A fellow named "Vivek Ramaswamy" made the following interesting comments:
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.
Keeping those comments in mind, consider again the issue of these H-1B visas. These could be useful to American company for one or both of two reasons:
Elon Musk says:
Of course my companies and I would much prefer to hire Americans, and we do, as that is much easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process. However, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.
Taking these thoughts down the road a ways, a ban on such work visas would have much the same effect as a tariff. It would eliminate competition from offshore and raise salaries for American engineers as companies compete to hire the best talent. Just like tariffs, this could be a good thing. It would certainly be a good thing if you were an American Engineer. Like tariffs, it would raise prices. (What nitwit ever said tariffs would lower prices?)
Not long ago I got an MS in Computer Science here at the University of Arizona. I noticed while I was taking classes that I was one of only a few "white guys" (for lack of a better word). Classes were 80+ percent students from China and India. I am not making a racial statement, just an observation. I would think to myself, "where are the people from our country?". Apparently being an engineer or software developer does not attract the young American. On one hand, maybe our culture has trained young people to be lazy and to shun ambition. What I think though is that is just isn't cool to be a "nerd". Athletes are cool. We have shows like "Big Bang Theory" where smart men are portrayed as misfits.
The only thing that is cool and that does attract smart people might be finance. It used to be law as well, but now lawyers are widely despised and people I know who work as lawyers have no end of bad things to say about the profession. Exploring the attraction of careers in business and finance goes down other roads that I don't intend to venture any further on here.
Is intelligence venerated in China and India? I really have no idea. Those countries do have gigantic populations, and we only see the best of the best selected to come to this country for education. I have met (and very much liked) many students from these countries. They are smart and highly motivated.
I don't know how you change a culture. I do think that it would be a good thing if smart people (scientists, software developers, engineers) could be given the same kind of recognition and admiration as athletes. Find some 10 year olds and ask them what they want to be when they grow up, and see what you learn.
"new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism, and gender ideology".What jumped out at me is him calling COVID-ism a "new secular religion". There is something to that, and indeed there are people whose concern about these issues does reach an intensity that could only be called a "religion".
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