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2025 Letter

danwang.co

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Re: 2025 Letter

#271

Post by throwaway132448 »

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.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with having that value if you want to. The problem is not having the self awareness to realise when that framework of values is clouding your view of other perspectives.

A lack of self-awareness is a trap - the most insidious one because you don't know when you're in it :)

And you'll need a citation on "for the most part the rest of the world". Economic performance as the one true measure of prosperity and progress is very new, even in America itself: Most Americans have no sense of how very different their country is now from say, the country that launched the Apollo missions.

Re: 2025 Letter

#272

Post by elevatortrim »

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.

Because economic performance does not account for unsustainable consumption of natural resources as a cost. Say I have $1M in the bank with a $10K monthly income. I am spending $100K per month. What is wrong with me measuring my happiness by the amount of money I spend?

Economic performance is a number. You can optimise it. Or you can choose any other number, and optimise it too. Is money the best number? Why not median lifespan? Why not reported happiness? Why not median wealth? US has much more money than EU, but the cost is the streets are covered with homeless. Is US really more prosperous if it can't provide a decent life for the equal percentage of people compared to EU countries?

Re: 2025 Letter

#273

Post by kayo_20211030 »

A very good read, with some provocative and thought-provoking content.

I just wonder if his aversion to AI as a panacea merely failed to displace his adherence to competition as a panacea. In the long run he's probably betting on a better horse, at least on one with better history and staying power; and we all need gods to believe in. However, it does feel like articles of faith still, but with a broader church.

His focus on capacity and planning is the golden nugget.

I loved the book recommendations. Generally the political and military history of the late Austro-Hungarian empire is incredibly interesting, and remains good signage on navigating current central- and eastern- Europe's situations.

Re: 2025 Letter

#274

Post by elevatortrim »

Nextgrid wrote: post #210
dzonga wrote: post #49

London 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

[flagged]

As a person who moved from a third world country to UK, this could not be further from the truth. Life in the UK, both economically and socially, is miles better than my previous 3rd world country (which is still in world top 20 GDP).

Re: 2025 Letter

#275

Post by ben_w »

piker wrote: post #235
hdgvhicv wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No vat on the majority of spending - from rent to food. But buy a £50k Rolex and yes there is vat.

Roughly the same with sales tax, it's just 1/3rd of that number. > But buy a £50k Rolex and yes there is vat. This is wildly ignorant of how less fortunate people live. They are hit with VAT on many daily expenses. Ignoring that fact and "tsk tsk"ing them for being frivolous is the [British] way.

Many daily expenses, yes. Before I left the UK, IIRC there was some campaign about tampons.

But "majority" just means half.

Between "The standard rate of VAT is 20 per cent, with around half of household expenditure subject to this rate." - https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/...

And Figure 10.2 on page 6 of https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05...

I'd say it's very close to even odds that the other poster is correct to say "No vat on the majority of spending".

I'd also say that VAT should be reduced to encourage domestic spending and local growth, but I did leave the country for various reasons that can be simplified as "I do not expect the UK government to do the right thing".

Re: 2025 Letter

#276

Post by elevatortrim »

klysm wrote: post #50
dzonga wrote: post #49

London 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

Income and wealth inequality! I don’t see a way out for the UK

Would you mind telling me if you are a genuine person who lived in the UK, or at least have some knowledge of the country beyond recent tweets?

Honestly I am shocked at the recent rise of anti-UK comments with horribly incorrect information or skewed views and curious about what is sourcing this.

Re: 2025 Letter

#277

Post by elevatortrim »

jemmyw wrote: post #153
hereonout2 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that unimaginable things might have changed in the almost two decades since you left?

Yes, it is unimaginable that the UK has replaced most of their automated car washes with immigrants washing cars manually. I've been back there and I've still family there, it's not that different "on the ground" as it were, despite the big political changes.

It did not, all the automatic washes are there.

I can see the reason why people see it this way though. For £20, you can have 4-5 people getting your car into the best state it can be in under 20 minutes. I would even say it is a joy to watch them work so efficiently.

Most people prefer that over automatic car washes, so after some point, while the automatic washes are there, you become blind to them.

Re: 2025 Letter

#278

Post by ben_w »

Cyph0n wrote: post #192
ineedaj0b wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To the extent that a dictatorship is doing well, it is evidence against the idea that democracy is the natural way to have a good economy.

That said, I don't think those states are doing *well enough* to justify such a fear. What we're looking at from the outside are basically the promo reels from a version of Disney Land made for people whose childhood dream wasn't to be a princess or a knight, but a CEO with a Lambo; what the kids see when they visit Disney has little in common with the effort needed to present the park.

Re: 2025 Letter

#279

Post by ben_w »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #231
shimman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House prices are only "out of wack" in areas with poor social housing programs. Housing in Vienna is still affordable, only due to their very successful public housing programs. Public housing can be both beautiful and highly affordable if you want it to be, it's not like we don't know how to make good quality homes with lovely public amenities. It's mostly developers that want to skim on everything while selling it…

How does Vienna ration housing - social or otherwise - if not via price?

Your reply suggests you're thinking inside a very strange (to me) box.

Have you considered… not rationing housing?

As in, you can actually pay people to build more houses, houses are not a fixed resource. Likewise roads, schools, shopping centres etc., they're all things you can just pay to get built. Only thing a little harder amongst the usual talking points is hospitals, but that's because medical qualifications take so long, not because you can't do it.

Re: 2025 Letter

#280

Post by fhsm »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #119
shimman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House prices are only "out of wack" in areas with poor social housing programs. Housing in Vienna is still affordable, only due to their very successful public housing programs. Public housing can be both beautiful and highly affordable if you want it to be, it's not like we don't know how to make good quality homes with lovely public amenities. It's mostly developers that want to skim on everything while selling it…

I am interested in what is working in Vienna when “housing problem” is what almost every city in “the West” has or thinks it has. To me it seems to be a combination of - wealth inequality (eg 20/30 trillion dollars was printed and furloughed out in Covid, which funnels its way up to the holders of the most assets, seeing asset price inflation but no attempt to tax back the money printed). Repeat on different scales f…

I don’t follow it but your last suggestion (use single income not household) was new to me and interesting in as much as it seems like an obvious extension of “The Two-Income Trap” thinking.

To some extent seems like it would also provide a margin of safety given homogeneity effects eg https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-pa...

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