Patrick Collison's Questions

...have you considered that things are much nicer there but at great cost to the sections of people they consider "not nice?" Especially in Japan?

There are different questions that we have at each level in Maslow’s pyramid, and HN tends to focus on the last two levels - but that doesn’t mean the questions at the other levels are any less important. There are other site, communities and blogs that cater to people at these levels.

A one size fits all solution wouldn’t be good for any of the levels, and it doesn’t mean people are one level are any better or worse than people at others.

"Where will the money come from to get the car fixed?" is a very personal question; answering it well would require knowing a lot about the person asking, and what their life circumstances, talents, resources, and obstacles were. This makes it harder to discuss on HN (or most other Internet sites), since these are very large groups who are mostly strangers, and don't know that much about each other. Questions about economic equality, the cost of housing, career advice, and so on in general are reasonably well represented here, I think.

On the Chinese research question: Just wait a decade.

In all likelihood, I am permanently departing academia in about a month. The underlying reason is structural -- neither our funding agency nor our institution is willing to yield on a fundamental sticking point that is causing all of our young researchers to leave. I am about to join them. There is literally no path forward.

In the decade that I have watched my world-leading research group wither, our Chinese colleagues have expanded their laboratories by 4-5x, appear to be well-resourced, and are poised to lead the world on all fronts within the decade.

An excellent colleague of mine, who had done excellent work for US particle-physics experiments, went to China for a high-energy physics faculty interview. On arrival, he was surprised to find that there appeared to be another candidate competing for the position. He did his best, as did the other candidate. As he prepared to depart, he asked whether or not it had been a competition for the open position. The reply? "We had one position, but we liked both of your talks so much, we are extending offers to both of you." There was no matching US offer of which I am aware: he accepted.

That essentially never happens these days in the United States. It is a story the likes of which one might have heard from 1950-1970.

Chinese physics results are continuing to gain in reliability. Where once we saw quite a bit of copy-catting, Chinese fundamental science research is beginning to transition into regularly breaking new ground.

Wait a decade.

We should welcome this development with open arms. A billion smart people, with equal potential, should be able to turn out roughly three times as much research as the 0.34 billion smart people in the US. We can encourage that research at the same time that we must stand against the regime's attacks on democracy in Hong Kong, the atrocities occurring in Xinjiang, their surveillance state, threatening the independence of Taiwan, enabling North Korea, and more. ( The US has dirty laundry, too: Our President is incompetent. Vote! )

"Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?"

That list is pretty much rank ordered by the amount of non-substitutable human labor involved per unit. Everything in red is a pretty universal need (health, education, child care, housing, food), while the blues are mostly wants. So we want medical care, but that requires a lot of labor, and each of those workers requires housing, but that's supply constrained in much of the country, and they have be educated, but college cost is rising, and their employees need child care, and the child care workers need to go to the doctor ...

If there was a way to reduce the cost of living (my hobby horse is dramatically increasing the amount of by-right housing permitted to be built in an area), then that would ripple through all of these industries. High and increasing costs and wages make labor-intensive industries much more expensive by comparison.