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2025 Letter

danwang.co

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Re: 2025 Letter

#261

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

Yep. This is Jeff Foxxworthy level social analysis.

Re: 2025 Letter

#262

Post by UncleMeat »

usui wrote: post #14
strange_quark wrote: post #11

> I believe that Silicon Valley possesses plenty of virtues. To start, it is the most meritocratic part of America. Oh come on, this is so untrue. Silicon Valley loves credentialism and networking, probably more than anywhere else. Except the credentials are the companies you’ve worked for or whether you know some founder or VC, instead of what school you went to or which degrees you have. I went to a smaller college…

I guess I'll ask since you strongly disagree and ignoring the fact this is very reductionist: In your opinion, what is the most meritocratic part of America?

Meritocracy is not a single thing. Regions do not have a uniform relationship with merit, as they are made of many different communities all living amongst each other. "Which is the most meritocratic part of America" is not even an especially meaningful question.

Re: 2025 Letter

#263

Post by UncleMeat »

fastball wrote: post #13
strange_quark wrote: post #11

> I believe that Silicon Valley possesses plenty of virtues. To start, it is the most meritocratic part of America. Oh come on, this is so untrue. Silicon Valley loves credentialism and networking, probably more than anywhere else. Except the credentials are the companies you’ve worked for or whether you know some founder or VC, instead of what school you went to or which degrees you have. I went to a smaller college…

Judging you based on the work you've done seems... very meritocratic to me?

"Where you have worked" and "what you have done" are different things.

Re: 2025 Letter

#264

Post by UncleMeat »

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.

No surprise that the author is at the Hoover.

Re: 2025 Letter

#265

Post by snvzz »

immibis wrote: post #239
riku_iki wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They keep increasing and increasing the level of what they can produce. Within a couple of decades they will overtake TSMC, ASML, etc. If you're thinking about how the west still does all the design, they will produce their own computer architectures (Loongarch is outpacing RISC-V) and chips and operating systems. IIRC they're now able to make their own chips and chip-making equipment at a decade-old technology level…

>Loongarch is outpacing RISC-V

Not really, unless you mean in performance of available chips.

Notably, Loongarch and the company behind it have been around for much longer, and thus have a head start. But it is ultimately a single company's ISA.

On a grander scale, China's focus is on RISC-V.

Re: 2025 Letter

#266

Post by gen220 »

jdross wrote: post #196
gen220 wrote: post #185

Earlier 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…

Supply and demand doesn’t just work in terms of raw housing supply, but in terms of housing that is “on the market”, which is a critical distinction that economists’ arguments deliberately ignore.

In my parents’ generation, it used to be that if you moved or stopped living in a house, you would sell the house in location A and buy a house in location B. Today this would be considered a critical wealth-building error / faux pas. Widespread absenteee landlordism is a new phenomenon, and the fact that we allow it to exist is a de novo policy decision constructed to inflate property value (similar to the subsidized mortgages you referenced).

The reason housing is so unaffordable in my city is not because there isn’t enough housing for the people who live here, it’s because I (along with countless other professionals) am given a choice between subsidizing the lifestyle of somebody who literally doesn’t live here if I’m living in old housing stock, or I’m subsidizing the unavoidably high cost of developing new property (and the lifestyle of property developers) if I’m living in new housing stock.

If the balance of households renting vs owning were inverted, housing would be more affordable. I agree that subsidized mortgages helped create this beast. But the superset problem is the financialization of housing, that the American dream stopped being about the picket fence and started being about securing a passive income / rent-seeking on that picket fence. There are many policies that contributed to this problem.

No mainstream economists touch this problem because we’ve become a country of rent-seeking. So right-leaning economists will say we just need to relax regulation (read: increase the profit margin of property developers) and liberal economists will say we need more “affordable housing” (read: remove more housing stock from the market, for the benefit of a few lucky souls), while neither addresses the core problem of putting median housing titles in the hands of median people, which was perfectly normal from the 50s-80s, before our current system crystallized.

In our current system, building marginal housing and reducing regulation more benefits capital (the top 1% of asset holders; the property developers and the people who can afford to subsidize their profits), not the people who actually live here.

Re: 2025 Letter

#267

Post by Thorrez »

verbify wrote: post #258
lukevp wrote: post #116

Earlier 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.

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…

Fixed table formatting:

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

Re: 2025 Letter

#268

Post by DiscourseFan »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #240
DiscourseFan wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I’ve lived in the UK before, I will say that yes it is not the same as continental Europe, but culturally, socially, and economically it is deeply tied into Europe, is Europe an . One could say the same thing about Ireland—except the majority of Ireland is in the EU. Does Europe stop at the border of Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland is quite different to Great Britain, moreso than the difference between England, Wales and Scotland.

So you’re saying Northerm Ireland is less European than than Great Britain, whereas the Republic of Ireland is more because they’re in the EU?

Re: 2025 Letter

#269

Post by ben_w »

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.

Are you conscious of the fact that you replied to, essentially, someone saying "author mistakes preferences for metrics" with "it's not a mistake, it's a preference"?

Re: 2025 Letter

#270

Post by lostmsu »

jjcc wrote: post #190
whoevercares wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many people especially those with chronic illnesses died because Zero-COVID blocked access to basic medical care and food. Those deaths were policy-driven and avoidable.

You watch too much anti government media and mixed narratives with solid facts. You need to read both sides of stories

Stories maybe not. Trustworthy data is the only thing that could possibly resolve this question.
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