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How the U.S. became a science superpower

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Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#221

Post by generativenoise »

potato3732842 wrote: post #204
woooooo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarians took over a town in NH and abolished town wide garbage collection. The free market produced a bunch of trash in people's yards, which attracted bears, causing havoc all around town. True story. That's not to say you can't solve a lot of problems with markets. It just means waving your hands at "the free market" like it's a magic talisman is a childish thing to do.

Why didn't they just shoot the bears? You'd figure libertarians would be all for that.

Because they couldn't reach a consensus with their governance mechanisms. There were people feeding and encouraging the bears. I guess they could have shot all the bears. Eliminating all the bears because a sensible consensus can't be reached seems like a gross failure of humanity to coexist with the natural (uncontrolled) world.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#222

Post by patagurbon »

consumer451 wrote: post #138
monknomo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a relatively easy fix to a negative replacement rate (at least when you have a well-run, wealthy, attractive country) is immigration. Replacement rate isn't a problem when you let more folks in

I agree, but this only works if one is willing to accept a changing racial profile/culture. It appears that many people do not accept this idea. Not just in the USA, but look at Japan or South Korea, for example. To me, the really interesting question is how to stop what appears to have been inevitable for the last 40+ years: when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what co…

The US was very good for a very long time at integrating immigrants. It should continue that tradition and work even harder at it.

I believe it was some Republican president who said something to the effect of “if you move to Germany you may be a citizen but you are not a German… But if you move to America and become a citizen you are an American”.

It’s worth noting that not all advanced societies have fared as badly as Korea and Japan. Scandinavia for instance is below replacement but not nearly as catastrophically as Korea. It’s possible that a bit more policy tweaking and more productivity=>leisure time could get them back to a replacement rate.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#223

Post by layer8 »

ijidak wrote: post #143

> By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years Was this written in 2030? The war ended in 1945. Just a minor nit... It was jarring to see a statement of questionable accuracy in the opening paragraph.

If you read carefully, there is no strict implication that the 85 years of leading only begun after the end of the war. If it began 1940, the quoted sentence would still be correct.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#224

Post by Retric »

nostrademons wrote: post #181
monknomo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a relatively easy fix to a negative replacement rate (at least when you have a well-run, wealthy, attractive country) is immigration. Replacement rate isn't a problem when you let more folks in

Fertility rates are below replacement on every continent except Africa, and they're dropping quickly there. Immigration isn't going to save us, at least not long-term. I think what'll happen is that areas that still have a vibrant age pyramid will put up borders (either geographic or economic or both) with ones that don't, and say "Sorry, you're on your own" to the latter. They protect their children at the expense o…

It’s not just regions you find differences based on culture, and guess what natural selection is going to do with less fertile cultures.

Hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#225

Post by consumer451 »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #210
consumer451 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but this only works if one is willing to accept a changing racial profile/culture. It appears that many people do not accept this idea. Not just in the USA, but look at Japan or South Korea, for example. To me, the really interesting question is how to stop what appears to have been inevitable for the last 40+ years: when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what co…

You know NYC is already minority white right?

My most controversial take, even though it is 100% true:

The entire planet is minority "white." I put that in scare quotes because even as the lightest skinned person in the land, I know that "white" is a made up in/out group term. As a Slav, I was not "white" according to US immigration law as recently as the 1950s. There is technically no such thing as being white, there is only passing for white. The definition of white entirety depends on the day, and who you ask. Slavs, Irish, Italians, Greeks, were not "white" until very recently. It's a silly word that really means nothing.

If one wants to slow down "white" people becoming the minority more and more due to their economic advancement, clearly the solution is carpet bombing poor countries with e-readers preloaded with Wikipedia. That is the only moral way to even things out!

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#226

Post by patagurbon »

philwelch wrote: post #171
apical_dendrite wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not really. The fact that we import so much is a function of our wealth, not our poverty. We import food because we like to have a variety of produce year round and we like alcohol from foreign countries and we can afford it. Britain was importing food because otherwise there would be famine. These are not equivalent situations.

It's true that the United States does not depend on food and energy imports. However, the growing fiscal situation and unsustainable costs of maintaining global hegemony are very similar to that of Britain in the 20th century, as is the declining competitiveness of American industry. You're never going to find any exact or perfect historical parallels but there are enough similarities to cause concern.

The US is not really in trouble because of maintaining global hegemony. It’s in trouble because of repeated tax cuts by Republicans that are too popular for Democrats to fully unravel, and deficit spending largely caused or enacted by Republican administrations. Maintaining global hegemony really isn’t that costly to the US as a percent of GDP. It’s foolishness like the Middle East wars that are costly.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#227

Post by roenxi »

grafmax wrote: post #174
jack_h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…

The idea that the free market will self-correct and optimize outcomes is a well-documented fantasy. Markets don’t account for externalities, they concentrate wealth (and therefore political power), and they routinely underprovide merit goods like education, healthcare, and basic research (things that benefit society broadly but aren’t immediately profitable). As for how to address budget issues, the solution is simpl…

> Markets don’t account for externalities

But on net the externalities are just as likely to be doing more good than bad. I've yet to see anyone in the public debate tallying up the positive externalities of markets. "They have externalities!" is likely to be an argument in favour of free markets, without the positive externalities a free market generates we would be poorer and more uncomfortable - it doesn't take much looking to find a whole raft of spinoffs where free market activity generates positive externalities.

Things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease where through no action of their own actors and musicians get a lot more money than in medieval times purely to represent the alternatives the market offers them.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#228

Post by throwaway473825 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #185
monknomo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a relatively easy fix to a negative replacement rate (at least when you have a well-run, wealthy, attractive country) is immigration. Replacement rate isn't a problem when you let more folks in

This doesn’t fix your problem if the people you let in cost more than they contribute in taxes. See for example the Netherlands where non-Western immigrants are large net negative contributors and their children are no better. https://docs.iza.org/dp17569.pdf Similar results apply in Denmark. https://docs.iza.org/dp8844.pdf EU style negatively selected immigration where easily a billion people are eligible for asylum…

They might still create more value than they cost. For example, a bus driver enables many people to work, but has a low wage and hence pays little in taxes.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#229

Post by koakuma-chan »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #155

It also didn't hurt that a certain European science superpower started purging academics based on ideology, said academics being more than welcome in the USA. Wait a minute...

I'm pretty sure the US is currently pushing for merit-based admission.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#230

Post by killjoywashere »

I've met Steve on a number of occasions, smart guy. I also work in this space and have definitely read a lot of the same books he has, along with many of his excellent articles. Alas, I'm pretty sure he would never read my articles, unless he got cancer, which I hope he doesn't.

I do want to pick up where he left off: the interface between the US and China, and specifically look at how China has invested. I've spent some effort on this forum making the point that our system has left some critical vulnerabilities that the Chinese have leveraged, e.g. (1,2).

It's worth understanding that Xi Jinping has been working hard on this problem set, along with his predecessors and many around him for a long time. To really understand his whole-of-economy approach, I highly recommend Hank Paulson's Dealing with China (3). He has and maintains a narrative of literally going from a boy in a cave to the leader of the largest nation on Earth. Much like the narrative arc Churchill maintained for himself (the Prof Blank mentions), Xi would see science as a component of the tapestry, but not the whole story.

Xi is also using the Belt and Road Initiative for massive effect, see the maps in (4). The US has started to pay attention with renewed investments in the region, e.g. (5) but Xi has a decade head start and a political base that could be characterized as relatively stable compared to the current US administration.

As my time is limited, I'm appending a reading list at the end for those interested (6 to end). Suffice to say, yes this is how we became a science superpower. But it ignores how our parochial incentives and belief in American exceptionalism morphed in the American narcissism (14) this is very likely to doom the American experiment without significant effort on the part of the American population to come together. Unfortunately, I fear the fracturing of the population is too far gone to remediate without major conflict, but major conflict in the present setting is likely far more serious than we could survive as a nation.

As a final thought, the major conflict is obviously nuclear war. We will not survive that as a nation. Thus the Prisoner's Dilemma. We are all prisoners on Earth. Even Musk's species-level escape is far from escape. The physics of deep space travel or even intra-solar-system travel just don't work out in our favor. So, how do you survive the Prisoner's Dilemma? The math answer is "there are a lot of complicated answers" ref (15) but mainly, all parties need to work toward, and signal reliably that they are working toward, stable equilibrium. Being an unreliable partner must be met with brutality, even at the cost of everyone.

(1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655390

(2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321493

(3) Hank Paulson, Dealing with China. We, and specifically, Goldman Sachs, and specifically Hank Paulson, taught Xi how to win. https://www.amazon.com/Dealing-China-Insider-Economic-Superp...

(4) https://merics.org/en/tracker/how-bri-shaping-global-trade-a...

(5) https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/us-revives-wwii-era-pacific-ai...

(6) Manchester. The Last Lion, the 3 volume definitive biography of Churchill, which puts the Prof's work in the largest possible context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Lion:_Winston_Spencer...

(7) Jamie Holmes. 12 Seconds of Silence, the definitive story of the proximity fuse, a significant portio of Merle Tuve's unique contributions to the war, and the story of the founding of Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory. https://www.amazon.com/Seconds-Silence-Inventors-Tinkerers-S...

(8) Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Note Merle Tuve also plays a critical role in this narrative, not bad for one of those 'second rate' government labs. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/...

(9) Rocco Casagrande and the work of Gryphon Scientific, alas (but probably net good) acquired by Deloitte. Wayback has some of their reports: https://web.archive.org/web/20240228103801/https://www.gryph...

(10) Senior Colonel Ji-Wei Guo, and his theory of Merciful Conquest, audaciously published in the US's own Military Medicine journal https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19813351/ see also https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/weaponizing-bio...

(11) Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The Dictator's Handbook. This Berkeley professor uses innumerable real world examples to illustrate how dictators effectively control their populations https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

(12) James C. Scott, Seeing like a State. UC Santa Cruz professor uses several extremely large examples the illustrate other ways governments control their resources. Spends a lot of time on the negative effects but certainly acknowledges the net upsides usually seem to outweigh the net downsides, but it would be good to learn how to avoid downsides when you can: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

(13) Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs. Most interesting passage to me was the dinner with Obama where Jobs told Obama the manufacturing jobs are never coming back. https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648...

(14) H.R. McMaster https://www.twincities.com/2020/10/16/h-r-mcmaster-u-s-forei... also https://www.amazon.com/Battlegrounds-Fight-Defend-Free-World...

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