- Venkatesh Rao, in The Gervais Principle proposed that organizations typically tend to self-stratify into three predictable layers of social classes.
- At the bottom are economic losers, with low output against the effort. Others realize the output of their effort.
- At the top are corporate elites, intelligent and hungry for power. E.g., David Wallace or Jan.
- In the middle are clueless, typical middle managers: e.g., Michale or Dwight or Andy.
- Fascinating construct: Their employees have real jobs and their bosses, but they don’t.
- For example, take how Michael spends his day- arbitrarily.
- The terminal layers are rational, whereas the middle layer is completely clueless. And their interactions are also very different.
Conversations between these groups
- Venkatesh Rao also proposed various kinds of talks that these groups have.
- Posturetalk: Anything spoken by clueless’, the typical language of living inside a construct. They are always intended to either impress or mislead.
- Babytalk: Spoken by elites to clueless. Almost always soothing or misdirecting.
- Powertalk: Internal communications of elites. It is targeted towards information and power gathering.
- Gametalk: Internal communications of losers. Typical hi-hello convos. To get through the day.
- Straight talk: Spoken by elites and losers. Very rare. Direct speech without any encoding.
Three ladders of progress
- Michael Church came up with a 3-ladder system of social class) that shows how these groups progress through their lives.
- Labour ladder starts with tough hourly-paid jobs and goes up to labor leadership.
- Rising up = More money + More power. It is more about money.
- They are accomplished via working harder.
- Labour leadership is not deficient in money but in leverage and therefore is still a loser.
- Elite ladder starts with reasonably paid jobs.
- Rising up = More money + More power. It is more about power
- Accomplished via acquiring leverage.
- Middle ladder starts with transitional jobs between the two.
- This ladder isn’t about money or power.
- They are accomplished via more education and, eventually, costly habits.
- The farther you go up the ladder, the more disconnected you get from reality.
- Labour and elites see the world as it is, but the gentry is unique in its ways.
- Humanity seems to have a strong propensity towards binary and tri-partite classifications.
- There are several classifications that are tri-partite.
- Even Plato divided his society in The Republic into three- producers/workers; auxiliaries/soldiers; and guardians/protectors.
- Our modern history is filled with binaries of us vs them.
Inspirations