Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

geohot.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#61

Post by roncesvalles »

indy wrote: post #41
roncesvalles wrote: post #30

The Chinese are not worried about AI taking anyone's job. In fact they're excited by it. For some reason, there is this unbelievably thick air of paranoia in America where everyone is just waiting for the day when their job will go away. To a point where I think it should be classified as mass hysteria and looked into by public health authorities. We should all introspect why so many of us perceive America as this ve…

Do you think there is a level of guilt amongst some working Americans? A case of "I shouldn't be earning this much money for this little work"

This guilt is baseless and part of this mass hysteria.

I used to work at the American office of a Chinese company. Our counterparts in China earned about half as much as we did in the Bay Area (which is a top-tier salary in China and attracts the best people). On the surface there is really no reason for a Chinese tech company to set up an engineering office in the US. And yet many of them do.

One of my colleagues asked our manager whether he thinks our jobs in the US were stable because the teams in China cost so much less. The manager just said the talent quality is still a bit better in the Bay Area so it's worth it. That sounds like a tautology, but I think there's something deeper.

The problem in America is that a lot of companies have started thinking of talent as a "toll", a cost that you need to pay to get things done. If you think of it as a toll, then your objective becomes how to minimize it. I think that's wholly the wrong perspective.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#62

Post by roncesvalles »

croes wrote: post #45
roncesvalles wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The belief that there is no safety net is also part of the paranoia that I'm referring to. America is actually one of the most welfarist states in the world.

Only if you include those countries without welfare. If you look at those with welfare the US are pretty bad. Lots of money but badly distributed

If your judgment of "badly distributed" comes from all the homeless people that you see, those people have fallen through like a dozen safety nets to get to that point and most of them cannot be helped.

You could literally hire a full-time dedicated team of 10 social workers and mental health professionals to care for 1 crazy SF hobo and it still wouldn't turn around their lives, they're too far gone.

You never see the iceberg of people who are successfully helped by American welfare.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#63

Post by Jtarii »

boxed wrote: post #53
adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons What would be different in Tesla’s output if Americans didn’t start boycotting Tesla less than 2 years ago? And I’m glad you think killing at least half a million kids in Africa to not even save any money, stealing all our social security data, etc are just “silly political reasons”.

> What would be different in Tesla’s output if Americans didn’t start boycotting Tesla less than 2 years ago? Car companies do better if they sell cars. They also find it easier to sell cars if owning said car doesn't make you fearful some crazy person will smash it because of identity politics. > And I’m glad you think killing at least half a million kids in Africa to not even save any money, stealing all our social…

No one forced Elon to kill a million Africans. He could have just like, not done that.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#64

Post by manfromchina1 »

boxed wrote: post #34
direwolf20 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is at the forefront of innovation. America is not, except for financial innovation a.k.a. the best ways to get money out of people without doing actual work.

China is a the forefront of catching up. Don't mistake that for innovation. China isn't building the best chips, that's Taiwan with really Netherlands doing the hard part. China is catching up to European car makers except they've largely caught up to Tesla in the powertrain (I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons). In the AI space obviously China is just running after playing c…

Despite my handle I am not Chinese lest I am accused of harboring any bias. Anyway, I decided to look up what is going on. Apparently, things are nuanced. On the one hand China lags behind when it comes to semiconductors, large commercial aircraft, some pharmaceutical innovation. On the other hand,

> When evaluating the top 10 percent of high-quality scientific publications, ASPI finds that China surpasses the United States across all 8 critical technology domains. The gap is particularly pronounced in the energy and environment domain, where China accounts for 46 percent of top-tier publications compared to just 10 percent for the United States. Despite U.S. leadership in AI, China produces more top publications, contributing 30 percent versus 18 percent for the United States[0]

Basically, China dominates in batteries, solar, quantum communications, robotics deployment, high-speed rail, nuclear construction, autonomous vehicle deployment, manufacturing process innovation, patent volume in most categories

[0] https://itif.org/publications/2025/09/23/how-china-is-outper...

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#65

Post by amanaplanacanal »

boxed wrote: post #53
adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons What would be different in Tesla’s output if Americans didn’t start boycotting Tesla less than 2 years ago? And I’m glad you think killing at least half a million kids in Africa to not even save any money, stealing all our social security data, etc are just “silly political reasons”.

> What would be different in Tesla’s output if Americans didn’t start boycotting Tesla less than 2 years ago? Car companies do better if they sell cars. They also find it easier to sell cars if owning said car doesn't make you fearful some crazy person will smash it because of identity politics. > And I’m glad you think killing at least half a million kids in Africa to not even save any money, stealing all our social…

Allowing chinese vehicles into the US would do more for saving the planet, if that's your goal.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#66

Post by Jtarii »

oezi wrote: post #14

The article is certainly firebranding, but the core tenet strikes a valid point: how has the US lost the plot within such a short time? How did it go from the flag bearer of freedom and progress to isolationist bully that wants to invade Greenland and become best friends with Russia? From the outside it is really hard to comprehend. Was it FoxNews that poisoned the American mind or the social media brainwashing? How…

It seems like the US never really reovered fully from the Civil War, and the undercurrent of racism has just been allowed to fully come to the surface with social media.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#67

Post by roncesvalles »

SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #42
roncesvalles wrote: post #30

The Chinese are not worried about AI taking anyone's job. In fact they're excited by it. For some reason, there is this unbelievably thick air of paranoia in America where everyone is just waiting for the day when their job will go away. To a point where I think it should be classified as mass hysteria and looked into by public health authorities. We should all introspect why so many of us perceive America as this ve…

> For some reason That reason would be the constant proclamation of such by business leaders, and these days, especially by AI company executives. Just yesterday Elon Musk was in the news again for making noise about the need for a Universal Basic Income, with the clear implication of massive job market disruption.

It's pretty clear that Elon Musk suffers from sadism; edgelords tend to.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#68

Post by Luker88 »

roncesvalles wrote: post #30

The Chinese are not worried about AI taking anyone's job. In fact they're excited by it. For some reason, there is this unbelievably thick air of paranoia in America where everyone is just waiting for the day when their job will go away. To a point where I think it should be classified as mass hysteria and looked into by public health authorities. We should all introspect why so many of us perceive America as this ve…

> For some reason, there is this unbelievably thick air of paranoia in America where everyone is just waiting for the day when their job will go away

That is not just an AI problem. AI is just worsening a problem in USA society.

For years in the USA losing your job was not that big of a deal, because there were lots of other jobs to do, and they paid well.

The paranoia comes from the fact that people are discovering they have not saved anything and the jobs they need to merely survive (not even prosper anymore) are less and more difficult to obtain.

Hence the perceived value of the job you have is greater, and losing it looks worse.

The American dream was Homer Simpson, a simpleton with a huge house to his name, supporting a family as the (mostly) single earner. Today Homer would not be able to buy his own house, nor support his family.

Being poor is expensive. You have to pay rent for a house that will never be yours, often replace cheap things that break more often than the more expensive ones.You need money to make money, and that reinforces how money is essentially a zero-sum game. For billionaires to make even more, someone else has to make less.

TL;DR: It's not just AI. Americans are getting poorer. Poor is scary. And they don't have any social net like more socialist countries.

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#69

Post by justinclift »

boxed wrote: post #34
direwolf20 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is at the forefront of innovation. America is not, except for financial innovation a.k.a. the best ways to get money out of people without doing actual work.

China is a the forefront of catching up. Don't mistake that for innovation. China isn't building the best chips, that's Taiwan with really Netherlands doing the hard part. China is catching up to European car makers except they've largely caught up to Tesla in the powertrain (I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons). In the AI space obviously China is just running after playing c…

Is this wrong?

https://insideevs.com/features/719015/china-is-ahead-of-west...

Re: America Lost the Mandate of Heaven

#70

Post by dv_dt »

alex43578 wrote: post #55
dv_dt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US passed up multiple opportunities to fund its own more foundational solar industry

The US does a terrible job trying to throw government cash at problems. See: Solyndra, PPP, the US’s inability to build ships, or most recently the debacle of Biden’s $7.5B rollout of EV chargers that only managed to build a few dozen stations in 3 years.

This is exactly how the opportunities were passed up. I am convinced its in no small part because of the unrealistic expectations of a very high success ratio with a small number of experiments. The US throws a lot of money at relatively few bets while China funds entire competitive markets at smaller scales and lets the ecosystem vet them.

There is also political alignment in funding next generation technologies even if it's disruptive of established industries. Lobbying of fossil fuel industry did not stop renewable factory investments in China. Whereas in the US any failure of a renewable investment was highlighted by fossil fuel lobbyists as a pretense to stop the investments

Post reply on HN