What Vivek is actually condemning is that the American working class has the fresh memory of their parents achieving a high standard of living through honest work, and that they hold that as an expectation.
Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc do not have that memory or expectation.
American workers have become fully disillusioned with runaway capitalism, and do not want to sacrifice their bodies or minds for a standard of living far below what their parents enjoyed with less education and skills than they have.
They do not want to work 50+ hours per week to barely be able to make ends meet for themselves, let alone for the family they hope to have. They have zero incentive.
So what Vivek means when he speaks of "culture" is the culture of insects.
What Vivek is describing when he refers to "hyper-competitiveness" are Americans being unable to compete with insect culture.
It is an American with the blood memory of a happy family being comfortably provided for on a union mechanic's salary up against a swarm of roaches content to be packed 20 to a pod, eating slop, shitting in a bucket, and doing it all for nothing more than the occasional headpat from their master.
For their refusal to accept such a slave-like existence, American workers are being mocked by the insects, who cannot even begin to fathom that there is meaning and value to life beyond a few extra dollars in their bank account, a bit of extra shareholder value, being #1 in some bullshit industry that shouldn’t even exist, etc...
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. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸