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Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

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Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#251

Post by javajosh »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #245
roymurdock wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are invoking the famous, often-misunderstood fiscal policy outlined by Keynes. Here is the often-paraphrased text from The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money Book 3 Ch.10 Section VI [1]: "Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better...If the Treasury were to…

> It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; This is the branch of thinking that should be extended. What exactly should fiscal stimulus _actually_ be building? THAT is the interesting discussion. We've ruled out burying bottles with banknotes. So, seriously now, what is a truly productive thing for the government to buy? New water systems? Repaved and widened highways? A super fat information b…

Every artifact decays. Every quanta of decay is an opportunity to build. This will always be true.

Human artifacts were built to serve our way of life. Yet our way of life has heretofore been driven by a desire to dominate nature. Science has widened our view, now we know that a complex living biosphere is rare and precious, which implies we should attempt to live with a minimum of artifacts and minimum population, with the primary ambition of the remaining population to ensure the long-term survival of the biosphere, both on earth and beyond earth. I envision a garden planet with several major university cities, unobtrusively integrated with the natural world, and a Spacer community that is also colonization/research focused, but also tasked with protecting the Earth from stray objects.

This is a new "way of life" with new priorities, new beliefs, and new rules. It is no small task to get there from here. But I believe it can be done and moreover, even small steps in that direction would be greatly beneficial to us all, especially in the long-term.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#252

Post by bubbleRefuge »

luso_brazilian wrote: post #57
bubbleRefuge wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can also be spectacularly successful . Although it wasn't a jobs program, WWII and its aftermath, driven by the state and centrally planned, resulted in great economic prosperity -perhaps unprecedented prosperity. Why can't we have a WWII on infrastructure, green energy, science funding, pollution cleanup, transportation, hyper-loops ?

>> WWII and its aftermath (...) resulted in great economic prosperity -perhaps unprecedented prosperity I don't think that applies to any other country except the U.S. England, for instance, almost went bankrupt and had to ask for an enormous loan from the U.S [1]. The entirety of the Mashall plan [2], if you only consider the western part of the iron curtain, is definite proof that WWII not only didn't benefit those…

Unemployment was historically low. The balance sheet of the private sector was restored during and after WWII. All of it resulting from enormous unprecedented Keynesian spending programs. We can do the same thing again but aimed at large scale infrastructure upgrades and I'd even throw in a job/income guarantee.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#253

Post by nascentmind »

pm90 wrote: post #244
Avner7 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. India would be a good example of hole diggers. If software engineers were oil, India produces the most but unlike China you don't see them producing a Baidu, Alibaba, HTC, Lenovo, Tencent etc. Like you say they have given away their oil to the West by being laissez-faire in IT. It's why there are no Jack Ma, Pony Ma type recognizable names out of India. Instead you see a Nadella and Pichai emerge in the US…

Software engineering is a relatively nascent field. While India does produce a lot of software engineers, it will take some time before the expertise in software development that is required to run a successful business is prevalant enough in India to nurture independent companies and allow them to grow big. There are already a few successful Indian startups though e.g. Zomato, Flipkart. Anecdotally, there is much ac…

Zomato and Flipkart are not successful. They are just surviving. Most of the startups are "me too" kind just copying what has already been done but just localizing it to the Indian market. It just takes a foreign entity entering the Indian market and competing with these companies to start its collapse.

Also software engineering is not a nascent field. It was nascent in the 70's and 80's. All the low hanging fruits are gone. It is very hard to be a the next Sun, or Microsoft or Oracle. In fact India should start looking at more nascent and upcoming fields and try to be leaders in it.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#254

Post by KannO »

majewsky wrote: post #185
refurb wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like an airport in a town of 2,000 that nobody uses, but ensure the Congressman will get reelected? I could only imagine the abuse with a gov't directed jobs program!

I would much rather have another airport built than another prison.

I would much rather have an affordable public transit system built than another airport.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#255

Post by hhw »

tim333 wrote: post #200
hhw wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hong Kong's prosperity in the 80's and 90's had more to do with being the gateway between China and the West as trade started to open up, and less to do with policy or entrepreneurship, as much as some people would like to take credit for such.

HK GDP/capita also grew 1320% between 1960 and 1980 when China trade wasn't really rocking. N Korea also borders and trades mostly with China and it didn't do them much good. Though if you want a counter example Singapore has had more state involvement in the economy and has done even better than HK. One interesting area where HK has been very non laissez faire is in land ownership. Much of the prime real estate belo…

It's not trading with China that's resulted in Hong Kong's success, but that they were the exclusive intermediary for trade with China for a very long time. North Korea doesn't trade with the West so there's no point in comparing them. There was also a large influx of fortune and human capital that came out of China after the war.

Singapore is more a gateway with Southeast Asia, which certainly has provided it with a great deal of opportunity also, but not nearly to the same extent. I think it would be fair to say to that much of their success is owing to their policy, on a number of fronts.

I also do not mean to say anything about whether Hong Kong has good policy or not. I'm just saying that they would have still been successful regardless, so long as it didn't preclude their role as a trade intermediary. So, even if you were to perfectly recreate all of Hong Kong's policy, you should not expect to get anywhere near the same results. What's generally attributed to the 'genius' of Hong Kong would be much more aptly attributed to dumb luck.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#256

Post by DasIch »

borvo wrote: post #249
DasIch wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. However Germany has a massive trade imbalance because it's exporting all these products. There are only so many countries this can work for. Recently-ish Germany is also aided by the fact that the rest of the eurozone isn't doing so well economically keeping the euro lower in value than a German currency would be.

You're saying that Germany doesn't control the ECB I think. So I guess it's just coincidence that ECB policy has been consistently and primarily in favor of German economic interest, and has been an unmitigated disaster for everybody else. The trade imbalance is in part a symptom of this.

The primary ECB objective is to maintain an inflation of 2%. Everything else is secondary to that.

The ECB is currently making cheap money available. That's exactly what they're supposed to do and the only thing they can do, to reach their primary objective.

This happens to help Germany economically but I don't see what else the ECB could possibly do that wouldn't help Germany economically.

Also the German Bundesbank - famously paranoid about hyperinflation that definitely occurs any day now and starts the apocalypse - is strongly against the current ECB policy. So clearly the Bundesbank isn't controlling the ECB, not as much as they want to anyway.

In any case focussing on monetary policy alone and maintaining a inflation of 2% can cause issues economically but is nevertheless agreed upon to be good policy. That's why the ECB is independent, to prevent people from influencing or controlling it at times like these. It's operating exactly as designed.

Unless you're entertaining conspiracy theories, I don't see how one could argue that the ECB is controlled by Germany to somehow screw everyone else over for Germany's benefit.

Disclaimer: I'm German.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#257

Post by ThomPete »

Spooky23 wrote: post #247
ThomPete wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are actually proving my point. There is no natural law that says that to have an economy we need humans to produce the output. Yet you speak as if our needs somehow trump the reality we live in. You are simply confusing what humans need with what humans can expect. Technology is a competitor to humans not just a tool. My train of thought is exactly sustainable in that it expects technology to take over most jobs…

There's no natural law stating that technological progress and capitalism is the exclusive interest of reality. People make laws. People make technology. If we continue down a path of making technology only serve the accumulation of capital, people will course correct the direction of technology.

It doesent need to. All it need is better fitness which it has. thechnology is a Better carrier of information and capitalism is hard to get around unless tech make it obsolete.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#258

Post by ArkyBeagle »

rgbrenner wrote: post #55
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Americans place a higher value on preventing extreme poverty around the world. When faced with picky eaters, before around 1970, parents all over the USA would use the cliche that "children are starving in China."

"before around 1970" You know what happened shortly before 1970? The Great Chinese Famine--where up to 45 million people starved in the span of 3 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine I'm not sure how saying facts out loud indicates a value preference.

It was said on a time interval from a very long time before 1970 until around 1970. This was not a direct reaction to the Great Famine ( which wasn't widely discussed in the US ).

If you're not familiar enough with American culture to know what I mean, then don't worry about it.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#259

Post by MicroBerto »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #219
MicroBerto wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already HAVE seen what the long term cost is. It's great for corporations, shareholders, and board members, yet terrible for the middle class, and thus a net negative on the country as a whole. It will only continue. That is the "long term effect". This guy is basically telling everyone from the grave to vote Trump, or Trump-like economic policies... but never utter such a thing around these parts!

>This guy is basically telling everyone from the grave to vote Trump, or Trump-like economic policies... but never utter such a thing around these parts! I know this is going to sound tiring, but: why not Sanders? * He's not as blatantly evil as Trump. * He's not at all a bourgeois globalist. * He's constantly banging on about what trouble the working class and middle class are in. I don't see why everyone's supposed…

Because he's smart, and thus not a socialist

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#260

Post by ArkyBeagle »

jernfrost wrote: post #181
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's an ... axiomatic ( meaning just made up out of whole cloth ) assumption that doing meaningful things for other people is part of a path to happiness. It may have the advantage of being true. It does not mean that it's the only condition for happiness ( it is necessary but not sufficient ) , but I know of no good assault on this idea. Adam Smith's "to be loved and to be lovely" exists, and is deeply…

Media and advertising isn't quite the same. There is a clear value in people writing articles in newspapers about what is going on around us. Advertisement OTOH is frequently of little use. And it is perfectly possible to deal with advertisement/media through laws and regulations. E.g. I find that where I live in Norway, much of the informative and quality media exist almost exclusively due to government policy. Eith…

In the US, the giant of the newspaper industry was William Randolph Hearst, who used those papers mostly for personal gain. He foemented actual invasions ( mainly of Mexico, where he owned a ranch ).

He'd damaged the reporting of American history in a manner to set back the literature for a century. He's set the stage for most of the nonsense American believe.

Of course small papers can maintain some degree of integrity but there's very few voices in mass media that can.

I am very happy if good journalism still exists in Norway. That's great. In America? I'm much less hopeful.

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