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blog.samaltman.com

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Re: China

#301

Post by dood »

maratd wrote: post #282
yeukhon wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I came to the US when I was 12 and I have been living here for eleven years. I was born in Hong Kong, but I think I know quite enough about the mainland China. But please correct me if I am wrong. As a Chinese, I think this is not short-term. I think it has to do with culture, how people were brought up. I don't remember the proper term for this, but people are pressured to make money. Call it peer pressu…

> Actually in China today there is a 70-year land-use right. You can own a piece of land for 70-year... Very few outside of China know about this and it will actually be very interesting in the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_law#Obtaining_...

This is interesting. What happens when you lose the right to the land your home or factory is built on?

Are there common provisions for renewing the land-use right? Do people expect that their land-use right will be renewed?

Re: China

#302

Post by userulluipeste »

"A remarkable number of the major technological developments—far in excess of our share of the world’s population—have come from the US in the last century."

For the most part those technological developments were due to the import (or plundering, if you're judging it as a non-American nationalist) of minds and entrepreneurial resource from elsewhere, and less because America actually forged its own bright people. That kind of affair was the easiest thing to do when America was the only place reasonably safe and developed (after WW2). Things change.

Re: China

#303

Post by waps »

thevardanian wrote: post #286
Htsthbjig wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conflict creation for profit is something inherent to humans, not the West alone. We are predators, we eat bunnies, and because bunnies don't kill us in return, we think that it is ok. For example, Spanish conquered South and Central America, but the people that lived there were not conflict free. In fact, if you compare Spanish with Mayans that will extract the heart out of their alive enemies, or their skin, Spanis…

I'm not talking about violence at all. The goal of a state is in fact to have a monopoly on violence. I'm not taking sides at all, just pointing out the history of the past couple hundred years. China is like any other state, in fact it was literally the first instance of the Modern State that had centralized authoritative systems of governance that provided various facilities throughout the Empire, mandated by the e…

But you hit on a very interesting point, but don't follow it through to conclusion:

> What the West was able to do is exploit that technology to create a new economic system, ...

> Furthermore it's an assumption to think that conflict creation is inherent in human beings, because it's really not, and there are many instances of various government being satisfied in their own domains. China, and India being an example where incredible wealth meant a stable state, ...

A stable economy is not a Nash equilibrium, and therefore unsustainable (not necessarily, but ...). Those nations were defeated, because they settled in a non-Nash-equilibrium and they were destroyed because of that. The west created a new equilibrium and it absorbed the world.

This is not the fault of the west, or of anyone at all, any more than my wet coat is the fault of the rain. If you live in a non-Nash-equilibrium state you are one change of tactics by one of your friends or enemies (or pets, really) removed from extinction (or at least massive change).

These states would have been defeated and replaced sooner or later regardless of whether any individual player felt the need to do so. It was easy to do, just requiring the first domino to get pushed over. The west was there at the right time with a better system, no more, no less. And most of the destroying would have been done, not by western soldiers, but by people in those old systems who very likely enormously benefited from introducing the new system.

Re: China

#304

Post by kiwidrew »

maratd wrote: post #282
yeukhon wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I came to the US when I was 12 and I have been living here for eleven years. I was born in Hong Kong, but I think I know quite enough about the mainland China. But please correct me if I am wrong. As a Chinese, I think this is not short-term. I think it has to do with culture, how people were brought up. I don't remember the proper term for this, but people are pressured to make money. Call it peer pressu…

> Actually in China today there is a 70-year land-use right. You can own a piece of land for 70-year... Very few outside of China know about this and it will actually be very interesting in the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_law#Obtaining_...

It's not such a big deal; in Hong Kong, for instance, all property (with very very few exceptions) is leasehold land. The most common term is now 75 years. The city has been in existence long enough that many of the original leases have come up for renewal at least once. In the vast majority of cases, the government signalled far in advance (10+ years) that: (a) it would renew the leases, and (b) the terms under which they would be renewed.

Yes, it is a different system than freehold property in Europe and America, but that doesn't make it unworkable.

Re: China

#305

Post by Eridrus »

FeeTinesAMady wrote: post #298
Eridrus wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why the bit about families is relevant. No-one expects people with families to move across the country for work.

Why not? Do people with families not need to work?

Not every opportunity is great for everyone; people with families generally don't like to travel, that doesn't mean that a job that entails travel is a bad one.

Having a family is clearly a choice. And having 3 kids is very different from having 1. These people will always have less material goods and have a harder time scraping by than someone with no dependants when the cost of living is high. This is true of any industry in any expensive area, it's what you should be expecting if you have kids.

In any case, the original comment is wrong about housing prices, you get shafted when you try to live right in the heart of SF, pretty much everyone with a family is going to have to commute from somewhere, you can still get comparatively cheap 3 bedroom houses in san jose, and there's still plenty of tech companies with offices in the south bay.

Re: China

#306

Post by lexcorvus »

The secret to this is not genetics or something in our drinking water. We’ve had an environment that encourages investment, welcomes immigrants, rewards risk-taking, hard work, and radical thinking, and minimizes impediments to doing new things.

It's disappointing (though not surprising) to see Altman dismiss the possibility of genetic differences between populations playing a role in differential economic success. While it's true that the US population has enjoyed many non-genetic advantages, genetic and non-genetic factors are not mutually exclusive. Showing that non-genetic factors do play a role is not the same as showing that genetic factors don't play a role. (I'm tempted to call this the "Guns, Germs, and Steel Fallacy," since Jared Diamond's work on the subject is essentially a book-length expansion on this basic error.)

If you read Larry Bird's biography, you'll learn how in high school he became obsessed with basketball, practicing at every opportunity and shooting 500 free throws every morning. He also had the good fortune of having a series of outstanding coaches and living in a culture that valued basketball prowess. On the other hand, he also grew to be 6'9".

Re: China

#307

Post by tomsun »

flyrain wrote: post #238
tomsun wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who spent more than half of his life in China, I'd have to agree with you, at least from an anecdotal perspective. Trust is hard to build in China. A lot of people care about making money but people scarcely think about creating value for the society. Wealth is synonymous with consumption. The worst part I think, is the 1) social stability is valued over social mobility 2) individuality is shunned rather t…

As a Chinese, I agree with you. A lot of (let's say most of)Chinese people actually care more about making money than creating value for society. But, I think this is a short-term wave, especially starting from 1978. And in China, people need more money to establish safety of life since there are less social security and public welfare comparing to western countries. This could change when there are more social secur…

Well, you're basically asking more than a billion people to change their cultural value on a fundamental level that has been instilled starting 5000 years ago. I wouldn't casually put it aside as a minor issue that can be solved by social security.

Re: China

#308

Post by TeMPOraL »

cbgb wrote: post #217
TeMPOraL wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand economics enough to address the point on debt, but I have to comment on that: > American culture of honesty; fraud and cheating are national scandals, not the norm Wait what. Fraud and cheating are sometimes national scandals if media bothers. But there's absolutely no honesty. Corporations lie and steal. Journalists lie. Startups... well, things like astroturfing, lying to users, tricking them int…

I would argue that the very notion that cases of fraud and dishonesty make such large media headlines underscores the American culture of honesty the OP is referring to. Brian Williams was just suspended for six months without pay for lying about a single news story more than a decade ago. From a business perspective, NBC knows their viewers won't take them seriously if they keep a potentially dishonest news anchor o…

A recent example.

http://blog.solarcity.com/monopoly-money

Here we have companies blatantly bribing government, and not even really hiding that fact. Did I miss that massive national scandal it caused?

Re: China

#309

Post by bduerst »

allemagne wrote: post #295
bduerst wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Chinese value the appearance of working hard, not actual hard work. It's very interesting how deep this type of behavior is ingrained in their culture. For example, western cultures have Aesop fables (e.g. Tortoise and the Hare) which tend to celebrate hard work and punish laziness. Eastern cultures have fables that tend to celebrate being clever or manipulative (e.g. The lion and The Rabbit). It's also interest…

This is textbook confirmation bias. You're ignoring the writings of every Chinese philosopher valuing hard work, the tendency for Chinese schools to value rote memorization--a very work-intensive activity--over creativity, the fact that American railroads were basically built by the Chinese, and the fact that you're likely reading this on a device made by hard-working Chinese hands. Your willingness to see East Asian…

Please don't project your confirmation bias onto me. How you got that from one comment is more than just a bit absurd, especially considering I said most, not all, so there are definite outliers as you mentioned.

I also specifically said eastern cultures, which are not limited to Chinese, and the example I gave is in fact a Panchatantra fable, making it Indian in origin, not Chinese. But don't let that stop you from making assumptions and blasé accusations with your alt Hacker News account.

Re: China

#310

Post by rifung »

chrischen wrote: post #89
rifung wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe so but I thought the lottery wasn't getting into YC but working for a start up that becomes successful. In that sense it's very much like a lottery: you have a tiny probability of succeeding, but if you succeed you get an extremely large sum of money. I'm not entirely sure it's like a lottery in terms of the expected value being negative though (if you consider the opportunity cost as a negative).

Its a lottery if you blind folded yourself and pointed at the startup you work at. You can always mitigate the risk by researching and making an educated decision about where you work. Different startups have different degrees of risk.

Indeed, but the probabilities are still so low that it's like a lottery. Obviously it's not an actual lottery, just similar to one in the sense of low probability high reward.
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