The insights on American and Chinese industry / tech are undercut by the generic stereotypical “Europeans are smug and backward-looking” comments. A bit disappointing that someone who spends a ton of time analyzing two complex societies (China and the US) falls into Reddit-tier caricature on a third.
2025 Letter
201–210 of 340 posts
Re: 2025 Letter
#202I've been convinced for years now of 90% of what Dan Wang wrote here about China, though I don't even have 20% of his talent in writing it up in a coherent way. Nor do I have enough on-the-ground experience in the country, nor the surname, to make me credible.
During all this time I've tried to think of a way to invest in this belief in a monetary way, but I've failed to come up with anything. Chinese stocks? Foreigners' holdings will likely be worthless when the slightest crisis happens. Then what is left? Without going and living there, I'm not sure. Has anyone thought about this?
Re: 2025 Letter
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
> 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
This is a fundamental problem. People in big cities are on average richer. That's not just a US thing. People in a Tier 1 city in China have a substantially higher standard of living than people in lower tier cities. There is a very real hierarchy.[1] City tier is determined by size, not income, but income tracks size.
This is the phenomenon that induces over-concentration. Go to the big city and make your fortune, or at least find enough scraps to keep you alive. That's why US homelessness is a rich city thing.
Figuring out how to make mid-sized cities, at the 0.5M to 1M population level work, is something the US currently is not doing well. Those cities have housing, but not jobs.
Re: 2025 Letter
#204I 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…
I'm not sure I understand your complaint. Is it that he misuses the term Pascal's Wager? Or more generally that he doesn't extend enough credibility to the ideas in AI 2027?
More the former. Re the latter, it's not so much that I'm annoyed he doesn't agree with the AI2027 people, it's that (he spends a few paragraphs talking about them while) he doesn't appear to have bothered trying to even understand them.
Re: 2025 Letter
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
sure, and what's your point? My opinion is that high margin leading edge equipment is more interesting direction than low cost low tech produce.
Re: 2025 Letter
#206I 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…
I agree. The center of capitalism may have shifted to China, but they'll have to deal with (are already) dealing with the same problems and it'll probably happen even faster for them. Instability in the system is only overshadowed by the growing instability in peoples lives. I think most people feel this and the discourse has fundamentally shifted in the west, but these are tectonic and unpredictable forces.
A parting thought: from a geo-political perspective, I understand the purpose of essays like this but like I said I think its losing the forrest for the trees and at great risk.
Re: 2025 Letter
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your statement here is pretty ironic. China also has many different cultures, languages and so on for the over 1.4 billion people who live there. Why would the “nuance” of Europe be “lost” on a Chinese person?
China mostly has a single national identity, and provincial differences are way too nuanced to be mapped in the same way that country differences in Europe would be. It would be like trying to get Americans to understand that "Henan man" is a meme similar to the "Florida man" meme.
I thought it was Guangxi man...
Re: 2025 Letter
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re trying to do a rebuttal, saying that wages are slightly higher than Mississippi and house prices are slightly lower than Cali doesn’t refute anything, it just serves to make the example more extreme and concrete. Look at house prices in Mississippi in relation to their income and then compare the same ratio for Cali and for London.
Also, taxes?
tax numbers are irrelevant except as part of a takehome pay calculation.
at the very least, pretending that health insurance isnt another tax is a common way to derail these discussions.
Re: 2025 Letter
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
He’s a Chinese guy in the US. He thinks in terms of large monoliths. The nuance of 40 different cultures on a small continent might be lost on him. That’s OK. We all have some approximation of reality in our brains which is necessarily shaped by our life experiences.
There is something very irritating seeing someone dismiss someone else on the internet using condescending therapy speak 'Thats Ok', nevermind the fact that calling him out as some ignorant Chinese guy while China has hundreds of cultures and languages, as if a Chinese person couldn't comprehend... Europe.
Europe and China are quite different, historically and culturally. It would make sense that people from the two regions wouldn't know about each other. The world is full of detail. As someone who's lived in both the west and asia I'm still surprised by little differences I see every week.
Re: 2025 Letter
#210London has the house prices of California and the income levels of Mississippi. the UK is seriously broken, I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita while in the US you see automated car washes, in the uk most car washes are Albanians n other immigrants etc
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