I was raised in the Bay and remember how miserable the Asian kids were, being goaded into having to be better than everyone else in the community. A failure if they didn't get into Berkeley or UCLA, successful only if they got into the Ivies or Stanford. That's why I find the argument over colleges childish. Grind culture made people miserable and that's nothing new - read JS Mill's autobiography for a wonderful example of this.
Ultimately, I've turned against a pure meritocracy as the correct solution for society (see The Tyranny of Merit or The Meritocracy Trap). I wish SV would pull more from the humanities to see the deeper meanings of what education can do for a person rather than turn people into as you so politely put it "zombie test takers".
We should be welcoming to any who want to come here and work hard. I think American culture has always been much more fluid than other nations' making natives more insecure than I think other nations are about matters like these. Sriram sounds like an intelligent and thoughtful person (I've listened to a few of his podcasts) and the idea of someone like that choosing to go into public service should be celebrated.
Family experience: Very well educated high tech/engineering white male honors graduate from prestigious eastern high tech college still can't get a job.
On local training...HA! Seattle schools, land of Bill Gates Foundation didn't offer coding or tech training at any level of school for years (and probably still doesn't). You had to send your students to private lessons. Seattle Schools were trying to do away with honors programs; high tech tiger moms offset that bent. Except the drop out rate was about 30% with the academic level acheived by students who lack tiger moms and highly educated helicopter tech parents is far closer to illiteracy than excellence. The federal programs supposedly intented to foster educational equilvalence (the dreaded IEP program) has resulted in way too many dumbed down academic programs so horrible that way too many low income and/or minority students graduate (or drop out) without even basic reading, writing and math skills. Basically these students get diplomas with F grades. Personal family horror stories available on request.
DEI is rampant and still the new bible in this left wing culture. Seattle area over wrought with its too many multi-billionaire tech moguls supports two large extemely wealthy immigrant areas (cites of Bellevue-Chinese & Sammamish-Indian) remniscent of the British protective cultural isolationism seen in Hong Kong. Sigh. if only they could avoid being tainted with local indigenous culture it would be great. Families and offspring of formerly mostly solid middle class Seattle (comprised of mostly white residents) find it increasingly difficult to afford to remain in the areas. In contrast to the wealthy east side, the Seattle south end has all the refugee poor immigrant from middle east, Africa, and other far away places, many on public assistance. They too are not happy at all with local culture of previous 50-100 years.
Left wing Seattle remains elitist and completely infaturated with "multi-culturism". Stuck in an insane worship of "diversity" and thick with a not-too subtle, anti-white anti working class bias, it seems the left wing governing goal for "diversity" is to make sure the area mirrors world population percentages where whites comprise only about 11% of global population. If all of this wasn't so derogatory and condescending toward traditional American culture of the last century and such a wokeland hell, this still would be a pleasant place to live.
Personal experience: A decade or so ago I ran a summer internship program for college kids. There was one student who was very nice and well-meaning but fantastically and hopelessly useless at any practical pursuits. I shared my concerns about his future with a friend, who laughed and said "Paul(name changed)? You're worried about Paul?!?! Paul is white, tall, and good-looking. Don't worry about him, he will fail up the whole way." (Both my friend and I are white, and as far as I know, neither is pro-DEI).
Ten years later, my friend couldn't have been more right.
Since I'm unable to edit or delete my comment and I'm not hiding as "Person B" making potentially controversial statements, I do want to say I'm glad to see this discussion. I'm not against work visa programs nor immigration, but both programs seriously need vetting as both have created discord and problems. A rational and transparent immigation policy is especially long overdue. We have this bizarre combination where on one hand, after 10 years, some very qualified folks I know are stlll waiting for citizenship, and on the other, millions of illegal immigrants were encouraged to flood the country by Biden's defacto open border policy and then granted "sanctuary" not always willingly funded by taxpayers and with exhorbitant amount of money spent to the detriment and expense of the local communities. I both agree and disagree with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. I see elements of truth in both statements. Note: Given that authors refuse to grant commenters any editing or delete capability, I do not intend to comment again. What's with that?
Either way, good to see debate play out rather than be censored or shamed. MAGA and tech right can hash it out, while still agreeing on the larger points.
Fantastic post. Thank you. Was wondering how "we need to restore the value for work, work ethic, and candidly probably culturally devalue the college degree" is different in the sense of social engineering vis-a-vis Vivek's social engineering? Also, who's we? We the people? We the elites? We the SV politicians/politician-whisperers? Are the "we" with agency today, the same groups as always or is that changing? I'm guessing it's no longer we the media and we the Madison Avenue. Sorry for being pedantic, but in a hyper-lucid and grounded essay/assessment, this part seemed like it was begging for context.
Defining what “American” means and drilling deep into what America and Americans are good at seem like an important first step that NOBODY wants to put into writing (understandable yet disappointing). What IS the strength of America and double down. Moving forward without clarity makes it easy to not realize you’re moving backwards.
I'm surprised Amy Chua's work on Market dominant minorities have not been mentioned. Is a classic case of the middle class ethnic majority being angry at a very successful minority. One could say that the college educated elite operate like a ethnic minority in themselves especially if you look at coming apart from Charles Murray.
Excellent article!
I was raised in the Bay and remember how miserable the Asian kids were, being goaded into having to be better than everyone else in the community. A failure if they didn't get into Berkeley or UCLA, successful only if they got into the Ivies or Stanford. That's why I find the argument over colleges childish. Grind culture made people miserable and that's nothing new - read JS Mill's autobiography for a wonderful example of this.
Ultimately, I've turned against a pure meritocracy as the correct solution for society (see The Tyranny of Merit or The Meritocracy Trap). I wish SV would pull more from the humanities to see the deeper meanings of what education can do for a person rather than turn people into as you so politely put it "zombie test takers".
We should be welcoming to any who want to come here and work hard. I think American culture has always been much more fluid than other nations' making natives more insecure than I think other nations are about matters like these. Sriram sounds like an intelligent and thoughtful person (I've listened to a few of his podcasts) and the idea of someone like that choosing to go into public service should be celebrated.
Zero-sum thinking is ultimately counterproductive but sadly that has been how the MAGA types think of anything now. See Richard Hanania's thoughts here -https://www.richardhanania.com/p/nietzschean-chuds-and-the-indian
Family experience: Very well educated high tech/engineering white male honors graduate from prestigious eastern high tech college still can't get a job.
On local training...HA! Seattle schools, land of Bill Gates Foundation didn't offer coding or tech training at any level of school for years (and probably still doesn't). You had to send your students to private lessons. Seattle Schools were trying to do away with honors programs; high tech tiger moms offset that bent. Except the drop out rate was about 30% with the academic level acheived by students who lack tiger moms and highly educated helicopter tech parents is far closer to illiteracy than excellence. The federal programs supposedly intented to foster educational equilvalence (the dreaded IEP program) has resulted in way too many dumbed down academic programs so horrible that way too many low income and/or minority students graduate (or drop out) without even basic reading, writing and math skills. Basically these students get diplomas with F grades. Personal family horror stories available on request.
DEI is rampant and still the new bible in this left wing culture. Seattle area over wrought with its too many multi-billionaire tech moguls supports two large extemely wealthy immigrant areas (cites of Bellevue-Chinese & Sammamish-Indian) remniscent of the British protective cultural isolationism seen in Hong Kong. Sigh. if only they could avoid being tainted with local indigenous culture it would be great. Families and offspring of formerly mostly solid middle class Seattle (comprised of mostly white residents) find it increasingly difficult to afford to remain in the areas. In contrast to the wealthy east side, the Seattle south end has all the refugee poor immigrant from middle east, Africa, and other far away places, many on public assistance. They too are not happy at all with local culture of previous 50-100 years.
Left wing Seattle remains elitist and completely infaturated with "multi-culturism". Stuck in an insane worship of "diversity" and thick with a not-too subtle, anti-white anti working class bias, it seems the left wing governing goal for "diversity" is to make sure the area mirrors world population percentages where whites comprise only about 11% of global population. If all of this wasn't so derogatory and condescending toward traditional American culture of the last century and such a wokeland hell, this still would be a pleasant place to live.
Personal experience: A decade or so ago I ran a summer internship program for college kids. There was one student who was very nice and well-meaning but fantastically and hopelessly useless at any practical pursuits. I shared my concerns about his future with a friend, who laughed and said "Paul(name changed)? You're worried about Paul?!?! Paul is white, tall, and good-looking. Don't worry about him, he will fail up the whole way." (Both my friend and I are white, and as far as I know, neither is pro-DEI).
Ten years later, my friend couldn't have been more right.
Since I'm unable to edit or delete my comment and I'm not hiding as "Person B" making potentially controversial statements, I do want to say I'm glad to see this discussion. I'm not against work visa programs nor immigration, but both programs seriously need vetting as both have created discord and problems. A rational and transparent immigation policy is especially long overdue. We have this bizarre combination where on one hand, after 10 years, some very qualified folks I know are stlll waiting for citizenship, and on the other, millions of illegal immigrants were encouraged to flood the country by Biden's defacto open border policy and then granted "sanctuary" not always willingly funded by taxpayers and with exhorbitant amount of money spent to the detriment and expense of the local communities. I both agree and disagree with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. I see elements of truth in both statements. Note: Given that authors refuse to grant commenters any editing or delete capability, I do not intend to comment again. What's with that?
Either way, good to see debate play out rather than be censored or shamed. MAGA and tech right can hash it out, while still agreeing on the larger points.
Fantastic post. Thank you. Was wondering how "we need to restore the value for work, work ethic, and candidly probably culturally devalue the college degree" is different in the sense of social engineering vis-a-vis Vivek's social engineering? Also, who's we? We the people? We the elites? We the SV politicians/politician-whisperers? Are the "we" with agency today, the same groups as always or is that changing? I'm guessing it's no longer we the media and we the Madison Avenue. Sorry for being pedantic, but in a hyper-lucid and grounded essay/assessment, this part seemed like it was begging for context.
Defining what “American” means and drilling deep into what America and Americans are good at seem like an important first step that NOBODY wants to put into writing (understandable yet disappointing). What IS the strength of America and double down. Moving forward without clarity makes it easy to not realize you’re moving backwards.
I'm surprised Amy Chua's work on Market dominant minorities have not been mentioned. Is a classic case of the middle class ethnic majority being angry at a very successful minority. One could say that the college educated elite operate like a ethnic minority in themselves especially if you look at coming apart from Charles Murray.