Secret History #7: Death by Meritocracy

Okay, good afternoon class. So this will be our last class before the break. We have a three week break coming. I hope that during these three weeks you have a chance to reflect on what we've learned, because when we come back we'll continue to build on the ideas that we've learned so far.

And so today I want to talk about the meritocracy. The meritocracy means that people should succeed based on their talent, their ability, and their hard work. And in theory this sounds like a good idea. And in fact, the school system is built around the idea of a meritocracy.

The good students go to the best universities and then after they graduate they will get the very best... That's the idea. But what I will show you today is that there are actually lots of problems with the meritocracy, and what I will also show you is that in fact this idea is actually destroying American society. Okay? So the first thing I'm going to do is explain to you why America has the world's most complicated admission system. Okay, so in China when you apply to university you take the Gaokao, you take an examination and then based on your test score you get into university.

And this is the system that most countries use. Only America has a system that's complicated. Your transcript matters but so does your standardized test scores, the SAT, the TOEFL, so does your... So do teacher recommendation letters and so do essays in which you have to say to America, "I'm a really good..." Why does it matter if you're a good...? Okay? So it's the world's most complicated admission system. So what I'll do first is explain to you why we have this system. Okay. So we start off in England in the 1600s.

And at this time in history in England there's a major conflict between religious belief and the king, okay? The king is head of the Anglican Church, which is the official church of England. And there's no difference between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church. The only difference is in the Catholic Church the head is the Pope and in the Anglican Church the head is the King of England. That's the only difference. In terms of rituals, in terms of belief, it's the same. Now there are people called... believe there should be no Pope, there should be no king.

You should as an individual be able to access God directly. And you do that by reading the... So at this time in history there's a major conflict between the Protestants, the Puritans, or dissenters, and the king, and it leads to wars basically. And so the solution is the king says to the dissenters, "Hey, there's this new place called America. It's far away. Go there, guys, and leave me alone." Okay? So the dissenters go as pilgrims to America to build their own theocracy, what they believe to be the new Jerusalem or paradise on Earth, heaven on Earth.

Now one core belief of the Protestants is you must read the Bible in order to understand the mind of God. Therefore, education, literacy, learning, it is the divine imperative. And that's why they established Harvard, okay? Harvard was a school designed to train people into the religion called... in order to study the Bible, in order to spread the truth of the Bible. Now Harvard then would encourage development of other universities, Yale, Princeton, okay?

And collectively they would be known as the Ivy League. Okay? So this is how the Ivy League started because America was founded as a religious colony and everyone needed to read the Bible so they needed places to study the Bible and so they founded Harvard and then Yale and then Princeton. Okay? But over time as America became more wealthy it became also less religious. And so the Ivy League became social clubs. And what I mean by that is these were just places where the rich of America went to become friends, okay?

It was to build cohesion, right? Remember we discussed the idea of cohesion, where if you commit transgression you become more cohesive. So these guys did not... They drank. They dressed up like girls. They had wild parties. They played football. They took risks. Okay? And they became good friends and they went on to become the leaders of America.

As America became much more diverse, much bigger, and much more wealthy it recognized that it needed to educate its population. And so it started state schools, okay? State schools.

What we call A&M. Okay, you may have heard the term Texas A&M, okay? It means Texas Agricultural and Mechanical. The reason why was these schools were built to train farmers, engineers, and soldiers, okay? Tradespeople in order to help grow the American economy. Now this system was extremely successful. America was able to industrialize really, really quickly and most people went to these schools. Only the rich would go to the Ivy League because they were country clubs or social clubs. Over time America, as it began to industrialize more and more, it recognized that it needed science and technology.

So it basically copied the best universities in Germany. And Germany was at this time the main center of science and technology in the world. And so they built something called research... Okay? And a couple of the first research universities were Chicago University, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins. Okay? So in about 1900 you have this system, okay, of state schools where most people went. If you were a poor person you go to learn a trade and then you go and get a good job and make good money.

If you want to be a professor or scientist you went to these research... If you were rich you went to these social clubs called the Ivy League. And quite honestly it was a really good... And America should have stayed with this. But what happened was, who's unhappy now about the system?

These guys, right? Harvard, Yale, Princeton, because if you think about it over time they become less and less relevant because just because you're rich doesn't mean you're smart. All the smart people are going to Chicago and Johns Hopkins. And so over time we can expect Chicago and Johns Hopkins to overtake the Ivy League. Okay? And that's why Harvard decided to institute scholarship programs. So they wanted to welcome more smart people into its campus, okay? And this created something called the SAT.

Okay, this is the origin of the SAT. The SAT was founded as a scholarship program to identify the best and brightest students from all over America so that they could come to Harvard and help Harvard be the best university in the world. Okay?

But now who's angry about the system? Harvard's not happy that the best students are going to Chicago and Johns Hopkins. So they created the SAT. And now the best students are coming to Harvard. Now who's unhappy?

The rich kids, right? Okay? The alumni, the legacies, because before their kids could just go to Harvard and have a great time. Now it's hard for them to get in, they have to take a test, and also they're in class with smarter... Okay? So now Harvard has a... On one hand it wants the best students in America but on the other hand it still wants to maintain good relations with its alumni. So that's why it created a new system, okay? In this new system grades are not the only factor.

Test scores are not the only factor. Now it's focused on holistic, okay? The new word is holistic. It's basically character. Just being smart is not good enough. You have to be a good person. You have to be a strong and brave and virtuous person, okay? So they have a new concept called character. But this word was created to basically keep Jews out, okay? Because Jews are really smart but Jews like to read books. So then I got... And so like that's not good. We need people who are manly, who are strong, who are brave.

We need white people. Okay? So they developed this holistic... And that's why we have the system that we have today, where it's not just test scores, it's essays, it's transcript, it's teacher recommendations, because they want to identify the Jews and keep them out, okay? Today we have the system to identify both the Jews and the Asians to keep them out.

Yes? Do they even identify your household? Like they will ask for your profile. Exactly. Exactly. So all the information that they're looking at today is to identify your ethnicity, yeah, they want to basically keep Asians out of Harvard, okay?

It's that simple, all right? But I'll explain more as we go along, okay? All right. So the purpose of all these changes is to ensure that Harvard remains the institution of power in America. Does it make sense? Harvard's not interested in academics, it's interested in power. Therefore, it must ensure that the people who come to Harvard are the ones who are most likely to succeed. And that's why it doesn't want all Asians. It wants a mix of students, okay? But I'll explain this later on.

Now in this new system, there are two key concepts. The first key concept is the idea of secrecy. Okay? Secrecy just means like I'll never tell you why I let you in or why I didn't let you in. I don't have to, okay? The other is the idea of discretion.

Discretion means that I can choose to let in for no reason, okay? So in China, if you get a really high score on the Gaokao, Peking University or Tsinghua has to let you in. Not in America. You could be the best student in the world, they don't care. If they don't like you, they'll just say, "We don't want you." Okay? They have their own institutional reasons to let you in and they'll never tell you. All right? And the system was created to ensure that Harvard is able to recruit the best students in the world.

But what's important for us to remember is from Harvard's perspective, best just means the most likely to succeed, not necessarily the best academically oriented student, not the smartest student, okay?

Let's run a thought experiment, okay? Let's just say that you are a Harvard admissions officer and you're presented with four students. Okay? You're Harvard, the best university in the world.

Okay? And I give you four students. And you can only let in one student, okay? You tell me who you let in, I'll tell you if you're a good admissions officer or not, okay? Okay, the first is the best math genius from China, okay?

Everyone's like, "No." All right. Second is the best basketball player in the world, okay? Basketball in America, okay? The third is the best student in the... And the fourth is three generations of Harvard, okay? So your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather went to Harvard. Who do you let in? You guys know the system. Exactly, okay? You don't even think about it. Like I'd let in number four, okay? Because you know that in the world he is the most likely to succeed. You're not interested in educating smart people, all you want to do is graduate rich people.

Okay? So let's just say this guy doesn't exist. Then who do you let in? Exactly. Yep, this guy, okay? Definitely not this guy, okay? Definitely not the math genius from China, because you know that he's probably just going to end up as a math teacher. Right? Math professor, who... We don't want that. Okay? We don't want professors, we don't want lawyers, we don't want doctors. We want people who will be head of a company. We want people who will become a famous rock star. We want people who will become president of the United States.

That's what we want. And yeah, so either one of these two is... No, no, okay? But we want these guys to apply because that helps us look better, right? We want people to apply so we can reject them so that our metrics look better, okay? Does that make sense? Okay, that's how the system... All right. Let me explain why they do this, okay? Why is this system set like this? The best analogy for Harvard, Yale, and... Sorry, go ahead.

Do all the admission officers in American colleges do this intentionally?

Okay, that's a really good question, okay? So if you're the Ivy League, you do this because everyone wants to go to the Ivy League. But if you're an average school, you're actually just trying to recruit students, okay? So this is the mentality of admissions officers for elite schools. But most schools just want you to come in and pay the tuition, okay?

So why would Yale pick you? Yeah, I'll explain later on, okay? Okay. All right. So Harvard is first and foremost a venture capital firm, okay? You're an investment firm. So let's pretend you're a venture capitalist and I give you two options. And you tell me which option you pick. Option one is I want to open a restaurant.

And I need a million dollars from you. But guess what, guys? My uncle works for the government. So I can guarantee that he and his friends will come to my restaurant every single day. And so there's no risk. There's actually no risk involved. I guarantee it will make at least... a year. No risk, easy money, okay? Number two is I want to start a website that's AI and Bitcoin or whatever and all this, okay? Problem is I don't even know how to write code. I have no experience writing, doing a website.

And my idea isn't really fleshed out. But if it works, we can make one billion dollars, guys, okay? Option one is low risk, really good plan, solid returns, $500,000 a year, okay? Option two is concept, vague idea, I have absolutely no experience doing any of this, but we could possibly make a billion dollars, okay? Which option do you take? Okay, you always take this guy's, okay? Right? Because you don't need $500,000. That's boring. You want a billion dollars. And that's the mentality of Harvard. You understand? They want to take a risk on you.

They don't want students who are solid and who will become a professor. That's boring, okay? They want crazy people who will change the world because that makes Harvard look good. Okay, now what I'm saying is they would rather have a class where 10 people succeed and 999 fail rather than a thousand people succeed slightly. Does that make sense? Okay? Why? Because we only remember the 10 people who succeed. We forget everyone else.

That's the Harvard mentality. And that's why they're the most famous university in the world, because they're looking to create as much brand name recognition for themselves as... All right. Does that make sense? All right.

How do we know if they succeed or not if you're Harvard? Well, remember the concept we learned last class, which is dissociative... And what we discussed last class is in the game people who are most likely to succeed have this characteristic. Okay? And so I'll explain why using myself as an example, because I got into Yale, okay? So what we're going to do is this. We're going to examine my application to... And then we're going to look at how the admission officers would perceive and how they would judge my potential, okay?

So three things. The first is what my application actually says. Second is they will examine my... The third is they will then judge my... Okay? All right, so my application. All right, so I went to a public high school. It was good, but it's not a private high school. You get a better education at a private high school. Plus it's in Canada, okay? Which is like everyone's kind of stupid in Canada, okay? So I was like top 10 of 200 kids. So it's good, but it's not number one, it's not number two, it's just top 10, okay?

I was number 10. My SAT was 1400 out of 1600. And it's like decent, but you know, people in China can get 1550, 1500 easily, okay? So, not that great. I was on a soccer... I was not athletic. The soccer team just needed players, so I signed up, okay? I was also editor of a school newspaper.

Okay? And I was captain of a quiz team. Quiz team. Called Reach for the Top. So, that's a Canadian thing. But I was captain of it. I organized it, okay? So, these two activities, they're fine, but it doesn't really demonstrate leadership potential, right? You're not like head of student government, or you're not head of Model United Nations. All right? On my essay, I wrote about Richard, who is a physicist. It was a really boring essay. I mean, anyone could have written it. I mean, ChatGPT could have written it, okay?

It's just a bad essay. My teachers, I mean, they liked me, but they really didn't like me because I seemed aggressive to them, you know? I wanted grades too much. So, the word they use is ambitious. They feel I was ambitious. Ambitious is a dirty word in Canada. It means you don't play by the rules. It means you're too aggressive. It means you're too pushy, okay? All right? So, this is my application to Yale. As you can see, it is not a stellar application. So, how did I get in?

Well, because there was some information that they could also derive from the application that made them interested in me, okay? The first is that I was poor. So, I couldn't even afford the application fee. I had to apply for a waiver for my application, okay? So, I was poor because I was an immigrant. So, I was born in China and my family went over in 1983 when I was like six. Okay? So, I was a poor immigrant. I transferred high school.

So, I was in a poor high school, then I went to a rich high school. Okay? So, basically I switched neighborhoods. My family lived in a poor neighborhood, and then I applied to go to a rich high school in a different neighborhood. So, I had to take the subway there every day, and I spent like half an hour on the subway. And guess what, guys? Canadians don't like that, okay? Canadians want you to stay where you are, and that's it. So, when I told my high school principal that I was going to transfer high schools, he got very upset.

And he said that I'm going to write a discipline letter, okay? A discipline letter. And it's a very serious thing. And I'm going to put it in your folder so that when you apply to university, they will know that you were suspended from the school. And like that's basically like a really bad thing, okay? So, I got a discipline letter. And when I went to the rich high school, I had no friends. Why? Because they didn't like me. Because they don't like it when someone new comes in.

Okay? I didn't know their culture. I'm sort of like ambitious, and I was grade grubbing, grade grubbing. But the thing is I was desperate because my family was very poor, and I wanted a better life. Again, they know all this, okay? They know I'm an average student, and they know that I'm pushy and that's why Yale let me in. Because it's clear from this information that I had dissociative personality disorder.

Okay? What does that mean? It means, first of all, I'm desperate. Desperate means like if I don't get into Yale, I'll probably kill myself. I mean, if I didn't get into Yale, I would drown. I couldn't breathe. It was a life or death issue for me. They can see the desperation. They want that, okay? Second thing is I was insecure. Okay? If you're an insecure person, it means you're not happy with who you are. It means there's a void in your heart. And therefore, the way to fill the insecurity is through achievement.

So, if I make a million dollars, I won't be happy. I will need to go make two million dollars. If I made 10 million dollars, I would see people around me who had 100 million dollars. And I would be like, I need to go make a billion dollars, okay? So, an insecure person sees the world as a competition.

You're always achieving and achieving, okay? And that's how you succeed, okay? And the third thing is I was not a moral person, okay? I was ready to break the rules in order to succeed, transgressive. Okay? So, I was not supposed to leave my poor high school and go to a rich high school. That's breaking the rules in Canada. It's not illegal, but you're not supposed to do that. And I didn't care. The principal said I couldn't do that. I said to him, "Screw off. I'm still going to do it." I went to the rich high school.

Everyone said to me, "You're not welcome." I said, "I don't care. I'm going to get my good grades, and I'm going to get into the Ivy League. I don't need you guys, okay?" So, they saw the desperation. They saw the insecurity. They saw the hunger and the amorality. And this is all part of dissociative personality disorder. And that's why they let me in. Because it's possible I go crazy, okay? It's possible I become depressed, but it's also possible I change the world. Okay? Does that make sense?

That's how they think. Because they're a venture capital firm. They're looking for the riskiest investment with the best possible return. They're looking for people who can become president of the United States, who can change the world, who can make a name for themselves. Because if they do that, that makes Yale look good. So, you remember the name, okay? It's all about brand name recognition. Okay? Does that make sense? All right. Okay. So, you're like, "Okay, well, this is fine, but... and what's wrong with the system, okay? Why would this be a bad thing?

It works. Why would this be a bad..." Well, the problem with this is because Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are so powerful, not only are they looking for people with trauma, okay? I was traumatized as a child, but they're also traumatizing the world. Okay? If that makes sense. All right? So, the meritocracy exists to find people with trauma, and because it exists, it's traumatizing the world. Okay? So, let me explain how and why. Any questions so far? Is this all clear? Yeah?

So, unless, if like Harvard and Princeton are these college students, then why are they still so famous? Because this system is just unreasonable and unequal for the students who have good grades.

Okay. All right. That's a really good question, okay? So, why are Harvard students or Yale students, Princeton students so famous? Okay. The reason why is when you do investment, you don't do all risky investments, okay? You always have diversity in your portfolio.

So, the majority of students are still students who will be successful no matter what. Why? Because their families are rich. Okay? So, if we go back to the example, right? Those four, you let in the child who comes from three generations of Harvard graduates, okay? And that's the majority of people who get into Harvard. And then you let in the athlete, okay? So, the athlete, the legacy, these are the people who are the majority. Those are the safe investments. And then you have like 1% of positions for people like me who you don't really know, but there's potential there, so let's take a risk.

Okay? And quite honestly, it's a crapshoot because it's all very discretionary. So, they basically, it's all intuition, okay? They don't have a formula for this. They just think, "This guy is interesting. Let's just let him in, okay?" And it's possible on an essay, you just wrote something really interesting, and they laugh, and they're like, "Okay, let's take a chance on this guy." They have that 1% of positions available for risk, okay? Does that make sense? Okay? So, I'm not the average Yale student. I'm a marginalized Yale student.

This system, the meritocracy, the way it's set up, it creates trauma. Okay? So, let me explain why. So, let's look at university, Yale. Then we'll look at high school. Okay? Then we'll look at parenting.

Okay? So, you think, "Oh, you get into Yale, you can just coast. You're happy. Life is simple." Okay? The fact of the matter is that when you get into Yale, Yale is actually The Hunger Games. Have you read the book The Hunger Games? It is a relentless competition. Because once you're in Yale, you're still competing. But now you're competing against the most competitive people in the world, okay? So maybe at the school, you could be the best student. Your parents love you. You have lots of good friends.

You had student government. You feel really good about yourself. You go to Yale and then you recognize that you're a nobody. Your parents are far away. And you're now in competition with the best students from all around the world who all want to kill you because it's a zero-sum game, okay? Only the strongest... And so everywhere you go, it's a competition. In the classroom, it's a seminar style, so you're with 20 other students and the professor's asking you questions and you're all competing to impress the professor.

Outside the classroom, you're competing to get into clubs and something called secret societies. Okay? But you're also competing for graduate school, for law school, for medical school, for scholarships like the world scholarship, okay? So Yale sounds nice, but once you get in there, from the first day, it's an endless pursuit of achievement. It's just competition after competition after competition. Wherever you go, you're being judged by someone, okay? You're being judged by the professor or your classmates. And everyone's looking to basically kill each other because it's a winner-take-all system, okay?

So this is very traumatic. And it makes you so insecure that you go through life thinking like life is just like that. Everyone's an enemy. I have to achieve and achieve in order to feel good about... I cannot stop working hard, otherwise I will be killed by other people, okay? So people who graduate from Yale have a deep sense of insecurity. Even those who come from the wealthiest families. Okay? They're always looking to achieve. And that's what Yale wants. That's what Harvard wants because these are the people who will be more successful in life, okay?

They're not happy with one million dollars, they want a billion dollars. Once they have the billion dollars, they want 10 billion dollars, okay? It never... Okay? So to get into Yale, you have to go through high school. And high school has to train you for Yale. So it's also a competition, also a Hunger Games.

And to train you for high school, your parents have developed a different parenting system, okay? So I'll give you two examples of parenting, okay? The first system, which is the healthy system, you say to your child, "I love you unconditionally. No matter what you do, I will support you. I will always be here for you." And if you say that to your child every day, your child will be happy, fulfilled, and secure in life. But the person will probably end up as a teacher, okay?

Now, you can also say to your child, "I don't have time for you, but if you win the swimming competition or you place first on your math test or if the teacher says nice things about you, I'll take you for ice cream." And so it's a system that neglects the child while at the same time demands from the child, okay?

And this is trauma. And again, most kids will be traumatized by this system. But there are some kids who will thrive in this system and the trauma will encourage them or drive them to achieve and achieve and achieve so that they get into Yale so they can compete in the Hunger Games so they can go on in life and compete some more, okay? And that's how the system is set up. And this is what we call the meritocracy.

As I'll explain to you later on, it is destroying America and the world. All right? So that's how the system is set up. And guess what, guys? Is it different in...? Not really, okay? All right? So the concept of the meritocracy has conquered the world. It started in America. It actually started at Harvard, but now it's conquered the entire world and that's why the world is so messed up.

So as you say, Yale gives you so many negative emotions. So would you still go there if you got a second... Okay.

So that's a really good question. Would I go there if I had a second...? And the answer is probably, okay? And the reason why is the system is set up that you don't really have a choice, right? If you want to move ahead in the world and you're poor, what are your options? Right? So before in America, there were opportunities for poor people to succeed. So for example, George Washington, the first president of the United States, he never went to college. Abraham Lincoln didn't go to the Ivy League. And these are two I consider the two greatest presidents in American history.

Unfortunately today, if you look at the presidents, if you look at the top people, they all went to the elite schools, okay? So the system is set up so that if you want to succeed, you have to go through the Ivy League. But I do not plan to send my kids to the Ivy League, okay? The last thing I would do is have them in such a competitive, traumatic environment as the Ivy League, okay? Does that make sense? All right. Any more questions? So thank you for your question.

Any more questions before I move on? So let's do a PPT and I'll explain to you how this is destroying the world, okay? Sorry about this. Okay. So I actually need to go back to the... Okay. Death by meritocracy. All right. Let's go. Okay. So from this graph, what you can see is this. In the year 1875, the best universities in the world were actually not in America. They were in Germany. Germany was producing the most Nobel Prize winners. Second was France, followed by the UK, okay? And America was... But because of its investments in research universities, it started to move up and up.

And then it won World War II, so now it can import all these German scientists and that's why it dominates today. So the best universities in the world are now in America. Or in America, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

Now, as these universities get better and better, they're letting in more students, okay? And as you can see, more and more American students are now going to college. Before, in... it was only about 5% of all males who went to university. Today, it's almost 35% basically, okay? So that's a huge step. And you would think that with the increase in college graduates, America would become a much more equal society, right? Well, the opposite has happened, okay? America has become a much more unequal society. There's something called the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality.

And as you can see, these past 20 years, it's gone way up. It's among the highest in the world, meaning America right now is one of the most unequal societies in the world, even though over a third of its young people go and graduate from... This is a graph of social mobility, okay? So the graph, the top, this number shows you the number of people who are doing better than their parents. As you can see in the 1940, most people are doing better than their parents.

But over time, no one's doing better than their parents, okay? So your generation, you will not do better than your parents, most of you, okay? Income inequality has gone way up in the United States. The top 1% control most of the wealth in the United States as you can see from this map, okay? So even though America has become wealthier, it's actually going to just the 1%.

At the same time, universities are becoming much more expensive, okay? And this is leading to student debt. And you can see how student debt, student loans, has gone way up. So in America, student debt is the only type of debt that you can never ever get rid of. You can't declare bankruptcy. This debt cannot be gotten rid of, okay? When you die, it passes on to your children, okay? So this is a terrible situation for young people in... This is actually a more stark graph where tuition has gone way up, but wages have stayed pretty stagnant.

And it's leading to depression among... Okay? And also, the thing about this graph is the middle class and wealthy students are much more likely to be depressed and identify as depressed than poor... All right? So this is leading to a crisis in America. So why are we... What has happened? Well, you had two individuals who created the meritocracy. The first is named James B. Conant. He was president of Harvard for a couple decades and he was a person who brought in the SAT in order to identify scholarship students.

And he made Harvard into the best research university in America. Okay? And he was determined to make Harvard into the best university in the world, as well as an institution of power in America, meaning that it would now decide who wins and who loses in... The man who would help him is named Henry Chauncey. He was Dean of Harvard who was in charge of the scholarship... Then he got a new job at a new organization called ETS. You know ETS because it's Educational Testing Service. They're the ones responsible for the SAT, the TOEFL, the AP, the GRE, okay?

So, these two together create the modern meritocracy. And as you can imagine, because they're both from Harvard, the entire system is set up to benefit Harvard. Okay? And guess what, guys? It worked, okay? So, in the year 1940, 9% of applicants to Harvard got accepted. Now, it's gone way down to 5%, okay? Stanford is even lower, okay? So, now it's so hard to get into Harvard. At the same time, look at the cash of Harvard, okay? This is called the endowment. The amount of money they have at Harvard is ridiculous.

They have more money than most countries in the world. Right now, their endowment is about $40 billion. Okay? And this is just the past 30, 40... The success of the Harvard alumni is just incredible. The most billionaires in America, Harvard graduates more billionaires than any other place, okay? 127 billionaires in 2024. Second is... All right? No one else comes close. But not only that, but it's also anyone with over $100 million, most of them graduate from Harvard, okay? 7% of all... Sorry. 7% of all people in America who have over $100 million in net worth graduate from Harvard, okay?

Then you have MIT, Stanford, Pennsylvania, Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Princeton. Guess what, guys? I have a link plus MIT. $30 million, still Harvard is number one, okay? All right? So, their graduates are the most successful in America.

Okay? But it's not just rich people, it's everyone in the American elite. Okay? Most of them are graduates of the elite universities. Okay? So, this is an article in Nature, and they looked at all the elite in America. And what they discovered is most of them went to certain schools, the elite universities. And this is what's causing a lot of political conflict in America today. All right? So, let's just look at what they found. The red is Harvard graduates. Okay? The green are Harvard plus Ivy League. And as you can see, Harvard is everywhere, even among generals, admirals, there's Harvard people.

Okay? They dominate in terms of philosophers and professors. But they're everywhere, even Pulitzer Prize winners, billionaires, New York Times best-selling authors, Fortune 500 CEOs, federal judges, senators, okay? They're everywhere. And that's the power of Harvard. This is a portion of Harvard graduates compared with the general population. This is the portion of Harvard graduates compared with the... You see the contrast. So, Harvard and the Ivy League dominate America today.

Now, what's amazing is Harvard people don't know they dominate. They don't know they're elite. So, they did a survey, and so they asked people in these elite organizations, "How many people do you think in this organization went to Harvard and other elite universities?" So, the red is the actual number, the blue is the estimate. So, Harvard and the Ivy League don't even know they dominate America. Okay? And if you ask them, like, "No, it's a conspiracy theory. No, you're spreading conspiracy theories. We're just average people. There's no way Harvard controls..." All right?

Now, as I mentioned, at Harvard, just going to Harvard is not enough. You have to join the elite social clubs, the secret societies. So, at Harvard, there's a place called like the... at Harvard, everyone should join the Porcelain Club, okay? At Princeton, it's the Ivy Club. Okay? These are secret societies. Oh, they're not really secret, but they're senior societies, okay? They're clubs that everyone should join. At Yale, it's Skull and Bones. Okay? Skull and Bones is the most famous college secret society. They're not that secret because they like to brag that they're Skull and Bones.

They're so powerful that they produce a lot of presidents, a lot of rich people, okay? 2004, okay? George W. Bush versus John Kerry. Guess what, guys? John Kerry is the Democratic nominee, George Bush is the Republican nominee, right? They're both Skull and Bones. They're both Yale Skull and Bones. Okay? So, it's a rigged game.

Barack Obama, okay? Barack Obama, Columbia, went to Harvard Law School, but he promised hope and change. He told people in 2008 that the game is rigged against them. That he'll be their champion. That he would make America more fair. Okay? And he won. Why? Because... Well, I sorry I... So, this is his book, Dreams from My Father. It was a New York Times bestseller. It basically launched his political... He won because in 2008, the US economy collapsed. Why? Because the US banks, the US political system was controlled by Ivy League graduates, by just people who were friends with each other.

And so, they cheated. They became... Okay? They basically destroyed the American economy. And people protested against all this. And Barack Obama promised that he would come in and do something about it. Okay? Well, he did do something about it. All right? So, his economic team, he appointed quite a few individuals. These are the two most famous. Larry Summers, who was a Harvard graduate as well as a president of Harvard. And he was Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, and he was the guy who created the mess in the first place.

And then Tim Geithner, who was a Dartmouth graduate, and he was the Treasury Secretary, okay? So, these are friends of Wall Street who came in to save Wall Street. So, a lot of critics say, you know, it's Wall Street who created this mess, who destroyed the American economy. They should be punished, or at least they should feel some pain. If you just let them go and help them out and save them, then you create a problem called moral hazard. The idea of moral hazard is if you don't have any consequences for your mistake, you will do it again.

Okay? And then Larry Summers said, "No, no, you guys are seeing it incorrectly. We have to save the American economy. The goal is not to save the banks and my friends. The goal is to save the American people and the American economy, and that's why we're bailing out the banks by giving them free money." Okay? And then the critics were like, "Well, how about all these American homeowners who lost their homes? Shouldn't we help them as well?" And do you know what Larry Summers said? "Moral hazard, guys.

Do you understand? Moral hazard. If we help out these ordinary Americans, they won't learn anything." As you can see, people were angry. The banks got saved, the people got screwed. And guess what, guys? Because of who... Who did we get? This guy. Okay? This is what he wanted. There were millions of Americans who voted for Barack Obama because he promised hope and change. And then they voted for Donald Trump because he promised to destroy the... That's why we have Donald Trump.

Funny story about Donald Trump and Barack Obama. So, Barack Obama and Donald Trump were always adversaries. In fact, Donald Trump led a movement which accused Barack Obama of not being born in America. He's born in America, but Donald Trump was saying, "No, no, he was actually born in Nigeria." He's saying his father is from... So, Barack Obama made fun of Donald Trump. 2011, there's a big dinner, the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where Barack Obama gets on stage and makes fun of Donald Trump, okay? He says, "Hey, if Donald Trump ever became president, this is what the White House would look like.

It'd be a casino." Okay? And this is funny, right? Donald Trump was in the audience at that time. And everyone was laughing at him. And that's what motivated Donald Trump to become president of the United States. Okay? So, thank Obama for Donald Trump. Without Obama, there would be no Donald Trump. So, it's not just Barack Obama, it's a lot of people in the American political class. They're just soulless robots, okay? This man is J.D. Vance. He's the vice president for Donald Trump. Like Barack Obama, he wrote a book, a best seller called Hillbilly Elegy, and it's possible he becomes president of the United States as well.

Now, you may not know this, but when he first came into prominence, he opposed Donald Trump. He thought that Donald Trump would be a fascist and be a dictator and all that. And then suddenly he changes his opinion and says, "Donald Trump is the greatest guy in the world." Okay? So, these guys, like J.D. Vance and Barack Obama, they have no ideas of their own. They're just puppets. They just tell people what they want to hear.

All they know is achievement, okay? So, another example of this. This man's name is Johnny Kim. Okay? And he'll probably run for president of the United States one day or at least be a U.S. senator. Why do I mention him? Guess what, he was a Navy SEAL. Which is the top position you can ever achieve in the military. He was a secret soldier, okay? He went to Harvard Medical School, making him a doctor. Then he joined NASA, making him an... This is like the ideal Ivy League graduate, okay?

This is what Harvard wants. Now, why is he able to do all this? Well, because this is his Wikipedia entry, okay? In 2002, the police went into his house and killed his father. He was there and he saw the police kill his father. He was traumatized for life. His father was a domestic abuser. The father was violent, crazy, hit him all the time. Okay? So, he has dissociative personality disorder. And in fact, if you look at most of these really successful people, they do have dissociative personality... And that's why he was able to do all this, because he's turned the trauma into an energy to drive him to greater and greater achievement.

The problem though is he has no ideas of his own. He's just a puppet, guys, okay? So, let's conclude and summarize why the meritocracy is so great. It creates this extreme inequality in America, okay? So, it destroyed the school system because all people care about are their grades now, right? People don't even care about learning anymore. All they want are the grades. In fact, if you get a bad grade, you'll probably complain to the teacher. In which case the teacher is now afraid to teach you because if the teacher tries to challenge you, make you a better student, you'll just complain.

Okay? And if you don't succeed, your parents will come and complain, okay? Traumatized children, okay? If you look at the rate of mental illness in China and in America, it's just insane. Death of the American dream and social... You're not going to be richer than your parents. You're just not. Concentration of wealth, power, and status in the 1%. The richest just get richer. Political divide between left and right, okay? So, you have all this political division right now in America. Corruption. So, Wall Street just steals and steals and steals and nobody does anything about it.

Destruction of American identity, globalization, immigration, woke ideology. Okay? Incompetent mismanagement. You look at the COVID rate. You look at the fact that America now has $37 trillion in... An elite that is soulless, mediocre, and unimaginative, okay? Barack Obama, J.D. Vance, this guy Johnny Kim, okay? They're just robots. Oh, and Donald Trump. Okay? So, thank you, American destroying the world.

All right, questions, guys. I know this is a lot to take in, but do you have any questions? You're all depressed and sad and shocked. Yep, we have a question. Thank you.

Is there a way to get rid of all those bad impacts of this? I mean, is there some suggestions for us to help us better develop ourselves, not just using the system?

Okay. Great question, okay? So, the real solution is to destroy the Ivy League. And there are different ways you can destroy the Ivy League.

The best way is to make them public, okay? To have the government come in and control them. Because all of the issues stem from the fact that these are institutions that only care about their own power. Okay? So, if the government were in charge, they wouldn't be so powerful and secretive, okay? So, that's the best solution. It's not going to happen because Harvard, as you can see, is too powerful, as well as Yale.

As an individual, the best option is to recognize how evil the system is and choose to learn for yourself, okay? Because when you go to Yale or Harvard or Princeton, you think you're learning, but you're not. You're being indoctrinated and being brainwashed and being traumatized to be turned into basically a robot that's only focused on success. So, you need to recognize this, be true to yourself, and focus on real learning. Okay? So, what do I mean by that? So, let me... Sorry, let me... Okay. So, success. What is real success?

Well, before the meritocracy, you didn't have to go to college, but you needed to have certain values and attitude. Okay? So, the first was to be... What... And so, recognize that you have a lot to learn. And ask questions. Learn from other people, okay? And what people recognized was failure is the best... Why? Because failure forces reflection, which leads to learning. Okay? And this is the model that most people understood before the meritocracy. Keep an open mind, make mistakes because if you make mistakes, you will learn from them naturally.

And then you can reflect, and then you can become resilient, and then you will grow and grow, and then you will achieve your true potential. Okay? The meritocracy has destroyed this. Because now we just want to focus on... And to get good grades, you cannot fail. Do you understand? Failure now is a problem. If you fail a class, you may learn a lot from your failure, but it won't look good on your GPA, right? It will destroy your GPA. And you won't get into Harvard, okay? You know how failure... you cannot have reflection, you cannot have resilience.

Also, before, you had time for yourself. Nowadays, every minute is organized for you, right? You come to school, the school day is very long, then you have lots of homework, and then you have activities, then you have to have dinner, then all that. You don't have any... You don't even have time to just think for yourself, to just chill and do what you want to do, okay? It's intentional. Okay? So, it's destroying reflection, you don't have any resilience, and so you can't learn anything.

So, it's a really bad system because if you're like me, okay? You're just a normal person, your family's not rich or powerful, and you go to Yale and Harvard, it actually makes you fail in life, okay? Let me explain why. Okay? The first is it makes you arrogant. It makes you think, "I went to Yale, therefore I know more than anyone else, so I don't have to ask questions. I don't have to learn anymore, okay?" Second is that you only care about things that help you succeed.

You're not actually interested in real learning anymore. Okay? And the third thing is all you care about is success, so you don't want to explore, okay? You're not so creative anymore.

So, it's a great system if you come from a rich family because this system trains you to go into power. But if you're just like me and you need to work hard and be talented and be committed to your passion in order to succeed, this actually destroys all that. And that's why probably most traumatized people in America are those who came from poor families, who had a dream of going to the Ivy League, who got into the Ivy League, and then they just fell in life because they don't have the ability to succeed.

They don't have the reflective ability. They don't have the resilience. They're not open-minded. They don't accept failure. They're not committed to learning. They're only committed to success. Okay? So, if you're rich, go to Harvard and Yale and Princeton because you'll become more rich. But if you're a poor person, going to these schools may be a mistake. Okay? Certainly for me it was a mistake because after I graduated, I stumbled through life. For me it was just failure after failure after failure because I wanted to succeed right away.

Okay? I refused to put the time and effort into learning a real skill and learning a real passion. And so in my 30s, late 20s, early 30s, I became really depressed. And honestly, I thought about killing myself and I was playing video games every single day. I just hid in my parents' basement. And so I was traumatized by Yale. It took me a long time to get over the trauma and recognize this is a false system. Okay? Yale traumatized me and I need to relearn to be open-minded, to be resilient, to embrace learning, okay?

And that's why I'm a teacher today, to teach you guys that to be successful in life, this is the formula, okay? You don't need Harvard, Yale, and... All right?

All right? Any more questions, guys?

Well, can we do both, like be open-minded and get the grades and be rich? Okay. Is it a possible thing?

Okay? So, utilitarian is what we call... or flight. Altruistic is just family and... So, imagine we're back in the village. And most of the time we are...

Yeah, yeah? You said that all the psychology is just brainwashing.

Okay. Yes, psychology is not all brainwashing. There's some validity to it, okay? And so, I'm not saying this is suddenly fact, I'm just saying this is a good way to understand how things work, okay? All right? All right. So, in the village, we spend most of the time being close with other people, right?

We want to be friends with other people, so we help each other out. But sometimes we have to be very utilitarian. So, for example, if there's not enough food, okay? Or we're being attacked. Guess what? Run, man. Okay? So, there are these two mindsets. And what psychology has discovered is they are mutually exclusive. It's either one or the other. The other thing that they discovered is the altruistic mindset is what leads to... Okay? Creativity and passion and love. Okay? And the utilitarian mindset is one that's focused on rewards.

Okay? Like grades. So, it is impossible to both want to have really good grades as well as help the world. But what's interesting is Harvard wants that, okay? So, in your application, you have to say to Harvard, I have a passion. I will die for my passion. But at the same time, I want to be a billionaire and I will die trying to be a billionaire. At the same time, I know it's important to be loyal to Harvard, so I will die being loyal to Harvard, okay? The only people who can do this are people who have dissociative personality disorder.

And they can test for that in the application. They're so experienced that they know exactly how you think, okay? Like come on, guys. You would not apply to Harvard if you were not utilitarian, okay?

But you have to pretend you're not. And that's what makes people crazy, okay? Because you're basically an actor. Harvard wants the best actors in the... They want people to go through life pretending they're something they're not, okay? They want Barack Obama. The problem with Barack Obama is he stands for nothing. Okay? In 2008, he promised people hope and change. The moment he gets in office, he's like, "Sorry, man. I was just joking. Why did you believe me?" Okay? Then in 2012, when it's time for re-election, he said, "Oh, you know what?

I want hope and change." Okay? Then 2016, he's like, "You know what? Screw that. I'm going to go water skiing now." Okay? So, the man is actually soulless. Stands for nothing. All right? Any more questions, guys?

Okay, great. So, thanks for today and I'll see you guys after the break, okay? So, we'll continue this after the break.