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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30072 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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I don't much care if all this stuff is true and I suspect Americans won't either. Certainly not Republicans, unfortunately. Red anti-intellectualism or, perhaps, anti-smartassism is real; you'd better be able to own the other guy in a debate, but you cannot make it look as if you're showboating at the expense of your diploma-less audience. Ben Shapiro with his quick debate bro tongue is Facebook meme material, not POTUS material, likewise for a clever, dweeby man like Vivek. He needs edge other than apparent competence and sharpness, or #1 and #2 to do themselves in.

It'll be funny if he makes it, though. Imagine Vivek vs Kamala (as Biden declines further): total Brahmin victory. A tiny (there are, what, 2 million Tamil Brahmins?) subrace bred for verbally justifying their authority in a casteist society seize political power in an antiracist democratic society. What could be more surprising?

Edit: Wiki on his drug adventures

In 2015, Ramaswamy raised $360 million for the Roivant subsidiary Axovant Sciences in an attempt to market intepirdine as a drug for Alzheimer's disease.[31][39] In December 2014,[40] Axovant purchased the patent for intepirdine from GlaxoSmithKline (where the drug had failed four previous clinical trials) for $5 million, a small sum in the industry.[32] Ramaswamy appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine in 2015, and said his company would "be the highest return on investment endeavor ever taken up in the pharmaceutical industry."[32][39] Before new clinical trials began, he engineered an initial public offering in Axovant.[32] Axovant became a "Wall Street darling" and raised $315 million in its IPO.[40] The company's market value initially soared to almost $3 billion, although at the time it only had eight employees, including Ramaswamy's brother and mother.[32] Ramaswamy took a massive payout after selling a portion of his shares in Roivant to Viking Global Investors.[32] He claimed more than $37 million in capital gains in tax year 2015.[32] Ramaswamy said his company would be the "Berkshire Hathaway of drug development"[3] and touted the drug as a "tremendous" opportunity that "could help millions" of patients, prompting some criticism that he was overpromising.[32]

In September 2017, the company announced that intepirdine had failed in its large clinical trial.[32][41] The company's value plunged; it lost 75% in one day and continued to decline afterward.[32] Shareholders who lost money included various institutional investors, such as the California State Teachers' Retirement System pension fund.[32] Ramaswamy was insulated from much of Axovant's losses because he held his stake through Roivant.[32][40] The company abandoned intepirdine. In 2018, Ramaswamy said he had no regrets about how the company handled the drug;[40] in subsequent years, he said he regretted the outcome but was annoyed by criticism of the company.[32] Axovant attempted to reinvent itself as a gene therapy company,[42] but dissolved in 2023.[32]

In 2017, Ramaswamy struck a deal with Masayoshi Son in which SoftBank invested $1.1 billion in Roivant.[32] In 2019, Roivant sold its stake in five subsidiaries (or "vants"), including Enzyvant, to Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma;[43][32] Ramaswamy made $175 million in capital gains from the sale.[32] The deal also gave Sumitomo Dainippon a 10% stake in Roivant.[44][43]

While campaigning for the presidency in 2023, Ramaswamy called himself a "scientist" and said, "I developed a number of medicines."[32] Although his undergraduate degree is in biology, he was never a scientist; his role in the biotechnology industry was that of a financier and entrepreneur.[32]

In January 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant Sciences and assumed the role of executive chairman.[43][44] In 2021, after he resigned as CEO, Roivant was listed on the Nasdaq via a reverse merger with Montes Archimedes Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition vehicle.[45] In February 2023, Ramaswamy stepped down as chair of Roivant to focus on his presidential campaign.[32][46]

Ramaswamy remains the sixth-largest shareholder of Roivant,[32] retaining a 7.17% stake.[47] Roivant has never been profitable.[45]

etc. I'd say this is not worse than I expected but it's certainly not the miracle success story you've painted. If anything, I'd say it calls for investigation.

While campaigning for the presidency in 2023, Ramaswamy called himself a "scientist" and said, "I developed a number of medicines."[32] Although his undergraduate degree is in biology, he was never a scientist; his role in the biotechnology industry was that of a financier and entrepreneur.[32]

That sounds like a non-insiders take, and indeed in the citation I just see assertions that his undergraduate degree can't afford him the title of "scientist." To support the idea that he doesn't do any science you could have interviewed former employees and had them say that Vivek was just a money guy, he never came to any lab, didn't even seem to understand what the scientists were up to. Those NYT authors don't have any such quotes.

Given that his companies have been unusually successful in their industry, maybe that's partly attributable to him getting his hands dirty.

He’s at least as much a “scientist” as Jill Biden is a “Dr.”

I guess this is about what I expected. Never made any money, never added any value, screwed over every investor he ever had, got out with the best part of a billion dollars. But that’s the thing, actually successful entrepreneurs rarely have the skillset for politics.

Stuff like that was so normal during 2021. I don’t even know how so many people were silly funding these companies. He actually reminds me a lot of Chamath who I believe basically blew up anyone who invested in him but got out very rich.

Is literally every famous Indian exec Brahmin class? I couldn’t verify Chamath. But looks like Nooyi and Nadella both Brahmin.

Brahmin itself doesn’t mean much since there are 70 million of them, it’s the dominance of the Tamil Brahmins specifically that’s particularly interesting.

I actually had to look that up last night to find 4-5% of Indians are Brahmins.

If we are going to be discussing Indian politicians since they seem to be running then I feel like we need a long post on what to know. I’m picking up a little.

Many but not all are Brahmins; my impression is that most who are not Brahmins come from some small, obscure (outside India) hyper-specific prestigious jati.

Vivek himself hails from a specific subset within Tamil Brahmins, Kerala Iyers of Palakkad. There can't be more than, like, 80k of them (probably more like 10k); I think it'd be amazing to discover that any other prominent American can be traced back to that tiny endogamous community.

Scrolling relatively large (compared to their population) list of notable Iyers, they tend to be actors and entertainers, not heavyweight STEM geniuses.

Well, these skills are exactly what democratic politician needs. The free and democratic world better get ready for total Iyer domination.

It'll be funny if he makes it, though. Imagine Vivek vs Kamala (as Biden declines further): total Brahmin victory. A tiny (there are, what, 2 million Tamil Brahmins?) subrace bred for verbally justifying their authority in a casteist society seize political power in an antiracist democratic society. What could be more surprising?

Oh man, this may be the most hilarious turn of events in history if it does happen. I love the narrative arc here, utterly ridiculous.

What would be even better is if he turns around after winning and goes full race-realism - says he won because he's genetically superior. It'll never happen, but man the irony there would be impossibly thick.

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