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blog.samaltman.com

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Re: China

#171

Post by cyorir »

kyllo wrote: post #58
random28345 wrote: post #12

Should the goal of the US be to emulate happy, stable, wealthy, smaller economies but arguably more egalitarian northern European democracies? Or rather, should we chase China in a race to the bottom? Lower corporate taxes, longer working hours, reduced environmental protections, with the goal of creating a fabulously wealthy klepto-capitalist ruling class? How dare people criticize kids burning the candle at both en…

I wish I could upvote this more than once. American insecurities about China seem to come from people who don't understand how unenviable China's position is. The country is authoritarian, polluted, crowded, and corrupt. People in China work hard because living in China really, really sucks if you are poor. Members of the wealthy ruling class all own property overseas and send their kids to university overseas. They…

I think you are hitting the right point, that China's system has a lot of flaws that we don't want to pick up. However, you are casting this in absolutist terms, "NOTHING about China's economic system would be appropriate," and I do not think that is correct either. Just because China has some flaws, such as its inability to handle environmental and social problems, it is a fallacy to then say that every thing about it is flawed. I think a more reasonable response is to say, "we should look to Northern Europe, but we should also look to China, and be wary of making the same mistakes found in any given system, whether in China or in Northern Europe."

Re: China

#172

Post by nissimk »

JonFish85 wrote: post #133
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 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…

I think that 15 years ago that was true of Korean manufacturers, and look at them now. Hyundai was a brand that was fairly reliable, but was ridiculed in popular media. Now it's on par with Japanese brands and often considered premium. Also, Samsung went from making parts for everything to developing and marketing their own premium products. Chinese manufacturers can easily follow this same path and I think it is already happening.

Re: China

#173

Post by chiph »

melling wrote: post #25
chiph wrote: post #3

China has 3 times the population of the US. As soon as they started growing a middle class, it was inevitable that this would happen.

Can you provide any support for this statement? I don't believe population directly correlates with the size of your economy. I only ask because if America is going to remain relevant, its citizens need to stop making shit up as they go. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP...

There is a ratio between them based on how productive your workforce is. German workers, for example, are thought to be very productive. But expressed as a GDP-per-person ratio, not as productive as US workers. China is far behind in productivity, yet their enormous population means they're ahead in total dollars. And as Chinese workers move from low-productivity work such as family farming to industrial farming & factory work, their population will act as a lever and grow their GDP even more so.

    China: GDP 16,149  Pop 1,357,380
    US: GDP 16,768  Pop 320,206
    Germany: GDP 3,512  Pop 80,716
    (millions and thousands, respectively)
So the GDP per-person ratio of each country is:

    China:  $0.01189
    US:  $0.05236
    Germany:  $0.04351
Expressed in terms of productivity, China still has a lot of growing room, and I would expect their GDP numbers to continue to grow in the future.

Re: China

#174

Post by adventured »

Alex3917 wrote: post #152
adventured wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to have to backup that claim that the majority of people that graduate from college are functionally illiterate. I call bullshit on that being true. The American food system is one of the safest and most regulated on earth. You may disagree with some of its practices, but that does not make it unregulated nor unsafe. The claim that America has a complete lack of food safety regulations is laughable, you…

http://www.alexkrupp.com/Citevault.html#literacy

Your source proves me right.

You're wrong in your claim that the majority of college graduates are not functionally literate.

2% of college graduates fall below a basic level of literacy.

14% of total adults fall below basic on prose; 12% on document; 22% on quantitative. The numbers of college graduates are vastly lower than those.

And further, digging into the data, I'd be willing to bet that half of those numbers of people that struggle on basic literacy - in english - do so because their primary language is either not english and or they have very little command of the language (first generation immigrants etc).

Re: China

#175

Post by thevardanian »

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…

A better question is why America became a super-power in the first place?

I think many of the assumptions of American exceptionalism are not root causes, as the majority of the reasons for why America, and the west in general, have risen to global domination are embedded in, how should I put it, conflict creation, and not conflict resolution. The west has benefited tremendously from the deliberate, and sometimes accidental ability to create conflict around the world, and gain profits from it including in China. This isn't some controversial claim, this is pure, and simple Nationalism, and enlightenment ideas of State.

However as the industrial dregs settle down, and as Imperial might whimpers, we're seeing the rise of countries that were left destitute in the past 150-200 years, regaining a sense of internal stability. The result of this new founded stability around the world unfortunately, or fortunately, creates a new world where the center is other than the west. Already India, and China are talking about a polycentric world that activity eschews the hegemony of the west, in favor for a more equal world, because let's face it the west is the 1%.

Even if we deny all that it would be very difficult to refute that America has in the past 100 years been an incredibly stable nation compared to the entire world, and coupled with an active participation in global economies. It was perhaps the only nation on the planet that was internally stable, and had a strong external presence. All other nations eventually declined, had internal struggles, or were just emerging as global economies. This alone gave America an unprecedented advantage over the last 100 years, and that advantage is slowly becoming meaningless as the entire globe is stabilizing.

Re: China

#176

Post by relaytheurgency »

breckinloggins wrote: post #136
relaytheurgency wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have never gotten that impression, and given that 1/3rd of the Chinese population are still in small farming communities, several of which do not have access to things the average American considers basic and fundamental to life, I don't see how anyone would have that impression.

Re: China

#177

Post by XERQ »

A bit off topic, it looks like Sam Altman is ramping up his blogging activity due to YC's S15 open sign-ups.

Re: China

#178

Post by cyorir »

tormeh wrote: post #144
tdees40 wrote: post #47

I don't mean to eye-roll, but Sam on economics tends to be, well, meh. The thing I always remind people when they say that China will take over the world is that everyone said the same thing about Japan in the 1980s (remember the movie/novel Rising Sun?). What happened? Well, the mercantilist economic toolkit has an endgame. Neither Sam nor I knows when it's going to let them down, but building an entire economy on c…

There's a population difference. While the US is more than twice as populous as Japan, it is less than a fourth as populous as China. It would be crazy if Japan became wealthier than the US; it would be only natural if China did.

There are also many other differences: differences in resource/energy availability, differences in the global environment, differences in policy options available to the government, differences in internal structure and diversity, etc. The Japan-China comparison is popular these days but it misses a lot of the things that distinguish China from the old Japan.

Re: China

#179

Post by rrggrr »

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...

The US is unequal largely because the US exported millions of blue collar jobs to Asia but did not proportionally increase incentives to create jobs for those displaced. This only affected the middle class as the highest earners benefited or were untouched by the job exports. The US then created huge incentives for "investment" in home purchases and other real-estate, creating a spectacular bubble that worsened inequality all the more when it burst. That did impact higher earners. Everyone is worse off. So, it must be the case that now Congress and the President are working together to make job creation, manufacturing and competitiveness a priority, right? Not so much. New manufacturing innovation centers appear to be patronage boondoggles. While billions went to bank bailouts, the Small Business Administration saw no significant increase. Taxes actually increased for employment, and the US healthcare law has made health insurance more (not less) expensive for many employers.

Re: China

#180

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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