the darker side of democracy) overtakes them and soon after a new prince, or monarch “of the people” is born and the cycle continues possibly over many hundreds of years.
Looking at America I think we are in the oligarchical phase and pushing hard towards a populist whom will reform the government dramatically.
I'm really interested in these views that view these human systems almost as physical systems, with semi-legible dynamics and complex (but comprehensible) interactions, and even implications. Thus the irons laws.
I'm also very taken with the idea of systems propagating themselves. Formally, this is called "autopoiesis" and is its own fascinating and related rabbit hole.
The coolest thing this morning, prompted by your comment, is the "self-licking ice cream cone" [1]. This paper [2] is particularly intriguing. Thanks again.
Yeah the self licking icecream cone is a classic at this point and correctly identifies one of the problems with new government (or any organization) programs/agencies/projects. Without explicit end goals and objectives that when met will trigger the dissolution of the program/agency/project as having successfully completed their mission, they end up existing to find reasons to exist. We see it everywhere today.
For example, at one point 50 years ago it was decided that we needed to do things to get more females into universities - a noble goal. So we set up a variety of things that made it more accessible to females and the things we did were successful. The way we did this is questionable (lower standards for females, in part) but they accomplished the goals. But we still have these systems setup and the people who run them have become entrenched and organized and any motion to dismantle them is met with aggression. You can extrapolate this well beyond females.
So we end up in a situation where more and more people find a prime mechanisms of elite credentialism (elite universities) as unfair and meaningless. And our pool of elites are weaker and unable to defend themselves against the rise of populism since so many of them aren't actually elites in reality, even if they pretend they are or believe they are being oblivious to all the artificial mechanisms that put them there in the first place.
Machiavelli too had many interesting ideas, in particular how the elite moved through the various forms of government. A monarch decays into a despot and is eventually overtaken by an aristocracy of nobles which decays into democracy over a few generations which has a very short life and takes on the darker side of “rule by few” as an oligarchy. Eventually they become so decadent that a populist government (rule by many, the darker side of democracy) overtakes them and soon after a new prince, or monarch “of the people” is born and the cycle continues possibly over many hundreds of years.
Looking at America I think we are in the oligarchical phase and pushing hard towards a populist whom will reform the government dramatically.