On Vivek: you can take the boy out of the caste system, but you can’t take the caste system out of the boy

And a word about my own Irish ancestors

None other than the foreign labor-fellating king himself, Elon Musk, blew up X on Thursday in his defense of merit-based worker visas. Then Vivek Ramaswamy weighed in and got slammed.

Let’s be clear: “merit-based” worker visa is a euphemism for one type of in-sourcing, and in-sourcing is part of a strategy to reduce labor costs and increase profits for multinational corporations and always has been. That’s why the last sentence of Vivek’s post sneaks in the acknowledgment that it’s a hiring practice that could be eliminated through legislation — because he’s actually terrified that it might be.

The text of his full tweet can be found below the screenshot, or click here to read it on X:

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.

“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.

This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.

That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

In other words, contends Ramaswamy, Americans need to become more like the companies importing Indian immigrants to the US, by treating their children like employees, demanding obedience, compliance, high productivity (80 hours a week minimum), and rankable and ranked success — outstanding or better, or back to India you go. (And remember, the cost of labor — wages — for the company is reduced on average by about 40%.)

Now Vivek Ramaswamy’s family hails from within the highest caste in India, the Brahmins. Some will say we have a de facto caste system in the US: we definitely have socioeconomic classes, but one of our cultural tenets is the promise that if you work hard, you can have a better life. This right to pursue happiness — relentlessly, stubbornly, even stupidly — is enshrined in our Constitution. So ensconced in our collective American spirit is this hope for a better tomorrow that we even have a name for it in the vernacular: “the American dream.”

But we Americans also know that life is for living,* that we can work hard and play hard. I have a wall hanging placard that says, “Work like a captain, Party like a pirate” that I got at Icing at the Mall of America before I moved from Minnesota to DC. And isn’t that the quintessential American take? The “why not both? *shrug*” meme/mindset that characterizes a certain high-achieving subset of American individuals? Hard physical labor performed by people in the trades is highly valued here, the guile+charm combo observed in sales people and others who make us believe it before we see it is highly valued here, the beauty of talented actors in film, TV, and internet broadcasting is highly valued here, and the virility of warriors on the field (sports) or in the battlefield (the military) is also highly valued here. All are often well-compensated in our American culture too. But since when do we look down on the “normalcy” of workers in airports, hospitals, fire stations, cop shops, coffee houses, restaurants, bars, malls, schools, day care centers, and banks (and more)? In doing this, Vivek is declaring them unnecessary. Could this anti-common man sentiment be any more illogical? Everyone, for a just a quick horrifying second, imagine this nation without trash collectors and the last office, school, or other building you worked in without janitors. And doesn’t the professional athlete stop by the coffeeshop at the airport before his flight, later go shopping at the mall to get souvenirs, enjoy dinner at a restaurant and a drink at the bar and the hospitality of the hotel? Doesn’t he tip the uber driver or cabbie? What, Vivek, should we start teleporting to the airport instead of taking a cab there? Let’s play his suggestion forward to its logical end: if everyone is raised by narcissistic abuse parents to work an “achievement” job instead of a “mediocrity” job, modern life as we know it would grind to a stunning halt (but you can change your own oil, right, Vivek? Switching out the brakes and rotors is easy — and I mean, if you do it wrong because you’re not an actual mechanic, what’s the worst that could happen if the brake pedal didn’t work, right?).

Yet somehow Vivek missed all of this, despite being born in the US (in 1985) and living here all of his life. In his American fantasy, replete with rigid hyper-discipline and an extremist quest for dominance (over China, he says — but really, over everyone), his inability to read the room announces itself loudly in that astoundingly out-of-touch X analysis of American culture.

But what do Indians in India (current subjects of a literal caste system) think about Vivek? One Indian writer in India posted this take on Reddit approximately two years ago with the subject line: “The interesting cas(t)e of Vivek Ramaswamy.”

So I am an Indian and still live in India. I maintain a surface level awareness of the political happenings in America. But I hadn't heard about Vivek until one of my American clients brought him up in a conversation. He was a conservative and praised Vivek for upholding American values, which he said helped Vivek achieve the American dream even though his parents were poor when they immigrated to America.

I would have forgotten about Vivek, but two things about him make him stand out in my mind. First, his parents were from Kerala, which is where I am from. See, this is odd. Because Kerala is primarily a left-leaning state. The right wing parties struggle to win more than even a couple of districts there. While there are conservative folks in Kerala, they are really rare. Secondly, 'Ramaswamy', Vivek's last name, isn't a Kerala name (or Malayali name to be precise. Malayalam is the language spoken in Kerala). It is more of a Tamil name (Tamil being the language of Kerala's neighbour state).

This bugged me. So I mentioned this to my friend who is also from Kerala. I also mentioned that Vivek is from Palakkad in Kerala. That's when it hit him. Apparently, Palakkad has a settlement of Tamil Brahmins and Vivek is from there. I googled Vivek's caste after the call and, voila, he IS a Brahmin.

Now why I am saying all this and pointing out Vivek's caste? Because of a couple of reasons. Vivek claims his parents came to the country poor and worked their way up. A lot of Americans don't realise that immigration in India is an expensive affair. And the majority of the immigrants you guys received from India until a couple of decades ago were Brahmins and upper caste folks. Why? Because a very few from the marginalized castes could afford it.

So when Vivek touts the same bullshit as Elon Musk and other rich guys, I hope you take it with a pinch of salt.

Also, Tamil Brahmins are generally the worst of Brahmins. Many Brahmins in modern India are introspective about the atrocities of their caste in the past and shun the caste system. In fact, many of them abandoned their identity as a Brahmin. But not Tamil Brahmins. They wear it as a badge of honour. They go around calling themselves "Tam-Brahms" and still subscribe to the false sense of superiority and look down on others. They also strongly argue for removing 'reservations", which is Indian equivalent of affirmative action to uplift lower castes.

Given all this, is there any surprise that Vivek will advocate for removal of all affirmative action, dismiss all discussions about inequality, and a return to the "good old days"?

PS: Also, as more and more Indians enter your country, I really recommend that Americans familiarise themselves with the Caste system. It will help.

Again, it’s a reddit post so take it for what it’s worth, but the text lacks indicators of deception; additionally, a quick google search confirms that Vivek’s family is indeed Brahmin.

Now, without doing a full communication analysis of Vivek’s tweet because the most glaring phrase protrudes so awkwardly in the first line that essentially the rest of the tweet becomes redundant so we don’t need to do a full analysis, let me please call your attention to the word choice he makes to claim that when it comes to hiring **human beings** to **work jobs,** the reason immigrants are preferable to Americans “isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation).”

No, no — never that.

But with that word choice, Vivek unwittingly reveals to us that “dumb Americans” is the word on the street, that “low IQ” is how Americans are described during office gossip at the proverbial water cooler, i. e. “You know, they have to hire us foreigners! Americans are too dumb to do this job! Ha ha….” But Vivek corrects them, That’s an intellectually lazy explanation, dummy. WRONG.

He then waxes lyrical about trope non sequiturs to avoid anything BUT the elephant (tiger?) in the room: Foreign workers get hired “over” Americans because — and again, this cannot be overstated — cheaper labor is what is preferable for corporations. You’d have to have been brainwashed into thinking you are genetically superior and also not actually be that smart (or be lying to yourself) in order to think that there’s any other reason to import human beings to perform labor. If you give a company an incentive to choose employees from one group of candidates “over” another, it (its hiring team) will respond accordingly. Hmm, more profit or less profit? What should we do???

And ultimately, I think Vivek unconsciously chose the word “over” because it’s a clear reference to the economic theory of “comparative advantage” which pseudo-libertarian Harvard guys like him love. It says that one set of production circumstances is preferable “over” another. And you guessed it, after factoring in the opportunity cost, cheaper is better, whether it’s producing a good or a service, which involves choosing laborers. Adam Smith’s theory. He’s a philosopher — a lover of wisdom — like John Wayne Gacy is a lover of clowns. Long story short, in the wake of Abolition, when slavery was losing favor around the world, replacing slaves with workers in countries with caste systems or de facto indentured servant segments of the population, like poor children and adults who weren’t considered enslaved because no one had purchased them per se but were still able to be incentivized with a little force (or a lot of desperation) to pick tea leaves or harvest sugar cane or sew or mine or do whatever factory labor at a wage way lower than the workers in the country that would eventually be purchasing the end product (or the same country, if possible), gained favor as a way of reducing labor costs. The book “Through the Prism of Slavery” is excellent for more background on this topic. As a modern day example, our iPhones are assembled by children people with small hands in China, but they definitely aren’t slaves because no one purchased them, see? So that’s a relief. iPhones being assembled in China is a great example of comparative advantage “in labor-intensive products.”**

But my initial response to Vivek’s tweet was this quick reaction (while I gathered my thoughts for this essay):

Oh please don’t put down the shovel, Vivek. For anyone who still believes in hard work, unions, and jobs as a way to get money to enjoy life, not careers that eviscerate life of the hours meant to enjoy existing: the TRADES! You poor slave, Vivek. Don’t you know you’re FREE here?

I mentioned the trades because they are an awesome way to (eventually) earn six figures without a degree or student loan debt, and earn excellent benefits and take pride in honest labor and excellent pay.

The rest of Vivek’s commentary is laughable: our Sputnik moment? Dear Lord. Instead of expressing gratitude for his outrageously good luck — being born in America after his parents did the hard work of moving here from India — he deeply believes he merited it (deserves it for being special). The truth is brutally reductive: if it weren’t for corporate greed and the reduced labor cost of his parents as (likely) H-1 work visa employees (there was no H-1B till 1990), incentivizing in turn a company to sponsor their initial move to the US, he wouldn’t have grown up here. That’s it.

My Irish ancestors came to Boston and St. Paul and worked as domestic servants. Some joined the military. All had progeny who eventually achieved both literacy and property ownership, an American Dream-come-true indeed. They worked hard and didn’t merit anything when they first stepped off the boat.

And for those like Elon and Vivek who are enslaved to money and status, I exhort you to learn the value of time. You may be exceedingly smart and excessively rich, but time is the great equalizer. Everyone gets the same number of hours in a day. From there we trade the minutes for money, for relaxation, for family. A few hours are taken back for sleep, and if you are literally enslaved, you have no influence over how you will spend the remaining waking hours. If a substance like drugs or alcohol controls you — if addiction is your slavemaster — then you will be compelled to meet all your survival needs after the addiction is paid its due. And then there are people like Elon and Vivek who feel entitled to other people’s time at the lowest market rate. (I have to wonder: if child labor were still legal in this country, would Vivek and Elon be lobbying to Make American Children Engineers Again?) Jay Archibald tweeted this response below to those lauding their own masochistic drive to work 80 hours a week for less than anyone else, sometimes for no pay at all, in order to display submissive gratitude for the sheer opportunity to have a job:

We American workers lack the slave morality that Vivek defends as culturally superior but that Nietzsche thought was really pathetic.

I posit to you, wise reader, that you do already value time. You are fully aware that you can’t take any of the money or status-indicators with you at the end of your life. You’ll have vivid memories of experiences. I know I will. For two decades I have eschewed any job above entry level in order to avoid being paid on salary and scheduled beyond a set shift of limited hours. I make less money than I might otherwise. And I’m free after 40 hours every week. The rest of my time is my own. The sheer luxury of doing whatever I want to do during the minutes I have not set aside to trade my employer for money would shock and overwhelm my ancestors. Freedom is not our natural human state: many people look for something, anything, anyone to take — steal, even — their minutes. Kudos to those of you who have wrangled kids into your experiences and memories without the feeling of time theft which can cause resentment. You played the game of Life and won again and again.

Finally, there is a lot to be said in favor of owning property (as long as it doesn’t end up owning you). Property-ownership allows us to more heavily influence the laws of our government: to paraphrase RFK Jr, owning our home transforms us from subject or serf into people who pay taxes which in turn entitles us to a say in how that tax money is spent. I’m simplifying a longer pro-property ownership argument here, but …

… you know who doesn’t own property and does act as a serf on his or her company’s de facto plantation? Imported human beings, temporarily exploited via a work visa for the comparative advantage they provide to, and the opportunity cost they reduce for, their corporate overlords whose sole desire is to increase profit which they successfully do by driving down expenses by reducing the wages they have to pay those workers.

This X user Matthew H put it best:

Vivek is simply the Republican Obama.

Smooth. All talk. Tells you exactly what you want to hear.

I don't understand why so many are fooled by this guy.

Indeed. Until the other day. If Trump hadn’t already started to see through the facade, he very likely does now. When people tell you who they are, believe them. When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.

I leave you with this: the suggestion that we don’t have the best of the best engineers right here in the United States reminds me of all the mysteriously missing violin prodigies.

If you’re still here … the continuation of my thoughts on comparative advantage:

**At least, that is what is taught in microeconomics classes in schools all over the country. I’m working on a longer thesis in which I posit that modern economic theory, beginning with Smith, reverse engineered a socially acceptable form of slavery, by first indoctrinating students of economics with the theories of “comparative advantage” and “opportunity cost” in order to ensure an academic field-wide acceptance of the justification of taking total advantage of countries whose citizens (a.k.a. potential “new hires”) have no legal protections and are so poor they will do any work at any price. They are slaves in every way but one: there was never a piece of paper that acted as a bill of sale of their physical body. In our own country, wages can be so low that the worker still qualifies for subsidized housing and food stamps (SNAP benefits, now on a debit card). Again, the person is free to do what they would like to do during their non-working hours which I believe assigns a higher moral value to our society and its attempt to regulate and mitigate human vice, specifically greed. We’ve outlawed slavery but we allow a wage that keeps some members of society still dependent on the government, but overall, we enjoy a far less coercive existence than the situation in India, China, and other countries. More to come.

Bottom line:

Corporations will be as morally “good” as a country’s laws require them to be.

Thank you for reading, dear substack subscribers! I look forward to your comments; they mean a lot to me. And TRIPLE thanks to my new paying subscribers.

Protect yourself from EMF’s (remember the study Huberman talked about that showed EMF radiation from cellphones on your testicles affects fertility? Now imagine what it does to your brain). I wear and recommend HAVN (formerly Lambs) brand gear: you get 10% off and I get a small commission if you purchase through my link.

Want to read about my thoughts on the gun control psy-op? Click here.

Want to read about the glass of life being half filled with water and half filled with air? Click here.

Check out my post “You aren’t pro-choice or pro-privacy rights if you don’t oppose forced personal medical history disclosure (which means we have to discuss The Truth About HIPPA)” here

Remember, if you’re going through hell, keep going!

A tiny bit of housekeeping: sending emails from substack straight to spam or junkmail is the new censorship/shadowban by yahoo/gmail. So if you add sarahreynolds@substack.com to your contacts, you will always get the emails when a new post is up in your regular inbox

* if we’re of the Irish American variety, we might know that “life is for the living, and let the dead bury the dead”