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This is intriguing but I think flawed. Elite-makers are not elites because unlike monarchs of yore, journalists etc cannot guarantee anything. Their influence is unpredictably catalytic rather than determinative. Same goes for algorithms. Maybe Putin/Xi still have such power?
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Replying to @vgr
Proposed elite definition: You're elite if you get to decide who's elite. Then 1965-2015: journalists — and in particular news anchors. 2015-2019: comedians 2020- : Algorithms (which prefer no one to be elite)
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You can see the search for new elites in the efforts to install new virtues (new sincerity, trad, post-irony, epistemic hygiene, climate consciousness) that flounder because they’re like trying to ‘make fetch happen.’ Can’t install new virtues without electing new elites.
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Normally the way to model the situation would be to treat this as an emerging elites market with no clear monopolistic winners yet. But I’m no longer sure there IS a market here. It’s worse than crypto. People are only hodling shitcoin candidate-elites and there’s no bitcoin.
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Another sign: apparently everybody turned into an accredited investor in the last couple of years there’s been a glut of “small gods” trying to establish themselves as niche elites (contradiction in terms?) through special-snowflake virtue investing. It’s the new virtue signaling
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To be fair, also true of the writerly commentariat class to which I belong. Trawling for new candidate elites to pump up so we can free-ride. We just invest with words rather than dollars. But hard to do with so few candidates around.
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