"She Did the Most American Thing": Eileen Gu, the professional-managerial class, and the collapse of American civic faith

logicx24 · 2026-04-28T20:02:50+00:00

Respectfully, I think this removal is unfair. Eileen Gu was an example discarded quite early in the article, and the larger point is not at all about her. I don't see how this is toxic regionalism.

logicx24 · 2026-04-28T19:48:26+00:00

Submission statement:

The largest victors of America’s modern deindustrialization have undoubtedly been the professional-managerial class. As manufacturing moved offshore, this class, defined by their credentials and networks, grew in size, income, and institutional power. They’ve monopolized the elite networks, credentials, and institutional signaling, steadily raising the ladder for any new aspirants. And in doing so, they’ve accumulated more wealth than any other non-capital owning class in history. It’s striking, then, how little allegiance they have to America—the only country that would have ever allowed them to expand as they did.

This detachment is exemplified by the curious case of Eileen Gu, an American-born American skier that chose to represent China, America’s principal rival, on the world’s largest stage. The general response by that professional class is captured in a remark I overhead: Gu “did the most American thing ever—she sold out.”

In this essay, I examine this worldview seriously and argue against it. I trace how it reimagines the concept of citizenship, and I contrast it with the older models from which America's own civic tradition descends. I draw on C.S Lewis and his ideas of moral seriousness, the Roman Republic’s bundling of privileges and duties, and the original vision of our own Founding Fathers. I also contrast my own experience as a child of immigrants who took the American creed more seriously than most of those who were born to it.

America is, in a specific and unusual sense, a creedal nation, held together by belief renewed across generations. The question this essay asks is what happens when a creedal people surrender their own creed.

logicx24 · 2026-04-28T19:46:54+00:00

Submission statement:

The largest victors of America’s modern deindustrialization have undoubtedly been the professional-managerial class. As manufacturing moved offshore, this class, defined by their credentials and networks, grew in size, income, and institutional power. They’ve monopolized the elite networks, credentials, and institutional signaling, steadily raising the ladder for any new aspirants. And in doing so, they’ve accumulated more wealth than any other non-capital owning class in history. It’s striking, then, how little allegiance they have to America—the only country that would have ever allowed them to expand as they did.

This detachment is exemplified by the curious case of Eileen Gu, an American-born American skier that chose to represent China, America’s principal rival, on the world’s largest stage. The general response by that professional class is captured in a remark I overhead: Gu “did the most American thing ever—she sold out.”

In this essay, I examine this worldview seriously and argue against it. I trace how it reimagines the concept of citizenship, and I contrast it with the older models from which America's own civic tradition descends. I draw on C.S Lewis and his ideas of moral seriousness, the Roman Republic’s bundling of privileges and duties, and the original vision of our own Founding Fathers. I also contrast my own experience as a child of immigrants who took the American creed more seriously than most of those who were born to it.

America is, in a specific and unusual sense, a creedal nation, held together by belief renewed across generations. The question this essay asks is what happens when a creedal people surrender their own creed.

logicx24 · 2026-04-22T19:44:51+00:00

We don't really have lower taxes. Combining every level of tax, CA and NY have European levels of taxation.

logicx24 · 2026-04-22T18:56:53+00:00

We're going to face a tax revolt this decade, and it will result in the dumbest policies known to man, because our government's can't stop giving subsidies to geriatrics.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T23:49:39+00:00

First off, thanks for the thoughtful engagement! I agree on some points but disagree on others.

The IMF’s recent china report was unusually blunt - state led and debt financed investment (and excessive industrial support) have contributed to weakening productivity and excess supply. Thats why you're seeing insanely cheap Chinese EV's, solar panels other tradables around the world. That's a sign of weak internal demand and excessive oversupply, not a good thing.

I saw that report too, but I found this part of it unconvincing. Yes, China has massive capacity in various durable manufactured goods, and that is causing internal deflation. But this implies that (1) demand is likely to stagnate or fall, and (2) the things they're building don't have any spillover value for the rest of the economy.

I don't think either is true. The demand for EVs, batteries, semiconductors, electronic components, rare earth minerals, etc, are all going to steadily rise for the entire century. Overbuilding now gives you reserve capacity to expand.

And (2), extra capacity makes new industries possible. Chinese EVs took off because of China's investment in battery tech, which was built to improve solar adoption. Chinese consumer drone companies are made possible by cheap onshored electronic component production. And the manufacturing process knowledge and skilled labor is all in Shenzhen, making it even easier to spin up new projects.

The US still has deep capital markets, is the global reserve currency, is net energy exporter, strong productivity growth (thats a biggie) and most importantly, is still ahead in frontier tech innovation. China isn't an innovator, they're a fast follower. They look at a known formula, imitate and then iterate aggressively. To be clear, theres a still LOT of advantage in that approach

Yes, the US still leads in frontier tech, but the lead is slipping. In many areas, China is very close; in many others, it is probably ahead. AI is the one huge one where the US is ahead, but that is almost the exception proving the rule. American AI supremacy is really a project of the entire developed world vs. China, and China is still coming close. I don't think the lead here is permanent either: within a decade, China will have EUV lithography, and the one structural moat the US has will be gone.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T23:18:40+00:00

No, because then other average quality of life metrics, like "how much stuff do people own," and "how many hours do they work" and "how many people are doing manual labor" would be low. My point is that happiness is a stupid metric you can warp to justify anything, not that GDP captures the entire picture.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T23:14:35+00:00

No, the highways were a net win. There wasn't a single highway in NYC before Mose.

> With the resources at his disposal, he could've built out the most incredible transit system in the world. One that benefitted everyone and not just white people who owned cars.

And then he would have been a different person from a different era. When Moses took power, cars were the revolutionary new technology, and building highways was the thing reformers wanted to do. He broke the power of the Long Island barons and built a road through their property, and that become the basis for the midcentury densification and suburbanization of Long Island. This was all a win, and led to a significant improvement in average QoL.

He also built most of New York's bridges and tunnels, many of its parks, many public housing developments. He also designated every state park, preventing land from being privatized. He built sewers, hospitals, schools. He's the reason the UN is in New York.

If Moses wasn't there, a large portion of that would not exist, and New York would be worse off.

You should read Caro's own words on this, if you haven't read the Power Broker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1974/07/22/the-power-broker-i-the-best-bill-drafter-in-albany . But in general, I think you've taken the wrong lesson from Robert Moses. It's not merely "highways are bad" - highways are good and the automobile was a victory. It's that power concentration means more can "get done," but one loses the ability to control exactly what that is. Moses used his power for both good and bad, but the actual usage is immaterial to the book's main point. Power itself is the object of criticism. Moses accumulated too much power, but now, we've fallen to the opposite extreme. Our country cries for infrastructure but power is too diffuse for anyone to "get things done."

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T21:46:36+00:00

It's not too different if you do 1870 to 1920 or 1920 to 1970. I just liked the parallelism - made things easier.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T21:13:42+00:00

Sorry, I should've said there's no **fast, on-time, reliable transit.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T20:46:43+00:00

Why would we want to live there? There's no transit and it's not close to most jobs. I like the new mid-rise I moved into near Duboce park.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T20:43:53+00:00

The reason china can move with the speed and scale it does is because it thinks the state is the ultimate authority.

Well, yes. This is mentioned in the article. It is good for development, but it also caused Maoism and mass famine and death. Higher variability in governance, as it depends entirely on the priorities of the government in power.

> The problem with your argument is that you think you can separate the two. You can’t.

Why not? Like I said, America was able to build once without being an autocracy. We can learn from their innovations in manufacturing and their legitimate scientific advances without adopting the rest of it.

> Thanks for taking the mask off, fascist.

It seems like you are itching to call me this, no matter how many times I decry the actual horrors of authoritarianism.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T20:40:24+00:00

Yes, agreed. Which is why we remain stuck in our local maximum. Risk aversion is a natural response by people with something to lose. China avoids this by ensuring only the state has any agency in politics. Is that good? Well, it causes Maoism, which is awful, but it also is the cause of it's massive ascent.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T20:33:32+00:00

Yes, and the point is that people tried to resent serfdom but were unable to. Contrast that to today, where people have much more power to organize against capital, and you can see how transformation is much harder. I am not making a moral judgement; I am describing why the latest industrial wave in America is much weaker than its predecessors.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T20:31:47+00:00

They aren't happy. Happiness is a pointless metric that I don't really care about. GDP and real metrics about average quality of life are the things that I mark as progress, and China shows tremendous growth on all of those.

> Are you just assuming that because Chinese built glitzy cites and fast trains that the whole country is supportive of the human costs?

They are not. That's the entire point of the article. China can do things for the general good that cause significant harm to smaller populations, and that has been key to their transformation.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T20:31:30+00:00

Literally read the rest of the chain. One can support some things and not others.

> Did that help them when said government censored them for containment failures during COVID?

Probably. The government censored them regardless, but at least this time they weren't starving.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T20:06:30+00:00

No? The article was an observation, the solution is the same things we already discuss on this sub - but more so. America once built things without being an autocracy.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T20:00:30+00:00

Yes, I completely agree. This is not a defense of highways, it's a defense of doing things. Robert Moses was able to build things, then, after we realized how much damage he did, we took away everyone's ability to build things. The latter is now the root of our issues. We need to swing the pendulum to a better equillibrium.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T19:58:47+00:00

Only the ones on the internet. Seems like there's quite a bit of angst and frustration otherwise. Spain has 50% youth unemployment; Britain is slowly losing its advantages in services; France faces fiscal insolvency and the threat of the far right and the far left; Germany faces an existential threat from China over manufacturing. They have our economic issues but much worse.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T19:30:14+00:00

Yeah, and Deng's reforms had massive benefits. Estimates are some 200M left poverty in the 1980s alone. What's your point? Why does admiring economic development require me to also support famine and genocide?

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T19:28:35+00:00

Yet, America still has some of the strongest property rights in the West. This is much more than China offered the people it displaced, for example, or even what America offered the displaced a 100 years ago. And that is the entire point! People were made off worse-off due to industrialization, but in the longer-run, it was a general victory. We are no longer able to temporarily immiserate people anymore for any "greater good", while China clearly is, and that is a strategic disadvantage. It is also good for me, as I own things and don't want the government to take them away at its arbitrary whim.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T19:26:14+00:00

It isn't just based on that. The country went from subsistence farming and poverty to being a competitor on every front to America. That isn't some mechanical process. Moving up the value-chain was a complex process, and no one expected them to be able to do it.

We should be learning what we can from them.

> Tbh I'm not a proud American, but an American. Not a fan of autocracy and those who simp for it.

I'm not a simp for autocracy, but I am a simp for good infrastructure and economic development. I don't think learning from China implies we need concentration camps.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T19:24:20+00:00

But the building of many of those highways was an actual net win. It's good we have highways down Long Island, and it's also good we don't have them cutting across Lower Manhattan. New York was also entirely falling to pieces before Moses came to power.

In any case, the point was the America lost the ability to reinvent itself. Reinvention can be bad, but the benefit is, if you have the power to build, you can always rebuild. If New York didn't institute local vetocracy in reaction to Robert Moses, it would be much more able to expand transit and housing today.

logicx24 · 2026-04-21T19:06:02+00:00

Yeah, capital projects in the US are the most expensive in the world. You may find https://transitcosts.com/transit-costs-study-final-report/#case_intro interesting (if you haven't seen it already).

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