Jocks and Valedictorians: Against a False Technocratic ‘Meritocracy’
“Palace Examination at Kaifeng, Song Dynasty, China.” Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
“Meritocracy” has become one of the key buzzwords of the new Trump-MAGA coalition: it is often imagined as a foil against “DEI,” “Affirmative Action,” “woke,” “communism,” and the like. This general restructuring in the name of merit has cast President Trump’s gaze across a wide variety of American institutions: the military, college admissions, the federal bureaucracy, and the private sector are all to be thoroughly reorganized in the name of this new ‘meritocracy.’ Some—particularly in Silicon Valley-adjacent right-wing circles—have advocated for the extension of this reorganization to society more broadly.
In December 2024, Vivek Ramaswamy generated considerable controversy when he argued on X that American culture partakes in the “veneration of mediocrity.” For Mr. Ramaswamy, this “starts YOUNG” when impressionable youths are introduced to the horrors of “a culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell.’” The crux of Mr. Ramaswamy’s cultural critique is as follows: for America to maintain its technological excellence, a culture that celebrates the archetypal “prom queen” or “jock” from beloved ‘90s sitcoms must be replaced by one that champions the “math olympiad.” Under the auspices of a Ramaswamy administration, after-school basketball practice is to be replaced by a strict program of five-hour-long Kumon sweatshop-style ‘sessions’ (no breaks allowed after age eight). In other words, all that is fun must die: our culture must become devoted to the singular goal of producing the “best engineers.”
Mr. Ramaswamy’s argument reflects a broader trend in the Trump-MAGA movement: calls for the return of a mythical meritocratic American ethos. The modern, pluralist American value system—deemed by Mr. Ramaswamy to be ‘uncompetitive’ in the technological age—can, and should, be replaced. By appealing to its lack of scholastic merit, American culture is considered incompatible with the “hyper-competitive global market for technical talent.” It is only by reinstituting some alternative system of conspicuously ill-defined meritocratic values that we may “Make America Great Again.” I aim to push back on two points. First, the empirical data suggests precisely the opposite of what Mr. Ramaswamy presupposes: American engineers still outperform their non-American peers in ‘rival’ nations. Second, and most critically, I am concerned that the Silicon Valley and Ramaswamy platform risks entrenching a new ideological conformity—one spearheaded by an emergent tech ‘elite’ with ever-increasing central authority and newfound political aspirations.
New Oligarchs and False ‘Meritocracies’
Ironically, the looming American technological disadvantage Mr. Ramaswamy presupposes does not, in fact, exist. Per recent research, American computer science majors still significantly “outperform” the abilities of their counterparts in China, India, and Russia. The study, conducted by researchers at UC Berkeley, particularly specifies that “the advantage of the United States is not because its CS programs have a large number of highly skilled international students.” There are, of course, innumerable benefits the United States gains by admitting a diverse array of international students into its universities and workforce. However, the empirical evidence suggests that Mr. Ramaswamy’s particular argument on American culture is incorrect and misguided. American universities still churn out top engineering talent—at a rate far exceeding our ‘rival’ nations, in fact—even alongside TV shows that promote “mediocrity” and “laziness.” Has it occurred to Mr. Ramaswamy that more reruns of Boy Meets World may perhaps promote improved computer science abilities? In any event, it is clear that the major premises of Mr. Ramaswamy’s arguments are contrived and false.
This contradiction poses a series of further questions, the most obvious being: why have Mr. Ramaswamy and others in Silicon Valley’s elite circles come to this blatantly erroneous conclusion?
Some have argued that the ‘profit imperative’ factor poses one clear answer to this question. By now, it has been well-documented that employers merely game H-1B–a temporary work visa program defended by Mr. Ramaswamy, Elon Musk, and President Trump, among others, as a means of undercutting market wages. The narrative on the right is that H-1B allows companies to recruit the best and brightest based on their merit in the name of innovation. In reality, it has merely become a tool for top shareholders to exploit foreign workers, all the while hurting the domestic labor market, for the sake of increased profit. Sixty percent of H-1B positions received compensation “significantly lower than local median salaries,” a pay gap exploited by many of the United States’ largest corporations. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, as well as Mr. Ramaswamy’s, Mr. Musk’s, and President Trump’s companies, all benefit from this program. Mr. Ramaswamy’s post is no doubt a subversive appeal to the benefits of hiring employees from superior cultures abroad—workers that are, by a rather insidious twist, often immediately subject to cruel, exploitative conditions.
Almost certainly, profit plays a major role in shaping Mr. Ramaswamy’s perspective. But this cultural critique on X seems to betray a further genuine belief: that his doctrine of ‘competitive meritocracy’ would actually inculcate a “new golden age in America” in which “hard work” is prized over a false “conformity.” And yet, as we all know, it is merely Mr. Ramaswamy and his band of Silicon Valley spaghetti-code-slumlords who truly benefit. This ‘meritocracy’ is only one in the sense that those already on top are the sole beneficiaries—all actual competition, in his system, is stifled by the weight of an uncompetitive monopolistic market, rigged against the worker from the outset. It is therefore not really a meritocracy at all—rather, Mr. Ramaswamy’s position amounts to something more akin to a new oligarchy.
This appears to be the new value matrix Mr. Ramaswamy proposes: that for the greater good of society, the new moral imperative for all Americans is to join the slave-labor tech rat-race for the sake of ‘beating China’ (a euphemism for the perpetual, infinite enrichment of a small group of Silicon Valley oligarchs). Gone are the days when children dream of becoming a pop star or a professional baseball player. No, our children will have the honor of wistfully daydreaming about the day they’ll become an ‘P1’ at Tesla where they’ll work 12-hour days—a lifestyle buffeted by confiscatory taxation, no shot at accruing generational wealth due to the subscription-ization of all commodities, and no opportunity to purchase a home (all land in the South Bay feudal kingdom is owned by Michel-Djerzinski-style AI-humanoid-overman “Zuck”). Does this sound like innovation to you?
‘Beating China’ in the race to produce a billion fridges, dishwashers, and stoves of mediocre quality is not the solution to our societal woes. Nor is it orienting the American educational system towards the realization of some spurious AI singularity that is more science-fiction than science-fact. On this point, Mr. Ramaswamy’s tirade against the supposed “conformity” of American culture rings especially hollow. Will American society actually be less conformist when, at “YOUNG” ages, children are educated and reared for the sole purpose of becoming the “best engineers”? Will American society really be less conformist when the levers of power, socio-economic advancement, wealth, and culture are shaped by a small group of ‘expert’ men?
Mr. Ramaswamy’s coalition may be understood as the latest—in a long line of manipulative elites throughout history—who have invoked ostensibly meritocratic principles, along with a convenient, false political allyship, in the name of establishing precisely the opposite: a regime dominated by a decadent, spiritually stagnant, vindictive oligarchy.
One such example from the annals of history: for thousands of years, imperial Chinese civilization administered the keju civil-service examination. For a short time, this ‘meritocratic’ system did allow for social mobility. Many centuries before any Western system of socioeconomic mobility was ever envisioned, much less attempted, Chinese commoners could attain positions in government without descending from lines of aristocratic heritage. However, the benefits of such social ‘mobility’ (for the very short time it lasted) arguably came at an even greater cost: ideological bottlenecking and enforced intellectual conformity. As the article outlines:
“The keju became more doctrinaire over time. First instituted in 587, the exams progressively shed such subjects as mathematics and astronomy. The curriculum narrowed again… requiring candidates to memorise ultra-conservative commentaries on Confucian classics. The commentaries advocated unquestioning obedience towards rulers… described as “the greatest destroyer of human talent” by Ch’ien Mu, a historian.”
Many in Silicon Valley have called for the import of this purportedly ‘pragmatic’ educational model to the States, à la the examinations currently administered in China, Korea, India, and elsewhere. The results indicate that these national exam systems have been extremely counter-productive; they neither boost innovation nor provide equal opportunity. The brutal pressures of a life-defining exam aside, pushing this model risks inculcating an air of rigid doctrinalism within society at large. Of course, this outcome will not produce genuine excellence, but a class of ideologically sterile state functionaries. Out-racing China to raise the most rigidly suppressed generation yet will not produce a vital American ethos.
José Ortega y Gasset and the Infinite Labor Regime
In his 1930 magnum opus, The Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset characterizes the threat of this tendency towards technocratization as “fatal.” Ortega’s book is not a critique of the impoverished Spanish peasant (what the word “masses” might initially call to mind)—rather, his work seeks to outline the unique harm posed by a new class: the ostensibly “educated” bourgeois man, the innocent “scientist” of the State. It is this class that makes a radical transformation in the norms of statecraft; it is the bourgeois, in its nineteenth-century mass-conquering of the body politic, who first enslaves society to the state. For the very first time in history, the “mass” man has become the state. Society no longer exists “except in the service of the state,” and the needs of the mechanical regime triumph over the whole. The result of this “bureaucratization of life” is not some utopian reinvigoration in the name of technological innovation, but the slow, dreadful decay of all that was once “vital.” As Mr. Ortega puts it:
“…the State, after sucking out the very marrow of society, will be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery, more gruesome than the death of a living organism.”
Creativity and innovation do not flourish in the infinite forced-labor-camp state. Infinite profits, magnified by infinite waste, are sought out for their own sake. German philosopher Martin Heidegger will refer to this ‘mindset’ as a risk inherent in the “essence” of our modern technological apparatus: a will-to-will, an infinite will-without-end. Ultimately, we trap ourselves in a cycle of crap-consumption Saṃsāra at the unapparent whim of some petty bourgeois machinist. The world becomes a mere “standing reserve” for their cruel manipulations.
Despite branding their movement in the name of “freedom,” the doctrine pushed by the tech-elite’s ranks foreshadows the creation of this type of ideologically totalitarian nanny state. Their platform amounts to merely the latest case in an oft-attempted effort to create some sclerotic, stifling, rule-by-gross-money-changers who exploit the life-force of a disenchanted and malcontent youth. There is no ‘innovation’ here. Rather, this doctrine produces a state that simply exists for the sake of its own self-indulgence. The article on the keju continues:
“…This focus on bureaucratic glory crowded out other paths to social mobility. It was handy for autocrats, as test preparation left scholars ‘no time for rebellious ideas or deeds…’”
It is the crushing of any spirit of rebelliousness—the true lifeblood of a vital, productive democracy—that the Silicon Valley IQ-tech-hawk nerd-type secretly wishes to impose. Mr. Ortega seems to think this desire to crush all that is ‘divergent’ is a characteristic feature of American society:
“As they say in the United States: ‘to be different is to be indecent.’ The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select.”
I am not quite so pessimistic about our past and future. However, in some sense, Mr. Ortega’s analysis certainly seems prescient. Today, we see the results of a crushing, imposed conformism sifting down through the cultural cracks. The creep of a distinctively totalitarian spirit seems to shroud many of our democratic institutions. Columbia itself is under threat: the spirit of rebellious, free, supra-political academic inquiry—the spirit in which the best research and intellectual advancement is always conducted—is currently being challenged because of base political grudges. The fight for absolute freedom of inquiry, the uniquely American tradition that defines our cultural and academic excellence, is increasingly under attack.
However, it is a disregard for this aspect of American culture on behalf of both Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. Ortega that stops them from realizing America’s true potential. The post-WWII era that brought us innovations such as the Apollo program—lauded by many techno-accelerationists as amongst our last great technological achievements—was not the product of some conformist, top-down cultural conservatism. Rather, it was born of an era of tremendous cultural flowering and upheaval: Civil Rights, the global spread of rock & roll, Hendrix and Elvis, sexual revolution, and the cultural and physical destruction of racial barriers. It is only with leadership capable of leading the reinvigoration of a pro-youth, forward-thinking American culture that new technological heights will be achieved.
Aidan Roque Dial is a sophomore at Columbia College studying philosophy and history. Get in touch: ard2219@columbia.edu.