Vivek Ramaswamy has created quite a stir with his comments regarding culture and immigration. It has sparked a lot of debate within the MAGA movement.
Vivek had a post on “X” (Twitter) explaining why he thinks top tech companies hire foreign-born workers over Americans. He goes on to state that it has to do with culture. The American culture celebrates mediocrity over excellence.
https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1872312139945234507?mx=2
He says, “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”
Vivek goes on to cite 1990s sit-com television shows as an example. He states, “A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World’, or Zach and Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell’, or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters’, will not produce the best engineers.”
I completely understand and sympathize with Vivek’s points, although I don’t fully agree with them. I also disagree with many Trump supporters in what they are saying in response, specifically as it regards immigration.
Intelligence Isn’t Everything
Vivek himself was the valedictorian of his high school graduating class. I once listened to his speech. He had rhetorical talent back then.
I didn’t watch much of “Boy Meets World”, so I can’t comment on that example. But I did watch “Saved by the Bell” and “Family Matters”. Vivek is celebrating Screech and Steve Urkel. These characters were apparently book smart but were considered nerdy.
But I think these are the wrong examples. They weren’t just nerdy. They were dorky or beyond. In fact, they were a social nightmare in polite society. They didn’t know how to behave properly in a social environment.
It is one thing to be book smart, but you aren’t going to have much influence on society if you have no social skills. Vivek of all people should know. He is a very smart guy, but he also knows how to talk to people. He was a salesman for his message all the way back to when he was a teenager. If Vivek were just book smart with no rhetorical skills, he would barely have any influence on society right now.
It is a good thing to have good rhetorical skills if you are using them for good purposes. The evil establishment uses propaganda to enhance their own power, but we need rhetoric and salesmanship to sell good ideas. I want Vivek to be a good salesman when it comes to reducing the size and scope of government.
Vivek is not Screech. He has some of Zach Morris in him. This enables him to sell his ideas and have influence on other people. This is something that Screech could not do effectively because of his lack of social skills.
I also don’t agree that our society completely ignores or makes fun of the so-called nerds. Maybe valedictorians in high school are not the most popular kids in school, but sometimes they are. And adults outside of school will often praise the intellectually talented students.
It is also ok to celebrate characters like Zach Morris and A.C. Slater. Slater was the jock, but being athletic is also a skill and talent. It may not build bridges or solve math equations, but it is a form of entertainment for people, and it is a skill. There are kids who work hard at their sport, and it can set good habits for life, and there is nothing wrong with appreciating these skills.
Politics and Intelligence
Something I harped on during COVID hysteria is the idea of intelligence. Perhaps we should distinguish between intelligent and smart. There are many highly intelligent people who did very well in school, yet they can’t think straight on basic issues.
It tended to be those considered intelligent and well-educated who were the most authoritarian during COVID. They are quite good at math and biology when it comes to reciting a textbook, but they were the first ones to follow orders and mask up and “vaccinate”. They trusted the experts, or at least the experts that were put out by the establishment media.
It is easier to train a smart dog. That is attributed to Michael Malice. If you tell a dumb dog to “sit”, he won’t listen. If you tell a smart dog to “sit”, he will obediently sit down.
For liberty, we don’t necessarily want obedience. We want peaceful people, but we don’t want obedience when it comes to infringing on people’s liberty.
This is where Vivek needs to be careful. Immigration is not just about bringing talented people to fill jobs that Americans are supposedly too stupid or lazy to do. There is also a question of preserving liberty.
Just because someone is a good producer and doesn’t collect welfare, it doesn’t mean they are advocating liberty. I don’t want an engineer or doctor coming to the United States only to support the next authoritarian for political office.
We hear about the education, the skills, and the work ethic in Asian countries. Maybe there are certain things to admire or emulate. Yet, most of these places are poorer than the United States. The reason highly intelligent Indians want to come to the United States is because they can more easily thrive in the United States as compared to India. There is a lack of respect for property rights in India.
There is more wealth in the U.S. as compared to China and India because there is a greater respect for free markets in the U.S. There is a greater respect for property rights and free association. It is extremely difficult to start a business in India.
Even in Japan, where the people tend to have a strong work ethic, there is a statist mentality that holds back the people and the economy. They are highly intelligent, but they also tend to be quite obedient, which means falling in line with government authoritarianism.
Singapore is a very rich country with a strong economy. It isn’t just because the people there work really hard. It is because there is a relatively free market system that enables business to flourish.
I am not worried about producing the best engineers. I am worried about having an environment where good engineers can be free to do good work.
MAGA Economics
In general, Trump supporters are not very good on economics. They understand that outright socialism is bad. They understand that over regulation can be bad. Unfortunately, they don’t understand the benefits of the free market when it comes to dealing with other countries.
Some of the people getting upset at Vivek’s comments are disagreeing with him only because it is possibly encouraging immigration that would “steal American jobs”.
First, nobody has a right to any particular job. It is the employer who owns the job. It is the employer who is paying out the money to the employee.
Just as many Trump supporters misunderstand the issue of tariffs, they also misunderstand the whole purpose of jobs. They see jobs as an end result. They don’t see jobs as being a means to an end.
The purpose of human beings working is to produce goods and services. This is what enables us to live, and beyond that, to live well. We either have to grow our own food and hunt for our own food, or we have to have someone else do it for us. Just about everything we own was produced by someone. The services we get are produced by someone.
The purpose of a job is to produce. Sure, those working jobs are producing in order to be able to consume the production of others. But we all rely on this production to give us wealth.
If we just look at jobs as the end goal, then this is working against the actual goal of producing greater wealth. If we just focus on the jobs, it will be detrimental to wealth production. It will make us poorer.
If a peaceful immigrant enters the United States to work (and not collect welfare), then this should not hurt the economy. (I am not considering the discussion above about possibly changing the politics of the country in the long run.)
A new person entering the country creates his own demand. He needs to buy food and other things, which means there will be additional work to be performed to satisfy his wants and needs.
Still, let’s even imagine an immigrant who comes to the U.S. to work and consume very little. He keeps all of his money under a proverbial mattress or he sends it to his home country. This is actually a benefit to our society. He is producing wealth while consuming very little.
If an immigrant is willing to move to the United States and work for less money than any American would, then this will actually mean lower costs for the company. It will ultimately mean lower prices (than otherwise would have been) for certain products and services.
Many Trump supporters cannot understand this or the similar issue when it comes to tariffs. If you impose taxes on foreign goods, it might mean that there will be more American jobs to produce those particular goods. It will also mean those Americans can’t do something else. It will also mean higher prices for American consumers.
If you can prevent immigration to save 1,000 American jobs, is it worth it? If you can impose tariffs to save 1,000 American jobs in a particular industry, is it worth it? What if it means paying twice as much for a smartphone? What if it means that every American buying a new car has to pay $500 more?
At least give me a number on what makes it worth it. What if every new car in the country would cost $500 more on average but it saved a total of 10 American jobs? Is that a good policy according to the protectionists?
You would be better off paying those 10 people $10 million per year each and getting the lower price of the cars for millions of Americans.
Libertarianism and Immigration
There are several different issues merging together here. There is immigration. There is culture. There is politics and economics.
It is very hard for libertarians to discuss the issue of immigration because we live in such a statist system. Immigrants (legal and illegal) get massive government welfare. Even the ones with work visas get welfare. It is also an unfair system at times because those that follow the law often have to wait a long time to get approved if they are ever approved, while some people just walk across the border.
I think libertarians can have different points of view on the issue of immigration. One thing we should all agree on is that there shouldn’t be government welfare, especially for those entering the country (legally or illegally). If everyone entering the country were doing so for work and opportunity, then it seems to solve a large chunk of the problem.
No matter where you fall on this issue, it is important to emphasize that all government welfare should be eliminated. That is the culture that really needs changing.