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

311–320 of 340 posts

Re: 2025 Letter

#311

Post by DicIfTEx »

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

> I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita

Can you elaborate on this?

From what I can tell, the UK's per-capita electricity generation has dropped steadily from a 2003 high[0] (4,069 kWh in 2024, 6,657 in 2003, 5,266 in 1985) and per-capita energy consumption has been going down since 2005,[1] but energy intensity (read: inverse of efficiency) has been decreasing consistently since at least 1965.[2] Domestic electricity production is down 24% since 2000,[3] whilst imports (which I don't think includes Albanians) are up 206% in the same period.[4]

That all reads to me as a country whose domestic generation has been replaced by imports and whose consumption has been reduced by efficiency gains, but I'm aware that I'm conflating figures here for 'energy' and for solely 'electricity'; I couldn't find anything for per-capita energy generation, as you specified.

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#in-...

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#wha...

[2]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#ene...

[3]: https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#whe...

[4]: https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#whe...

Re: 2025 Letter

#312

Post by exceptione »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #173
slfreference wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care who the next hegemon will be; US or China. But please pray, can these people tell what their next strategy is for the rest of the world after the Cold War ends. Will the next regime advance sciences further after whichever side wins the Cold War? Can't that be done without the war? US has been hegemon since last 5 or so decades; has it worked out best even ONLY for the Americans if not for the rest of th…

from my understanding, US strategy "for the world" is "you sell me things, I sell you dollars, do democracy or else" - while best China guess seems to be "build business, together, don't push your agenda on others or else" (as with anything, these will change over several decades tho) but main divide seems to form on "ngo vs government" lines, imo - and ironically the exact opposite way of the proclaimed "authoritari…

The way China have done/do "business" with non-Han ethnicities is a very creative way of abiding by the maxim "don't push your agenda on others".

All jokes aside, current China and current US administration believe in "might makes right", like any criminal gang. They both like to abolish the rules based order, any smaller "piece" will be on the menu in this school of thought.

Re: 2025 Letter

#313

Post by maxglute »

riku_iki wrote: post #307
maxglute wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, your reading comprehension can't parse basic argument, so there's not much to discuss. For >50%, pick a manufactured finished good or intermediary good like steel, electronics, solar modules, batteries, shipbuilding, xyz components, and chances are PRC produces more than 50% of it by volume/units/tonnage, but not gross/value add. For more broad proxy indicator, look at share of global export TEUs, PRC…

So, you don't have source, this was expected.

I'm not here to enter your lame sealioning effort for basic facts. This is 2026, you can validate claims trivially. Or you can keep demonstrating illiteracy/innumeracy, which is just as well. Audience can go through comment chain and judge argument merits / cognitive function.

Re: 2025 Letter

#314

Post by riku_iki »

maxglute wrote: post #313
riku_iki wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you don't have source, this was expected.

I'm not here to enter your lame sealioning effort for basic facts. This is 2026, you can validate claims trivially. Or you can keep demonstrating illiteracy/innumeracy, which is just as well. Audience can go through comment chain and judge argument merits / cognitive function.

burden of proof is on you, because you made a statement.

If you blindly trust LLMs, it explains well why you are like this..

> Audience can go through comment chain and judge argument merits / cognitive function.

or very few care about your fantasies spam lol

Re: 2025 Letter

#315

Post by ineedaj0b »

exceptione wrote: post #310
ineedaj0b wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those articles were written a plenty about the Davos Elite - even precovid. It’s a tad lazy now. Sure there was some evidence of wealth concentration mattering. But there was also evidence against it (like Jack Ma). Power is still the ring to kiss. And hopefully it’s very understood to the parent comment and agreers, wealth creation is not zero sum. When something new is created the pie gets bigger. All wealth inequa…

> wealth creation is not zero sum. Entirely not the point. We know that monopolies and wealth _concentration_ reinforce each other, at the cost of wealth creation. Every time a monopoly buys a company, a chance of competition gets eliminated. As monopolist have enough money to buy the government by regulatory capture or even state capture, competition cannot grow, stifling innovation and growth. Parasitism is the mos…

I agree we should be busting more monopolies in the vein of Teddy Roosevelt, but you are forgetting the monopolies and capture political parties have on the states themselves.

I know its a hot issue and I apologize, but if you look at Minnesota with its likely fraud: would their social welfare program numbers look better without the fraud? Could California be run better without its (also likely) welfare fraud? You might really want this but the leadership doesn't want to root it out. So you're left with voting for the opposition but how many want to do that? Nothing happens.

There's no competition in politics. It's two parties or nothing right now.

There's Californian billionaires who loudly hate the Government but can't get anything to change. I feel you are overestimating wealth's influence too some degree as well.

Re: 2025 Letter

#316

Post by gen220 »

ehfeng wrote: post #305
gen220 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Emotionally, I agree that the current system sucks. But how exactly do you "[put] median housing titles in the hands of median people"? Government seizure and redistribution of property titles? That's where I always get stuck: criticizing society ills is much easier than proposing concrete, pass-able policy. "No mainstream economists touch this problem" because it's a damn hard problem without painless solutions.

I mean the problem will solve itself eventually. As wealth continues to centralize and urbanization continues unchecked, the “renter” voting block will eventually be state-level majorities in places like New York and California.

There are plenty of ways for people to “vote themselves” property, whether it happens peacefully or not is a decision of those in power. The spectrum runs from land value tax to punitive landlord taxes, improving tenant rights, squatter rights, and outright seizure.

I don’t know which path we’ll go down, but some step in that direction feels inevitable within the next 60 years.

Re: 2025 Letter

#318

Post by exceptione »

vanviegen wrote: post #257
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?

It is a bit of a trope under self-important bloggers, he seems to have copied and as such it reveals one's depth of understanding. On the one hand: who cares, we all have stereotypes when the resolution is too low. And criticism is due, but not this one.

I think it is a bit of a trade-off, his writings are engaging, but to discuss Europe in a serious way a blog wouldn't cut it, and it would make it possibly quite dry nonetheless. One has to not only understand the EU, their limited budget and mandate, but also the various parties in each country. This is just incredibly difficult to form an accurate picture of, even if there wouldn't be things like centuries old cultures and various languages.

To take away from the doom and gloom, iff the EU is really able to integrate in the next decade(s), form a shared market, my money would be on them. Both the current US government and Russia fear an integrated Europe, as they would be too big as a prey. Meanwhile, many countries want to join the EU, despite it being a "hell hole", at least if one believes the adversarial content promoted on the big tech platforms. At this moment the current US government supports "nationalistic" parties and corrupt kleptocrats like Orban, trying to break it apart from inside.

Re: 2025 Letter

#319

Post by exceptione »

strange_quark wrote: post #255
andrepd wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It happens with more authors. Blogging and self-promotion on social media easily leads to fast and sensational "insights". It is fast food: feels good, easily digestible, way better than a thorough study involving the required ifs-and-buts and the hard work of trying to find blind spots in one's own perspective.

The latter profile isn't suitable for short content bites and doesn't sell to a large audience. The former does, but comes with a cost only the uninformed aren't aware of.

I can sympathize with that though. Non-fiction in general is a hard sell.

Re: 2025 Letter

#320

Post by zurfer »

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.

Yes it's a bit disappointing but probably captures the current American and Chinese opinion quite well.

Europe as a whole has a lot of good things going for it but I do agree that it's less ambitious on average than these 2 power blocks.

However the same dynamic that was described in the article where nobody wants to lack behind is also true for Europe.

Also, yes Novo Nordisk plundered their GTM in the US and lost market valuation but you can still get the same medical outcome in Europe as a patient based on a European invention. Another one: The first Covid vaccine came out of Germany.

More interestingly is the question on degrowth. I personally believe that growth is the more tempting path in general, but we do live on a finite planet and no system is on a path or has a good framework on how to grow sustainably or responsibly. Maybe AI is going to figure it out for us, but maybe it involves some hard tradeoffs that intelligence alone can't solve.

Post reply on HN