Summary
Vivek Ramaswamy criticized American culture for prioritizing “normalcy” over excellence, which leads tech companies hiring foreign-born workers over Americans.
In a post on X, he argued that U.S. culture celebrates mediocrity and undervalues nerdiness, hard work, and academic achievement.
His comments sparked backlash across the political spectrum, with critics labeling him out of touch with American culture.
The controversy may jeopardize his standing in the Trump administration.
North America as a whole - America mostly, but also Canada being not that far behind - has been on a crazy rush to the bottom with cultivated ignorance.
Anything intellectual is mocked and degraded. Children who are smart try to hide it because it’s “not cool”. Adults who are competent and erudite get treated like freaks.
As of late, my longer-form content been frequently flagged as a product of AI because I use “big words” – and the language I use is no more sophisticated as something put together in first or second year university. It’s not sophisticated in the least, but the problem arises because a majority of adult Americans can’t read past a 5th grade level. So when I write at a completely bog-standard adult level, most adults simply cannot keep up.
And this intellectual decline in our culture is hella terrifying.
Sorry — have to downvote you on your rant, as Canada has the highest tertiary education attainment level in the world. And those are 2014 numbers — by 2022, 63% of Canadian adults had a post-secondary education. We are unmatched in global education attainment, and it really isn’t all that close.
Are there pockets of anti-intellectualism? Sure — but get out of your bubble and the reality is vastly different.
Are there pockets of anti-intellectualism?
Yeah, we call those people losers
It’s kind of true. I don’t think it’s necessarily that there is a culture of mediocrity but that other foreigners have a really high bar to get citizenship here in the states so they have to be exceptional. Leading to a massive amounts of underpaid intelligent H1B people.
Also, America can’t get shit done with technological improvements. Our infrastructure is shit, no high speed rail systems and we’re dependent on oil. We try to change but change takes way too long. Take a look at China and Japan, these countries are living in the future and we’re stuck in the past.
Edit: fixed visa type name
Japan is only living in the future in very select and narrow areas. Source: a decade in Japan sending faxes, having to use a physical stamp on hand-written paperwork, and working with/at japanese companies whose IT practices are still sitting around 2008.
Ah yes, have they gotten rid of their tape drives yet? I’m just nitpicking these technological advancements and highlighting how fast these countries can move whereas our California High Speed Rail is taking fuck long.
This year the government (at least national; not sure on more regional and local) updated their systems to allow submitting data on something other than literal 3.5" floppy disks so there’s that!
I’m not sure exactly how rail will continue to evolve here. Some argue the maglev stuff is a waste of money. We also have our own infrastructure issues going on here, particularly in the more rural areas.
I’d definitely say that Americans value hard work. To the point of their own detriment. I’d also say they often strive for excellence in product making, but it rarely comes out excellent. When comparing product quality between Europe and the US, Europe almost always comes out ahead. Plus, Europeans value a good balance between work and life. That’s true excellence in my book. The US seems to mostly survive on size and quantity rather than quality.
everyone talks of germany and japan as being efficient but its the US that the priority is efficiency. Thing is we don’t give a fuck about quality which is what allows for such great “efficiency”. What germany and japan were doing was maximizing efficiency while maintaining quality. We had a japanese shipping company bring some stuff for an NTT project. Truck came. Several guys. fully equipped. Got their lift gate going right away and zoom did that stuff get off the truck and right up to the rack and unboxed and man. just full service. incredibly fast and everything in very good condition. Compare that to the typical american shipping with just the one guy driving and unloading. They would often try to lie and say their liftgate was not working (they were worried about the few minutes it took and they had unreasonable schedules breathing down their necks). No handtrucks or belts or any other equipment. Once they got it onto the dock they are gone. So yeah the savings on improperly equiped trucks and only one guy is huge. Economically efficient. Meanwhile the japanese company with several guys and costly equipment is costing more, but they spend about the same amount of time and you get the equipment right to where it belongs and in perfect condition and your just happier about the whole experience. Efficiency while maintaining quality.
In a post on X, he argued that U.S. culture celebrates mediocrity and undervalues nerdiness, hard work, and academic achievement.
I can’t really argue with that part.
How is mediocrity celebrated? Well, other than the existence of social media influencers.
I would say that here in the U.S. and Canada:
Mediocrity is less celebrated and more just that anyone with real skill will probably stand out as troublemaker at work because they’ll know that their bosses are wrong.
Hard work is definitely celebrated because morons can always work longer hours but they aren’t capable of understanding how to work smart. Then the very worst people, the braindead managers, come along and ignore every single piece of documentation showing how working long hours is both unnecessary these days and just straight-up unproductive.
Academic achievement is massively worshipped here. In fact it is one of the number one arguments dumbasses who were good at school but not at real work make when spouting their other garbage. See: so many engineers, lawyers, and even doctors.
So I’m really not sure why you believe that that statement is true.
lol
Hey he’s not a CEO but, y’know. Maybe we could make an exception.
