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

2025 Letter

danwang.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 340 posts

Re: 2025 Letter

#191

Post by dworks »

ceuk wrote: post #70

As a Brit, I struggled to get much interesting out of this considering how many times he mentions "Europe" (in that condescendingly general way that only US folks seem to manage). He talks about "European" prospects and his trip to Denmark but then cites London as a representative example? This almost broke my brain it felt so incoherent. Never mind that (despite my personal wishes) we're not even part of the EU (whi…

>As a Brit, I struggled to get much interesting out of this

As someone who didn't study China's tech sector, but spent more than a decade working in it, my view is similar on Dan Wang's writing on China.

Re: 2025 Letter

#192

Post by Cyph0n »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #181
Cyph0n wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example I like to use to demonstrate how broken labor vs. service costs are in the UAE is to compare the price of a Big Mac meal to the price of a standard manual car wash (closer to detailing tbh). In the UAE, a Big Mac meal costs approximately 35 AED ($10). On the other hand, a manual car wash - approx. 1-2 hours of labor - can cost you around 20 AED. In other words, you could get almost two manual car washes f…

You can probably get that here in the US near a high school during team sports donation times. Not a great car wash but probably $5-10 on the low end. One should be uncomfortable the Arab States are doing so well. They have no democracy but seem to be thriving. Not expected post 9/11 imo.

Why should one feel uncomfortable?

Re: 2025 Letter

#193

Post by jjcc »

dworks wrote: post #189
ksec wrote: post #58

In the thread "Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges" [1], I wrote about China'a hardware capability now going far beyond what US can imagine. In Dan's article; >A rule of thumb is that it takes five years from an American, German, or Japanese automaker to dream up a new car design and launch that model on the roads; in China, it’s closer to 18 months. Not only is China 3 - 5 times faster in terms of prod…

Whenever the topic of "China Speed" comes up, I feel the need to add that speed is not a strategy but an outcome of the previous four decades of relentless hard work: https://dilemmaworks.com/on-china-speed

That's a very important point that most people missed. China spent decades to achieve the current status. Especially the investment in education, i.e. Human Resource, the most effective ROI but need very long term commitment.

Western countries should do the same and do it continuously without consider the economic reward.

Re: 2025 Letter

#194

Post by dworks »

kalkin wrote: post #80

I have nonspecific positive associations with Dan Wang's name, so I rolled my eyes a bit but kept going when "If the Bay Area once had an impish side, it has gone the way of most hardware tinkerers and hippie communes" was followed up by "People aren’t reminiscing over some lost golden age..." But I stopped at this: > “AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever.” It’s a Pascal’s Wager That's not what Pascal's…

It's a very Silicon Valley thing to drop things like Pascal's Wager, Jevon's paradox etc into your sentences to appear smart.

Re: 2025 Letter

#195

Post by dworks »

jjcc wrote: post #193
dworks wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever the topic of "China Speed" comes up, I feel the need to add that speed is not a strategy but an outcome of the previous four decades of relentless hard work: https://dilemmaworks.com/on-china-speed

That's a very important point that most people missed. China spent decades to achieve the current status. Especially the investment in education, i.e. Human Resource, the most effective ROI but need very long term commitment. Western countries should do the same and do it continuously without consider the economic reward.

Indeed. What we need to do in Europe is spend the next three decades building the industrial, social, technological environment that gives China the advantages it has today, and enables "China Speed". I am worried that we will not do it until after we have gone through a deep crisis, however.

Re: 2025 Letter

#196

Post by jdross »

gen220 wrote: post #185
siavosh wrote: post #76

I read the whole post. Really revealing - so much analysis but not a single mention of a global system that is reaching a singularity in wealth concentration, and maybe how that might be an important dimension to reflect on. Its like using so many words to deeply analyze the speed differentials in a car race, but not looking up to see that all the drivers are racing towards a brick wall.

Sometimes I wonder if our system evolved the discipline of economics as an incredibly expensive intellectual distraction to pacify the petit bourgeois. We can read Dan Wang and Tyler Cowen and whoever else to educate ourselves on the idea that {interests aligned with the further concentration of capital} are the real reason why we the people of the middle class can’t afford to buy a home, and actually you should be g…

You can’t afford to buy a home because the current owners vote to restrict new housing through zoning and expensive regulation on construction permitting, so supply is limited in the places you’re trying to live (a higher income region?).

The government also subsidized mortgages for the prior generation to increase asset values and now that time is up. Subsidized demand = inflation

Finally, you likely want a bigger house than your parents had. And most people want it to be in the cooler area, not somewhere in Iowa where schools are great but restaurants and non-remote jobs are lacking

Re: 2025 Letter

#197

Post by ksec »

riku_iki wrote: post #128
ksec wrote: post #58

In the thread "Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges" [1], I wrote about China'a hardware capability now going far beyond what US can imagine. In Dan's article; >A rule of thumb is that it takes five years from an American, German, or Japanese automaker to dream up a new car design and launch that model on the roads; in China, it’s closer to 18 months. Not only is China 3 - 5 times faster in terms of prod…

that's obvious that some country with 1.5B working people will have edge in some niches, and will demonstrate tremendous growth from the bottom where they were 20 years ago. But for global picture, if we are comparing Western World: US+Canada+EU vs China in technological domination, the picture is likely not super-clear and more complex analysis is required. Even if we consider manufacturing output, where China is su…

>we see it is 5.5T for Western world vs 4.6T for China (according to my brief google searching).

I would bet the unit volume of manufacturing with those 4.6T is more than double that of 5.5T. And those 5.5T likely have some very high value, high margin leading edge equipment.

Not only is China catching up to those sectors, they are continuing their momentum to accelerate and expand in other low value market. They key here isn't to maximise profits, it is to maximise control.

If Trade is war, which is the fundamental of principle of what "Art of War" is about, then I dont see how the west could win this war without some very drastic changes.

Re: 2025 Letter

#198

Post by deaux »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #172
whoevercares wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero-COVID was an absolute disaster. It involved severe human rights violations and caused immense social and economic damage, including unnecessary displacement, homelessness, and even deaths. The number is lower sure, but China had the capacity to do much better

again, how is it a disaster if nobody else managed to do better? and it's kinda stupid to say "even deaths" on the background of Italy, India and even million dead in the US

China's statistics on COVID deaths are entirely unreliable. In reality, in all likelihood China was the least successful in its region of East-Asia, less successful than Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Note that I'm not including the large-scale suffering caused by the way it was executed besides deaths - if you include that, it's beyond any doubt they did worse than the countries mentioned above, and it's not even close.

Re: 2025 Letter

#199

Post by deaux »

jjcc wrote: post #188
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #160

> For tragedies too widely experienced in modern times to be censored — the Cultural Revolution, the one-child policy, Zero Covid ... this part has me confused can someone explain to me why Zero Covid - the most successful program that minimized Covid deaths - is a tragedy? imo it was better than whatever clusterfuck was happening pretty much everywhere else

There are two parts of the Zero Covid policy which actually is a continuous one : 1.At the beginning of the pandemic. It was successful in terms of reducing the death count of population but at the cost of freedom that also widely criticized in Western countries. 2.Because of the early success, the government continued the policy even it was not necessary till close to the end of the Covid. This is one of the biggest…

> Dan Wang's observation about China in his book is mostly accurate, except this part that he has some twisted view on CPP, which is not his fault but CPP's fault.

Give us your take, we're listening. Curious to hear.

Re: 2025 Letter

#200

Post by Animats »

siavosh wrote: post #76

I read the whole post. Really revealing - so much analysis but not a single mention of a global system that is reaching a singularity in wealth concentration, and maybe how that might be an important dimension to reflect on. Its like using so many words to deeply analyze the speed differentials in a car race, but not looking up to see that all the drivers are racing towards a brick wall.

US Per-capita real income tracked productivity growth until about 1975. After that, productivity continued to climb, but per-capita real income did not. This is why life sucks worse than it used to for everybody but the top 10%.

With AI coming along, productivity is about to get another boost. Maybe a big boost. But will most people benefit from it? Under capitalism as currently implemented, no. That's the meaning of Sam Altman's “I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.”

Universal basic income is not the answer. That's welfare 2.0, leading to high-rises of useless people. Altman doesn't have the answer. Wang doesn't have the answer. They both see the problem coming but suggest no viable solutions.

This is a problem.

[1] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Post reply on HN