The Prestige Economy

The more prestigious your job (such as an Ivy League professor or network news anchor), the more vulnerable you are to cancellation for crime think.

The professor and the elite journalist primarily work in a prestige economy while the businessman and the athlete typically work in a merit economy.

How many economies are there and which ones dominate your life?

ChatGPT: 1. Prestige economy (status-based)

What matters: recognition, reputation, who praises you, where you’re published, who you’re seen with.

Domains: academia, journalism, arts, fashion, politics, social media.

Logic: value is conferred by peers or gatekeepers. You succeed by being recognized as “important,” not necessarily by measurable output.

Downside: herd effects, echo chambers, fear of deviating from consensus.

2. Merit economy (performance-based)

What matters: measurable outcomes, skill, output, or results.

Domains: engineering, some parts of business, sports, surgery.

Logic: value comes from demonstrated ability or productivity — you win the race, you design the bridge that stands.

Downside: merit measures can get gamed; not all “merit” is measurable.

3. Money economy (market-based)

What matters: purchasing power, price signals, capital.

Domains: commerce, labor markets, investment.

Logic: value is set by supply and demand; anyone who can pay can access.

Downside: inequalities compound, wealth isn’t always aligned with wisdom or talent.

4. Bureaucratic economy (rule-based)

What matters: compliance, seniority, credentials, ticking the right boxes.

Domains: government, big corporations, military, HR departments.

Logic: you advance by following the rules, meeting formal criteria, or lasting long enough in the hierarchy.

Downside: sclerosis, box-ticking over substance.

5. Moral economy (norm-based)

What matters: virtue, altruism, adherence to shared values.

Domains: religion, activism, community life.

Logic: esteem and trust are granted for being “good” or “selfless.”

Downside: moral signaling can substitute for effectiveness; purity spirals.

6. Attention economy (visibility-based)

What matters: eyeballs, clicks, followers, virality.

Domains: social media, entertainment, politics.

Logic: value flows to whoever can grab and hold attention, regardless of truth or depth.

Downside: incentivizes outrage, spectacle, simplicity over nuance.

In real life, these overlap. A professor is judged partly on merit (quality of research), partly on prestige (journal placement, who cites them), partly on bureaucracy (tenure rules), and increasingly on attention (social media presence).

Legend: ★★★★★ = dominant, ★☆☆☆☆ = weak

This lets you see at a glance:

Academia = prestige + bureaucracy.

Media = attention + prestige.

Government = bureaucracy + prestige.

Business = money + merit.

Sports = pure merit, but layered with money and attention.

Religion/activism = moral + attention economies.

Tech/engineering = merit + money, though prestige is creeping in (e.g. conference buzz, VC signaling).

How Economies Interact and Distort Each Other

Prestige vs Merit

• Distortion: Prestige can overshadow real ability. A Harvard degree may be valued more than raw skill.
• Example: In academia, citation counts and institutional prestige often count more than the actual content of research.

Prestige vs Money

• Distortion: Money can buy prestige (endowed chairs, naming rights) while prestige can inflate financial value (celebrity endorsements).
• Example: Universities admit big donors’ kids regardless of academic merit.

Merit vs Bureaucracy

• Distortion: Bureaucratic rules can block recognition of actual talent, while “meritocratic exams” can be gamed.
• Example: In government jobs, civil service rules sometimes promote time-in-grade over performance.

Attention vs Merit

• Distortion: Viral fame can eclipse actual competence.
• Example: Influencers with millions of followers get lucrative deals while more talented but unknown creators get ignored.

Moral vs Money

• Distortion: Moral appeals can be monetized, turning causes into brands. Conversely, financial backers shape which causes gain traction.
• Example: “Green” or “woke” consumerism where virtue is sold as a premium lifestyle choice.

Prestige vs Attention

• Distortion: High-prestige actors chase attention, diluting their credibility; attention-seekers borrow prestige through association.
• Example: Scientists on Twitter simplify or exaggerate findings to gain followers, which can undermine long-term trust.

Key Takeaway

Most domains run on a mix of these economies. But when one dominates—especially attention or money—it tends to distort the others. That’s why elite media, academia, and politics so often sound uniform: they are trapped in overlapping prestige–attention–bureaucracy loops that leave little room for pure merit or truth-seeking.

Prestige Economies Driving Elite Media Behavior

Biden’s Cognitive Decline Denial

• Prestige Economy: Elite outlets like NYT and Washington Post prize their credibility and elite standing. Admitting Biden’s decline early would risk sounding like right-wing talking points, which would lower their standing in the prestige hierarchy of journalism.
• Attention Economy: Stories affirming Biden’s competence were rewarded with clicks from their loyal base, while dissenting voices risked alienating that audience.
• Bureaucratic Economy: Newsrooms have internal norms—editors, standards desks—that function like bureaucracies. Deviating from the “he’s fine” line meant career risk inside the institution.
• Result: Groupthink. A uniform narrative of “Biden is sharp” prevailed until obvious signs made denial impossible (Politico eventually broke ranks).

Trump’s Trade Policy Derision

• Prestige Economy: Economists in places like the Brookings Institution and CBO had long treated free trade as settled orthodoxy. Journalists mirrored that prestige consensus rather than re-examining assumptions.
• Merit Economy: Actual outcomes (tariff revenue, renegotiated trade deals, resilience arguments) were ignored because they conflicted with the prestige line.
• Attention Economy: “Trump the fool on trade” stories drove traffic, fitting reader expectations. Nuanced analysis (“tariffs could raise $3 trillion in revenue over a decade” – CBO) was buried.
• Result: Uniform ridicule—until later, when outcomes complicated the narrative and some humility began creeping in (FT analysis).

Takeaway

Neither case is about truth alone. The uniformity comes from overlapping economies: prestige (status within the profession), attention (traffic and audience loyalty), and bureaucracy (institutional norms). When those dominate, reality gets filtered until it can no longer be ignored.

Russiagate: How the Prestige Economy Produced a Single Story

Turner-style takeaway

• Closure came first (declare the narrative settled), then prestige enforced it (who is credible to say what), while bureaucratic newsroom habits and the attention economy kept the arc intact.
• When later documents complicated the original frame (Mueller non-establishment of conspiracy; IG FISA errors; Durham’s criticisms), the system largely reframed rather than retracted—preserving credibility capital.

Quick links (primary docs)

• Mueller Report (Vol. I, DOJ) • Mueller Report (Vol. II, DOJ)
• DOJ IG: Crossfire Hurricane & FISA (Dec 2019)
• Durham Report (May 2023) • Declassified Durham Annex (2025)
• Pulitzer 2018: NYT/WaPo (National Reporting) • Board statement standing by award (2022)

In the positivist picture, life (especially intellectual life) runs like a merit economy: each discovery is a brick in the wall of cumulative knowledge, neat and impersonal. That’s what people like Comte or logical positivists hoped for — knowledge as an ever-growing model that nobody can really dispute once the facts are in.

But in practice, as Turner emphasizes, much of life — not just science but culture, politics, journalism — runs like a prestige economy. Knowledge isn’t simply added up; it’s negotiated, policed, and stabilized by people who hold authority, credibility, or symbolic capital. The “conversations” decide what counts as knowledge and what doesn’t.

So how much of life operates like this?

Academia: Almost entirely. Journals, tenure committees, funding agencies, and disciplinary boundaries decide what is knowledge. Prestige hierarchies matter more than raw merit.

Media and public discourse: Heavily. A story is not true or false in the abstract; it’s “true” if The New York Times or The Washington Post says so, and untrue if it comes from “fringe” or “conspiracy” outlets.

Law and politics: Same. Courts and legislative bodies are “conversation arenas” where closure happens not because the facts are final, but because a ruling or statute gives a definition the force of authority.

Everyday life: Even at a smaller scale, reputations and cliques determine who is believed in a workplace, a family, or a church.

Where does the merit economy still operate?

In narrow technical domains where feedback from reality is brutal and immediate — like engineering, surgery, or competitive sports. If the bridge collapses, no amount of prestige talk can save you.

Even then, prestige can shape who gets to build the bridge in the first place, or whose failure gets excused.

So the blunt answer: most of life is prestige economy, with pockets of merit economy wherever the world forces brutal feedback.