Nassim Taleb also hinted at it with his “extremistan vs. mediocristan”- the former is winner-take-all, and second place is just the first loser, whereas the former can provide relatively consistent rewards to most in the field.

Compare academia to dentistry, or finance to accounting, and you get the idea. Though, as Taleb also notes, one of the reasons for this is that extremistan jobs tend to be interesting and appealing, while mediocristan jobs tend to be boring and unpleasant. Being an academic is good work if you can get it; dentistry is ugly work, but moderately lucrative. Finance tends to produce a few stars and a lot of failures all pursuing a field that is at least somewhat glamorous and interesting; accounting provides a great deal of constant, dull work.

I sometimes thank my lucky stars that an arrogant prof kicked me out of the dead-end Poli Sci PhD program I was in seven years ago. That man doesn’t know it, and probably has forgotten me completely, but he changed my life for the better by doing so.

Still, it’s not all bleak. Knowing the problem illuminates the solution. In these cases, several things have to go wrong. We can see it’s not inevitable.

A pitiful wretch. He should have questioned authority. Having sacrificed everything to petition Authority, he certainly can’t do it now, even though he received none of the promised blessings.