Elite overproduction is bad enough on the 90% thwarted in their expectations for high status and access to power, but is maybe even worse on the 10% who succeed only to find out their big reward having survived the meat grinder is permanent bug-life

David Markovits' Meritocracy Trap is ostensibly a case against hierarchies and the distorting effects on institutions of the Ivy League rat-race, but beneath the surface is a bugman desperately pleading to be let out of the jar he’s trapped himself in

You feel for these people on some level. “I spent my whole life striving and scrambling to make it to the top of the heap, and all I got was this lousy Resistance T-shirt.”

Many such cases.