I couldn't. In fact by the end, I realized gato had illuminated exactly the problem I have in my own neighborhood. A guy from another country (it doesn't matter which one, he's new to the US) has turned the 2300 ft residential house he bought from retired older Americans into the hub of a 24 hour mobile truck repair company in defiance of HOA rules and city codes. And because he's brought in a squad of same country of origin non-American friends, and is clever and lies whenever anyone makes an attempt to enforce laws he's, he's managed to completely change what used to be a quiet residential neighborhood. It is a microcosm of the cultural problem gato described.
Gato wrote about this in the past but under another frame. The golden rule.
"whether it was luck or intelligence or provenance or predestination, somehow in the west we happened to find a tenet around "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" emergent from judeo-christian tradition and (perhaps vitally) rarified by protestant reformation. it seems a prosaic and obvious thing, but as an idea it was astonishingly revolutionary and remains to this day vanishingly rare in most of the world. many languages do not even have words for the concept."
"the enlightenment and the industrial revolution were offshoots of christianity. it's why it happened in the west and nowhere else except as awkward imitation and why so much of the rest of the world remains unable to emulate these economic and social miracles and resorts to large scale family metaphors (kiretsu, chaebol, etc) to try to circumvent this lack of basic trust. (or simply cannot manage it at all)
I shared this on another Gato Stack last month, applies here, too, even more.
This interesting AP article from 1958 here. It was then, is now, always will be about "efficiency." And as long as it's "more efficient" for the economic engine the social engineers will keep engineering a "more efficient" economy. But in their relentless pursuit of efficiency they grow fonder and fonder of their centrally planned "efficient" economies. Often ignoring that there's more to the American economy, innovation, dynamism than can be measured by metrics of efficiency. They deem those intangibles and unmeasurables "inefficient freedom."
This AP article describes wonderfully "efficient" central-planned totalitarianism is. This was at the height of the Cold War. From the side of freedom? Note that the World Trade Association conference was held in San Francisco, not far from Silicon Valley. Coincidence?
‘Damned Efficient Slavery’ vs. ‘Inefficient Freedom’
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
Communism is mounting an attack upon the western world with economic weapons, Sir David Eccles, president of the Board of Trade of the United Kingdom, declared yesterday.
He said that while the western nations are pooling their military resources against any war arising from the Soviet Union, “not enough attention has been given to pooling our economic resources, either for the expansion of trade between ourselves, or for meeting the economic offensive that is coming from the Sino-Soviet bloc.”
Sir David, member of the British cabinet, addressed members of the British-American Chamber of Commerce and Trade Centre, the San Francisco World Trade Association and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Because the Soviets mobilize and direct all their economic resources from one centre, he said, they have a great advantage.
“Vice-President Nixon called the Russian system slavery. All right, slavery it is. But damned efficient slavery.
“The west, on the other hand, is fragmented into sovereign states, as often as not pursuing rival economic policies.
“We lack imaginative plans for expansion of the free world’s wealth. Indeed, we go our own sweet ways protecting our domestic industries to the detriment of those of our closest allies, trying to block each other’s trade when we should be collaborating for raising standards of life.
“We cherish our freedom. All right, freedom it is, but sadly inefficient freedom.”
FF - Note: The Soviet Union was defeated by the economic might of a free market, innovation that outproduced the central-planned economy of the USSR. Those intangibles and unmeasurables they call "inefficient freedom" is the secret sauce. But because they can't see it they choose to import cheap, obedient labor that measures high on the efficiency scale. "Experts" placed in charge of an economy and workforce immigration overlook the inherent, and necessary value of "inefficient freedom." Only able to see the measurables of "efficient slavery."
Related political cartoon from The Chicago Tribune, 1934:
It is not commonly appreciated, that the 'Judaism', practiced by the descendants of Jacob (that is, the Israelites), at the time of Christ's birth,
was a very corrupted form of the religion of the first 39 books of the Bible.
Hence the hostility between the Religious Leaders, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Public officials do not like to be told -
You are not doing a very good job of this ...
and you are a liar and a thief.
The Religious Leaders of Christ's day had no interest in God or the people, except as a brand to be used to increase their power and their wealth.
A little like most Politicians today.
What is probably least understood, is that True Judaism is ...
Christianity.
Adam was a Christian.
So was Noah and
Moses and
King David.
They all looked to the coming of the Messiah, promised in Genesis 3.
He came unto His own, and His own received Him not
John 1
When the Messiah rejecting ...
Torah rejecting ...
39 Book rejecting ...
Religious Leaders of Christ's day, condemned Him to death ...
they rejected Adam, Noah, Moses and King David ..
they rejected True Judaism, in favour of Religion Flavoured Organized Crime.
The Apostles were all Jews.
They didn't stop being Jews, and become Christians.
They were Jews, who recognized their Messiah, and continued to practice True Judaism, and promote it, to all men, not just Israelites.
The rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the rejection of every single book in the 66 Book Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.
Without the Golden Rule, there is no golden age.
Without the Bible, there is no Golden Rule.
Fake Judaism is a made up religion, which has nothing to do with the first 39 (or 66) Books of the Bible.
It has no Golden Rule.
And so it has no golden age.
39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
40 But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.
41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.
42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.
44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
45 And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
46 Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?
47 He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
John 8
35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,
42 Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David.
43 He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying,
44 The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?
45 If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?
46 And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.
Either you hand your chidren over to a Man in Women's Clothing to be bounced on his lap ...
or
you read the Bible to them, for five minutes, every morning and evening.
Perversion or Preaching ...
TAKE YOUR PICK.
Madonna taught us to sing ...
PAPA DON'T PREACH
How has that worked out for us ?
Papa stopped preaching ...
and the country went to Hell.
no golden rule, no golden age
Preaching made us good
Preaching made us safe
Preaching made us smart
Preaching made us healthy
Preaching made us rich.
What has perversion done for us ?
but make us ...
bad
scared
stupid
sick
and
poor.
Friends, I want to encourage all of you to Practice and PROMOTE Daily Family Worship as MAN'S HIGHEST OBLIGATION ...
HIS NUMBER ONE INDISPENSABLE ACTIVITY ...
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HE HAS TO DO EACH DAY ...
5 minutes in the morning
5 minutes in the evening
Read the Bible and pray with your WHOLE family
If you have time, sing a psalm or a hymn.
(If you have no family, but want one ...
this is the time to get knock, knock, knocking on Heaven's door.)
Daily Family Worship, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, will ...
PROTECT YOUR FAMILY
FIX YOUR CHURCH
SAVE YOUR NATION
So ...
Practice it in your family.
PROMOTE it by every means at your disposal.
no golden rule, no golden age
1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper - Psalm 1
How very dare you. Airbnb is the very pinnacle of swashbuckling capitalism! "Corporations should never be constrained by parasitic government regulations. Unless they help me personally." -Ayn Rand, probably.
Im pretty sure NIMBY does not apply to this essay. As a matter of fact, it's the opposite of that. Less rules, less cronyism, more innovation. HOA Karen's are part of the problem, not the solution.
this discussion has been a weapons grade hot mess all over titter with a MAGA vs etch bro bawl for the ages going on around name calling, accusation, and counter accusation.
perhaps i have (inaccurately) assumed that substack would devolve to similar trollery around "you want us all replaced" and "americans are crap, indians rule!" and emotions here would be running similarly hot.
i'd love to have been wrong about that, but let's wait a bit for the article to propagate. BC rapid readers tend to be more measured than comments that come later. still, cautiously hopeful you may be right.
I took the time to read and digest your article in full before responding. It is well articulated and mirrors my own experience, though I am female, on the older side and never worked in silicon valley. Living near DC as I do, most of my entire life, I have seen the degradation of the golden rule over time. For about a decade I have been saying to other Americans (of various backgrounds), whatever happened to assimilation and the melting pot? This was my foundational culture, and for about 20 years now, maybe, it's been turned 180 degrees into something somehow "racist."
It is refreshing to hear your fleshing out of my deeply held sentiment. How do we olders help the youngers realize what they have been missing, with their "every day is trophy day" upbringing?
I remember it started with "America should not be a "melting pot", it should be a "tossed salad". Unfortunately, it's turning into a table full of side dishes.
As a non-American, I have always been impressed with the ability of the US to take people from anywhere and within one generation, turn them into Americans. This is something no other nation has been able to replicate, not the UK, not anywhere in Europe or even Canada, which is probably the closest comparable immigration based society. Vivek R. is a perfect example of this; from just listening to his voice, I would be hard pressed to say from which country he is originally from. This is a source of enormous cultural strength. I hope you guys are able to fix this, as the alternative is balkanisation and will not be pretty.
I want people who want to be Americans to immigrate here. I do not want people to come here and import non-American cultural ideals. The way it was when I was a kid (which I kind of liked) was something like this: within your own household, you celebrate the culture of your forebears, but once you step outside the door, you are Americans, period. Absolutely, share your culture with others, and after you have "lurked" here long enough, you have earned the right to offer some suggestions -- but otherwise, for newcomers, respect the existing culture and don't try to change it. I hope that makes sense. I honor other cultures and there are good ideas from elsewhere! But there are polite and respectful ways to offer them -- rather than imposing them while destroying all that is good about this place.
Either you hand your chidren over to a Man in Women's Clothing to be bounced on his lap ...
or
you read the Bible to them, for five minutes, every morning and evening.
Perversion or Preaching ...
TAKE YOUR PICK.
Madonna taught us to sing ...
PAPA DON'T PREACH
How has that worked out for us ?
Papa stopped preaching ...
and the country went to Hell.
no golden rule, no golden age
Preaching made us good
Preaching made us safe
Preaching made us smart
Preaching made us healthy
Preaching made us rich.
What has perversion done for us ?
but make us ...
bad
scared
stupid
sick
and
poor.
Dani, I want to encourage you to Practice and PROMOTE Daily Family Worship as MAN'S HIGHEST OBLIGATION ...
HIS NUMBER ONE INDISPENSABLE ACTIVITY ...
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HE HAS TO DO EACH DAY ...
5 minutes in the morning
5 minutes in the evening
Read the Bible and pray with your WHOLE family
If you have time, sing a psalm or a hymn.
If you are on your own, ask God to show you, how to get your wider family, onboard.
Daily Family Worship, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, will ...
PROTECT YOUR FAMILY
FIX YOUR CHURCH
SAVE YOUR NATION
So ...
Practice it in your family.
PROMOTE it by every means at your disposal, to everyone you meet.
1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper - Psalm 1
EGM, Many of us on Substack never go to Twitter for just this reason. I would be surprised if this became a flamer war. The Substack crowd is generally not the "speak then think" crowd. The piece was excellent and correct and I think the comments reflect that your readership agrees with much/most of it. I surely do. But thanks for stating it so eloquently. Will disseminate widely.
People tend to have deeper thoughts when not limited to 'sound bites' of a particular number of characters. I refuse to go to twitter or any other short format platform. It's like the earphones in Harrison Bergeron that give erratic short bursts of noise to distract someone who thinks. I'm bad enough scrolling Substack and YouTube for long form think pieces, gods forbid I get hooked on snippets...
OH crap... Twatter is always like that... This was a little pitched...
Long ago I did a lot of different things for a living, some high paying and some very menial. Especially in the latter case I ended up working with a lot of Mexicans. (NOT HISPANICS and they get a CAPITAL M) To much of America Mexicans were the "Indians." They came here to work; they came here to assimilate at least after a fashion.
But when they came here they brought the freedom and work ethic with them. And they were good workers, which is why they have taken over much of the manual occupations. I worked with them in all manner of places. They are a great success, by and large.
The south of the border types we are getting now - a lot of them - are nothing but trouble. Lazy, thieving, and all-around criminally inclined. They do not come from successful countries. They came from shitholes, and they brought with them shithole ideas.
And guess what? The Mexicans are their biggest enemies. No love lost there at all.
I am new to X and got on once and read the vitriol and it made me see that deep thoughts are not conducive there. It was a bunch of monkeys throwing hot poo at each other and they were all in the same cage. I don't like it there...makes me uneasy and I log off feeling more than a little dirty.
You wrote about the "golden rule" and its impact on western society and that is allowed an amazing jump in progress. If only I could search your articles and find it again.
Do you think pajeets fundamentally believe in the golden rule and randian creator values?
I’ve been increasingly skeptical in my lifetime. Their performance abroad and their behavior here just seem to get worse and worse. Increasing their numbers would probably accelerate that trend.
Maybe there is something about them that creates the shitty institutions of their home country.
Viveks screed may have been the worst thing I’ve read on this issue. He clearly means what he said, not some clever opposite reinterpretation.
I live in northern Virginia, which has a very high concentration of pajeets. They seem like the embodiment of the complete opposite of old school Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. I personally also greatly dislike them for how they behaved during COVID/woke, and the impact they have had on my state/local politics.
If your a genius pajeet that wants to play by western values, I think mass importing your co-ethnics is probably the worst thing you could do for yourself. You should basically want to be a tiny minority that has to play by other peoples values, not import and values of India.
Vivek says the opposite (we should all become soulless grinds and import as many soulless grinds as possible, because he couldn’t get a date in high school).
I am a Twitter user, but my algorithm-filled version is just me once again responding to masks and even air purifiers not working. I'm also realizing that I am now talking to people pathologically afraid of air who at the same time laugh at people about chemtrails...which is essentially people afraid of the air.
a bc rapid reader, i am not. i take my time and savor the imagery and masterful use of language while running the ideas over the palette of my mind…more slowly than most i expect. i also make notes for myself. sometimes a particular phrase sparks an idea or lesson for me.
i love this excellent assessment of complex issues. this is much more to my liking than the bumper car madness of x.
the varied comments add to the texture and to my understanding of broader viewpoints.
i am grateful for the many well-articulated thoughts in the bc agora.
the golden rule and the freedom to explore and be innovative are essential to our future success and to our overall well being as individuals and as a society.
You must not have seen some of the MAGA comments which were indistinguishable from something like AOC, Bernie or Liz would say. Like Cernovich 'I think people who work at gas stations should earn enough to have a nice life.' Sounds a lot like 'every American worker deserves a living wage' to me. BTW, several from MAGA X-verse are now claiming that all of the racist remarks made came from bots.
I think underneath, people are objecting to the accusation of American mediocrity. But if you look at our culture, there certainly is a lot of evidence of it. And it's been a constant complaint.
Our work ethic was predicated on the golden rule. You would not like to be screwed, so when you work, you provide the type of work and quality of it you would pay for. And in reciprocation, others will pay you a fair wage for such a high-value offering because they would like to be paid a fair wage for the work they provide.
But in many parts of our society now, you are "awesome" simply by being you. Really? Our culture no longer celebrates exceptionalism.
I think in fairness, most people are very mediocre. What seems to have broken down the most is our ability to recognize merit. Credentialism gets in the way, as well as the problem of people hiring folks to do jobs the hiring manager doesn't understand either, etc. all before we get to issues of DEI nonsense. That was what really struck me from Vivek's comment, that he didn't seem to realize how oddly racist it was to suggest that the average Indian (or whomever) from over seas wasn't actually any better.
I have experienced both ends of this issue. . I personally have suspected, but can’t prove, discrimination against me in the job market, in favor of currently favored groups. At the same time, my son, an American born white guy, works for a tech startup founded by an Indian born, MIT trained, immigrant. I’m fairly certain neither that founder nor anyone else at that small company spends brain cycles on this issue. They just want to build! Maybe Gen Z will show the way!?
The crux of the problem and the solution is stated in just a few words-
"where we get into real trouble if when we lose the idea of assimilation and melting pot and start importing large groups of people who do not share these high trust morals and practices because to do this is to threaten not only what makes our economy so dynamic, but also what makes america a pleasant and safe place to live."
There is assimilation, and then there is forming a separate colony and calling it assimilation. The Vietnamese from the 70's assimilated and have done well. Their children and grand children speak English. This is the same process as the Irish, Germans, Dutch, Japanese, and dozens of other ethnicities have followed. They revere their native culture, but have adopted the the USA, our language, laws, holidays, and general way of life. Far too many of the current "immigrants", illegal or not, have no plans to adopt anything related to the USA except the gravy train- for as long as that lasts. Often they not only refuse to adopt it, they are against many of our rights and actively seek to destroy it. Those who embrace Sharia, are drug cartel members, do honor killings, perpetrate endless chain migration, commit fraud, and live by sucking our country dry have NO DAMN PLACE HERE. Control the borders, deport the illegals, do away with anchor babies, and use current law to jail those who aid and abet breaking immigration laws. I'm talking about priests, pastors, NGOs, politicians, bureaucrats, employers, LEOs or anyone else.
There is strong evidence that long-standing US regional differences are rooted in their colonists being from different parts of the UK. THEY didn’t assimilate. Californians and Massholes move within the same country, ostensibly because they felt oppressed in their former homes, and what do they do? Recreate their origins.
And we’re going to import people from low-trust foreign cultures where you admit human capital can’t flourish, and pretend that this isn’t and hasn’t been a driver of the very degradation and depredations the cat cites?
No. Your “reasonable solution” is neither reasonable, nor a solution.
Vivek, who made his billion in a pump and dump with a legal veneer, was right. It IS about the C-word. If you want the golden rule culture that lays the golden eggs, you must exclude cultures that don’t accept it.
But that’s a heresy you can’t utter in 🤡🌎. Precisely because it’s true.
You're repeating the arguments from Leighton Woodhouse's recent piece, which was a bit over-generalizing from a few examples.
Traveling abroad teaches you really right fast that to the world we are all just Americans and spottable from 100 meters away. It's only here we feel our own differences from region to region, city to city, neighborhood to neighborhood.
You'd think my backpack was wrapped in a giant neon red white 'n blue. Fortunately it was only a moderate sorrow to me, being so instantly recognized as a Yank. I still never had trouble getting lifts on the road and hostel managers were all nice to me.
As a recovering "Masshole" I've seen what you describe. My brother-in-law moved from MA to NH, and complains bitterly about how former MA residents move there and bring their liberal politics with them. My family moved from Newark NJ just ahead of the 1960's riots. 30 years later our politics were poisoned by all the downstaters who moved there. My wife and I got out of the Northeast upon retirement and moved to rural KY. We never had those liberal ideas, and are very happy to assimilate here. On the one hand, we tell folks here how happy we are finally, and to the rest we say: go elsewhere! The culture is much healthier here; the Golden Rule still lives in isolated pockets. We occasionally go back to NY or MA to visit, and we can't get back here soon enough. And we don't inhabit X either.
One area of twitter inflammation concerns H1-B visas. If immigrants arrived here and started competing with local workers, that would be one thing. However, these visas are supposed to be used when there aren’t enough local workers to compete.
In reality, employers are offering jobs to local workers at substandard rates. They can’t find good local workers who will accept those rates so they import workers who are delighted to accept them.
If it weren’t possible to import those workers, they would have to either hire substandard local workers or pay good local workers appropriate rates for their quality.
In reality, many (most?) of the imported workers are substandard relative to local workers, so substandard local workers who otherwise might have jobs aren’t getting them. Nor are good local workers getting jobs because the imported workers work for less.
How can this happen? Many hiring managers can’t tell the imported workers are also substandard OR they belong to the same nationality/culture and want to hire others of that culture. This is probably what is happening most of the time.
In my experience as a Silicon Valley worker and hiring manager, cutting costs is usually prioritized over hiring superstars. And, as with government jobs, you hire a couple of superstars or contractors to do all the work and still have a nice little empire. When Elon bought Twitter, he kept the superstars and fired the empire deadwood No one missed them.
"Many hiring managers can’t tell the imported workers are also substandard OR they belong to the same nationality/culture and want to hire others of that culture. "
That unfortunately matches much of my experience in corporate as well. Identifying the merit is an important part of a meritocracy, and that part is failing hard, leaving a lot of room for nepotism of one sort or another.
I think that's because "Europe" was never more than an H1 [HTML] heading on a map; it's always been a geographically-connected bunch of nations, at-odds-with and dependent-on each other... searching-for an ever-shifting balance, but rarely giving-up on finding, using, and maintaining it. Let-go of the illusion and return to the roots.
Not a lie. Not black and white at all. Some peoples assimilated more than others. From the beginning of the settlements there was a division you speak of, and it largely resulted in a mostly english coast (the limeys don't get a capital "E") And Scotch-Irish further inland especially in appalachia. But remember the civil war altered a lot and there were the indigenous people and blacks to consider too. Not everyone assimilated into the same group. My next to the last european ancestor fled his homeland's tyranny (as he saw it) moved to the frontier, married an indigenous woman, and totally assimilated into the tribe.
I throw that out as a caution: This is very complex and there are a lot of different ways it developed.
Um, the British have nothing to do with CA for the most part. Massachusetts and the Carolinas, maybe, the difference between puritains and royalists? But it ain't just the Brits, there was, at the time, the germans, dutch, spanish and portuguese all on the east coast in that era and since we've had all sorts. So Anglo obsessed to omit them. But comparing CA to MA, dude, apples to oranges.
On edit: I forgot France. You know? The France that owned at least one third of the continent before they sold it off. Are NOLA and Boston all that different?
Read the book Two Years Before the Mast, about a New England seaman traveling to Mexican-held CA about 1840. The culture of San Francisco quickly became the California ethos. That culture had a high degree of New England character to it after the conquest of Northern Mexico. Even Puritans mellow a bit in perfect weather, however.
That's it in a nutshell. The people who claim that closing the border is racist have clearly never overstayed a Tourist Visa in many of the countries from which we involuntarily import "citizens".
Gut welfare, funding, and tax exemptions -- I repeat myself -- for ESG and DEI and every other nonsensical boondoggle and let the chips start to sort themselves out. Then we can get surgical.
Fixing the problems with illegal immigration will take decades and I doubt that it would ever be entirely fixed. But you want that fixed before we tackle H1B? Get outta town.
As a person I read this morning on Twitter/X said, come to the SF Bay Area and then tell us that the H1B program is not a problem.
Don't need to eliminate H-1B. Require minimum salary for H-1B to be 150,000 paid directly to the employee, not the body shop. Then only critically needed foreign workers will get them.
Respectfully, Mimi, I disagree. Fixing illegal [im]migration requires *enforcing* existing laws/regulations, and can be done immediately; fixing the H1B visa problem(s) requires *revoking/amending* existing laws/regulations, and will take time... lots of time, if ever. The first is easier than the second.
PS: I lived-and-worked in "the Valley" (high-tech), late-'80s/early-'90s.
You simply set the number of H1B visas allowed for the next year to zero. Then you can work on fixing the regulations as time goes on. Yeah, there will still be plenty of them around working but at least there won't be any new people added.
Except it isn't possible to correct the problems of legal or illegal immigration. Even with a 100% stop to immigration and 100% enforcement of existing laws, this would only delay the point at which Whites become a minority by a few years. 2038 instead of 2040, or similar. And the slide continues. Demographics is destiny, and currently the US will inevitably become a turd world shit hole. Import the turd world, become the turd world.
True enough... However, remember... Karma she is a bitch.
I have a hunch that traitor joe's incompetence - or more accurately the sabotage of the traitors who wielded his power for him - is the biggest single reason Trump (GETS A CAPITAL "T"!!!) won the election. The importation and most importantly the distribution of these frankly worthless individuals - seriously, they are a terrible burden and disruption - coupled with the way the machine bent over backward for them...
That brought the reality of the goals of the globalists home to most every part of America. It was so big the liars in the MSM couldn't even ignore it. That, coupled with the arrogance of the commiecrat "sanctuary" faction... That got Trump elected.
We can multi-task. And yes, maybe 10 million illegal entries just in the last 4 years, while people still claim there are 11 million illegals in the country. That number is from 2000, and was probably an under-estimate even then. Ann Coulter estimated 35 million in 2015. The true number could be 60 million by now - roughly one out of five people you see on the streets.
Have you no mercy upon my housing equity?! Imagine how much housing costs would drop for our poor and middle class people by deporting that many people.
First I'm pissed you used my favorite quote...I had it all tee'd up...jj...lolol.
Like you said some of the shit that was said on Twitter was reprehensible. I never go on there, but i kept hearing i should go check it out. Conservatives did themselves no favors. Ramsaway landed right in the hornets nest when he tried to provide color on Elons original tweet. He shouldn't have used Indians as an example. I'm sure he regretted it right after he pushed "send". And if he didn't he sure does now because he gave the media exactly what they want: an immigration cudgel for conservatives to beat each other to death.
However, I'd like to point out that we wouldn't be in dire need of issuing H1-B visas to recruit scientists and engineers if we had a department of education that actually cared about children...or better yet not having a DOE. That said, I'm all about legal immigration if it's based on merit and if they will assimilate.
I think this is real easy. What does the average H1-B visa recipient contribute to GDP? Even if you throw out the Elons et al i think people will be surprised what they're "worth" vs. the average American.
Bottom line:
You do not get capital to start new ventures without investors who believe in the human capital they are evaluating for an investment. I know this first hand from raising capital; you get them in the door with an impressive "deck", but you can not close a VC deal unless the investors are blown away by the human capital.
Sorry, some people have more "value" to the free flow of capital than others. Chiefly because some people don't just earn money; they CREATE it; they expand the pie. People who have been involved in this kind of stuff know exactly what I'm talking about.
And that benefits everyone. This is NOT a zero sum game. In fact it's just the opposite...and frankly the only way to grow an economy long-term.
The H1-B program was started in 1990. Saying that the problem is education makes the assumption that all the people educated in STEM for the past few decades don't know anything. It's insulting to say that and almost as bad as what Musk and Vivek said.
The number of people pursing degrees in STEM has nearly 100% to do with the economic situation. When people think they can get jobs in tech, they will study the tech fields. If they don't think they can get jobs in tech, they study something else.
There is *not* a shortage of Americans who are educated in technical fields. The tech companies always say that because they want to keep those H1-Bs coming because they can get them cheaper.
The whole H1-B program could be eliminated tomorrow and America would be no worse off.
I get your point and agree to a certain extent. But i completely disagree on the state of our educational system and higher academics. I have children in school right now and i can tell you it's not good...and hasn't been since the DOE was formed in 79'. We went from number 1 in the world to 30th. The decline started immediately....and is only getting worse.
But haven't you just fallen into the trap I laid out?
This is not a zero sum game. I never mentioned that we didn't have Americans who could do the same thing.
Not saying that education isn't a real mess right now. But that doesn't mean that there aren't Americans who are just as capable of doing STEM work as H1-Bs.
My problem is with the argument that says (which I have seen other people say) that we *need* H1-Bs until we can fix education.
Initially, there has to be a far superior public school education.
Public school is okay, just okay, until they hit middle school. Then the sharp kids move ahead, and they do get bored. both of my daughters hated public school once they entered 5th grade. Kids are not taught that school is supposed to be serious and important study. Instead we have pajama day, and plaid day, and way too many distractions. Look back into the 60s and everyone dressed properly for school and behaved themselves
my uncle Jan in the Netherlands can not stand the USA. He has NEVER been here.
I adore him he was a country school teacher and principal in Aalten. He has two brilliant sons.
He and my mom were so so very close. I believe his dream was that when he grew up he and my mom would live together forever. You see, my mom was older, and was born with only a left hand and a right arm that ends at the wrist. She was a whiz by the way. So, mom grew up... and had boyfriends, I think Jan was horrified of course as a younger brother. My dad was dirt poor. lived in poor people housing in Rotterdam only streets away. Another shock. My mom spiffed him up. He was super bright and very industrious. They married and came to the US and I know, my uncle is still alive today, just spoke with him last week at age 99, he still hates America. Our country was doing well, until media moved in, comparisons, vanity, and really some unwholesome behavior. I do not believe it was the fault of legal immigration, it was certainly the US government. I do not think there is any other country that taxes so much with insanity spending on programs.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, I lived-and-worked in "the Valley" during the late-'80s/early-'90s (high-tech). Speaking only of white Americans (there were NO blacks in high-tech, and the few Hispanics I saw were field-techs), there were -- increasingly -- more with BS degrees in CompSci/EE *who went on for MBAs* and became Project Managers (not *Leads*... Managers). Take that for what it's worth... and see if the trend has changed in the past 30 years (i.e., lessened, rather than increased).
My SIL was married to a black guy (Jamaican) and the two of them set up part of a major bank's internet backbone. there might have been fewer, but there were blacks in the biz in the day as well. My takeaway is that there used to be more small, responsive 'mom and pops' doing this in the day as opposed to monoliths.
One more: "However, I'd like to point out that we wouldn't be in dire need of issuing H1-B visas to recruit scientists and engineers "
"The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs." that's the Tampa Bay Times, January, 2024.
How about, we stop kidding ourselves about a "dire need of issuing H-1B visas" (about 150K per year) until the STEM graduates working in STEM rate rises to, say, 70%? I'd even go for 50%. With about 437k bachelors in STEM students, 50% working in field would be... almost more than the total of H-1B visas.
"What does the average H1-B visa recipient contribute to GDP?"
That's a poor question and the game the elites play. What does the average H-1B recipient contribute to GDP per capita is better, since it doesn't involve increasing GDP at the cost the people already here.
A better question is: does the US population generally turn a profit on H-1B immigrants, all costs considered? You can pay an H-1B less than an equivalent American (assuming you could find two perfectly matched candidates) for this reason: the American already possesses citizenship in a country with good water, good roads, and a decent level of trust, and the H-1B will presumably acquire this, a good worth substantial value. You might estimate that value at the salary difference over six years of the visa... say 25k a year.
The citizen, whose ancestors paid for the infrastructure of a first world country, is subsidizing the H-1B. Until you account for this by requiring, say, an infrastructure tax equalization you're still disadvantaging American citizens in favor of people with literally no right to that wealth.
The champions of this immigration scam are promoters. One bought a failed drug patent, raised $300 million for a pump and dump on Wall Street. He is nothing more than Ivy educated salesman willing to take people's hard earned money and give false hope to the sick. The other has fed at the trough of government subsidies for decades and appears to be a cut out. Who can be the CEO of multiple major companies, consistently misrepresent what his company's tech does (it kills people via non autopilot), take massive subsidies from Communist China, and get a free pass everywhere?
gato makes great points about how all of these tech bros have turned government grifters. The stories about discrimination against Americans and the true level of H1B talent I have seen on X are consistent with personal experience. Immigration both illegal and legal has become another scam for the uber wealthy and connected who at their very heart are godless communists and traitors to America.
"if you want to make immigration work, immigrants need to assimilate. the value of the american way of life far outstrips any contribution they could make if their presence undermines such social fabric."
You betcha. You betcha!
And--the thing about autistic genius types like Elon and Vivek--they're great at creating. They need smart tough normally-wired people to manage the businesses they build and deal with all the boring tiresome but extremely necessary aspects too. Elon and Vivek see far but straight ahead and peering around corners ain't something they like to bother with.
Immigration: I was astonished as a kid in elementary school to meet kids whose grandparents were born in America. I'm the granddaughter of illegal aliens on the maternal side and not entirely sure about the status of the grandparents on the paternal side. I'm sure glad my grandma snuck in just in time to give birth to an American daughter.
So naturally in all honesty and decency I have a lot of sympathy towards anyone wanting to get in too. But we should not be paying for them via our taxes and, of course, horribly, sometimes in blood. All those NGOs need to lose their government contracts pronto and do their work as they were meant to--with private dollars donated by those passionately devoted to the cause.
My mother's family were given a land grant by the King of Spain to a large parcel in New Spain, which was then a part of New México. This was in the 1640s. Part of the family moved east in to 1700s to a new area called Tejas, after the natives who lived there, into a little pueblo called San Antonio. There's been family there, working and contributing, ever since.
Wish I could see the sales brochure for that vs reality: come from cold rainy Ireland to the fabulous sunny paradise of Florida! (don't worry about the huge bugs, humidity, or hurricanes)
And isn't it amazing how many very creepy crawlies are always in them earthly paradises? And even the creepy crawlies one may like will not very kindly like one back. I'm extremely fond of snakes and alligators but I know unfortunately they're only fond of me as dinner.
I believe that some of those who support unscreened massive immigration are deliberately trying to turn America into another third world country. They want to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven.
Others are just kind of naive to the point of stupidity. About ten years ago, I was talking to a former business client in Boulder. She expressed a desire to visit Cuba "before American tourism ruined it." Righty-o.
Some of our best immigrants-- Ayn Rand! Lily Williams!- are from those totalitarian hellholes. I love those people, inspiring.
i have actually wondered from time to time if it's not actually foreign attack egged on by china buying brandon. pure conjecture on my part, but were i they and wanted to break american exceptionalism, i'd flood america with immigrants it cannot assimilate (as is also occurring in europe) and destroy the potential for high trust, high freedom society.
The attack through immigration started in the early 1900s, and there were pushes for it in the 1800s. It accelerated with the 1965 Immigration Act, the results of which we see today.
Multiple 'someones' have bought Brandon, AND his handlers!
Over and over again. Which may help explain how people who have never had a "real job", who have never actually worked in the private sector, become multi-millionaires. (A few names come to mind - like Biden, or Pelosi.)
I absolutely agree! Add Russia to that equation, too. Subversion is a long game for which there are no quick fixes. Secure the border, and have honest debate about the country's need for what workers. Deep six ESG and DEI. None of this will work without a government creating an environment where people are encouraged to marry and have children again. Our policies have been the antithesis of this for decades. It's a deep hole we've dug for ourselves.
I’ve been increasingly skeptical that non-whites are capable of western freedom, even the high iq ones. East Asia has been economically stalled for decades now and demographically free falling. India is worse than East Asia in every way.
Vivek’s bizarre jock vs nerd screed more or less convinced me it’s not possible. He basically wrote that Harvard is right about pajeets having terrible personalities.
We’ve got plenty of h1b pajeets cram school drilling their way to no outside life and 0.5 kids so they can get government contractor scam jobs here is northern Virginia and it seems to me the exact opposite all of Elon’s supposed randian creator values. If doge were real he would fire all these people.
Sure, you can plug a few non-white geniuses in so long as their numbers are low and they have no political or cultural influence, but we are obviously past that point today. And we’ve just learned that Indians in particular are really bad on this front (at least East Asians don’t care about influencing politics and culture).
I wonder not just about immigration but the entire Leftist agenda: Is it a product of foreign influence, or the natural outcome of our own culture? And why would China want to destroy their largest customer?
I think it really comes down to White Americans being tired of being replaced by various shades of brown people. The Kalergi Plan is real as is the ongoing White genocide. People are more than willing to sacrifice a few basis points of GDP...it’s not a huge deal.
Nicky Haley had an a good tweet about this, I never thought I’d agree with her on anything but this I do:
Diversity is NOT a strength, that’s a lie that’s been pumped into people’s minds relentlessly by a coincidence of people who definitely do not embrace diversity. We are witnessing the downfall of many countries and indeed an entire way of live because of diversity. Disagree, then look at Sweden, France, Germany, England, Belgium, etc. London is minority White. Is London a better place now or was it better 40 years ago. Same with Paris, etc.
Diversity is in fact somewhat of a curse...as America's current struggles with its Black population illustrate....When 60% of murders are committed by a few percent of the population, you have a major problem...
No. It's with Americans being replaced by anyone from abroad.
It wouldn't even be so bad if Americans weren't being fired and made to train their replacements.
I understand why people from India want to come to the United States. What I never could understand is why there are H1-Bs coming from Western Europe to work here. I worked with some of them from the UK. Now, that made me angry. Couldn't they get work at home?
The problem is Americans, by in large, are unwilling to work 14 hour days.
It doesn't matter how smart you are, if you want to CREATE wealth, you have no other choice than to burn the candle at both ends in your youth (25 to 50). I would argue youth is a persons biggest asset. Many are squanderiing it. Started with participation trophies.
Being smart is just the foundation. Hard work is the framing, and risk management is the finishings.
I totally agree with the working hard. I spent years getting a couple of different degrees. But I don’t agree that any guy, and even worse, maybe you’re even talking about mothers as well, should have to work an 80 hour work week.
They did a huge study for six years in Europe and found that 39 hours is the most a man should work and 26 hours the most a female should work.
They found out 80% of females who work past 26 hours during the week get extremely strung out and depressed it because they can’t do anything much at home. Father shouldn’t be working 80 hours either. It’s one thing to sacrifice by working maybe 50 hours in your 20s but come on!!! Parents would never see their children. Nobody in the world should be working 80 hours unless a person obsessively loved their job and even then it wouldn’t make sense.
If you are an entrepreneur, working long hours makes sense because you are working for yourself and you may end up creating wealth for yourself.
Working long hours for somebody else just makes wealth for them, especially if you aren't being paid much.
Most people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs. There's nothing wrong with that. Why should everybody work long hours for low pay for somebody else and why should everyone who is not an entrepreneur not be allowed to make enough money to support themselves?
It's not about participation trophies. H1-B started in 1990 so they were replacing boomers. Say what you like about my generation, but we never got f-ing participation trophies.
I agree 100%. However, sometimes the “price” is too high when marriages crumble due to who drove the wealth. Naïveté and thinking you’re on the same page can lose what one treasures the most: family. And wealth can evaporate with greedy lawyers and “other interested parties”. After multiple companies, I’ll keep it small and secure going forward. Entrepreneurs are a unique breed and it’s seldom as straightforward as it appears from outside. She says sadly…
Well I completely agree. I certainly was blessed in that department and there's zero chance I could've made it without my wife.
About 85% of the time it's nice owning a business, because of the flexibility, etc...but then there's that 15% of the time that's just living hell...where you have scrape yourself out of bed after a couple hours sleep and work until the jobs done...or you may not have a bed to sleep in at all.
I'm here to talk about H1B. That's why the Bad Cat wrote his substack, right?
Do entrepreneurs need to hire H1Bs? I hope not.
I really don't know what you are trying to say. Sure, theoretically wealth creation benefits everyone. But you don't want it putting people out of work which is what the H1B does.
But that SOB Musk thinks the answer is UBI. He said so again on Twitter the other day. To hell with him.
You got it Ryan! Don't know how for years I worked a regular job, then a home-based software business into the wee hours. Not especially thrilled in retrospect about not spending more time with my kids.
Americans aren't lazy, we just figured out that working harder rarely results in success. Only bigger profits for slave masters like yourself, while we get divorced and fired on a whim.
Profits and productivity go up, but our wages don't. It's a scam, and more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that it's a fixed game. This thread and this issue are perfect illustrations of that: slave masters and immigrants whining about how real Americans need to make room and work harder for less money.
No, you are being a dick by expecting people to work 80 hours.
As a woman, I absolutely appreciate you working long hours for the family sake. At least if your wife was home yes there was a parent home and all our fathers went to work when we were kids. But not for 80 hours a week. You have 600 employees. That’s nice. Wouldn’t it be nice to have 300 employees and have spent a few less hours working? Is 100 employees enough?
I know you will try to show me some way that it doesn’t work like that and you don’t get 300 employees by working less etc. but what I’m saying is you are bragging about working 80 hours a week and having 600 employees when I’m saying, you could’ve been 1/3 as successful and having a couple hundred employees and spent a little bit more time at home.
I can't speak for all Brits, but I'd be tempted to move to the US if I could. Why?
The economy isn't doing very well. I work in finance in the City of London, earn about $120K per year gross of tax, but pay about 40% in income tax and local rates, another 20% goes in VAT. I'm mid forties and if I am honest, probably doing less well than my peers of similar age in my profession (I'm not 'good with people'). From what I hear, US salaries are much higher, taxes are lower (depending on where you live) and costs are lower (notwithstanding recent inflation). A colleague of mine managed to get a transfer from the UK to a red state in the US, bought a 7 bed room house for about $300K and has two cars. In the UK he owned a small flat, which I expect would have cost about the same.
With Trump's election I hope a nail will be put in the coffin of the climate change and renewables scam. Electricity is very expensive in the UK. Not quite yet German levels, but our government is working on it. At the time of writing, the US is the only country where there seems to be hope for liberty.
Most importantly, after the Covid tyranny, I simply don't enjoy the company of most people anymore. I can interact socially, but it's skin deep. For the same reason, I don't feel as strongly about moving further away from where my parents live. Why not move to somewhere where I know there are more people with my views than anywhere else?
One reason where I still prefer the UK however is for the raising of children. The school system is perfectly ok, although it does depend on where you live (my kids go to an academically selective school). The schools are woke, but it's not on steroids as it is in the US public system. Oh, and and there are no vaccine requirements to go to public schools in the UK.
When I was working with the H1Bs from the UK, it was 20 years ago. Also, I live in San Francisco which was more like its old self then so that may have been one other reason that they wanted to move. So yeah, I can understand that people might want to move to California (which was starting to get crazy even then).....but it's not right to allow companies to just import people to replace Americans.
But my husband and I have lived in a rented apartment for years. It's impossible to buy anything here unless you inherited money. My brother had been able to buy a home in Oregon, but he is nearly 6 years older than I am and the prices there were pretty reasonable several years ago.
In Europe, it sounds like the governments are just trying to figure out how to get people to die from cold and starvation. Biden (or whoever has been pulling his strings) would have gone along with that. But this country is huge and even though the Federal government keeps trying harder and harder to interfere with everything, the states still have some autonomy which is fortunate.
This is a story I have told from time to time over many years.
My family immigrated from Scandinavia in the 1880s. My grandfather was then a boy. Move along 30 years, he's father to my father. Grandfather and his family spoke Swedish natively, and somewhere in his high school years, my father asked his father to teach him Swedish. Grandfather refused, saying he could learn it in school if possible. "Why?" The response of my grandfather to my father, decades before I was born, was critically enlightening:
"Because we came to America to be Americans, and Americans speak English."
My grandfather, and his parents who brought him here, understood the need for assimilation implicitly. It wasn't even a question to them; it is was that obvious. OF COURSE you need to learn to fit. You had to fit in order to get along with a place that could provide so much opportunity.
I am 64 now. I believe I was told this story over the dinner table one evening by my father when I was a high school freshman, so I was 14, making my recollection now half a century old. It is still fresh in my mind every time any question of "what should we expect of immigrants?" comes up.
Those who are arrive Here are duty-bound and morally bound to *fit*. Here is not There. If they wanted something like There, they should stay There. By coming Here, they need to adopt personally all that it is about Here that makes it Here, being so different from There.
There is a similar story in my immediate family. My paternal grandfather brought his family to America from Italy around the beginning of the 20th century. He forbade his children from speaking Italian in the home. They were Americans, and were by God going to speak English. My family tree on that side only goes back to Ellis Island, and no farther. It bothered me a little when I was younger, but realistically, what would I say to any distant relatives back in Italy anyway? Talk about a screwed-up country! Assimilation is the foundation upon which the country was built.
"Fit[ting]" need not mean "castrating", and it is unfortunate that you've chosen Language as the lynch-pin to Here, rather than There. We Americans (and I'm a 2nd-generation American... both Dad and Me are US Army, wartime, combat-arms veterans) have paid the price of abandoning centuries-old culture for a "New-and-Improved" variety... and more's the pity. It was never an "Either/Or" choice... there was always room for both... we/they/one needn't "throw out the baby with the bathwater" -- if not, why do we, now, value the bilingual among us (more than the monolingual)?
Don't be ridiculous. I didn't offer it as either/or; impressively poor reading comprehension.
Surely my father could have gone on to learn Swedish in school if he wished, and his father would have approved...as an extension beyond my father's native English. I speak fairly fluent French, a little German (I worked for a German company for a few years), and I read Greek. But as natively American, my mother tongue is English, because the USA's structural heritage derives from British common law. I use language as example only because it is an especially clear indicator of willingness to assimilate.
The question, in article's context, is whether those who show up are interested in fitting into the high trust environment that western society created:
« the flashpoint lies in schools and streets and a home culture being dissolved in rampant abuse of systems by those to whom “high trust, high freedom” is a foreign idea. »
Those who will not assimilate -- on any terms, whether language or understanding of our govt's intended structure (e.g. not competing for hand-outs) or tolerance + debate of dissimilar viewpoints -- should not be welcome. Deal with us, who are born into this, who were raised on this, who are rightly enveloped in this, on our own terms.
Learning one's family's native tongue in school is nothing like learning it at home. There's ample (decades-long) evidence that having an "at-home" language that is different than an "outside" language is wholly beneficial to the speaker of both.
In my case, it was Yiddish (which my parents denied to me and my brother). Learning it in school, in 1950s/60s suburban New York, was not an option; learning it as an adult was also not an option, given the needs of work and family.
"Assimilate" does not mean "forget/forgo". The popular "melting-pot" metaphor means "Borg"-like assimilation; but what IS workable is the "salad-bowl" metaphor: small pieces -- large-enough to remain identifiable, but small-enough for a mouthful with others.
2nd-generation Asian immigrants speak their "native" languages at home... and fluent, unaccented English outside; likewise, Italians, and others. Language is THE key to cultural continuity... and a stable, evolutionary, sense of self and where one fits.
Ultimately, there's a disconnect on what's meant be "tech talent" from some in tech management vs the average person's understanding of "tech talent".
When Elon, whose companies are largely manufacturing and R&D, says "tech talent", he means roles like process engineers, systems engineers, controls/embedded programmers, chip designers, condensed matter physicists, materials scientists, etc.
When the average person says "tech talent", they're thinking of the massive and loud numbers of web developers on social media (mostly rightfully) complaining about how they were lied to about the availability of web development jobs, since the market oversaturated during their education and dried up.
When Elon went to layoff at X, it was the latter group, generally, who were laid off. If you look into his H1-B hiring as Tesla, it's mostly the former group, which the US doesn't really produce in high quantities due to financial incentives having been directed more at Business-to-Business software development vs manufacturing.
This isn't the case for other companies, Cognizant being the worst. But Elon's operating operating in a different space than them since he's not in B2B software development, and there's a communication breakdown happening. It's entirely possible that there is both a glut of STEM majors (specifically, software engineers with B2B web experience) who can't find work due to market saturation/DEI/H1-B fraud/whatever, and a shortage of STEM majors (specifically, manufacturing-related engineering disciplines) whom employers can't find in the US workforce, without anyone lying on either side.
Thanks for outlining the differences. The argument on Twitter devolved into chaos, nearly, as all were screaming over one another, displaying individually their worst traits - for example, Elon impatience and Vivek a "tin ear". The argument also displayed fissures in MAGA that can easily be exploited by Trump's enemies. I see one demonstrated by some commenters here - a distrust of Elon Musk.
yeah, this has been an extraordinarily poor showing of character from all sides, which is very likely to have political ramifications in '26, if not also '28 and beyond. If I'm Donald Trump, I'm furious that every single side fell for the rage bait from grifting pot-stirrers like Loomer, and proved every stereotype the left layers on the movement true just 23 days before I'm set to take office.
Especially considering his wife is an immigrant and proof positive that the process can bring in incredibly intelligent, America-friendly people, and if he had assurances from Elon/Vivek about conduct when dealing with a volatile and fragile new coalition of very disparate groups from across the political spectrum (and I presume he did).
Sure, that's fair. But I work in IT (as one of those younger straight, white, male, web developers the nativist right are telling you employers won't hire due to H1-Bs, who has also worked in the research sciences), and I can tell you first hand that there is a massive difference between just hardware and software and those skillsets, let alone software (IT) and the myriad other disciplines under the "STEM" umbrella, many of which we legitimately no longer produce in quantities necessary to reboot a manufacturing-forward economy out of our finance-focused nightmare.
For example, I have a friend with a degree in Industrial Design, who can't find work in the field, not because of H1-B, but because we just flat don't have enough companies in manufacturing for that to be in-demand. He works in patent law instead.
This is a problem which is going to take decades of fixing the educational and career-training systems and direction of capital flow (i.e. into American manufacturing and R&D, instead of to Europe and Asia) to unwind, during which time we either let those positions lie fallow to protect the country culturally, or take Elon's approach and bring in people who can do them, and potentially help with the training/re-training, but risk the culture slipping. I'm not sure which is better, personally. There are arguments for both, which the Bad Cat has laid out very well between the lines of this substack.
And look at that poor dad who got kicked off of Twitter because he wrote that he and other white guys spent a lot of money on their education, and they still can’t get a job and then they have to look at Elon hiring a bunch of people from another country ?!?!
Business and capital ebbs and flows. Entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of massive debt or cash flow shortages. Find me an entrepreneur who didn’t sometimes take one step forward, one back in order to take two new steps?
This was really long, so I didn't read ll of it, judt enough to note the weakness foundation.
So first off. I'm Swedish.
Sweden is a global powerhouse when ut comes to invention, technologies and business alive. With a population of 9 million swedes, you know several Swedish tech unicorns, industrial tech Companies etc.
Now here is the point. The Swedish culture of engineering, is one of work-family balance, steady improvement, group effort and flat hierarchies. Built on a socialndemocrat school system which is highly egalitarian un it's approach and has a strong focus on group dynamics, not individual, elite, performance.
The latter, is the French school system, and Sweden compete with France on a neck and neck basis with 20% of the population.
So what is my point? The elite supermen driving innovation is a myth, and success is built by strong teams over time, not with low wage Indian labour doing 80h work weeks.
So vivek, is wrong. A nice and healthy culture l, one which celebrates life, athletics, personal success through group effort (,ie team sports) is a winning culture.
and yet sanfFrancisco, with 1/8th sweden's population produces FAR more of those things.
the SF metro area has a higher GDP than sweden. silicon valley as a whole (3 million people) dwarfs it.
apart from spotifiy, a me too business that was a fast follower and not an innovator, who are the relevant swedish tech companies? erikssen was once but despite pole position for cell phones lost the smart phone game entirely.
Ericsson is still high tech, but on the b2b side. They build the networks that the consumer goods run on after having sold its consumer goods division to Sony. So those Sony phones, that is still Swedish tech.
Spotify is built by streaming music through a p2p network, on tech built by the guy who built mytorrent.
While it’s neither a (silicon) tech- nor product category- innovator, it did innovate by finding a workable (if not overly popular) way of dealing with “artists” and their plantation owners (“labels”).
SOMETHING is giving Spotify competitive advantage (have you seen the share price?), and that something is technology in the economic sense (a factor in the increase of value), if not in the commonly held sense of robots and electronics.
i still know SF well. i lived there for 16 years. there's still quite a lot of innovation going on there despite how gross the streets have gotten the crime issue.
(of course, stockholm having some interesting issues of it's own of late...)
SF is a single city on a vast, continent wide state which you can't disconnect in the comparison. Especially not given how the investment scheme it has runs on the entire US trade deficit creating huge foreign investment funds looking for us denominated assets. It's an integrated loop that bleeds the rest of the nation dry while pumping up SF real estate.
1) Silicon Valley was built by wierdoes and drop outs, not conformist pajeets doing Kumon drills all weekend at the behest of their tiger mother
2) sv is mostly coasting in the accomplishments and network effects of its (majority white) past
3) sv managed to channel all of its gdp into total social, political, and demographic dysfunction for the people living there
4) the pajeets and other immigrants were a big part of why sf and California became a one party dysfunctional blue state. It’s just like back home in low trust India!
The Asian tigers all have basic market structures and rule of law and they stalled out at 50% of our gdp and sub 1.0 TFR. India is like 1000x worse than the Asian tigers. We do NOT want these people importing their “elite human capital” culture that led to those outcomes.
Sorry but if Vivek’s vision of “the good life” sounds like a randian villain rather than a randian hero we don’t want these people.
This ignores the fact that Sweden has a major immigration problem. It has developed on of the highest rates of rape per capita in the world, (clue it is not fair haired native Swede on native Swede), Sweden had approximately 0 bombings over a 30 year period going back to the 1980’s and last year alone had 149. Not those fair haired Swedish gang members triggering it. Malmo is effectively a no go zone as immigrants terrorize the natives and most Jews have left the country. Fire fighters need police protection because the Muslim immigrants attack them and the police don’t like to go into those neighborhoods. By 2050 Swedish Swedes will be a minority. The majority of immigrants do not work. A Danish study, ok not Swedish, determined that after 10 years in Denmark most immigrants do not work, over 60% have been convicted of at least one crime and 34% of their offspring have also been convicted of a crime. Those statistics would suggest the bad cat makes important points.
I agree fully. Our immigrants have nothing to do with our innovation. They are a net drain on the economy. Our inter-European migration is however important, doing a European wide brain drain due to better quality of life for families.
You want people to pay attention to your opinion by beginning it with a complaint that gato's article was too long for you to bother to read it all (or even most of it)?
That's a bold strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off.
I recently visited the Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It chronicles the development of nuclear power, which drew upon international talent but reached its apotheosis here in the U.S. If ever there was a case for the transformative role of genius, this is it.
There is a role for "group effort and flat hierarchies," but it isn't a leadership role on a global scale.
It drew upon international talent because the Nazis didn't like Jews. Heisenberg might have come closer to making the bomb if Hitler hadn't been such an idiot.
Yes, which is consistent with the argument that you need talent in the right environment. Would Elon Musk have achieved what he has if he had stayed in South Africa or been born 10K years ago?
I believe that was the central idea of this post, that the immigration argument focuses mostly on the talent part but not on the societal aspects like trust.
Musk is a money guy and a business man. He's certainly not a tech genius but he knows how to take advantage of the special deals that the US Government provides him.
He probably wouldn't have done as well in South Africa but that's because American is where all the funding is.
If Elon Musk were not in the US, we'd be just fine.
The government LOANED him money, which he repaid, ahead of time, with interest. The rebates on SOME of his cars (many don't qualify) is something states and federal government does. He has often said he things the incentive/rebates are wrong and should not be needed.
He also provides his rockets to our government in a more timely, dependable and better priced manner. Remember that for years we were DEPENDING on the Russians for supply and transport to the ISS. Elon is doing it cheaper and more efficiently than NASA or any other company/country.
So I'd prefer that he thrive HERE and paying HUGE amounts of taxes.
The idea that he is just a money man yet he could file a 1040 ez for his taxes. I dont know any finance folks that dont have far more interesting retirement and investment strategies with lots of banks in tax havens.
He was a teen when he made his first million. He was one of the founders of paypal an sold it to ebay. Government did its best to stop space x. He empowered some amazing people and created an environment to innovate.
While Americans absolutely cooperate as needed for mutual success & benefit, our culture is not generally attuned to “personal success through group effort”, admirable as that may be in other cultures.
And it works-out! Our DEI-acolytes would have us believe that those "supermen" (somehow) "self-pollinate" (and then -- again, "somehow" -- assemble teams). You'd think they'd become Evangelical Xtians... believing in Miracles (or in Marianne Williamson).
Yes, Sweden is very egalitarian. They are worse than even the United States when it comes to being confused by two different sexes. Another country that pushes that men and women are exactly the same.
I do think that they are correct in Sweden about should teaching a lot more about cooperation and working with a group than trying to make individual stars, but the rabid feminism is a turn off.
I think that there are separate issues here...Yes, America (like Switzerland) should be able to import elite level skilled people, provided that they can support themselves from the gitgo..There is already a program to do that, separate from H1-B, etc...99.9% of those entering via H1-B aren't at that level, and many of them are unskilled, uneducated entry level workers, whose sole purpose is to lower wages and take jobs away from Americans..and many of the more elite types, like Vivek, come from countries where lying, cheating, scamming and nepotism are predominant...Vivek made his money by peddling a worthless Alzheimers drug, via and IPO, and then selling the stock..He injured suffering Americans, and robbed those who bought the stock....That's what they do in india...
But American kids, particularly the smart white kids face discrimination at every turn...Our kids, who are in the top .1% on the SAT, and have written successful programs for well known companies as consultants, eventually found employment in the IT industry, but not without considerable difficulty at all levels...One of their friends has been consulting in China at times, which apparently was more interested in his talents than US business..Whereas the H1-B code writers that I have come in contact with, were incompetent and deceptive, as in trying to put back doors into software...
So H1-Bs are largely a scam, and should be reserved exclusively for those with proven high intelligence and/or scarce useful skills...But in fact, as the devastating employment statistics show, immigration is in fact throwing Americans out of work in order to replace them with cheaper foreign labor, often from highly corrupt cultures....
Vivek's comments about American culture ignore these facts...India's culture, with an average IQ of 78, is infinitely worse, and Vivek's use of medical fraud to make his money illustrates that...
Reading the beginning of the article, I got ready for some spicy takes, only to find I agreed with all of it.
I live in Canada and am an immigrant from the UK. So not much of a culture shift. Assimilating was easy for me. Going through the citizenship process there was a whole section on what the expectations are of its citizens (work hard, avoid debt etc etc)
Whilst we may not have immigration problems on the scale of the US we are seeing culture being eroded in immigration hotspot towns.
The (false) assumption made by the far left pro immigration group is that everyone deserves to come and reap the benefits of this great country. But this country only became great because of the work done by its citizens. By allowing in people who come because of what they can get, rather than what they can do given the opportunity puts undue strain on the hosting country.
I’m all for immigration, we need it in Canada, and I also believe this country should be a safe refuge for those who need to flee their birth country for safety reasons. But opening the borders wide and letting anyone in is naive and ultimately damaging.
Yes, the USA is unique in the world in the upward mobility it provides. But is that "land of opportunity" durable? Up until 2010 or so Big Tech competed in a dog eat dog world, where the best ideas won out in a contest with mostly fair rules.
And then it seems Big Tech got tired of competing and opted for a rigged game where they and their investors always made money. And a funny thing happened. Everyone decided this rigged game of grift and freeloading was great!
And here we are nearing the end of the first quarter of the 21st century and the American economy has been greatly transformed. Everywhere you look you find a corrupt union of government and graft mingled with fake "free enterprise".
The COVID money and rules was the cherry on the top of the sellout. Big Tech and Big Corp profited immensely while ma & pa were sunk. And voila! What do we see but Big Finance showing up to buy out ma & pa and transform any remaining small businesses into corporate rollups.
So I wonder does the American "land of opportunity" still exist? Or is what we are really seeing is the last gasps of a corrupt feudal system, where the only way to riches is to figure out a grift where others pay and you profit.
I believe America always had the creative spark that makes us different than any other culture, and hasn’t lost it in spite of the mess we see. I didn’t understand this until working in Silicon Valley in the late 80s I met a couple of German entrepreneurs, and it was their point of view that illuminated the difference. They explained that Europe, almost without exception, is constrained by a class system, one that they’re born into and almost impossible to escape. A system ingrained for centuries. This system defines your personal belief system, financial status and what schools you can attend, if at all. They pointed out to me America has no such constraints, and for the most part, any one can rise up and become a success. Not true in European countries.
In think what El Gato was pointing out is factions (Oligarchy, deep state, call them whatever), has been trying to turn us into Europe. Destroy what made us America. They’ve no doubt made an absolute mess, but I believe haven’t broken our collective spirit. A strong manufacturing base can be restored, along with a stable middle class, and folks will be willing and able. Entrepreneurship requires all types, not just STEM degrees which has been rammed down our kids throats for a generation. Tiger moms aren’t the answer, that’s another culture try to replace our own. It can be done. There are entrepreneurs doing this now, and if you want an example, look up Schiit Audio, and the story of its founder Jason Stoddard. The case also demonstrates the notion that everything made in America has to cost 10x is a myth even perpetuated by El Gato.
BTW. Tech shifted into robber baron mode by the late 1990s, when Microsoft had 95% of desktop OS market, and took the corporate server market in the early 2000s. 2010 and on was another wave of consolidation and antitrust behavior that started 20 years earlier. A classic example of this was Apple, Amazon, FB and Google crushing the Parlor startup from competing with FB. Government did nothing, actually supported the move.
At any rate, tech has been very guilty of the foreign labor exploitation game for over 40 years, and that’s why the Musk/Ramaswamy comments lit off a firestorm. There’s a lot of pent up rage, for good reason, and the tone of the comments were shameful coming from two individuals supposedly advising the Trump Team. Just my 2cents.
It was always thus. You're just noticing now. The important people have been insolated from failure in the US since before they started building railroads.
Excellent observations. The short term problems might be that the generations of “everyone-gets-a-trophy every day kids (not to mention those who were traumatized & dumbed down during the scamdemic) are or soon will be in charge. And what to do about long time legal immigrants - Somali & otherwise - who have grifted for decades & have those attitudes?
I'm still trying to find the controversial part of this.
I couldn't. In fact by the end, I realized gato had illuminated exactly the problem I have in my own neighborhood. A guy from another country (it doesn't matter which one, he's new to the US) has turned the 2300 ft residential house he bought from retired older Americans into the hub of a 24 hour mobile truck repair company in defiance of HOA rules and city codes. And because he's brought in a squad of same country of origin non-American friends, and is clever and lies whenever anyone makes an attempt to enforce laws he's, he's managed to completely change what used to be a quiet residential neighborhood. It is a microcosm of the cultural problem gato described.
Gato wrote about this in the past but under another frame. The golden rule.
"whether it was luck or intelligence or provenance or predestination, somehow in the west we happened to find a tenet around "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" emergent from judeo-christian tradition and (perhaps vitally) rarified by protestant reformation. it seems a prosaic and obvious thing, but as an idea it was astonishingly revolutionary and remains to this day vanishingly rare in most of the world. many languages do not even have words for the concept."
"the enlightenment and the industrial revolution were offshoots of christianity. it's why it happened in the west and nowhere else except as awkward imitation and why so much of the rest of the world remains unable to emulate these economic and social miracles and resorts to large scale family metaphors (kiretsu, chaebol, etc) to try to circumvent this lack of basic trust. (or simply cannot manage it at all)
no golden rule, no golden age."
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/golden-rules-and-golden-ages
I shared this on another Gato Stack last month, applies here, too, even more.
This interesting AP article from 1958 here. It was then, is now, always will be about "efficiency." And as long as it's "more efficient" for the economic engine the social engineers will keep engineering a "more efficient" economy. But in their relentless pursuit of efficiency they grow fonder and fonder of their centrally planned "efficient" economies. Often ignoring that there's more to the American economy, innovation, dynamism than can be measured by metrics of efficiency. They deem those intangibles and unmeasurables "inefficient freedom."
This AP article describes wonderfully "efficient" central-planned totalitarianism is. This was at the height of the Cold War. From the side of freedom? Note that the World Trade Association conference was held in San Francisco, not far from Silicon Valley. Coincidence?
https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist0158uvic_1/mode/2up?view=theater
The Daily Colonist
Victoria Island's Leading Newspaper Since 1858
January 4th, 1958
‘Damned Efficient Slavery’ vs. ‘Inefficient Freedom’
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
Communism is mounting an attack upon the western world with economic weapons, Sir David Eccles, president of the Board of Trade of the United Kingdom, declared yesterday.
He said that while the western nations are pooling their military resources against any war arising from the Soviet Union, “not enough attention has been given to pooling our economic resources, either for the expansion of trade between ourselves, or for meeting the economic offensive that is coming from the Sino-Soviet bloc.”
Sir David, member of the British cabinet, addressed members of the British-American Chamber of Commerce and Trade Centre, the San Francisco World Trade Association and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Because the Soviets mobilize and direct all their economic resources from one centre, he said, they have a great advantage.
“Vice-President Nixon called the Russian system slavery. All right, slavery it is. But damned efficient slavery.
“The west, on the other hand, is fragmented into sovereign states, as often as not pursuing rival economic policies.
“We lack imaginative plans for expansion of the free world’s wealth. Indeed, we go our own sweet ways protecting our domestic industries to the detriment of those of our closest allies, trying to block each other’s trade when we should be collaborating for raising standards of life.
“We cherish our freedom. All right, freedom it is, but sadly inefficient freedom.”
FF - Note: The Soviet Union was defeated by the economic might of a free market, innovation that outproduced the central-planned economy of the USSR. Those intangibles and unmeasurables they call "inefficient freedom" is the secret sauce. But because they can't see it they choose to import cheap, obedient labor that measures high on the efficiency scale. "Experts" placed in charge of an economy and workforce immigration overlook the inherent, and necessary value of "inefficient freedom." Only able to see the measurables of "efficient slavery."
Related political cartoon from The Chicago Tribune, 1934:
https://i.imgflip.com/9f3zln.jpg
Question: Judaism does not have this? I don't know the answer, just asking the question.
Dear JP
Good question.
It is not commonly appreciated, that the 'Judaism', practiced by the descendants of Jacob (that is, the Israelites), at the time of Christ's birth,
was a very corrupted form of the religion of the first 39 books of the Bible.
Hence the hostility between the Religious Leaders, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Public officials do not like to be told -
You are not doing a very good job of this ...
and you are a liar and a thief.
The Religious Leaders of Christ's day had no interest in God or the people, except as a brand to be used to increase their power and their wealth.
A little like most Politicians today.
What is probably least understood, is that True Judaism is ...
Christianity.
Adam was a Christian.
So was Noah and
Moses and
King David.
They all looked to the coming of the Messiah, promised in Genesis 3.
He came unto His own, and His own received Him not
John 1
When the Messiah rejecting ...
Torah rejecting ...
39 Book rejecting ...
Religious Leaders of Christ's day, condemned Him to death ...
they rejected Adam, Noah, Moses and King David ..
they rejected True Judaism, in favour of Religion Flavoured Organized Crime.
The Apostles were all Jews.
They didn't stop being Jews, and become Christians.
They were Jews, who recognized their Messiah, and continued to practice True Judaism, and promote it, to all men, not just Israelites.
The rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the rejection of every single book in the 66 Book Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.
Without the Golden Rule, there is no golden age.
Without the Bible, there is no Golden Rule.
Fake Judaism is a made up religion, which has nothing to do with the first 39 (or 66) Books of the Bible.
It has no Golden Rule.
And so it has no golden age.
39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
40 But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.
41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.
42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.
44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
45 And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
46 Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?
47 He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
John 8
35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,
42 Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David.
43 He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying,
44 The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?
45 If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?
46 And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.
Matthew 22
God Bless
Dear Friends
El Gato Malo has nailed it ...
again.
no golden rule, no golden age
BUT the Bad Cat went further ...
IT MUST START YOUNG
Friends, there is no such thing as ...
an UN - INDOCTRINATED CHILD.
Either they are indoctrinated by them ...
or they are indoctrinated by you ...
THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND.
Either you hand your chidren over to a Man in Women's Clothing to be bounced on his lap ...
or
you read the Bible to them, for five minutes, every morning and evening.
Perversion or Preaching ...
TAKE YOUR PICK.
Madonna taught us to sing ...
PAPA DON'T PREACH
How has that worked out for us ?
Papa stopped preaching ...
and the country went to Hell.
no golden rule, no golden age
Preaching made us good
Preaching made us safe
Preaching made us smart
Preaching made us healthy
Preaching made us rich.
What has perversion done for us ?
but make us ...
bad
scared
stupid
sick
and
poor.
Friends, I want to encourage all of you to Practice and PROMOTE Daily Family Worship as MAN'S HIGHEST OBLIGATION ...
HIS NUMBER ONE INDISPENSABLE ACTIVITY ...
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HE HAS TO DO EACH DAY ...
5 minutes in the morning
5 minutes in the evening
Read the Bible and pray with your WHOLE family
If you have time, sing a psalm or a hymn.
(If you have no family, but want one ...
this is the time to get knock, knock, knocking on Heaven's door.)
Daily Family Worship, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, will ...
PROTECT YOUR FAMILY
FIX YOUR CHURCH
SAVE YOUR NATION
So ...
Practice it in your family.
PROMOTE it by every means at your disposal.
no golden rule, no golden age
1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper - Psalm 1
God Bless
Yeah, that's why people objected to AirBnB but have gotten nowhere.
My living nightmare Mimi
Yeah, the guy Essay33 mentioned worked too darn hard to destroy his neighborhood. All he had to do was open up an AirBnB.
There's a world of difference between an Airbnb and the thing that essay 33 describes.
Sure. But the point is that they both ruin neighborhoods. If that's the goal, Airbnb is faster and easier.
How very dare you. Airbnb is the very pinnacle of swashbuckling capitalism! "Corporations should never be constrained by parasitic government regulations. Unless they help me personally." -Ayn Rand, probably.
Double-bonus for "swashbuckling capitalism".
You have to be one of those HOA Nazis. I have that thankless role and have vetoed time and again accessory dwellings.
But if you want to run Old Glory up in your front yard, be my guest.
Im pretty sure NIMBY does not apply to this essay. As a matter of fact, it's the opposite of that. Less rules, less cronyism, more innovation. HOA Karen's are part of the problem, not the solution.
Rural Bob, I am also puzzled, why did he think this was going to be controversial? It’s well argued and consistent with his other writing.
i'm going to presume you're not a twitter user?
this discussion has been a weapons grade hot mess all over titter with a MAGA vs etch bro bawl for the ages going on around name calling, accusation, and counter accusation.
perhaps i have (inaccurately) assumed that substack would devolve to similar trollery around "you want us all replaced" and "americans are crap, indians rule!" and emotions here would be running similarly hot.
i'd love to have been wrong about that, but let's wait a bit for the article to propagate. BC rapid readers tend to be more measured than comments that come later. still, cautiously hopeful you may be right.
I took the time to read and digest your article in full before responding. It is well articulated and mirrors my own experience, though I am female, on the older side and never worked in silicon valley. Living near DC as I do, most of my entire life, I have seen the degradation of the golden rule over time. For about a decade I have been saying to other Americans (of various backgrounds), whatever happened to assimilation and the melting pot? This was my foundational culture, and for about 20 years now, maybe, it's been turned 180 degrees into something somehow "racist."
It is refreshing to hear your fleshing out of my deeply held sentiment. How do we olders help the youngers realize what they have been missing, with their "every day is trophy day" upbringing?
What happened to assimilation and the melting pot? It's been under sustained attack for half a century if not longer.
I remember it started with "America should not be a "melting pot", it should be a "tossed salad". Unfortunately, it's turning into a table full of side dishes.
It is time to bring back the American stew.
I'd say it's closer to a table full of tossed cookies...
yes, indeed it has.
Multiculturalism happened. It sounded good but was insidious.
As a non-American, I have always been impressed with the ability of the US to take people from anywhere and within one generation, turn them into Americans. This is something no other nation has been able to replicate, not the UK, not anywhere in Europe or even Canada, which is probably the closest comparable immigration based society. Vivek R. is a perfect example of this; from just listening to his voice, I would be hard pressed to say from which country he is originally from. This is a source of enormous cultural strength. I hope you guys are able to fix this, as the alternative is balkanisation and will not be pretty.
I want people who want to be Americans to immigrate here. I do not want people to come here and import non-American cultural ideals. The way it was when I was a kid (which I kind of liked) was something like this: within your own household, you celebrate the culture of your forebears, but once you step outside the door, you are Americans, period. Absolutely, share your culture with others, and after you have "lurked" here long enough, you have earned the right to offer some suggestions -- but otherwise, for newcomers, respect the existing culture and don't try to change it. I hope that makes sense. I honor other cultures and there are good ideas from elsewhere! But there are polite and respectful ways to offer them -- rather than imposing them while destroying all that is good about this place.
Amen sister
Dear Dani
Great question.
I am going to be so bold, as to offer an answer.
El Gato Malo has nailed it ...
again.
no golden rule, no golden age
BUT the Bad Cat went further ...
IT MUST START YOUNG
Friend, there is no such thing as ...
an UN - INDOCTRINATED CHILD.
Either they are indoctrinated by them ...
or they are indoctrinated by you ...
THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND.
Either you hand your chidren over to a Man in Women's Clothing to be bounced on his lap ...
or
you read the Bible to them, for five minutes, every morning and evening.
Perversion or Preaching ...
TAKE YOUR PICK.
Madonna taught us to sing ...
PAPA DON'T PREACH
How has that worked out for us ?
Papa stopped preaching ...
and the country went to Hell.
no golden rule, no golden age
Preaching made us good
Preaching made us safe
Preaching made us smart
Preaching made us healthy
Preaching made us rich.
What has perversion done for us ?
but make us ...
bad
scared
stupid
sick
and
poor.
Dani, I want to encourage you to Practice and PROMOTE Daily Family Worship as MAN'S HIGHEST OBLIGATION ...
HIS NUMBER ONE INDISPENSABLE ACTIVITY ...
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HE HAS TO DO EACH DAY ...
5 minutes in the morning
5 minutes in the evening
Read the Bible and pray with your WHOLE family
If you have time, sing a psalm or a hymn.
If you are on your own, ask God to show you, how to get your wider family, onboard.
Daily Family Worship, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, will ...
PROTECT YOUR FAMILY
FIX YOUR CHURCH
SAVE YOUR NATION
So ...
Practice it in your family.
PROMOTE it by every means at your disposal, to everyone you meet.
1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper - Psalm 1
God Bless
EGM, Many of us on Substack never go to Twitter for just this reason. I would be surprised if this became a flamer war. The Substack crowd is generally not the "speak then think" crowd. The piece was excellent and correct and I think the comments reflect that your readership agrees with much/most of it. I surely do. But thanks for stating it so eloquently. Will disseminate widely.
People tend to have deeper thoughts when not limited to 'sound bites' of a particular number of characters. I refuse to go to twitter or any other short format platform. It's like the earphones in Harrison Bergeron that give erratic short bursts of noise to distract someone who thinks. I'm bad enough scrolling Substack and YouTube for long form think pieces, gods forbid I get hooked on snippets...
OH crap... Twatter is always like that... This was a little pitched...
Long ago I did a lot of different things for a living, some high paying and some very menial. Especially in the latter case I ended up working with a lot of Mexicans. (NOT HISPANICS and they get a CAPITAL M) To much of America Mexicans were the "Indians." They came here to work; they came here to assimilate at least after a fashion.
Nobody totally assimilates... Chinatown... Germantown...
But when they came here they brought the freedom and work ethic with them. And they were good workers, which is why they have taken over much of the manual occupations. I worked with them in all manner of places. They are a great success, by and large.
The south of the border types we are getting now - a lot of them - are nothing but trouble. Lazy, thieving, and all-around criminally inclined. They do not come from successful countries. They came from shitholes, and they brought with them shithole ideas.
And guess what? The Mexicans are their biggest enemies. No love lost there at all.
For one thing, substack readers are more self-selecting than the Xwitter crowd.
Gato readers have to be more thoughtful in order to plow through these long articles 😜 and therefore, probably less emotionally reflexive.
No, I'm not a Twitter user. That explains a lot.
I am new to X and got on once and read the vitriol and it made me see that deep thoughts are not conducive there. It was a bunch of monkeys throwing hot poo at each other and they were all in the same cage. I don't like it there...makes me uneasy and I log off feeling more than a little dirty.
A cesspool - both before and after Elon.
You wrote about the "golden rule" and its impact on western society and that is allowed an amazing jump in progress. If only I could search your articles and find it again.
“golden rules and golden ages”, January 27, 2024
Go to the list of EGM posts and scroll a bit. I saved it at the time and it’s well worth another read.
Do you think pajeets fundamentally believe in the golden rule and randian creator values?
I’ve been increasingly skeptical in my lifetime. Their performance abroad and their behavior here just seem to get worse and worse. Increasing their numbers would probably accelerate that trend.
Maybe there is something about them that creates the shitty institutions of their home country.
Viveks screed may have been the worst thing I’ve read on this issue. He clearly means what he said, not some clever opposite reinterpretation.
I live in northern Virginia, which has a very high concentration of pajeets. They seem like the embodiment of the complete opposite of old school Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. I personally also greatly dislike them for how they behaved during COVID/woke, and the impact they have had on my state/local politics.
If your a genius pajeet that wants to play by western values, I think mass importing your co-ethnics is probably the worst thing you could do for yourself. You should basically want to be a tiny minority that has to play by other peoples values, not import and values of India.
Vivek says the opposite (we should all become soulless grinds and import as many soulless grinds as possible, because he couldn’t get a date in high school).
I am a Twitter user, but my algorithm-filled version is just me once again responding to masks and even air purifiers not working. I'm also realizing that I am now talking to people pathologically afraid of air who at the same time laugh at people about chemtrails...which is essentially people afraid of the air.
a bc rapid reader, i am not. i take my time and savor the imagery and masterful use of language while running the ideas over the palette of my mind…more slowly than most i expect. i also make notes for myself. sometimes a particular phrase sparks an idea or lesson for me.
i love this excellent assessment of complex issues. this is much more to my liking than the bumper car madness of x.
the varied comments add to the texture and to my understanding of broader viewpoints.
i am grateful for the many well-articulated thoughts in the bc agora.
the golden rule and the freedom to explore and be innovative are essential to our future success and to our overall well being as individuals and as a society.
Yep
You must not have seen some of the MAGA comments which were indistinguishable from something like AOC, Bernie or Liz would say. Like Cernovich 'I think people who work at gas stations should earn enough to have a nice life.' Sounds a lot like 'every American worker deserves a living wage' to me. BTW, several from MAGA X-verse are now claiming that all of the racist remarks made came from bots.
I think underneath, people are objecting to the accusation of American mediocrity. But if you look at our culture, there certainly is a lot of evidence of it. And it's been a constant complaint.
Our work ethic was predicated on the golden rule. You would not like to be screwed, so when you work, you provide the type of work and quality of it you would pay for. And in reciprocation, others will pay you a fair wage for such a high-value offering because they would like to be paid a fair wage for the work they provide.
But in many parts of our society now, you are "awesome" simply by being you. Really? Our culture no longer celebrates exceptionalism.
Well, said Jimmy, we are losers would be another version
I think in fairness, most people are very mediocre. What seems to have broken down the most is our ability to recognize merit. Credentialism gets in the way, as well as the problem of people hiring folks to do jobs the hiring manager doesn't understand either, etc. all before we get to issues of DEI nonsense. That was what really struck me from Vivek's comment, that he didn't seem to realize how oddly racist it was to suggest that the average Indian (or whomever) from over seas wasn't actually any better.
It's an excellent essay. However, the assertions about tariffs could be considered controversial. There's a lot of debate on the issue.
I have experienced both ends of this issue. . I personally have suspected, but can’t prove, discrimination against me in the job market, in favor of currently favored groups. At the same time, my son, an American born white guy, works for a tech startup founded by an Indian born, MIT trained, immigrant. I’m fairly certain neither that founder nor anyone else at that small company spends brain cycles on this issue. They just want to build! Maybe Gen Z will show the way!?
It's where he claims this nation is for immigrants
Well, part of the problem is that the woke right managed to purity spiral from 'fewer H1B visas' to 'deport the Ellis islanders' rather quickly.
The crux of the problem and the solution is stated in just a few words-
"where we get into real trouble if when we lose the idea of assimilation and melting pot and start importing large groups of people who do not share these high trust morals and practices because to do this is to threaten not only what makes our economy so dynamic, but also what makes america a pleasant and safe place to live."
AND
"stop paying for it. stop handing out free stuff"
AND
"make america meritocratic again."
There is assimilation, and then there is forming a separate colony and calling it assimilation. The Vietnamese from the 70's assimilated and have done well. Their children and grand children speak English. This is the same process as the Irish, Germans, Dutch, Japanese, and dozens of other ethnicities have followed. They revere their native culture, but have adopted the the USA, our language, laws, holidays, and general way of life. Far too many of the current "immigrants", illegal or not, have no plans to adopt anything related to the USA except the gravy train- for as long as that lasts. Often they not only refuse to adopt it, they are against many of our rights and actively seek to destroy it. Those who embrace Sharia, are drug cartel members, do honor killings, perpetrate endless chain migration, commit fraud, and live by sucking our country dry have NO DAMN PLACE HERE. Control the borders, deport the illegals, do away with anchor babies, and use current law to jail those who aid and abet breaking immigration laws. I'm talking about priests, pastors, NGOs, politicians, bureaucrats, employers, LEOs or anyone else.
Amen brother
What if “assimilation” is a lie? Spoiler: it is.
There is strong evidence that long-standing US regional differences are rooted in their colonists being from different parts of the UK. THEY didn’t assimilate. Californians and Massholes move within the same country, ostensibly because they felt oppressed in their former homes, and what do they do? Recreate their origins.
And we’re going to import people from low-trust foreign cultures where you admit human capital can’t flourish, and pretend that this isn’t and hasn’t been a driver of the very degradation and depredations the cat cites?
No. Your “reasonable solution” is neither reasonable, nor a solution.
Vivek, who made his billion in a pump and dump with a legal veneer, was right. It IS about the C-word. If you want the golden rule culture that lays the golden eggs, you must exclude cultures that don’t accept it.
But that’s a heresy you can’t utter in 🤡🌎. Precisely because it’s true.
You're repeating the arguments from Leighton Woodhouse's recent piece, which was a bit over-generalizing from a few examples.
Traveling abroad teaches you really right fast that to the world we are all just Americans and spottable from 100 meters away. It's only here we feel our own differences from region to region, city to city, neighborhood to neighborhood.
Really. How's Somaliland, MN going?
Living in London in the early/mid '80's, I took it as a compliment when people would ask if I was from Canada or, just ask 'where are you from'.
You'd think my backpack was wrapped in a giant neon red white 'n blue. Fortunately it was only a moderate sorrow to me, being so instantly recognized as a Yank. I still never had trouble getting lifts on the road and hostel managers were all nice to me.
Shitty, I’m sure.
As a recovering "Masshole" I've seen what you describe. My brother-in-law moved from MA to NH, and complains bitterly about how former MA residents move there and bring their liberal politics with them. My family moved from Newark NJ just ahead of the 1960's riots. 30 years later our politics were poisoned by all the downstaters who moved there. My wife and I got out of the Northeast upon retirement and moved to rural KY. We never had those liberal ideas, and are very happy to assimilate here. On the one hand, we tell folks here how happy we are finally, and to the rest we say: go elsewhere! The culture is much healthier here; the Golden Rule still lives in isolated pockets. We occasionally go back to NY or MA to visit, and we can't get back here soon enough. And we don't inhabit X either.
Even in Europe, "high trust" is fading.
Well, that’s probably because it’s no longer only European.
Czechia still is. But...
It's full of Ukies on the run.
Ukraine is a low trust society.
Not a good trend...
Plus the Czechs don't like each other much these days... :-(
Correct. Middle easterners are destroying it.
One area of twitter inflammation concerns H1-B visas. If immigrants arrived here and started competing with local workers, that would be one thing. However, these visas are supposed to be used when there aren’t enough local workers to compete.
In reality, employers are offering jobs to local workers at substandard rates. They can’t find good local workers who will accept those rates so they import workers who are delighted to accept them.
If it weren’t possible to import those workers, they would have to either hire substandard local workers or pay good local workers appropriate rates for their quality.
In reality, many (most?) of the imported workers are substandard relative to local workers, so substandard local workers who otherwise might have jobs aren’t getting them. Nor are good local workers getting jobs because the imported workers work for less.
How can this happen? Many hiring managers can’t tell the imported workers are also substandard OR they belong to the same nationality/culture and want to hire others of that culture. This is probably what is happening most of the time.
In my experience as a Silicon Valley worker and hiring manager, cutting costs is usually prioritized over hiring superstars. And, as with government jobs, you hire a couple of superstars or contractors to do all the work and still have a nice little empire. When Elon bought Twitter, he kept the superstars and fired the empire deadwood No one missed them.
"Many hiring managers can’t tell the imported workers are also substandard OR they belong to the same nationality/culture and want to hire others of that culture. "
That unfortunately matches much of my experience in corporate as well. Identifying the merit is an important part of a meritocracy, and that part is failing hard, leaving a lot of room for nepotism of one sort or another.
last time I went to Holland to see my uncle, there is a mosque on every other corner. People are just accepting and complacent
I think that's because "Europe" was never more than an H1 [HTML] heading on a map; it's always been a geographically-connected bunch of nations, at-odds-with and dependent-on each other... searching-for an ever-shifting balance, but rarely giving-up on finding, using, and maintaining it. Let-go of the illusion and return to the roots.
Not a lie. Not black and white at all. Some peoples assimilated more than others. From the beginning of the settlements there was a division you speak of, and it largely resulted in a mostly english coast (the limeys don't get a capital "E") And Scotch-Irish further inland especially in appalachia. But remember the civil war altered a lot and there were the indigenous people and blacks to consider too. Not everyone assimilated into the same group. My next to the last european ancestor fled his homeland's tyranny (as he saw it) moved to the frontier, married an indigenous woman, and totally assimilated into the tribe.
I throw that out as a caution: This is very complex and there are a lot of different ways it developed.
Um, the British have nothing to do with CA for the most part. Massachusetts and the Carolinas, maybe, the difference between puritains and royalists? But it ain't just the Brits, there was, at the time, the germans, dutch, spanish and portuguese all on the east coast in that era and since we've had all sorts. So Anglo obsessed to omit them. But comparing CA to MA, dude, apples to oranges.
On edit: I forgot France. You know? The France that owned at least one third of the continent before they sold it off. Are NOLA and Boston all that different?
Read the book Two Years Before the Mast, about a New England seaman traveling to Mexican-held CA about 1840. The culture of San Francisco quickly became the California ethos. That culture had a high degree of New England character to it after the conquest of Northern Mexico. Even Puritans mellow a bit in perfect weather, however.
This is it, exactly
Yes sir.
10,000,000 illegal aliens in the US, ushered in by the Biden regime from 2021 to 2024....let's stop putting the cart before the horse.
Plenty of time to correct legal immigration shortcomings and fraud after the most pressing issue is solved....
Well I do think gato had it right when, a few months ago, he said:
"You can not have both open borders and a welfare state."
That's the real threat imo.
🎯RG
Biggest con man , puppet Biden Inc finished it . https://m.youtube.com/shorts/WN-BUdS1Zjw
Fixed it.
"You can not have either open borders or a welfare state."
Thanks. You're right
That's it in a nutshell. The people who claim that closing the border is racist have clearly never overstayed a Tourist Visa in many of the countries from which we involuntarily import "citizens".
Gut welfare, funding, and tax exemptions -- I repeat myself -- for ESG and DEI and every other nonsensical boondoggle and let the chips start to sort themselves out. Then we can get surgical.
Eliminating the H1B program is an easy fix.
Fixing the problems with illegal immigration will take decades and I doubt that it would ever be entirely fixed. But you want that fixed before we tackle H1B? Get outta town.
As a person I read this morning on Twitter/X said, come to the SF Bay Area and then tell us that the H1B program is not a problem.
Nope, it's completely logical to stop a dam burst before you repair the tile floor in the cafeteria.
Similarly your comment is like saying you need to paint the walls and remodel a bathroom while your house is burning down...
Notwithstanding your bizarre Google translate comment "As a person I read on Twitter/X said..."
We are not talking about fixing a house or a cafeteria. We are talking about human beings who are trying to make a living.
Your last comment is about my "bizarre" comment is just you being a jerk.
Lol. Not sure how someone can't understand an analogy but claims to be affected by tech worker replacement.
Use better analogies.
You’re right a lot of people liked your comment. It was not bizarre.
Don't need to eliminate H-1B. Require minimum salary for H-1B to be 150,000 paid directly to the employee, not the body shop. Then only critically needed foreign workers will get them.
The immigration lawyers will never allow that to happen. It's easier just to cut down on the numbers each year and eventually it will die on the vine.
I feel the same way about a lot of the immigration problems. Just stopping the bleeding will eventually fix a lot.
Respectfully, Mimi, I disagree. Fixing illegal [im]migration requires *enforcing* existing laws/regulations, and can be done immediately; fixing the H1B visa problem(s) requires *revoking/amending* existing laws/regulations, and will take time... lots of time, if ever. The first is easier than the second.
PS: I lived-and-worked in "the Valley" (high-tech), late-'80s/early-'90s.
You simply set the number of H1B visas allowed for the next year to zero. Then you can work on fixing the regulations as time goes on. Yeah, there will still be plenty of them around working but at least there won't be any new people added.
Everything in moderation. I had a coworker remark once, every candidate sent to him to hire was of a foreign nationality and over qualified.
So he was looking for average Americans?
In my opinion yes, for this particular job.
Except it isn't possible to correct the problems of legal or illegal immigration. Even with a 100% stop to immigration and 100% enforcement of existing laws, this would only delay the point at which Whites become a minority by a few years. 2038 instead of 2040, or similar. And the slide continues. Demographics is destiny, and currently the US will inevitably become a turd world shit hole. Import the turd world, become the turd world.
True enough... However, remember... Karma she is a bitch.
I have a hunch that traitor joe's incompetence - or more accurately the sabotage of the traitors who wielded his power for him - is the biggest single reason Trump (GETS A CAPITAL "T"!!!) won the election. The importation and most importantly the distribution of these frankly worthless individuals - seriously, they are a terrible burden and disruption - coupled with the way the machine bent over backward for them...
That brought the reality of the goals of the globalists home to most every part of America. It was so big the liars in the MSM couldn't even ignore it. That, coupled with the arrogance of the commiecrat "sanctuary" faction... That got Trump elected.
We can multi-task. And yes, maybe 10 million illegal entries just in the last 4 years, while people still claim there are 11 million illegals in the country. That number is from 2000, and was probably an under-estimate even then. Ann Coulter estimated 35 million in 2015. The true number could be 60 million by now - roughly one out of five people you see on the streets.
Have you no mercy upon my housing equity?! Imagine how much housing costs would drop for our poor and middle class people by deporting that many people.
My house price will drop... hmmm.
First I'm pissed you used my favorite quote...I had it all tee'd up...jj...lolol.
Like you said some of the shit that was said on Twitter was reprehensible. I never go on there, but i kept hearing i should go check it out. Conservatives did themselves no favors. Ramsaway landed right in the hornets nest when he tried to provide color on Elons original tweet. He shouldn't have used Indians as an example. I'm sure he regretted it right after he pushed "send". And if he didn't he sure does now because he gave the media exactly what they want: an immigration cudgel for conservatives to beat each other to death.
However, I'd like to point out that we wouldn't be in dire need of issuing H1-B visas to recruit scientists and engineers if we had a department of education that actually cared about children...or better yet not having a DOE. That said, I'm all about legal immigration if it's based on merit and if they will assimilate.
I think this is real easy. What does the average H1-B visa recipient contribute to GDP? Even if you throw out the Elons et al i think people will be surprised what they're "worth" vs. the average American.
Bottom line:
You do not get capital to start new ventures without investors who believe in the human capital they are evaluating for an investment. I know this first hand from raising capital; you get them in the door with an impressive "deck", but you can not close a VC deal unless the investors are blown away by the human capital.
Sorry, some people have more "value" to the free flow of capital than others. Chiefly because some people don't just earn money; they CREATE it; they expand the pie. People who have been involved in this kind of stuff know exactly what I'm talking about.
And that benefits everyone. This is NOT a zero sum game. In fact it's just the opposite...and frankly the only way to grow an economy long-term.
The H1-B program was started in 1990. Saying that the problem is education makes the assumption that all the people educated in STEM for the past few decades don't know anything. It's insulting to say that and almost as bad as what Musk and Vivek said.
The number of people pursing degrees in STEM has nearly 100% to do with the economic situation. When people think they can get jobs in tech, they will study the tech fields. If they don't think they can get jobs in tech, they study something else.
There is *not* a shortage of Americans who are educated in technical fields. The tech companies always say that because they want to keep those H1-Bs coming because they can get them cheaper.
The whole H1-B program could be eliminated tomorrow and America would be no worse off.
I get your point and agree to a certain extent. But i completely disagree on the state of our educational system and higher academics. I have children in school right now and i can tell you it's not good...and hasn't been since the DOE was formed in 79'. We went from number 1 in the world to 30th. The decline started immediately....and is only getting worse.
But haven't you just fallen into the trap I laid out?
This is not a zero sum game. I never mentioned that we didn't have Americans who could do the same thing.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Not saying that education isn't a real mess right now. But that doesn't mean that there aren't Americans who are just as capable of doing STEM work as H1-Bs.
My problem is with the argument that says (which I have seen other people say) that we *need* H1-Bs until we can fix education.
Nope, we don't.
factor in the cost of a university education.
Initially, there has to be a far superior public school education.
Public school is okay, just okay, until they hit middle school. Then the sharp kids move ahead, and they do get bored. both of my daughters hated public school once they entered 5th grade. Kids are not taught that school is supposed to be serious and important study. Instead we have pajama day, and plaid day, and way too many distractions. Look back into the 60s and everyone dressed properly for school and behaved themselves
Exactly
Couldn't have said it's better myself
my uncle Jan in the Netherlands can not stand the USA. He has NEVER been here.
I adore him he was a country school teacher and principal in Aalten. He has two brilliant sons.
He and my mom were so so very close. I believe his dream was that when he grew up he and my mom would live together forever. You see, my mom was older, and was born with only a left hand and a right arm that ends at the wrist. She was a whiz by the way. So, mom grew up... and had boyfriends, I think Jan was horrified of course as a younger brother. My dad was dirt poor. lived in poor people housing in Rotterdam only streets away. Another shock. My mom spiffed him up. He was super bright and very industrious. They married and came to the US and I know, my uncle is still alive today, just spoke with him last week at age 99, he still hates America. Our country was doing well, until media moved in, comparisons, vanity, and really some unwholesome behavior. I do not believe it was the fault of legal immigration, it was certainly the US government. I do not think there is any other country that taxes so much with insanity spending on programs.
I didn't say that. But again I do understand your point...and we agree on much.
Isn't that enough to be on the same "team"?
About education, sure. But it isn't why the H1-B visa came into existence and better education won't make it go away.
Mimi, i don't think you've ever read any of my comments over the last few years. If you had you would know I'm 100% America first.
I've made my points. But the biggest one is that we can not stay competitive if we do not emphasize excellence as a virtue in the US.
Do you really think the kids of the 21st century could compete with the kids who were raised in the 70's and 80's, etc.
If you doubt me go look at a class of 6th graders. Half are obese and a quarter are seriously pudgy.
When we were growing up we might have had one pudgy kid in class. I think that's a pretty good indicator of future results.
I also think much of the blame is at the feet of parents
Bam, right there Ryan.
So many shitty parents calling their kids "buddy" all day
As I mentioned in a previous comment, I lived-and-worked in "the Valley" during the late-'80s/early-'90s (high-tech). Speaking only of white Americans (there were NO blacks in high-tech, and the few Hispanics I saw were field-techs), there were -- increasingly -- more with BS degrees in CompSci/EE *who went on for MBAs* and became Project Managers (not *Leads*... Managers). Take that for what it's worth... and see if the trend has changed in the past 30 years (i.e., lessened, rather than increased).
I have known a couple of black people in tech here in San Francisco.
My SIL was married to a black guy (Jamaican) and the two of them set up part of a major bank's internet backbone. there might have been fewer, but there were blacks in the biz in the day as well. My takeaway is that there used to be more small, responsive 'mom and pops' doing this in the day as opposed to monoliths.
There are probably more black tech workers in parts of the country other than California too.
Department Of Education is the worst, nobody who has ever worked with them likes them. Almost without exception.
One more: "However, I'd like to point out that we wouldn't be in dire need of issuing H1-B visas to recruit scientists and engineers "
"The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs." that's the Tampa Bay Times, January, 2024.
How about, we stop kidding ourselves about a "dire need of issuing H-1B visas" (about 150K per year) until the STEM graduates working in STEM rate rises to, say, 70%? I'd even go for 50%. With about 437k bachelors in STEM students, 50% working in field would be... almost more than the total of H-1B visas.
"What does the average H1-B visa recipient contribute to GDP?"
That's a poor question and the game the elites play. What does the average H-1B recipient contribute to GDP per capita is better, since it doesn't involve increasing GDP at the cost the people already here.
A better question is: does the US population generally turn a profit on H-1B immigrants, all costs considered? You can pay an H-1B less than an equivalent American (assuming you could find two perfectly matched candidates) for this reason: the American already possesses citizenship in a country with good water, good roads, and a decent level of trust, and the H-1B will presumably acquire this, a good worth substantial value. You might estimate that value at the salary difference over six years of the visa... say 25k a year.
The citizen, whose ancestors paid for the infrastructure of a first world country, is subsidizing the H-1B. Until you account for this by requiring, say, an infrastructure tax equalization you're still disadvantaging American citizens in favor of people with literally no right to that wealth.
"...you used my favorite quote"
Was that D'Anconia's "Money Speech?" Because I was getting ready to paste a part of it her as well.
$
Once again, El Gato Malo demonstrates the clarity and power of common sense thinking.
While (perhaps) highlighting how utterly uncommon it is in today's popular discourse.
The champions of this immigration scam are promoters. One bought a failed drug patent, raised $300 million for a pump and dump on Wall Street. He is nothing more than Ivy educated salesman willing to take people's hard earned money and give false hope to the sick. The other has fed at the trough of government subsidies for decades and appears to be a cut out. Who can be the CEO of multiple major companies, consistently misrepresent what his company's tech does (it kills people via non autopilot), take massive subsidies from Communist China, and get a free pass everywhere?
gato makes great points about how all of these tech bros have turned government grifters. The stories about discrimination against Americans and the true level of H1B talent I have seen on X are consistent with personal experience. Immigration both illegal and legal has become another scam for the uber wealthy and connected who at their very heart are godless communists and traitors to America.
"if you want to make immigration work, immigrants need to assimilate. the value of the american way of life far outstrips any contribution they could make if their presence undermines such social fabric."
You betcha. You betcha!
And--the thing about autistic genius types like Elon and Vivek--they're great at creating. They need smart tough normally-wired people to manage the businesses they build and deal with all the boring tiresome but extremely necessary aspects too. Elon and Vivek see far but straight ahead and peering around corners ain't something they like to bother with.
Immigration: I was astonished as a kid in elementary school to meet kids whose grandparents were born in America. I'm the granddaughter of illegal aliens on the maternal side and not entirely sure about the status of the grandparents on the paternal side. I'm sure glad my grandma snuck in just in time to give birth to an American daughter.
So naturally in all honesty and decency I have a lot of sympathy towards anyone wanting to get in too. But we should not be paying for them via our taxes and, of course, horribly, sometimes in blood. All those NGOs need to lose their government contracts pronto and do their work as they were meant to--with private dollars donated by those passionately devoted to the cause.
The cause will then shrink remarkably.
Here's a shocker for you: my ancestors were given land grants in Florida in the 1740s to come over from Ireland.
My mother's family were given a land grant by the King of Spain to a large parcel in New Spain, which was then a part of New México. This was in the 1640s. Part of the family moved east in to 1700s to a new area called Tejas, after the natives who lived there, into a little pueblo called San Antonio. There's been family there, working and contributing, ever since.
It's nice to be wanted!
Wish I could see the sales brochure for that vs reality: come from cold rainy Ireland to the fabulous sunny paradise of Florida! (don't worry about the huge bugs, humidity, or hurricanes)
Well, you know, plus ca change 'n all that.
And isn't it amazing how many very creepy crawlies are always in them earthly paradises? And even the creepy crawlies one may like will not very kindly like one back. I'm extremely fond of snakes and alligators but I know unfortunately they're only fond of me as dinner.
Plus you're packed with vitamins and minerals!
In a supple, easily-digested casing!
I believe that some of those who support unscreened massive immigration are deliberately trying to turn America into another third world country. They want to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven.
Others are just kind of naive to the point of stupidity. About ten years ago, I was talking to a former business client in Boulder. She expressed a desire to visit Cuba "before American tourism ruined it." Righty-o.
Some of our best immigrants-- Ayn Rand! Lily Williams!- are from those totalitarian hellholes. I love those people, inspiring.
i have actually wondered from time to time if it's not actually foreign attack egged on by china buying brandon. pure conjecture on my part, but were i they and wanted to break american exceptionalism, i'd flood america with immigrants it cannot assimilate (as is also occurring in europe) and destroy the potential for high trust, high freedom society.
The attack through immigration started in the early 1900s, and there were pushes for it in the 1800s. It accelerated with the 1965 Immigration Act, the results of which we see today.
Did somebody buy Brandon, or the people who give the orders to his handlers?
Multiple 'someones' have bought Brandon, AND his handlers!
Over and over again. Which may help explain how people who have never had a "real job", who have never actually worked in the private sector, become multi-millionaires. (A few names come to mind - like Biden, or Pelosi.)
I absolutely agree! Add Russia to that equation, too. Subversion is a long game for which there are no quick fixes. Secure the border, and have honest debate about the country's need for what workers. Deep six ESG and DEI. None of this will work without a government creating an environment where people are encouraged to marry and have children again. Our policies have been the antithesis of this for decades. It's a deep hole we've dug for ourselves.
You've done it again gato:
"and destroy the potential for high trust, high freedom society"
Which succinctly sums up millions of words penned by thousands of "right leaning" authors over the last few centuries.
I’ve been increasingly skeptical that non-whites are capable of western freedom, even the high iq ones. East Asia has been economically stalled for decades now and demographically free falling. India is worse than East Asia in every way.
Vivek’s bizarre jock vs nerd screed more or less convinced me it’s not possible. He basically wrote that Harvard is right about pajeets having terrible personalities.
We’ve got plenty of h1b pajeets cram school drilling their way to no outside life and 0.5 kids so they can get government contractor scam jobs here is northern Virginia and it seems to me the exact opposite all of Elon’s supposed randian creator values. If doge were real he would fire all these people.
Sure, you can plug a few non-white geniuses in so long as their numbers are low and they have no political or cultural influence, but we are obviously past that point today. And we’ve just learned that Indians in particular are really bad on this front (at least East Asians don’t care about influencing politics and culture).
I wonder not just about immigration but the entire Leftist agenda: Is it a product of foreign influence, or the natural outcome of our own culture? And why would China want to destroy their largest customer?
I think it really comes down to White Americans being tired of being replaced by various shades of brown people. The Kalergi Plan is real as is the ongoing White genocide. People are more than willing to sacrifice a few basis points of GDP...it’s not a huge deal.
Nicky Haley had an a good tweet about this, I never thought I’d agree with her on anything but this I do:
https://x.com/nikkihaley/status/1872667361473368504?s=46
Diversity is NOT a strength, that’s a lie that’s been pumped into people’s minds relentlessly by a coincidence of people who definitely do not embrace diversity. We are witnessing the downfall of many countries and indeed an entire way of live because of diversity. Disagree, then look at Sweden, France, Germany, England, Belgium, etc. London is minority White. Is London a better place now or was it better 40 years ago. Same with Paris, etc.
Diversity is in fact somewhat of a curse...as America's current struggles with its Black population illustrate....When 60% of murders are committed by a few percent of the population, you have a major problem...
No. It's with Americans being replaced by anyone from abroad.
It wouldn't even be so bad if Americans weren't being fired and made to train their replacements.
I understand why people from India want to come to the United States. What I never could understand is why there are H1-Bs coming from Western Europe to work here. I worked with some of them from the UK. Now, that made me angry. Couldn't they get work at home?
The problem is Americans, by in large, are unwilling to work 14 hour days.
It doesn't matter how smart you are, if you want to CREATE wealth, you have no other choice than to burn the candle at both ends in your youth (25 to 50). I would argue youth is a persons biggest asset. Many are squanderiing it. Started with participation trophies.
Being smart is just the foundation. Hard work is the framing, and risk management is the finishings.
I totally agree with the working hard. I spent years getting a couple of different degrees. But I don’t agree that any guy, and even worse, maybe you’re even talking about mothers as well, should have to work an 80 hour work week.
They did a huge study for six years in Europe and found that 39 hours is the most a man should work and 26 hours the most a female should work.
They found out 80% of females who work past 26 hours during the week get extremely strung out and depressed it because they can’t do anything much at home. Father shouldn’t be working 80 hours either. It’s one thing to sacrifice by working maybe 50 hours in your 20s but come on!!! Parents would never see their children. Nobody in the world should be working 80 hours unless a person obsessively loved their job and even then it wouldn’t make sense.
You left out, for 7 days pay.
If you are an entrepreneur, working long hours makes sense because you are working for yourself and you may end up creating wealth for yourself.
Working long hours for somebody else just makes wealth for them, especially if you aren't being paid much.
Most people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs. There's nothing wrong with that. Why should everybody work long hours for low pay for somebody else and why should everyone who is not an entrepreneur not be allowed to make enough money to support themselves?
It's not about participation trophies. H1-B started in 1990 so they were replacing boomers. Say what you like about my generation, but we never got f-ing participation trophies.
Again I'm not talking about the average employee. I'm talking about entrepreneurs and their teams.
They CREATE wealth which benefits everyone....including the types of individuals your talking about.
Most people can't...risk takers are those who create a rising tide. Work-a-days earn and spend money created by entrepreneurs.
Sorry. It's just the way it is.
I agree 100%. However, sometimes the “price” is too high when marriages crumble due to who drove the wealth. Naïveté and thinking you’re on the same page can lose what one treasures the most: family. And wealth can evaporate with greedy lawyers and “other interested parties”. After multiple companies, I’ll keep it small and secure going forward. Entrepreneurs are a unique breed and it’s seldom as straightforward as it appears from outside. She says sadly…
Well I completely agree. I certainly was blessed in that department and there's zero chance I could've made it without my wife.
About 85% of the time it's nice owning a business, because of the flexibility, etc...but then there's that 15% of the time that's just living hell...where you have scrape yourself out of bed after a couple hours sleep and work until the jobs done...or you may not have a bed to sleep in at all.
I'm here to talk about H1B. That's why the Bad Cat wrote his substack, right?
Do entrepreneurs need to hire H1Bs? I hope not.
I really don't know what you are trying to say. Sure, theoretically wealth creation benefits everyone. But you don't want it putting people out of work which is what the H1B does.
But that SOB Musk thinks the answer is UBI. He said so again on Twitter the other day. To hell with him.
He was talking about much more than just HB-1.
Reread his article.
You got it Ryan! Don't know how for years I worked a regular job, then a home-based software business into the wee hours. Not especially thrilled in retrospect about not spending more time with my kids.
Yeah, same. But I'm making up for it now with my kids. And frankly they'll have a better life because of my wife and my sacrifices.
Bullshit.
Dude, I have nearly 600 employees, and have owned several business for 25 years. I think i have a little experience evaluating this. Do you?
No need to be a dick.
Americans aren't lazy, we just figured out that working harder rarely results in success. Only bigger profits for slave masters like yourself, while we get divorced and fired on a whim.
Profits and productivity go up, but our wages don't. It's a scam, and more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that it's a fixed game. This thread and this issue are perfect illustrations of that: slave masters and immigrants whining about how real Americans need to make room and work harder for less money.
top graph:
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Totally agree with your link. I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.
If you want to MAKE money you have no choice to do anything other than i said.
And why do you think i ate glass for breakfast and looked into the abyss for the first 10 years after I started my first business?
Because I refuse to make another man rich.
If if it was easy to MAKE money then everyone would do it.
But it's not. And therefore most don't.
No, you are being a dick by expecting people to work 80 hours.
As a woman, I absolutely appreciate you working long hours for the family sake. At least if your wife was home yes there was a parent home and all our fathers went to work when we were kids. But not for 80 hours a week. You have 600 employees. That’s nice. Wouldn’t it be nice to have 300 employees and have spent a few less hours working? Is 100 employees enough?
I know you will try to show me some way that it doesn’t work like that and you don’t get 300 employees by working less etc. but what I’m saying is you are bragging about working 80 hours a week and having 600 employees when I’m saying, you could’ve been 1/3 as successful and having a couple hundred employees and spent a little bit more time at home.
Did i ever say I expect people to work 80 hr weeks?
Not in the least. Not only do I not expect it, i don't allow it to happen.
But when you're the one who writes the checks you just don't have an alternative.
When you've literally stayed up 4 nights in a row on multiple occasions come talk to me.
Like I said...most can't. So wht would I expect someone who works for me to do so? I'm the one that took the risk...not them.
If I did...well...then your claim that I'm a dick would be true. Fortunately my employees could tell you first hand that you are misjudging me.
Not sure why you are.
I can't speak for all Brits, but I'd be tempted to move to the US if I could. Why?
The economy isn't doing very well. I work in finance in the City of London, earn about $120K per year gross of tax, but pay about 40% in income tax and local rates, another 20% goes in VAT. I'm mid forties and if I am honest, probably doing less well than my peers of similar age in my profession (I'm not 'good with people'). From what I hear, US salaries are much higher, taxes are lower (depending on where you live) and costs are lower (notwithstanding recent inflation). A colleague of mine managed to get a transfer from the UK to a red state in the US, bought a 7 bed room house for about $300K and has two cars. In the UK he owned a small flat, which I expect would have cost about the same.
With Trump's election I hope a nail will be put in the coffin of the climate change and renewables scam. Electricity is very expensive in the UK. Not quite yet German levels, but our government is working on it. At the time of writing, the US is the only country where there seems to be hope for liberty.
Most importantly, after the Covid tyranny, I simply don't enjoy the company of most people anymore. I can interact socially, but it's skin deep. For the same reason, I don't feel as strongly about moving further away from where my parents live. Why not move to somewhere where I know there are more people with my views than anywhere else?
One reason where I still prefer the UK however is for the raising of children. The school system is perfectly ok, although it does depend on where you live (my kids go to an academically selective school). The schools are woke, but it's not on steroids as it is in the US public system. Oh, and and there are no vaccine requirements to go to public schools in the UK.
When I was working with the H1Bs from the UK, it was 20 years ago. Also, I live in San Francisco which was more like its old self then so that may have been one other reason that they wanted to move. So yeah, I can understand that people might want to move to California (which was starting to get crazy even then).....but it's not right to allow companies to just import people to replace Americans.
But my husband and I have lived in a rented apartment for years. It's impossible to buy anything here unless you inherited money. My brother had been able to buy a home in Oregon, but he is nearly 6 years older than I am and the prices there were pretty reasonable several years ago.
In Europe, it sounds like the governments are just trying to figure out how to get people to die from cold and starvation. Biden (or whoever has been pulling his strings) would have gone along with that. But this country is huge and even though the Federal government keeps trying harder and harder to interfere with everything, the states still have some autonomy which is fortunate.
Did you just say that when 6% of the people are committing 60% of the crime it’s not at all a problem?!?
You just said no, which is pretty unreasonable. They are certainly both a problem. There is no no about it.
I'm with you about NH. occasionally, she gets it right. I still wouldn't vote for her. 😉
London is not minority white. The 2021 Census showed that it is 53.8% white.
Well achuallly it’s not exactly minority White. Okay dude. And what’s the most common baby name? Idgf about your census, go have a look around.
This is a story I have told from time to time over many years.
My family immigrated from Scandinavia in the 1880s. My grandfather was then a boy. Move along 30 years, he's father to my father. Grandfather and his family spoke Swedish natively, and somewhere in his high school years, my father asked his father to teach him Swedish. Grandfather refused, saying he could learn it in school if possible. "Why?" The response of my grandfather to my father, decades before I was born, was critically enlightening:
"Because we came to America to be Americans, and Americans speak English."
My grandfather, and his parents who brought him here, understood the need for assimilation implicitly. It wasn't even a question to them; it is was that obvious. OF COURSE you need to learn to fit. You had to fit in order to get along with a place that could provide so much opportunity.
I am 64 now. I believe I was told this story over the dinner table one evening by my father when I was a high school freshman, so I was 14, making my recollection now half a century old. It is still fresh in my mind every time any question of "what should we expect of immigrants?" comes up.
Those who are arrive Here are duty-bound and morally bound to *fit*. Here is not There. If they wanted something like There, they should stay There. By coming Here, they need to adopt personally all that it is about Here that makes it Here, being so different from There.
Those who will not fit must be expunged.
There is a similar story in my immediate family. My paternal grandfather brought his family to America from Italy around the beginning of the 20th century. He forbade his children from speaking Italian in the home. They were Americans, and were by God going to speak English. My family tree on that side only goes back to Ellis Island, and no farther. It bothered me a little when I was younger, but realistically, what would I say to any distant relatives back in Italy anyway? Talk about a screwed-up country! Assimilation is the foundation upon which the country was built.
"Fit[ting]" need not mean "castrating", and it is unfortunate that you've chosen Language as the lynch-pin to Here, rather than There. We Americans (and I'm a 2nd-generation American... both Dad and Me are US Army, wartime, combat-arms veterans) have paid the price of abandoning centuries-old culture for a "New-and-Improved" variety... and more's the pity. It was never an "Either/Or" choice... there was always room for both... we/they/one needn't "throw out the baby with the bathwater" -- if not, why do we, now, value the bilingual among us (more than the monolingual)?
Don't be ridiculous. I didn't offer it as either/or; impressively poor reading comprehension.
Surely my father could have gone on to learn Swedish in school if he wished, and his father would have approved...as an extension beyond my father's native English. I speak fairly fluent French, a little German (I worked for a German company for a few years), and I read Greek. But as natively American, my mother tongue is English, because the USA's structural heritage derives from British common law. I use language as example only because it is an especially clear indicator of willingness to assimilate.
The question, in article's context, is whether those who show up are interested in fitting into the high trust environment that western society created:
« the flashpoint lies in schools and streets and a home culture being dissolved in rampant abuse of systems by those to whom “high trust, high freedom” is a foreign idea. »
Those who will not assimilate -- on any terms, whether language or understanding of our govt's intended structure (e.g. not competing for hand-outs) or tolerance + debate of dissimilar viewpoints -- should not be welcome. Deal with us, who are born into this, who were raised on this, who are rightly enveloped in this, on our own terms.
Learning one's family's native tongue in school is nothing like learning it at home. There's ample (decades-long) evidence that having an "at-home" language that is different than an "outside" language is wholly beneficial to the speaker of both.
In my case, it was Yiddish (which my parents denied to me and my brother). Learning it in school, in 1950s/60s suburban New York, was not an option; learning it as an adult was also not an option, given the needs of work and family.
"Assimilate" does not mean "forget/forgo". The popular "melting-pot" metaphor means "Borg"-like assimilation; but what IS workable is the "salad-bowl" metaphor: small pieces -- large-enough to remain identifiable, but small-enough for a mouthful with others.
2nd-generation Asian immigrants speak their "native" languages at home... and fluent, unaccented English outside; likewise, Italians, and others. Language is THE key to cultural continuity... and a stable, evolutionary, sense of self and where one fits.
Good article.
What peeved me off personally is that we know tech had mass layoffs the last couple of years.
People like Elon know this, because he fired plenty of people himself.
And so shortly after that happens to turn around and say there is a tech labor shortage - It rings hollow.
If you need more people, why are you laying people off??
Perhaps in Elon's case he may say "well that weren't hardcore" or whatevr
But that rings hollow when you look at numbers like a quarter million people losing their jobs over 2 year.
It's impossible to believe every single one of those people was bad their jobs or what have you.
And so - you just cant do that and then turn around and talk about a labor shortage.
Especially on Christmas. Lol.
Ultimately, there's a disconnect on what's meant be "tech talent" from some in tech management vs the average person's understanding of "tech talent".
When Elon, whose companies are largely manufacturing and R&D, says "tech talent", he means roles like process engineers, systems engineers, controls/embedded programmers, chip designers, condensed matter physicists, materials scientists, etc.
When the average person says "tech talent", they're thinking of the massive and loud numbers of web developers on social media (mostly rightfully) complaining about how they were lied to about the availability of web development jobs, since the market oversaturated during their education and dried up.
When Elon went to layoff at X, it was the latter group, generally, who were laid off. If you look into his H1-B hiring as Tesla, it's mostly the former group, which the US doesn't really produce in high quantities due to financial incentives having been directed more at Business-to-Business software development vs manufacturing.
This isn't the case for other companies, Cognizant being the worst. But Elon's operating operating in a different space than them since he's not in B2B software development, and there's a communication breakdown happening. It's entirely possible that there is both a glut of STEM majors (specifically, software engineers with B2B web experience) who can't find work due to market saturation/DEI/H1-B fraud/whatever, and a shortage of STEM majors (specifically, manufacturing-related engineering disciplines) whom employers can't find in the US workforce, without anyone lying on either side.
Thanks for outlining the differences. The argument on Twitter devolved into chaos, nearly, as all were screaming over one another, displaying individually their worst traits - for example, Elon impatience and Vivek a "tin ear". The argument also displayed fissures in MAGA that can easily be exploited by Trump's enemies. I see one demonstrated by some commenters here - a distrust of Elon Musk.
yeah, this has been an extraordinarily poor showing of character from all sides, which is very likely to have political ramifications in '26, if not also '28 and beyond. If I'm Donald Trump, I'm furious that every single side fell for the rage bait from grifting pot-stirrers like Loomer, and proved every stereotype the left layers on the movement true just 23 days before I'm set to take office.
Especially considering his wife is an immigrant and proof positive that the process can bring in incredibly intelligent, America-friendly people, and if he had assurances from Elon/Vivek about conduct when dealing with a volatile and fragile new coalition of very disparate groups from across the political spectrum (and I presume he did).
I've been so po'ed with all sides that I find myself unable to express myself coherently. Your reply says it all. Loomer drives me particularly nuts.
Driving people nuts appears to be Loomer's calling in life, unfortunately.
"When Elon, whose companies are largely manufacturing and R&D, says "tech talent", he means roles like"
I mean, that might be true, but I have 0 reason to just take his word for it.
Sure, that's fair. But I work in IT (as one of those younger straight, white, male, web developers the nativist right are telling you employers won't hire due to H1-Bs, who has also worked in the research sciences), and I can tell you first hand that there is a massive difference between just hardware and software and those skillsets, let alone software (IT) and the myriad other disciplines under the "STEM" umbrella, many of which we legitimately no longer produce in quantities necessary to reboot a manufacturing-forward economy out of our finance-focused nightmare.
For example, I have a friend with a degree in Industrial Design, who can't find work in the field, not because of H1-B, but because we just flat don't have enough companies in manufacturing for that to be in-demand. He works in patent law instead.
This is a problem which is going to take decades of fixing the educational and career-training systems and direction of capital flow (i.e. into American manufacturing and R&D, instead of to Europe and Asia) to unwind, during which time we either let those positions lie fallow to protect the country culturally, or take Elon's approach and bring in people who can do them, and potentially help with the training/re-training, but risk the culture slipping. I'm not sure which is better, personally. There are arguments for both, which the Bad Cat has laid out very well between the lines of this substack.
Tech management always lies.
Definitely, I agree!
And look at that poor dad who got kicked off of Twitter because he wrote that he and other white guys spent a lot of money on their education, and they still can’t get a job and then they have to look at Elon hiring a bunch of people from another country ?!?!
It’s been the truth!
Business and capital ebbs and flows. Entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of massive debt or cash flow shortages. Find me an entrepreneur who didn’t sometimes take one step forward, one back in order to take two new steps?
The very definition of the entrepreneurial mindset.
This was really long, so I didn't read ll of it, judt enough to note the weakness foundation.
So first off. I'm Swedish.
Sweden is a global powerhouse when ut comes to invention, technologies and business alive. With a population of 9 million swedes, you know several Swedish tech unicorns, industrial tech Companies etc.
Now here is the point. The Swedish culture of engineering, is one of work-family balance, steady improvement, group effort and flat hierarchies. Built on a socialndemocrat school system which is highly egalitarian un it's approach and has a strong focus on group dynamics, not individual, elite, performance.
The latter, is the French school system, and Sweden compete with France on a neck and neck basis with 20% of the population.
So what is my point? The elite supermen driving innovation is a myth, and success is built by strong teams over time, not with low wage Indian labour doing 80h work weeks.
So vivek, is wrong. A nice and healthy culture l, one which celebrates life, athletics, personal success through group effort (,ie team sports) is a winning culture.
and yet sanfFrancisco, with 1/8th sweden's population produces FAR more of those things.
the SF metro area has a higher GDP than sweden. silicon valley as a whole (3 million people) dwarfs it.
apart from spotifiy, a me too business that was a fast follower and not an innovator, who are the relevant swedish tech companies? erikssen was once but despite pole position for cell phones lost the smart phone game entirely.
i do not think the facts here are as you claim.
Ericsson is still high tech, but on the b2b side. They build the networks that the consumer goods run on after having sold its consumer goods division to Sony. So those Sony phones, that is still Swedish tech.
Spotify is built by streaming music through a p2p network, on tech built by the guy who built mytorrent.
No way, I didn't know the mytorrent guy worked also worked to build spotify. That's wild. Very cool.
Anyways, I agree with your original comments.
Particularly in software, it's inherently a collaborative process, not individual (or at the very least - it is at larger scale).
You might not be quite correct about Spotify.
While it’s neither a (silicon) tech- nor product category- innovator, it did innovate by finding a workable (if not overly popular) way of dealing with “artists” and their plantation owners (“labels”).
SOMETHING is giving Spotify competitive advantage (have you seen the share price?), and that something is technology in the economic sense (a factor in the increase of value), if not in the commonly held sense of robots and electronics.
You're talking Silicon Valley. Here in SF proper, we aren't doing all that well.
i still know SF well. i lived there for 16 years. there's still quite a lot of innovation going on there despite how gross the streets have gotten the crime issue.
(of course, stockholm having some interesting issues of it's own of late...)
We got rid of Breed so with any luck things will start going better.
SF is a single city on a vast, continent wide state which you can't disconnect in the comparison. Especially not given how the investment scheme it has runs on the entire US trade deficit creating huge foreign investment funds looking for us denominated assets. It's an integrated loop that bleeds the rest of the nation dry while pumping up SF real estate.
1) Silicon Valley was built by wierdoes and drop outs, not conformist pajeets doing Kumon drills all weekend at the behest of their tiger mother
2) sv is mostly coasting in the accomplishments and network effects of its (majority white) past
3) sv managed to channel all of its gdp into total social, political, and demographic dysfunction for the people living there
4) the pajeets and other immigrants were a big part of why sf and California became a one party dysfunctional blue state. It’s just like back home in low trust India!
The Asian tigers all have basic market structures and rule of law and they stalled out at 50% of our gdp and sub 1.0 TFR. India is like 1000x worse than the Asian tigers. We do NOT want these people importing their “elite human capital” culture that led to those outcomes.
Sorry but if Vivek’s vision of “the good life” sounds like a randian villain rather than a randian hero we don’t want these people.
This ignores the fact that Sweden has a major immigration problem. It has developed on of the highest rates of rape per capita in the world, (clue it is not fair haired native Swede on native Swede), Sweden had approximately 0 bombings over a 30 year period going back to the 1980’s and last year alone had 149. Not those fair haired Swedish gang members triggering it. Malmo is effectively a no go zone as immigrants terrorize the natives and most Jews have left the country. Fire fighters need police protection because the Muslim immigrants attack them and the police don’t like to go into those neighborhoods. By 2050 Swedish Swedes will be a minority. The majority of immigrants do not work. A Danish study, ok not Swedish, determined that after 10 years in Denmark most immigrants do not work, over 60% have been convicted of at least one crime and 34% of their offspring have also been convicted of a crime. Those statistics would suggest the bad cat makes important points.
💯💯💯
I agree fully. Our immigrants have nothing to do with our innovation. They are a net drain on the economy. Our inter-European migration is however important, doing a European wide brain drain due to better quality of life for families.
You want people to pay attention to your opinion by beginning it with a complaint that gato's article was too long for you to bother to read it all (or even most of it)?
That's a bold strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off.
Yup , that Sweden is a real success story.
I recently visited the Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It chronicles the development of nuclear power, which drew upon international talent but reached its apotheosis here in the U.S. If ever there was a case for the transformative role of genius, this is it.
There is a role for "group effort and flat hierarchies," but it isn't a leadership role on a global scale.
And really, you should have read to the end.
It drew upon international talent because the Nazis didn't like Jews. Heisenberg might have come closer to making the bomb if Hitler hadn't been such an idiot.
Yes, which is consistent with the argument that you need talent in the right environment. Would Elon Musk have achieved what he has if he had stayed in South Africa or been born 10K years ago?
I believe that was the central idea of this post, that the immigration argument focuses mostly on the talent part but not on the societal aspects like trust.
Musk is a money guy and a business man. He's certainly not a tech genius but he knows how to take advantage of the special deals that the US Government provides him.
He probably wouldn't have done as well in South Africa but that's because American is where all the funding is.
If Elon Musk were not in the US, we'd be just fine.
The government LOANED him money, which he repaid, ahead of time, with interest. The rebates on SOME of his cars (many don't qualify) is something states and federal government does. He has often said he things the incentive/rebates are wrong and should not be needed.
He also provides his rockets to our government in a more timely, dependable and better priced manner. Remember that for years we were DEPENDING on the Russians for supply and transport to the ISS. Elon is doing it cheaper and more efficiently than NASA or any other company/country.
So I'd prefer that he thrive HERE and paying HUGE amounts of taxes.
Is he paying huge amounts of taxes??
The idea that he is just a money man yet he could file a 1040 ez for his taxes. I dont know any finance folks that dont have far more interesting retirement and investment strategies with lots of banks in tax havens.
He was a teen when he made his first million. He was one of the founders of paypal an sold it to ebay. Government did its best to stop space x. He empowered some amazing people and created an environment to innovate.
I don't care. We still could do without him.
While Americans absolutely cooperate as needed for mutual success & benefit, our culture is not generally attuned to “personal success through group effort”, admirable as that may be in other cultures.
Yeah but if you want to create/ raise capital you need the 1/10th of one percenters who can assemble a team to meet those ends.
"Teams" alone, earn money. The "superman's' make money out of thin air.
But point taken.
And it works-out! Our DEI-acolytes would have us believe that those "supermen" (somehow) "self-pollinate" (and then -- again, "somehow" -- assemble teams). You'd think they'd become Evangelical Xtians... believing in Miracles (or in Marianne Williamson).
Yes, Sweden is very egalitarian. They are worse than even the United States when it comes to being confused by two different sexes. Another country that pushes that men and women are exactly the same.
I do think that they are correct in Sweden about should teaching a lot more about cooperation and working with a group than trying to make individual stars, but the rabid feminism is a turn off.
He says TLDR, but comments anyway.
https://x.com/PeterSweden7/status/1873061794534826412?t=m_s57amr18eJqCPlYip9cg&s=19
I think that there are separate issues here...Yes, America (like Switzerland) should be able to import elite level skilled people, provided that they can support themselves from the gitgo..There is already a program to do that, separate from H1-B, etc...99.9% of those entering via H1-B aren't at that level, and many of them are unskilled, uneducated entry level workers, whose sole purpose is to lower wages and take jobs away from Americans..and many of the more elite types, like Vivek, come from countries where lying, cheating, scamming and nepotism are predominant...Vivek made his money by peddling a worthless Alzheimers drug, via and IPO, and then selling the stock..He injured suffering Americans, and robbed those who bought the stock....That's what they do in india...
But American kids, particularly the smart white kids face discrimination at every turn...Our kids, who are in the top .1% on the SAT, and have written successful programs for well known companies as consultants, eventually found employment in the IT industry, but not without considerable difficulty at all levels...One of their friends has been consulting in China at times, which apparently was more interested in his talents than US business..Whereas the H1-B code writers that I have come in contact with, were incompetent and deceptive, as in trying to put back doors into software...
So H1-Bs are largely a scam, and should be reserved exclusively for those with proven high intelligence and/or scarce useful skills...But in fact, as the devastating employment statistics show, immigration is in fact throwing Americans out of work in order to replace them with cheaper foreign labor, often from highly corrupt cultures....
Vivek's comments about American culture ignore these facts...India's culture, with an average IQ of 78, is infinitely worse, and Vivek's use of medical fraud to make his money illustrates that...
agree. The culture in India is not pristine either - I see a lot of "shady" on the edges
Reading the beginning of the article, I got ready for some spicy takes, only to find I agreed with all of it.
I live in Canada and am an immigrant from the UK. So not much of a culture shift. Assimilating was easy for me. Going through the citizenship process there was a whole section on what the expectations are of its citizens (work hard, avoid debt etc etc)
Whilst we may not have immigration problems on the scale of the US we are seeing culture being eroded in immigration hotspot towns.
The (false) assumption made by the far left pro immigration group is that everyone deserves to come and reap the benefits of this great country. But this country only became great because of the work done by its citizens. By allowing in people who come because of what they can get, rather than what they can do given the opportunity puts undue strain on the hosting country.
I’m all for immigration, we need it in Canada, and I also believe this country should be a safe refuge for those who need to flee their birth country for safety reasons. But opening the borders wide and letting anyone in is naive and ultimately damaging.
Yes, the USA is unique in the world in the upward mobility it provides. But is that "land of opportunity" durable? Up until 2010 or so Big Tech competed in a dog eat dog world, where the best ideas won out in a contest with mostly fair rules.
And then it seems Big Tech got tired of competing and opted for a rigged game where they and their investors always made money. And a funny thing happened. Everyone decided this rigged game of grift and freeloading was great!
And here we are nearing the end of the first quarter of the 21st century and the American economy has been greatly transformed. Everywhere you look you find a corrupt union of government and graft mingled with fake "free enterprise".
The COVID money and rules was the cherry on the top of the sellout. Big Tech and Big Corp profited immensely while ma & pa were sunk. And voila! What do we see but Big Finance showing up to buy out ma & pa and transform any remaining small businesses into corporate rollups.
So I wonder does the American "land of opportunity" still exist? Or is what we are really seeing is the last gasps of a corrupt feudal system, where the only way to riches is to figure out a grift where others pay and you profit.
I believe America always had the creative spark that makes us different than any other culture, and hasn’t lost it in spite of the mess we see. I didn’t understand this until working in Silicon Valley in the late 80s I met a couple of German entrepreneurs, and it was their point of view that illuminated the difference. They explained that Europe, almost without exception, is constrained by a class system, one that they’re born into and almost impossible to escape. A system ingrained for centuries. This system defines your personal belief system, financial status and what schools you can attend, if at all. They pointed out to me America has no such constraints, and for the most part, any one can rise up and become a success. Not true in European countries.
In think what El Gato was pointing out is factions (Oligarchy, deep state, call them whatever), has been trying to turn us into Europe. Destroy what made us America. They’ve no doubt made an absolute mess, but I believe haven’t broken our collective spirit. A strong manufacturing base can be restored, along with a stable middle class, and folks will be willing and able. Entrepreneurship requires all types, not just STEM degrees which has been rammed down our kids throats for a generation. Tiger moms aren’t the answer, that’s another culture try to replace our own. It can be done. There are entrepreneurs doing this now, and if you want an example, look up Schiit Audio, and the story of its founder Jason Stoddard. The case also demonstrates the notion that everything made in America has to cost 10x is a myth even perpetuated by El Gato.
BTW. Tech shifted into robber baron mode by the late 1990s, when Microsoft had 95% of desktop OS market, and took the corporate server market in the early 2000s. 2010 and on was another wave of consolidation and antitrust behavior that started 20 years earlier. A classic example of this was Apple, Amazon, FB and Google crushing the Parlor startup from competing with FB. Government did nothing, actually supported the move.
At any rate, tech has been very guilty of the foreign labor exploitation game for over 40 years, and that’s why the Musk/Ramaswamy comments lit off a firestorm. There’s a lot of pent up rage, for good reason, and the tone of the comments were shameful coming from two individuals supposedly advising the Trump Team. Just my 2cents.
It was always thus. You're just noticing now. The important people have been insolated from failure in the US since before they started building railroads.
100%
Excellent observations. The short term problems might be that the generations of “everyone-gets-a-trophy every day kids (not to mention those who were traumatized & dumbed down during the scamdemic) are or soon will be in charge. And what to do about long time legal immigrants - Somali & otherwise - who have grifted for decades & have those attitudes?
BINGO