America generally believes the path to success in today's competitive job climate is through hard work, regardless of one's background or hometown.

But Andrew Yang, former CEO of Venture for America, says he received an education from Brown and Columbia not by working hard, but because he was a good test taker.

Yang believes intelligence and efficiency have become stand-ins for human worth in America, and the average American is being displaced in the workforce in what he calls a "war on normal people."

The below is an excerpt from "The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future" by Andrew Yang.

I recently had dinner with a friend of mine who works for a real estate investment firm. We met at a Japanese restaurant in Manhattan. After catching up for a bit, I asked him if he'd bought any fancy hotels lately — he'd gotten me a discount to one a few years ago.

He responded, "Our appetite for risk has gone down. You know what we've been buying? Trailer parks."

I became more interested. "Really? Why is that?"

He answered, "They're good investments. Tenants pay to keep their mobile home in a space with water and utilities. All we really have to do is keep the place clean and keep the water flowing."

I asked him if he ever had problems with delinquency.

"The delinquency rate is very low because first, they get a late notice on the day after their rent is due if they haven't paid. We are very diligent about monitoring and everyone knows it. Second, there's no place cheaper to live. It's really these places or the street for a lot of people. They find ways to pay. It's a nice stable investment for us."

"Fascinating. How do you grow?"

He shrugged, "We'll probably look at raising prices over time."

I thought this was a pretty good illustration of what we do in the Bubble. We maximize market efficiencies and take tolls.

The other major pursuit, particularly for those who work in technology, is replacing workers with software, widgets, robots, AI, algorithms, and/or cheaper workers. Many of my friends are innovators and know that they are automating away other people's jobs.

The technologists and entrepreneurs I know are generally good people. If they were given a choice, "Do your job and eliminate normal jobs" or "Do your job and create abundant opportunities," they would choose the latter. Most of them would happily even take a small hit to do so. But this isn't a choice they're given. They do their own jobs to the best of their ability and let the market do the rest. They may feel troubled at times that their success will displace hundreds or thousands of American workers, but believe in progress and that their work is overall for the good.

You may find this objectionable. Here's the thing — it is not the innovator's job to figure out the social implications of what they do. Their job is to create and fund innovation in the market as cost-effectively as possible. This is itself a difficult job.

It is our job to account for society. That is, it's the job of our government and our leaders.

Unfortunately, our leaders are typically a country away from these conversations. They're trapped in cycles of warring press releases and talk show appearances and fundraising dinners. They also generally don't understand technology so they're reduced to lionizing innovators and trying to get on their good side. In turn, technologists often see government as a hindrance, to be ignored as much as possible, lobbied when necessary and navigated around while they make things better/faster/cheaper/more automated.

This is a disaster-in-the-making because technology is transforming society and our economy while politicians are left responding to the effects ineffectively years after the fact, or worse yet ignoring them.

This is not to say that the people in the Bubble have it all good. We are anxious about the path ahead too. We feel stuck in place, competing at the top of the pyramid for the most resources for our children. We are constantly asked to choose between family and function, and fear that if we let up for even a little while our race will be lost. Women choose between time with their children — or having children — and keeping their job. Men choose between life on the road and being bypassed. Children get used to seeing zero or one parent routinely. We talk openly with our friends about having someplace to fly to when things go south. We compare ourselves to our peers in our high-cost Bubble and feel dissatisfied.

Occasionally we see people leave for a more hospitable or child-friendly environment. We envy them a little, while also patting ourselves on the back for sticking it out. Professional empathy is limited. We are fighters. Our organizations have little use or need for non-combatants. We work long hours and pride ourselves on being available and indefatigable.

In the Bubble, the market governs all. Character is a set of ideas that comes up in the books we read to our children before sending them to test for the gifted and talented program, or a means of doing right by our bosses and reports, or a good way to burnish one's personal network. On some level, most of us recognize that we are servants to the tide of innovation and efficiency. As the water rises, we will protest as we clamber to higher ground. We will be sure to stay out of the way and keep ourselves pliant and marketable to the extent possible. Our specialty is light-commitment benevolence. We will do something to help but not enough to hurt us or threaten our own standing. We know better than to do that.

The author, Andrew Yang, was named one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business. Pete Souza/Hachette Books In the Bubble, many of us came up through the meritocracy and we've internalized its lessons. The underlying logic of the meritocratic system is this: If you're successful, it's because you're smart and hard-working, and thus virtuous. If you're poor or unsuccessful, it's because you're lazy and/or stupid and of subpar character. The people at the top belong there and the people at the bottom have only themselves to blame.

I know how deeply mistaken these premises are because of my own experiences. I had very little going for me as a kid except for the fact that I had demanding parents and was very good at filling out bubbles on standardized tests. I went to the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University because I did well on the SAT. I went to Exeter because I did well on the SAT. I got into Stanford and Brown because I did well on the SAT. I went to law school at Columbia because I did well on the LSAT, which led directly to a six-figure job. I even became the CEO of an education company in part because I did well on the GMAT.

Being good at these tests, however, has very little to do with character, virtue, or work ethic. They just mean you are good at the tests. There were many people who studied much harder than I did who didn't do well. I remember one classmate crying when we got our test results back because she'd studied so hard for it.

We say success in America is about hard work and character. It's not really. Most of success today is about how good you are at certain tests and what kind of family background you have, with some exceptions sprinkled in to try and make it all seem fair. Intellect as narrowly defined by academics and test scores is now the proxy for human worth. Efficiency is close behind. Our system rewards specific talents more than anything. I got pushed forward for having certain capacities. Others had their horizons systematically lowered for having capacities that our academic system had no use for. I've seen countless people lose heart and feel like they should settle for less, that they don't deserve abundance.

J.D. Vance wrote in his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy about growing up in Middletown, Ohio:

The message wasn't explicit: teachers didn't tell us that we were too stupid or poor to make it. Nevertheless, it was all around us, like the air we breathed: No one in our families had gone to college . . . Students don't expect much from themselves, because the people around them don't do very much . . . There was, and still is, a sense that those who make it are of two varieties. The first are lucky: They come from wealthy families with connections, and their lives were set from the moments they were born. The second are the meritocratic: They were born with brains and couldn't fail if they tried . . .To the average Middletonian, hard work doesn't matter as much as raw talent.

The people of Middletown have gotten the message. The SAT came into its own during World War II as a way to identify smart kids and keep them from going to the frontlines. Now, every year is wartime.

Excerpted from the book “The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future” by Andrew Yang, published on April 3, 2018 by Hachette Books, a division of Hachette Book Group. Copyright 2017 Andrew Yang.

Andrew Yang is the founder of Venture for America, a major nonprofit that places top college graduates in startups to generate job growth and train the next generation of entrepreneurs. Yang has been the CEO, co-founder, or executive at a number of technology and education companies and is a Democratic candidate for President in 2020.