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

251–260 of 340 posts

Re: 2025 Letter

#251

Post by vouwfietsman »

enraged_camel wrote: post #241
keiferski wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m responding to comments like this in the article: So I am betting that the US and China are more compelling forces for change. Stalin was fond of telling a story from his experience in Leipzig in 1907, when, to his astonishment, 200 German workers failed to turn up to a socialist meeting because no ticket controller was on the platform to punch their train tickets, citing this experience as proof of the hopelessne…

>> This isn’t a serious analysis of German culture. Who said it’s meant to be a serious analysis? This is an essay that shares anecdotes and personal opinions, not a PhD dissertation.

This is not really fair, the story is never explicitly discounted as hyperbole in the article and follows a range of other more mellow criticisms of europe. Also, directly following this quote, is the question: "Could anyone imagine Chinese or Americans being so obedient?".

None of this points to the story being out of place, and since the author specializes in serious analysis of china's relation with america, and the author brings up europe, its fair to assume that they included this story as a relevant criticism of europe.

In that regard, its indeed not of the same quality as the analyses of china or american culture.

Re: 2025 Letter

#252

Post by vouwfietsman »

snake_doc wrote: post #246
throwaway132448 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you only have to quote the letter itself: "I have a hard time squaring the poor prospects of Europe over the next decade with the smugness that Europeans have for themselves. I spent most of the summer in Copenhagen. There’s no doubt that quality of life in most European cities is superb, especially for what I care about: food, opera, walkable streets, access to nature. But a decade of low economic growth is…

What exactly is wrong with Americans or for the most part the rest of the world valuing economic performance as a measure of prosperity and progress? Your comment is again another anecdote confirming European stereotypes. It’s not a “trap”, it’s a different world view.

Again this is a polarizing question.

There's nothing wrong with either perspective, rather its the case that the European perspective is different. That's not to say that Europeans are right, or that criticism flowing from Europe to America is justified, but it should at least be acknowledged that pitching two players in a competition that one of the players has less interest in competing on, is misguided.

Re: 2025 Letter

#253

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

fastball wrote: post #186
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

meritocratic means "judgement on merit (aka skill)" and the story told is "no judgement on skill, only on being in-group. It's just the in-group is caused by previous employment and not birth-right/nationality/etc"

Previous employment isn't an "in-group", it's an endorsement of your skill (assuming your references pass muster).

it's the same endorsement of skill as a university diploma nowadays - not correlated in the slightest

surviving a startup says a lot more about skill than going through employee churn of some bigname corp

Re: 2025 Letter

#254

Post by vouwfietsman »

mns wrote: post #228
keiferski wrote: post #201

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.

The attitude here is quite astounding, seeing how any criticism of the author or this piece is seen as some sort of reductionism of his views and european smugness (?!?), all the while the author reduces an entire nation (Germany in this case) to the anecdote of a Georgian mass murderer, probably one of the most ruthless and diabolical people that ever existed, so yeah, very balanced discussion here.

Indeed, it seems that the gap that is present politically between America and Europe is to some extent also playing out in the individual, even in the tech scene. This is a little alarming to me, as the idea of an alliance can break down on the political level and be repaired in the new cycle of elections, that's OK.

But if an individual American really thinks Europeans are as smug as described in this article, or if Europeans really think the way this article describes, there is a more concerning, deeper issue with the worldview of these historically well-aligned peoples.

Re: 2025 Letter

#255

Post by strange_quark »

andrepd wrote: post #151
pityJuke wrote: post #4

As someone unfamiliar with the author, I had a deep amount of cynicism for the length of this piece... but damn, it's good, top to bottom.

Hard disagree. How many paragraphs of fawning over the unique culture of the Bay Area must I endure before he arrives at the point? Such gems as > I like SF house parties, where people take off their shoes at the entrance and enter a space in which speech can be heard over music, which feels so much more civilized than descending into a loud bar in New York. It’s easy to fall into a nerdy conversation almost immediat…

The next sentence is “The Bay Area has converged on Asian-American modes of socializing”

As if there is a single Asian-American culture and no Asian-Americans like going out to bars…

The whole piece is littered with weird over generalizations over huge and diverse groups of people.

Re: 2025 Letter

#256

Post by t43562 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #163
amelius wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why allow e.g. Chinese investors to buy property in SF if they aren't even going to live there?

1. It's only an investment because of limited supply. 2. Chinese investors buying up and not living there is effectively a myth. There just are aren't very many of them. 3. What's special about "Chinese"? If a rich NYC finance person buys a vacation home in SF is that ok? How about a Brit or German?

The supply may be limited because the people who own property want it to remain so.

Re: 2025 Letter

#257

Post by vanviegen »

keiferski wrote: post #201

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.

I agree. What are comments like this

> I feel it’s impossible to convince Europeans to act in their self interest. You can’t even convince them to adopt air conditioning in the summer.

doing in an article that seems to strive for serious reflection on different societies?

Re: 2025 Letter

#258

Post by verbify »

lukevp wrote: post #116
verbify wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spot checked some of this and from what I can find, the median salary in London is about $12k more than Mississippi, and the median house price in London is about $100k less than California. Bear in mind that obviously the mean salary in London is going to be far higher than the median (the finance industry will skew it), while I'm not sure that's as extreme as Mississippi. Additionally median salaries reflect a lo…

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.

I'm not sure why we're doing states vs cities. Jackson (the largest city in Mississippi) has a population of 150k. If I find a non-commuter belt town in the UK with a size of 150k, then the house prices will be dramatically lower. An analysis of London house prices needs to take into account that major urban areas in general command a premium (for reasons other than the ability to earn more).

If you compare SF or LA to London, then you'll find:

City | Median Wage | Median House Price | Ratio SF | 104k | $1.5m | 14.42 London | 67k | $890k | 13.28 LA | 73k | $1.1m | 15.07

London ends up being slightly more affordable despite lower salaries.

The whole analogy was a bit meaningless - it wasn't an apples to apples comparison. The writer mixed geographic and demographic scales to make a point that could just as well be about the unaffordability of large cities.

Re: 2025 Letter

#259

Post by opjjf »

kubb wrote: post #86
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…

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.

His wife is Austrian though, I would have hoped that adds a bit to his perspective.

Re: 2025 Letter

#260

Post by UncleMeat »

snake_doc wrote: post #223
keiferski wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m responding to comments like this in the article: So I am betting that the US and China are more compelling forces for change. Stalin was fond of telling a story from his experience in Leipzig in 1907, when, to his astonishment, 200 German workers failed to turn up to a socialist meeting because no ticket controller was on the platform to punch their train tickets, citing this experience as proof of the hopelessne…

[flagged]

This is sealioning.
Post reply on HN