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2025 Letter

danwang.co

281–290 of 340 posts

Re: 2025 Letter

#281
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]

I'm British by birth, lived there until 2018. I've also visited Kenya and Switzerland and the US.

Kenya's actually third-world. Was playing a card game with my partner and family in a gas station in Nairobi when sparks started flying out of the outdoor lighting system covering the forecourt roof. Place I was staying, there was a power cut that meant the water pump couldn't keep the taps and toilet pressurised. The fancier toilets in the shopping mall, the paper was outside the cubical because it cost too much to not be a theft target if it was inside; other places, squat toilets. Public transport included a Matatu, kind of a hybrid of a bus and a taxi, very cheap but it was also a minivan that only moved when full, and "full" meant about as many people as would physically fit given they'd replaced the cargo area with another two benches and everyone was squeezed in. I didn't visit the actual slums, which are (from the pictures I've seen) much worse.

Switzerland… the discount food is priced like Waitrose. In this regard, it's a bit like America. But American discount food has the quality of Poundland, while Swiss discount food has the quality of Sainsbury's.

The UK is much better put together than Kenya. It is much cheaper than Switzerland or the US.

Re: 2025 Letter

#282
post #228

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.

I find these comments funny, because a lot of HNers will reduce the behavior of Asians (everything is about “face”), and yet become so acutely aware when it happens to Europeans.

Re: 2025 Letter

#283
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW this comes across as very condescending to me too. Maybe try a different framing.

Interestingly, you’re demonstrating arrogance. All you’re bringing to the discussion is “my feelings are hurt”. And you’re putting the onus to fix that on me. You have the power to change your paradigm, but you refuse to. Others have to see things through your lens, you won’t have the flexibility to change yours for a moment. Meanwhile I’ve started with a plausible explanation of why someone sees things differently.…

Good framing

Re: 2025 Letter

#284

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.

There's also a big differences between the Western Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe on the forward/backward looking plane.

I presume his eyes are mostly fixed on the "old EU".

Re: 2025 Letter

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But at a more fundamental level, our material quality of life is that of literal kings. This cannot be overstated. To wit, a Honda Accord (or equivalent mid-range car of today) is objectively superior to a Rolls Royce from the 90s in terms of amenities, engine power/efficiency, quietness, build quality, safety, etc. The same is true for quality-of-life improvements across a vast swath of consumer goods, and therefor…

> Carefully consider the lifestyle of someone living several decades ago. Would you honestly want to live such a lifestyle yourself? Sure, I lived it, and it was very pleasant at the time and in many ways better than now in retrospect. e.g. always-on access to infinite content engines like YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook, etc. is probably a net negative, both for individuals and society. I wouldn't want to go back a cen…

The good thing about YouTube, TikTok, Facebook etc is you don’t have to use them if you don’t like them!

Re: 2025 Letter

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tru…

> Most Americans have no sense of how very different their country is now from say, the country that launched the Apollo missions.

You cannot be kidding right? Those that remember the Apollo missions will undoubtedly agree their country is different, first but not least they are most likely using a smartphone assembled and designed with technology unimaginable by NASA planning the Apollo missions; not only that, the smartphone is assembled half way around the world by a country previously in such dire poverty and famine that over 30M died due to Marxist central planning.

Re: 2025 Letter

#287
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House prices are out of wack anywhere desirable because the local income is irrelevant when non-locals are allowed to scoop up the local supply.

This is a common opinion that never actually matches the facts. The issue is all the things blocking supply. As long as supply is blocked, prices will go up, Period

[deleted]

Re: 2025 Letter

#288

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…

great, healthy competition is good for everyone, and it will force western companies innovate harder.

Re: 2025 Letter

#289
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…

Dubai is absolutely economically broken lol. The city was built on cheap foreign slave labor. And the luxurious amenities of the city are only for the wealthy royal and foreigners. Their main export besides oil is the illusion of a thriving metropolis

AKA the most sensible economic model for Dubai. It's a nice enough metropolis for the desert, entices enough high end talent to live there to supplement frankly undereducated population a few generations away from nomads, and locals are comfy. What else they going to do with oil money in the desert.

They're just arbitraging cheap labour in your face instead of some farm field or factory overseas. For resource to local population ratio, it's supremely optimized - cheap migrant workforce does all the shit job locals don't want to do, don't have the numbers to do, without need for onerous social safety net of citizenship.

It's economically "fine", as in as "fine" as can be trying to pivot desert city from oil. It's morally broken because labours occasionally be slaves, even though largely everyone wins. UAE gets cheap labour, labour countries get remittance, labourers get life changing pay.

Like west already does this shit in some sectors (agri) and get cheap calories, UAE can't supply enough labour in all sectors and get cheap everything.

Re: 2025 Letter

#290
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…

The tremendous growth is still happening on sector by sector basis, and arguably west only holds edge in few extreme frontier niches while PRC increasingly dominating rest. Relevant PRC joke:

If China can't make something, it's considered high tech. Once china makes it, it's no longer high tech.

PRC makes high tech products into low margin commodities. That's what happens when they have roughly oced combined in stem talent and vast industrial base to value engineer. And most of it happened in last 15 years. The point is PRC catches up fast (including extreme frontier), and when they do, they can scale and cut margins, which is more interesting direction than west who seemingly can't. The point is that is obviously the superior dominance recipe vs west who has vanishing frontier lead that will continue to be lost because western margins is PRC opportunity. The point is when PRC makes >50% of global stuff materially but charges <50%, it's exceedingly likely that will take over everything, at PRC speed, and will not leave west any high margin, leading edge niches, unless west can learn to operate with low margins as well.

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