Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 317 posts

Re: China

#131

Post by nostrademons »

kirse wrote: post #88
Afforess wrote: post #55

I disagree with a lot of this. The Chinese value the appearance of working hard, not actual hard work. Cheating among Chinese students is pandemic. Chinese companies regularly publish misleading or outright fraudulent earning statements and quarterly reports. While the Chinese government seems to be taking steps to reverse these trends, it will take a long time to undo their culture of corruption. Contrast this with…

China's growth has long since been an organism that feeds on the back of the gorilla of US growth. If the US economy would hit a major recession, China would come crashing down with it. On the other hand, if the Chinese economy would have a major collapse, the US would suffer, but still be able to re-route core-value manufacturing processes to new countries (or back home). I agree with your cheating note, many of the…

FWIW, the U.S. got its start as a major industrial power by a major act of industrial espionage. (Francis Cabot Lowell went over to England for two years, worked in the textile mills, memorized all the details of their workings, and opened the first textile mill in the U.S. in Waltham, MA.) Large-scale American industrial espionage continued throughout the rest of the 19th century. American goods had the same reputation for being cheap knock-offs of British innovations that Chinese goods do now.

I don't think this has anything to do with the respective cultures of either nations. Remember that China has a long culture of valuing knowledge for its own sake. Rather, it's rational for the firm that's behind to copy the firm that's ahead. The firm that is ahead has no such option available to it. That's also why it's never the best students that cheat off their peers - they have nobody to cheat from. China and the U.S. (in both periods of history) are just responding to the incentives available, as ambitious actors in their own right.

Re: China

#132

Post by api »

mathattack wrote: post #109
api wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call real estate the "evil sponge." As a region becomes more affluent, the price of real estate appreciates at least in step with this. Due to the leveraged debt financing of RE, the reality is often that price appreciation is a multiple of wage appreciation. This takes pretty much all the surplus capital in a region -- among everyone but the rich -- and locks it up in an inert asset. Think of it this way: a starte…

It's not an exact comparison... For instance - if I bought a house in the 1990s for 200K and it's now worth a million dollars, it isn't stealing $800K from anywhere. That's new wealth that I have that I can also put to work. (Even if I don't take a mortgage out on the house, I can invest more of my other money more aggressively, if I'm paying less mortgage, or know that I have a high value asset in my home) I think i…

It's not "stealing" 800k. That would be a bit too strong. But the problem is that your 800k comes via the fact that newer entrants to the market must now take out monster mortgages. It's not wealth created, but a draw on future wealth and an increase in the interest payments of younger workers.

It's sort of a generationally regressive tax. I personally suspect that policies that protect and encourage RE hyperinflation have been pursued as a way for the baby boomers to economically eat their children.

Rent prices are also quite tied to real estate prices, so when the latter appreciates rents go up too.

Re: China

#133

Post by JonFish85 »

kirse wrote: post #88
Afforess wrote: post #55

I disagree with a lot of this. The Chinese value the appearance of working hard, not actual hard work. Cheating among Chinese students is pandemic. Chinese companies regularly publish misleading or outright fraudulent earning statements and quarterly reports. While the Chinese government seems to be taking steps to reverse these trends, it will take a long time to undo their culture of corruption. Contrast this with…

China's growth has long since been an organism that feeds on the back of the gorilla of US growth. If the US economy would hit a major recession, China would come crashing down with it. On the other hand, if the Chinese economy would have a major collapse, the US would suffer, but still be able to re-route core-value manufacturing processes to new countries (or back home). I agree with your cheating note, many of the…

I agree with pretty much all of what you said, and I also wanted to add a bit more along these lines. It's all pretty much anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth.

Engineers that I've worked with in China are wildly different from what I consider engineers in the US. They seem to be better at making a given process ruthlessly efficient, but they're not so great at creative problem solving--I suspect it's a cultural thing more than anything else, but that's just an opinion.

So I think that China is great at adding value in making things efficient and cheap from an operational standpoint, but I don't think they add a lot of new ideas, which are an outcome of creative thinking. Once there are countries more desperate for manufacturing money (South America region, maybe?), China will have a problem because the jobs will leave and they will have to find a way to generate value in other ways.

For now, they don't really own many brands that people know; they manufacture white-label goods, so to speak, but I can't think of any specifically Chinese name-brand goods that people buy because they are superior to anything we have in the US. Sure, a huge portion of stuff is made in China, but when was the last time something big was invented in China?

It fits with your initial point, that China is dependent on US ideas, whereas the US loves their low prices, but ultimately doesn't need them.

Re: China

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

smacktoward wrote: post #92
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have endless impressive growth. Once you're developed its going to hit a reasonable cap. China is still developing. You can't compare the most mature economy to one of least developed. The move from back-breaking farm labor all day to manufacturing is MASSIVE growth. The problem with Western democracies is that we moved past that stage over 100 years ago. Now we're in a service based economy. That just does…

> These pro-China pieces are mystifying to me. Geeks always seem to worship autocrats and dictators for whatever reason. It's because we see the world through the lens of our relationship with our computers, and in that relationship, we are dictators. We tell the computer what to do, and it just does it. It never asks for more vacation time or complains when we push it to its physical limits. In those cases where it…

I disagree. I think it's mostly because geeks like effective solutions.

Dictatorships, despite all their scary failure modes, have one very good feature democracies lack - they get things done. When there's a new power plant to be built or transportation project to be realized, they just happen. There's no need to pander to clueless people bitching about things they don't understand. No anti-nuclear movements, no NIMBYsm, etc. No decision-making overheads because various politicians are bribed to support different groups. No pandering to electorate. If it needs to be done, it just gets done. In contrast, western governments are pretty much incapable of any serious action on anything that matters.

I think this is the very reason geeks seem to worship benevolent dictatorships. They're just efficient. It's maintaining the benevolent part that is hard.

Re: China

#135

Post by VLM »

api wrote: post #94
mordocai wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For good reason. It is both unhealthy and inefficient to work massive amounts of hours. There are multiple studies that show that overall productivity increases when you don't work over 40 hours a week.

The studies I've seen show productivity falling at 40 hours and dropping off a cliff at 50 for most activities. I don't think the blame for the workaholic culture lies primarily with VCs, though some do encourage this. I think it's mostly a part of the cult of male ego. "I worked 70 hours last week! How many did you work? 50? Wuss! I'm so much more hard-core than you!" People also lie about how many hours they worked…

"I'm so much more hard-core than you!"

Its a grind game. Obviously my WoW character level 70 is far superior to your WoW character level 50.

Unfortunately companies can be killed by this kind of primitive behavior when the 70 hour/week guy executes less shareholder value add than a 20 hour/week intern.

Give someone a stupid metric to aspire to, they'll max it. Might destroy the company in the process, maybe even themselves or their own careers, but they'll max the metric number, thats for sure.

Re: China

#136

Post by breckinloggins »

relaytheurgency wrote: post #68
breckinloggins wrote: post #5

After listening to a recent episode of Invisibilia, I've become somewhat convinced that one of the root ills of current American society is extremely low expectations . Whenever I think of countries like China, I think of an entire population driven to be more excellent. I know that's not true in general (people are people everywhere), but I still feel there is a stronger expectation that, as a human, you will do mor…

Maybe you're projecting your own lifestyle onto the entirety of society. Honest question: Have you been to China?

No. But you always hear in stories about the more disciplined populace and the focus on education standards. It's possible those are overblown, but I would argue that the average American (myself included) definitely gets the impression that we are a bunch of slobs compared to the Chinese.

Re: China

#137

Post by happyscrappy »

tsurantino wrote: post #101
kirse wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's growth has long since been an organism that feeds on the back of the gorilla of US growth. If the US economy would hit a major recession, China would come crashing down with it. On the other hand, if the Chinese economy would have a major collapse, the US would suffer, but still be able to re-route core-value manufacturing processes to new countries (or back home). I agree with your cheating note, many of the…

I completely disagree with your notion that U.S. is less interdependent than China. The exchange is clear: U.S. needs cheap Chinese manufacturing to proliferate its innovation, and in turn, China gets direct access to U.S. blueprints, and is able to leverage and improve upon them to produce their own products. This is basic economics, not a question of "who is genuinely innovating". American companies need cheap manu…

>I completely disagree with your notion that U.S. is less interdependent than China.

Well we will probably find out shortly as the largest real estate bubble in the history of the world is about to pop in China.

Re: China

#138

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #72
epicureanideal wrote: post #23

The US could easily remain the world's only superpower if it was ruthlessly focused on doing that. Actually it would have been easier 40-50 years ago. The opportunity is fading away. Interestingly, the US often behaves as if it wants to control the world. So either this is a misperception, and the leaders of the US don't want to control the world (and they're spectacularly bad at public relations), or they're spectac…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: China

#139

Post by jorgecastillo »

I know at least one metric where China won't beat the US in while: GDP per capita

>It’s almost unthinkable for most people born in the US in the last 70 or so years for the US not to be the world’s superpower. But on current trajectories, we’re about to find out what that looks like.

Things would have to go so horribly wrong as to make being a superpower irrelevant for the US to lose its superpower status. It's undeniable that in the future the US might have to share this status with China but I don't see this happening in the following years.

Quite frankly China's rise is overrated!

Re: China

#140

Post by api »

VLM wrote: post #135
api wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studies I've seen show productivity falling at 40 hours and dropping off a cliff at 50 for most activities. I don't think the blame for the workaholic culture lies primarily with VCs, though some do encourage this. I think it's mostly a part of the cult of male ego. "I worked 70 hours last week! How many did you work? 50? Wuss! I'm so much more hard-core than you!" People also lie about how many hours they worked…

"I'm so much more hard-core than you!" Its a grind game. Obviously my WoW character level 70 is far superior to your WoW character level 50. Unfortunately companies can be killed by this kind of primitive behavior when the 70 hour/week guy executes less shareholder value add than a 20 hour/week intern. Give someone a stupid metric to aspire to, they'll max it. Might destroy the company in the process, maybe even them…

Reminds me of the old metric for code productivity from aeons ago, the K-LOC (thousand lines of code).

If one programmer does in 50 lines what takes another programmer 5000, should that programmer make less?

Post reply on HN