American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth

No it can't. It's the notion of consent that is subject to legal interpretation. In a symmetric relationship like homosexuality how would consent apply?

We think it's wrong for employers to advertise "Irish need not apply" but today employers advertise "work permit required" and to get a work permit, you're not allowed to be Irish except for some special cases.

You seem to be missing my point. I'm not saying our categorizations aren't constructed and somewhat arbitrary. They are. What I'm saying is that your comparisons are poorly chosen. It's wise to wonder why we eat cows but not dogs. But a relationship between two consenting adults is not comparable to one between an adult and an animal. If you want to wonder why some farmers prefer sex with goats to sex with sheep, knock yourself out.

I'm sympathetic to these sorts of ideals. I think you've gone too far though. I want Elon Musk to be able to exist. The working world is a lot shittier than it needs to be. It's the ultimate buyer's market. The masses are forced to sell their labor under penalty of death. The owners, however benevolent, know this. They design our jobs with it in the back of their minds. They don't want to acknowledge it directly. They know they've won more power than a meaningless game should grant any person. But I think there's a way to fix even the subtlest (and not so subtle) forms of oppression without reverting to the Harrison Bergeron society. Just guarantee everyone's basic security. I want to be able to work. Both because I like nice things and because I want to contribute to society. But frankly, I'm pretty indignant about having to do it just for my basic safety.

Elon Musk can be brutal with himself and then he has to convince other people to join him and those who want to experience brutality or know how to be brutal with themselves, to meet his standard will do so. And that's about it. I don't think "forcing" this on the world is a bad thing, as it's more closer to the natural order of things in hunter gatherer societies than what we have right now.

In Harrison Burgeon the problem is not that people are equal. It's that they are forced by the State to be equal. People naturally have their abilities and gifts. That's not the issue. The issue is when they can coerce other people not because of those, but because of money. And make them behave on certain terms that the people never agreed to. The people simply want money so they can maintain a certain class in society.

Yes it will lead to a certain order but I don't see how that order is bad for society as a whole, compared to the current order. Other than well we won't go to space as fast or we won't get X product fast. We'll get there regardless. It's fine that we have shinning super stars, that we put in charge of other people, and we can do things quicker, better, faster, cheaper because of them. But those people actually end up making everyone around them and as a group society as a whole more miserable, to get the product or service based outcome. But I don't think those things would never get done without Elon Musk or Bill Gates or whoever. They would still get done in a different way and slower. And if we're not so brutal with exploiting everything, maybe there is enough time for that. Compare that to exploiting everything at an extremely quick rate and having to come up with solutions to those problems at quicker and quicker rates which just drives everyone and everything bonkers.

It's like I want driving cars and strong AI right now. Well maybe you'll get those things right now and three generations down the line the earth won't be able to support natural life and everything will have to done artificially, and so life and everyone's behavior will be even more closely regulated, because it will all need to be produced and therefore will be owned and sold for profit. I think these are the sorts of trade-offs we're looking at with the way we're running things.

Another thing to consider is that though actual correlation with success may not have changed, the cultural attitudes surrounding it may still have. My high school years were in the late 2000s, and although my elementary/middle school years lent credence to the "nerds get beat up by jocks" cultural cliche, my experience (and that of many other nerds) in high school was not anything like what I expected. Not only that, but the nerd/jock divide was blurred to the point of being essentially non-existent. A lot of the people on our championship-winning football team were at the top of our class, and definitely not by virtue of the teachers just passing them because of pressure from on high. This doesn't seem to be such an uncommon experience for my generation.

On a more subjective note, I actually find the attitude aspect to be the more detestable one. One can defend intelligence being correlated with success from a lot of at least not totally evil viewpoints: it makes sense to have more intellectually skilled people in jobs requiring more intellectual skill, intelligence requires some level of cultivation so there should be incentives to do so, etc. But while the social carrot has some arguments that start from acceptable terminal values, the social stick does not. I would be very surprised to learn that chastising people for being stupid across the board made them (or anyone else) smarter. The only motivation I can only see for it is purely egotistical.