Where are all the originals?

I was browsing through a Demographics of Innovation report in context of a very interesting paragraph that I came across.

Asian Americans indirectly hurt the prospects of everyone else by exacerbating the negative externalities of the signaling model of education. Essentially, because most of the returns to higher education comes from the ability to signal desirable characteristics to employers (e.g., intelligence, conscientiousness, conformity, etc.) rather than actual skills acquisition, it is individually lucrative but collectively destructive as the choice to spend more years in education hurts equally qualified candidates in the labor market who choose not to engage in the signaling game. Asians, being the sheer academic strivers that they are, amplify this effect, as it forces the entire population of the country to do the same if they wish to distinguish themselves in the jobs market. This creates a destructive feedback mechanism of runaway signaling that forces everyone to spend ever more time in higher education in order to strengthen their signal to employers, wasting Americans time and money. This is a fantastic example of an indirect cost that is almost never discussed in debates surrounding policymaking despite it being extremely important when you point out the issue.

The data says a lot about both foreign students and immigration. It says that despite the educational signaling, you may get extremely low innovative productivity.

Therefore, if innovation is very low and if signaling is very high, that certainty explains a lot about both communism and protectionism.

It is through the closed societies that they can create environments of pride.

Take, for example, the Western right-wing fantasy that allies itself with conservative Asian societies. It’s absurd. These groups have nothing in common. A Chinese programmer in a third-tier city building fantasy video games does not share meaningful cultural or political overlap with Western nationalist media consumers. They wouldn’t even hang out, and that tells you everything. In a Western context, that programmer might be in Silicon Valley, aligned more with progressive tech culture and liberal narratives like "Stop Asian Hate" than any so-called “based” resistance.