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blog.samaltman.com

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Re: China

#161

Post by bresc »

> Even if there weren’t a competitor in the picture, countries historically don’t do well with declining growth, and so it’s in our interest to try to continue to keep growth up. It’s our standard advice to startups, and it works for organizations at all levels. Things are either growing or dying.

Actually it's time to rethink this "wisdom" that was introduced by our grandparents. There is no such thing as infinite growth and only by seeing this, the West (actually I don't care about the USA so much, as I'm from Europe) is going to prosper. Because in no-growth there lies a different kind of growth and a lot of opportunities for those who can think out of the box.

Right now growth is measured in money, but maybe one day it's going to be trust or influence.

Re: China

#162

Post by smacktoward »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #134
smacktoward wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 NI…

> Dictatorships, despite all their scary failure modes, have one very good feature democracies lack - they get things done... I think this is the very reason geeks seem to worship benevolent dictatorships. They're just efficient.

Not really -- or at least, not necessarily. Modern scholarship on Nazi Germany, for instance, has found that despite its much-vaunted efficiency it was actually a morass of feuding power centers all fighting each other to get Hitler's ear, which resulted in massive inefficiencies that in the end contributed materially to their loss in World War II. Fascist Italy was much the same way. And even the dictator himself didn't help matters -- look at the story of the revolutionary Me 262 jet fighter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262), which arrived too late to help Germany fend off the Allied bomber offensive because Hitler decided apropos of nothing midway through development that it should be completely retooled to function as a bomber instead.

Dictatorships look efficient, because they tend to focus resources on high-profile prestige projects of the kind that would never get off the ground in a democracy because they make absolutely no economic sense. If you build a pyramid, people are gonna look at it and say "wow, those people sure can get things done." But in their everyday operation they run according to the whims of the dictator, which hurts efficiency rather than helping it.

Re: China

#163

Post by lukasm »

Historically, all superpowers collapsed, so maybe there is a point where you cannot grow more with current system?

Re: China

#164

Post by marcusgarvey »

drt1245 wrote: post #129
marcusgarvey wrote: post #71

Why ignore the elephant in the room? The U.S. is more unequal than it has been since before WWII [1], and that is a big reason why its growth is stagnating.[2] It's time to stop taking seriously any analyses that do not address this. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-by-state-19... [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/income-inequa...

https://www.google.com/search?q=china+income+inequality If that was the case, China's growth would be stagnating as well. Not everything is caused by income inequality.

Not necessarily. 70% of the U.S. economy is based on consumer spending, meaning the disposable income has to be there in the first place. China's economy is not structured this way.

Re: China

#166

Post by diydsp »

Alex3917 wrote: post #117
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…

> Contrast this with the American culture of honesty; fraud and cheating are national scandals, not the norm. Fraud is basically the biggest national industry in the U.S. Just look at: - The 30% of all medical spending that is wasted. - The rise of for-profit colleges with super low graduation rates and even worse employment prospects. Same with law schools. - The fact that the majority of people who graduate high sc…

> The complete lack of food safety regulations and/or enforcement.

There have been some major recalls due to food safety in the last 5-10 years(1).

In the last 5 years, the Food Safety Modernization Act was passed (2).

In the last 5 years, the "Egg Rule" was passed (3). "Over 15 months, FDA inspectors visited about 600 facilities nationwide that produce about 80 percent of the country's eggs to determine if they are in compliance with the Rule, which went into effect in July, 2010."

You can also find thousands of warning letters the FDA has written to companies over the last decade on their website (4).

I searched through the warning letters for "supplements" and found exactly 500. (5) The letters were issued for all kinds of reasons, from outrageous claims, to products not containing the advertised chemicals. (6)

I'm not going to argue the other points you list, but when it comes to the FDA, your assessment of "completely lacking in regulations and/or enforcement" was overreaching.

(1) http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0512/the-5-larges...

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDA_Food_Safety_Modernization_A...

(3) http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments...

(4) http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/

(5) http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/warningletters/wlSearc...

(6) http://www.fda.gov/iceci/enforcementactions/warningletters/2...

Re: China

#167

Post by johnsea »

Alex3917 wrote: post #117
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…

> Contrast this with the American culture of honesty; fraud and cheating are national scandals, not the norm. Fraud is basically the biggest national industry in the U.S. Just look at: - The 30% of all medical spending that is wasted. - The rise of for-profit colleges with super low graduation rates and even worse employment prospects. Same with law schools. - The fact that the majority of people who graduate high sc…

> Just look at:

I'd like to add:

- how many people are in prisons (for imho minor offences)

- screwed up (software) patent system

- amount of money wasted on NSA

- stale two party government

- homeland security paranoia

Re: China

#169

Post by tormeh »

tdees40 wrote: post #113
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…

The US economy did hit a major recession, and Chinese growth slowed marginally, but generally did okay.

This. The Chinese economy is driven by investment, not export (though that helps). Western investors think investing in China is a good idea - that's where the growth comes from. And they're not wrong - investment in China has paid off (for those that have managed to navigate its complicated business-politics).

Re: China

#170

Post by akfanta »

rememberlenny wrote: post #6

I lived in Shanghai and worked at a startup for a year after college. The startup expat and startup local communities are surprisingly developed. There are a lot of co-working spaces, hacker spaces, and start up events. For anyone interested in China, you can live in Shanghai without speaking Mandarin. Western training in programing, design and product is highly valued. Salary offerings are lower by a factor of 10. R…

"Salary offerings are lower by a factor of 10", compared to where? A decent freshly graduated developer in Shanghai can easily make 1.5-2k USD a month. Where you do get 10 times more than that?
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