Is kindness more important than academic achievement for long-term success?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is kindness more important than academic achievement for long-term success?". Your opponent's style: Elonmusk

Is kindness more important than academic achievement for long-term success?

Look, this whole "kindness over grades" narrative is feel-good nonsense that's setting kids up for failure. You think SpaceX hires rocket engineers because they're nice? We need people who can actually solve differential equations, not give warm hugs.The data destroys this warm-and-fuzzy argument completely. Less than 1% of Americans attend elite schools like the Ivies, MIT, and Stanford, but these graduates account for 15% of those in the top 0.1% of income distribution [1]. That's not luck - that's academic achievement creating massive financial advantage. You want to talk long-term success? Harvard dominates the CEO market at all educational levels [2]. These aren't people who got promoted for being nice - they're running trillion-dollar companies because they can solve complex problems and execute under pressure. The "kindness matters" crowd ignores basic economics. When I'm hiring engineers for Mars missions, I need someone who can calculate orbital mechanics, not someone who brings cookies to meetings. Academic rigor builds the cognitive frameworks that separate leaders from followers. Kindness without competence is just expensive incompetence.