[HN Gopher] 2023 Letter
___________________________________________________________________
2023 Letter
Author : admp
Score : 240 points
Date : 2024-01-23 20:40 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (danwang.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (danwang.co)
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I am pleasantly surprised to see that he attended the "walk and
| talk" organized by Craig Mod, also discussed previously on HN
| [0].
|
| I am really inspired by that, and I am trying to organize one in
| either the Dolomites (Italy), or in Venice and its Lagoon (also
| Italy), which would have to be adapted to the characteristics of
| a lagoon with islands [2].
|
| Anyway, if this is of interest to you, please say hi to
| WalkAndTalkItaly@gmail.com and let me know why you'd like to do
| it, and if you'd prefer Venice or Dolomites.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38613170
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolomites
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Lagoon
| latchkey wrote:
| > I've never felt great enthusiasm for crypto. After chatting
| with these young Chinese, I became more tolerant of their appeal.
| Digital currencies are solutions looking for problems most
| everywhere in the Western world, but they have real value for
| people who suffer from state controls. The crypto community in
| China has attracted grifters, as it has everywhere else. But it
| is also creating a community of people trying to envision
| different paths for the future.
|
| This is where most HN commenters fall down. It is easy to sit in
| "the west" and hate on crypto, but once you've experienced
| capital controls first hand in poorer countries, it all starts to
| make more sense. It goes beyond just paying for things.
|
| I'll point out my favorite post here as well:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
| kome wrote:
| ...yeah, but also capital controls make sense. you don't want
| foreign currency to inflate your economy, as you don't want too
| much of your currency going abroad. it's not like capital
| controls are made for fun.
|
| Ofc they are not in the interest of everybody, but usually they
| are for the greater good.
|
| And despite what the IMF was hammering in the 90s: yes, they
| really work. (also the IMF backpedaled on this)
| latchkey wrote:
| > but usually they are for the greater good
|
| In your opinion. That is like Jamie Dimon saying that bitcoin
| is a pet rock and is only used for bad stuff, while also
| being Epstein's banker.
|
| https://twitter.com/yahoofinance/status/1749820534790205767
| keyle wrote:
| The problems with crypto are two folds and I think it's
| resounding in HN in general: A- it festers
| with scams and scammers. B- it uses astronomic
| resources world-wide.
|
| Both of these have counter points but the overwhelming majority
| denies it credibility.
|
| I have for example envisionned systems like "proof of latency"
| but have never engaged in proving it seriously, due to the
| overwhelming putrid nature of the crypto world.
|
| I hope some day it turns, I personally love the ideology behind
| it.
| latchkey wrote:
| Those two points are valid and I don't deny the credibility
| at all. As someone who's been involved in crypto for quite
| some time, I can add 1000 other items to that list.
|
| At the same time, I also think it is wrong to
| deny/ignore/discount the counter points. In my eyes, there
| are always two sides to any story.
| kelnos wrote:
| The problem with that outlook is that crypto isn't really all
| that great for people who live under capital controls. It's
| possibly better than the local currency, depending on what they
| want to do, but it still has serious drawbacks.
|
| Looking at the USD-BTC price chart over the years, pretty much
| any time after mid-2017, BTC is just a very risky store of
| value. It's super volatile. You need to know that what you have
| will still buy you what you expect in a month, 3 months, a
| year, etc.
|
| Now, again, this still may be a better deal than the local
| currency for some people. And if you're primarily using it as a
| money transmission method (convert local currency to BTC, send
| to recipient, they convert to their local currency), you lose a
| lot of the price risk. But that still doesn't make it a _good_
| deal.
|
| And that's just one issue that directly affects anyone using
| it. On top of that there's the proliferation of scams, enabling
| of criminal activity, ridiculous electricity use, etc.
|
| I think my position has softened, over time, though. I used to
| be very anti-crypto, and wished for its demise. Now I just
| kinda don't care too much about it; if people want to spend
| their time working on the technology to see where it goes, who
| am I to tell them to do something else with their time? And it
| does seem to be helping a lot of people who don't have good
| financial options. And who knows, maybe it'll eventually grow
| or morph into something I might find useful or interesting.
| tock wrote:
| Its getting more useful over time. There are good fiat backed
| stablecoins + ethereum and its peers are all proof-of-stake
| so no ridiculous electricity usage. But the risk premium of
| using it(falling prey to scams, hacks, etc) makes no sense in
| countries with stable financial regimes.
| latchkey wrote:
| The funny thing about this though is that this is so easy
| to whatabout. Fraud is all over tradfi. I have a true
| story. The head of finance got phished. Ended up
| transferring money to some new bank account number they
| received on a friday. He called, when they opened, on
| Monday. The money was gone and the bank wouldn't do
| anything to return it. Call the police/feds they said.
|
| I think the next step is to build trustless escrow
| services. I know that sounds weird, but we need some sort
| of insurance system that if fraud happens, we can get our
| money back. Programmable money makes that possible and that
| would be an improvement on what we have today.
|
| Don't forget... how can credit cards afford to absorb the
| losses? Fees and penalties. Someone always has to pay.
| keiferski wrote:
| What is "good" is determined by the options available, not by
| all theoretically possible options. The average person in
| say, Argentina, isn't going to have access to complex
| financial instruments and so is functionally choosing between
| a hyperinflating local currency and a volatile-but-still-
| going-up bitcoin. This is a real world use case and it's
| echoed in countless places around the world - most of which,
| I imagine, the most strident crypto critics haven't ever been
| to.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, I get that. And I'm not in a position where I need to
| use crypto, so I know I'm not going to feel it like someone
| in that position would. And I agree that they should use
| the best option available to them, and that crypto might be
| it.
|
| But otherwise, I disagree: "good" is not solely determined
| by the options available. When comparing options, you can
| only say that some are "better" or "worse". Crypto may be
| better for some people than their other options, but that
| doesn't make it good. (Consider sayings like "the best of
| bad options" or "the lesser of evils". It's an
| acknowledgement that none of the options are good, but some
| are nonetheless better than others.)
|
| Ideally people in these situations do -- sooner rather than
| later -- get some actually good options. Maybe crypto will
| morph into that, or maybe people would get better (and
| quicker) bang for their buck tackling the problem from a
| different angle. I don't know what that other angle might
| be, but I worry that crypto ends up being a sort of local
| maximum that hits a ceiling, one that is better than the
| alternatives for some people, but is still not particularly
| good.
| keiferski wrote:
| What's the alternative you're proposing? For the average
| person in these countries to push for radical political
| and economic changes against their governments?
| Governments which are typically more controlling in the
| first place? All of this so that they can just not have
| their meager savings eaten away by inflation?
|
| Again, this kind of criticism has little contact with
| reality and mostly comes from people without actual
| experience in using the tech. In the real world, in
| places with hyperinflation or other financial issues,
| bitcoin isn't "the lesser of two evils."
| kelnos wrote:
| I think you're not really listening. I explicitly said I
| don't have any alternatives to offer. Maybe some sort of
| future magical internet money that doesn't suck in the
| ways the current crypto ecosystems do?
|
| I also absolutely acknowledged I don't have experience
| living in that kind of situation. Not sure why you seem
| to be getting so worked up about this.
|
| I never claimed Bitcoin was the lesser of two evils. I
| was merely illustrating my disagreement with your
| assertion that "good" is determined by the options
| available, not out of hypothetical options or some idea
| of "objective good". But I do think Bitcoin (and most
| crypto) can be (for some people) the best of bad/so-
| so/meh options. And that's great that it exists for
| people, when their other options are worse.
|
| But I really hope we can do better than this. Obviously
| we can't right now, and I'm not suggesting that someone
| who lives under a repressive financial regime is going to
| have to be the one responsible for figuring out what that
| is. But I have to believe that better -- something that's
| _actually_ good, unlike current cryptocurrency -- is
| possible.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm not getting worked up about it, I just don't really
| understand this line of criticism. Yeah, it's not perfect
| and the people pushing it as some messianic currency
| solution are obviously grifters. But what technology is
| perfect?
|
| It is being used right now, today, in ways that benefit
| people's lives in demonstrable ways, and so with your
| admitted lack of alternatives, I don't quite understand
| the reasoning here, unless you're just arguing about the
| abstract definition of _good_.
|
| I focused on the real world knowledge because I think a
| lot of the criticism of bitcoin in general lacks an
| understanding of how the tech is really used, and is just
| abstract academic criticism.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Real estate in Argentina is priced and sold in dollars, not
| crypto or the hyper inflating local currency.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I think another commenter said it better, but you second
| sentence buries the lede. If crypto is better than the
| alternatives, people will rationally choose to use it, and
| that seems like a good thing for them. Even if I agree with
| literally everything else you said.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous, right? I guess the
| people who are actually at legal risk might research it more
| throughly than some westerners, but I worry that mixing up the
| two is an easy and common mistake, to the point where it is
| often informally described as anonymous.
| latchkey wrote:
| It has been 15! years since Bitcoin was released. Technology
| has advanced. There are far more products out there than just
| Bitcoin.
| paulpauper wrote:
| How does crypto solve capital constraints when you have to
| convert the fiat to crypto? This is by far the biggest
| challenge. Crypto is like a solution that is worse than the
| problem in many instances. Maybe fine for small transactions,
| but not subverting capital controls.
| latchkey wrote:
| There are people who want both. That creates a market.
| astrange wrote:
| Crypto isn't effective against governments. They can just ban
| it, and since most of them publish all their history in public
| forever they can find you using it.
|
| It's only useful in situations where it's legal and yet some
| private actor is not letting you use bank transfers for
| something. Porn and weird research chemicals maybe.
| latchkey wrote:
| > It's only useful in situations where it's legal
|
| If I live in one country where it is legal and I travel to
| another country, where it is illegal. Do you actually think
| that will stop me from being able to use it?
|
| Due to market forces, it is often easier, and a lot more
| powerful, for me to use it in the banned country. Once I'm in
| that other country, I'm also anonymous again.
| astrange wrote:
| > Do you actually think that will stop me from being able
| to use it?
|
| Yes. Obviously you can't do infinite financial crimes by
| traveling to another country and doing them there. For
| instance, they can get you the next time you want to travel
| there.
|
| In this case you also can't use local exchanges if they
| don't exist and you have to evade the Great Firewall.
| red_admiral wrote:
| That is very well put, but it does rely on the government not
| interfering in the crypto sphere too much. Given the CCP's
| crackdowns everywhere else, if citizens stashing away money in
| bitcoin becomes a big problem, they're likely to pay attention
| to this area too.
|
| After all, you somehow have to get your dollars or RMB or
| whatever converted into cryptocurrency in the first place, and
| then get them out again when you want to buy something with
| them. You also need to hope that the government doesn't have
| the resources to take over 51% of the network by conscripting
| all the miners running in their country.
| latchkey wrote:
| What most people do not consider is that in countries with a
| lot of capital controls, black/OTC markets are the way most
| citizens interact. Just head to any gold dealer for all your
| currency conversion.
|
| You might think, wow, that is crazy, I'm not going to take a
| bunch of cash to a gold dealer to do that. But the reality is
| that this is how local citizens do things all day long. It is
| normal there.
| padolsey wrote:
| The article seems to suggest that the role of crypto to these
| young Chinese individuals is that it forms a means of community
| and a nonjudgemental channel of new thoughts. I feel it's
| become quite a trope worldwide actually: a following has
| ammassed not because of the core tenets of the technology
| itself, but because it is a story of something new and
| different, promising progress and a severe and much-needed
| change. When I was younger I was enamored by something called
| the Venus project, a movement that aimed to re-architecturalize
| all of society towards a post-scarcity world. Something utterly
| enthralling to me at the time. But when I attended enough talks
| and saw the people I was sitting besides, I saw that all I
| shared in common was a deep disatisfaction with the status quo
| and a distrust of authority. I saw that topics of discussion
| extended into various conspiracies, from 9/11 to illuminati and
| UFOs and beyond. I felt quite alienated at that point and never
| looked back. That's what I see when I see crypto. It's not a
| cult, per se, but it seems to gain buy-in in the same brain
| lobes.. if that makes sense? People make friends, find common
| validation, and it all snowballs. I dare say: It was never
| about the blockchain.
| latchkey wrote:
| This is a great comment. Part of what is missing for most
| people is utility. Without utility, it is easy to go off on
| the cultish aspects of it as a replacement. What convinced me
| was actually being able to use my pet rocks, to do something
| valuable for myself.
| echelon wrote:
| > There still are some corners in China that are relatively
| permissive. One of these is Yunnan's Dali, a city on the northern
| tip of highland Southeast Asia, where I spent much of 2022.
| There, one can find the remnants of a drug culture as well as a
| party scene for an occasional rave. But even Dali is becoming
| less tenable these days since the central government has cottoned
| on that the city is a hub for free spirits. The tightening
| restrictions emanating from Beijing are spreading to every corner
| of the country. "China feels like a space in which the ceiling
| keeps getting lower," one person told me. "To stay means that we
| have to walk around with our heads lowered and our backs
| hunched."
|
| This is incredibly sad, and the analogy is both palpable and
| frightening.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| It's rare to witness such an unbiased view of China, US, and
| their problems.
|
| I dream of a world in which these biggest countries unite
| together to grant peace and basic human rights to every person on
| Earth.
| corethree wrote:
| It's hard for humans to be unbiased. Part of the reason is he
| seems to be an ABC.
|
| ABCs are attached to both worlds, and thus are likely to feel
| pride and shame for both countries. Sometimes they will feel
| more loyalty towards one world over the other and sometimes the
| loyalties cancel out where you're left with a rare person who
| can look at the situation completely impartially.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of ABCs have more of a chip on their shoulder about
| China, or for that matter immigrants from China itself. Every
| Saturday, a bunch of falun dafa protesters are out in
| downtown Seattle protesting against the CCP, most of them
| just Chinese Ayis (middle aged women).
|
| Gordon Chang "china will implode" articles are a popular
| straw man whenever any news articles mentions China possibly
| going into recession.
| corethree wrote:
| It's a whole spectrum. But almost everyone on the face of
| the earth has some bias towards their own country.
|
| The percentage of impartiality among ethnic minorities born
| in the US like ABCs have a tendency to be much higher then
| normal. I wouldn't say it's the majority but it's
| definitely much higher then normal.
| leosanchez wrote:
| ABC = American born Chinese?
| mangamadaiyan wrote:
| Likely. Not to be confused with ABCD.
| sycamoretrees wrote:
| American born Chinese dumplings.
| mangamadaiyan wrote:
| No, ABCD is a pejorative term referring to US born people
| of Indian origin - American Born Confused Desi.
| maxglute wrote:
| TBH Dan's still an Anglo Chinese Canadian who grew up under
| western pedagogy that colours his analysis, but it's fairly
| level-headed given his background.
| pphysch wrote:
| Dan's letter is a largely objective personal account, but it is
| heavily biased towards a particular worldview. This "Ezra
| Klein" liberal worldview is absolutely not representative of
| China. It represents a tiny (affluent, expat-oriented)
| minority.
|
| He spends a few paragraphs talking about how returning to
| NYC/SF was disappointing, that the NYC subways were strictly
| worse than he remembered, then turns around and says "the real
| [America] is getting better". Huh? Based on what? The stock
| market?
|
| Being a Chinese liberal in 2024 is an exercise in cognitive
| dissonance and blind faith. You have to just believe that Xi's
| China is about to collapse, and Biden's America is on the cusp
| of a golden age. You have to ignore decades-deep trends (in
| education, development, economic inequality, geopolitics) and
| wish that they are going to suddenly reverse. Because of an 80
| year old POTUS who has been US Senator since 50 years ago when
| Shenzhen was a dumpy fishing village? It's a very difficult
| ideological position right now.
| berserk1010 wrote:
| I think it's hilarious that when westerners provide data
| based arguments that China is failing, China supporters will
| say you don't understand China and you need to live there,
| and they've heard China's impending fail many times. And then
| when a Chinese person that lives in China provides arguments
| that China is failing, China supporters will say well they're
| biased.
| pphysch wrote:
| Cherry-picking can look superficially like a "data-based
| argument", but that doesn't make it a good argument or
| approximation of the truth.
|
| Dan isn't outright lying, but he is omitting a lot of
| uncomfortable truths (long-term trends) in order to
| reinforce his worldview.
|
| Voluntary expats in particular are unreliable narrators
| because they are incentivized to fit in their new home and
| defend their major life choice. An expat that expresses
| loyalty to their old country over their new one is not
| really an expat, they will be viewed socially as an eternal
| outsider, foreign agent or invasive settler.
| maxglute wrote:
| Glad Dan decided to keep doing these letters.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sounds like he's taking next year "off", though, to write a
| book.
| zubairq wrote:
| I loved the "elephants nose cold to the touch"! Makes me think I
| need to get out, travel and explore more!
| kelnos wrote:
| It was interesting to read about younger Chinese people, and
| their dissatisfaction with life in China. At the risk of being
| too US/West-centric, I do worry a lot about Western domination
| declining, and China taking its place. I fundamentally do not
| believe that their system of government is good for people, and
| for the world at large. (To be clear, I'm fine with US/Western
| dominance declining over time, but I would like to see something
| I feel is equivalent or better taking its place, or, preferably,
| sharing its place.)
|
| So in a way it's good to read about two things in concert: 1) Xi
| tightening things up and cracking down harder and harder on free
| expression, and 2) younger Chinese people -- despite the
| propaganda I hear they're exposed to -- becoming disillusioned
| and frustrated by it. Overall it sucks: I certainly don't wish
| more and more censorship etc. being foisted upon a billion of my
| fellow humans. But I also don't want to see a totalitarian regime
| being the main dominant world power.
|
| Of course, dissatisfied young people -- and probably not even
| that many when compared to the whole of young Chinese people in
| China -- don't guarantee any kind of meaningful change over time.
| I'm sure there are plenty of young people in China who will
| happily step into the party's shoes once the current leadership's
| time has past.
| huijzer wrote:
| > I do worry a lot about Western domination declining, and
| China taking its place.
|
| What gives me hope is that we're not driving in North Korean or
| Russian cars, nor use their chips, or airplanes. The Soviet
| Union tried to be a leader in all these fields. I know China is
| not Russia, but in many things it is. How many Western
| companies, for example, have the government sit on their board?
| Top-down economic planning has never worked and I don't see why
| it would be different now.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think there are different levels to "things working"
| though. A country can be using an economic and governing
| system that ultimately doesn't work, but still have enough
| weight to throw around for a while, enough to do plenty of
| damage to others. Russia is clearly showing that right now in
| Ukraine. Even if Ukraine prevails (far from certain), the
| country may never be the same. China may pull something
| similar (and be more successful at it) in Taiwan in the near
| future.
|
| I do worry about Chinese products in the classes you mention.
| OP notes that China became the world's largest automobile
| exporter in 2023 (by units sold, not by revenue). China still
| can't rival Intel or AMD in chips, but they're gaining ground
| all the time, and have some decent (though not superb)
| competitors in the ARM market, with inroads into RISC-V, I
| believe. The Comac C919 airliner isn't exactly all over yet,
| and I don't know how safe, relable, and airworthy it is (not
| that Boeing has done well in that regard lately), but it
| exists, regardless of whether or not the allegations that
| they stole IP from US manufacturers is true.
| huijzer wrote:
| > Even if Ukraine prevails (far from certain), the country
| may never be the same.
|
| You can also say: Yes it has never before been as pro-West
| as it is today.
|
| I agree completely with you that China has enough weight to
| do plenty of damage in the short term. In the long term, I
| paraphrase something Stephen Kotkin said: The West has
| gained more and more friends over time. After the second
| world war, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have
| become friends.
|
| Maybe the relationships are not perfect, but they are
| pretty good if you ask me. Some healthy back and forth and
| discussing without major drama. Finland has joined NATO and
| Sweden will soon also. Maybe one day even Ukraine. And
| maybe India one day?
| graemep wrote:
| > Yes it has never before been as pro-West as it is
| today.
|
| On the other hand Russia has never been more in China's
| camp than it is now, and I think that loss is far greater
| than the possible gain of Ukraine and the NATO expansion.
|
| > After the second world war, Japan, Germany, South Korea
| and Taiwan have become friends.
|
| Yes, over that period, but that is no longer happening.
| Power is shifting to other countries - China, India, etc.
| and they are not "friends". Quotes because I think the
| idea of friendship in international relations is
| mistaken.
|
| > and maybe India one day?
|
| India has very different values and interests to the
| west, and while it is likely to ally with the west
| against China, I cannot see it in anything else. It is
| not backing the west over Ukraine, for example.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > I think that loss is far greater than the possible gain
| of Ukraine and the NATO expansion.
|
| That wasn't a loss. Russia was never in the western camp.
|
| The "loss" is the loss of the hope that they would become
| so. I'm not sure how realistic that hope ever was.
| graemep wrote:
| That is true, but Russia getting closer to (or dependent
| on) China is a loss anyway.
| thriftwy wrote:
| The Western camp has never invented any framework that
| would let Russia be in it.
|
| What it could offer was: you sit here and sell us cheap
| oil and gas, while we court all your neighbours to stop
| associating with you and associate with us instead. But
| it did not have any meaningful participation format for
| Russia, only that it should be increasingly lonely. Not
| to mention stuff like visa waiver or student exchange
| programmes. In the end even at the best of relations the
| integration was actually tiny.
|
| When confronted with this, the West will usually deflect
| and blame it all on Putin, which is also not
| constructive: This does not offer any plan to a regular
| Russian, especially seeing how close EU politicians were
| to Putin at that time and how they did not care if he
| stays for as many terms as he wanted to.
| hmmmcurious1 wrote:
| And yet all of Russias neighbours are now courting China,
| Kazakhstan especially. And also Russia is content with
| becoming a vassal gas station for China as long as it
| gets to play as a faux empire and slaughter both its
| citizens and its brother nation's citizens in an
| industrial meat grinder. 5D chess as the youngsters say
| these days
| thriftwy wrote:
| China is not so dangerous in this regard because it is
| not appealing. It has great amount of economic power, but
| culturally it is very insular, plus the story of Chinese
| Uighurs, making people (in Central Asia especially) wary
| of fully embracing the Chinese Way.
|
| Not so with Europe, which is culturally dominant, and
| many countries around Russia would love to fully embrace
| the EU, if EU is willing to take effort. But this is
| shitty deal for Russia since it was never invited to any
| such schemes and will lose cultural and economic
| influence. It's also not all rosy for target countries'
| population, but it's acceptable and Europe can make it
| _look_ great.
|
| For Russians it will always look that they cut family
| bonds for sugar daddy, though. That has sufficient stigma
| that would explain why Russian population still does not
| mind the war.
|
| Russia has the Snow White's Evil Queen role assigned
| here, who is uninvited to the party but crashes it. And
| boy does Russia embraces this role, unfortunately. "5D
| checkers" is the term.
| maxglute wrote:
| If anything UKR (and Gaza) war has shown, global south,
| the dominant reservoirs for future growth, which PRC is
| courting (and now constitute plurarity of trade) is
| decidely not pro west. What west is doing is
| consolidating the elite clique amoung a powerful but
| increasingly stagnant friends. Which is fine, but it's
| also matter of relative size of the group. The Chinese
| "family" i.e just PRC itself, is pumping out comparable
| human capita and industrial potential than all of the
| west, their family and her friends. Don't be surprised a
| well run family business + some acquaintances eventually
| outcompete tight friend groups that are still connected
| based on artificial affiliations.
|
| Also most of global android users would be on Chinese
| phones if US sanctions didn't ban access to Huawei and
| reduce appetite for PRC firms to continue expansion into
| western markets. Sanctions / tech control are every bit
| as top-down economic planning. Once PRC indigenizes their
| own tech stack, there's a good chance rest of world will
| drive PRC cars, and fly on PRC planes, and use PRC chips.
| I think only long durable term competitive advantage of
| west, and really we're talking about anglo countries like
| US/CA/AU is being net food/mineral exporters due to
| resource abundance.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| These positive relationships are not artficial. Japanese
| and Taiwanese people really genuinely like the USA in a
| way that runs deep in the culture. Im from texas, and
| live in japan. I was surprised to find this out.
| maxglute wrote:
| The relationships aren't artificial in feeling but
| artificial in construction - took generations/decades of
| postwar political purging in US influenced countries to
| cultivate local compradors to develop good people to
| people relations over time. But alliances between
| countries are still political arrangement are ultimate
| subject to domestic geopolitical interests and whims.
| Peoples in democracies still have very little control of
| their foreign policy. The other consideration we don't
| speak is you can absolutely massacre a people and still
| have their kids love you with enough elite capture and
| control over culture. That's also the story of modern
| PRC, you can slap the shit out one generation and mold
| their grandkids into patriotism. Or the story with US/JP,
| except with atom bombs. Regardless alliances will last,
| until they're tested. Then they can break or get
| stronger. I would not be surprised if they break if
| tested violently enough. That's usually how these things
| go. Remember Canada was originally a British possession
| designed to contain America. Then US got kicked out of
| North America and Canada, a fundmentally anti American
| project, are very friendly with US, and even the most
| antiAmerican politician in Canada won't seriously
| consider moves that would undermine US interests.
| nradov wrote:
| There is zero chance of India joining NATO in our
| lifetimes. They have an entirely different set of
| priorities. At most we might see some limited defense
| cooperation agreements between India and other maritime
| powers to secure their sea lines of communication and
| contain Chinese expansionism.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The CCP is using its authority to make its citizens the
| slaves of the world. They do this by manipulating the
| currency and internal environment to stop living standards
| and wages from rising to Western levels, while trying to
| avoid interference with economic activity that does not
| threaten the government. Key nationalized sectors under-
| perform (like their oil industry) while others work much like
| they do in America. That doesn't make them a centrally
| planned economy, any more than FED's currency planning makes
| the US economy centrally planned in nature. They have a
| "central plan," which is to drive all of their money towards
| reinvestment, but it's not a planned economy.
|
| Going beyond a statement of facts, I assume the reinvestment
| is supposed to eventually lead to owning the world, but that
| isn't working out in Africa and all of the western
| infrastructure they finance has turned into yet another way
| for depressed Chinese living standards to transfer wealth to
| the countries the government is trying to get on top of. (It
| might feel intrusive to find out that a Chinese company owns
| a toll road you frequently use, but what actually happened is
| they froze their capital in a fixed asset, freeing an
| American firm to start a new project.)
|
| It reminds me of how the US's own foibles, mainly of a
| neocolonialist/military interventionist type, have done
| nothing to benefit us but have weakened domestic security and
| the security of our interests abroad.
| sooheon wrote:
| > to drive all of their money towards reinvestment
|
| Can you be specific about how this is done?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Being a hybrid planned/market economy, CCP still has much
| of a say in what businesses prosper & which do not. China
| has very little in the way of a consumer sector, quite
| the opposite of the US consumerism. This means there's
| very little for consumers to spend their money on versus
| a US consumer.
|
| China's savings rate as a result of these pressures
| hovers around 50%, compared to the low 4% in US / 10% in
| UK / 20% in Germany & Northern EU countries.
|
| Saving such a high % of income means more money is
| available in the banking system to be lent out to
| businesses for investment. So China has an export driven
| market in which they sell goods to the world, and then
| re-invest it to build more capacity to build more exports
| to..
| caskstrength wrote:
| > China has very little in the way of a consumer sector,
| quite the opposite of the US consumerism. This means
| there's very little for consumers to spend their money on
| versus a US consumer.
|
| FWIW Chinese middle class tend to gobble up ridiculous
| amount of foreign overpriced luxury crap instead,
| starting from designer clothes and ending up with several
| thousands of dollars worth bottles of whisky (that I bet
| absolute majority of the buyers couldn't distinguish from
| random Johnnie Walker in blind testing). High saving
| rates must be cultural and not just a result of not
| having the ability to spend the money.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > High saving rates must be cultural and not just a
| result of not having the ability to spend the money.
|
| You can see this too in the generation that lived through
| the Great Depression, and some carry-over into the next
| one.
|
| OTOH those who grew up in boom times tend to take on
| unhealthy amounts of debt (esp credit card, for weddings
| and vacations, and fancy cars) and have to struggle to
| learn to live within their means.
|
| China has had a lot of rough times to until relatively
| very recently, and much of the country hasn't shared in a
| lot of the economic growth.
| sooheon wrote:
| Isn't this a false dichotomy? The inverse -- high
| spending and low savings -- still leads to reinvestment.
| From business POV whether they get funds via loans or via
| revenue the money they have to invest in growth is the
| same.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| In China you have a lot of SOA (State Owned Enterprises)
| and entire sectors loosely under the CCP thumb.
|
| So 50% of income going back into banks which then direct
| capital as the CCP sees fit.. more export oriented
| growth.
|
| This is very different than the US model.
|
| In the US ~95% of income goes into spending which flows
| into private enterprises which make operational cost,
| capital cost, and saving decisions on their own.
|
| The US model is more decentralized. We have to create
| incentives and schemes like IRA and Opportunity Zones to
| get private individuals and companies to deploy capital
| where the government prefers, and even then it only works
| on the margins.
| berserk1010 wrote:
| The Chinese savings rate is a bit of a mirage, since
| there are a couple of things happening
|
| * Chinese banks are swallowing many Chinese citizens'
| deposits in the bank, without recourse and explanation.
| There are protests of course, and of course those are
| squashed. There's even a story of a public listed
| company's assets in the bank being swallowed without
| recourse, and the company had to shut down
|
| * The banking system aren't able to lend the deposits
| out, because the Chinese government has asked them to
| take over real estate companies and local government
| debts. Also, there is very little consumer spending, and
| the state enterprises don't like competitions, so very
| little investment is given to private enterprises these
| days
|
| * Increasing bankruptcies. 8.5M in 2023, up from 5M in
| 2020. https://www.asiafinancial.com/record-number-of-
| chinese-black...
| coryfklein wrote:
| > This means there's very little for consumers to spend
| their money on versus a US consumer.
|
| How does this line up American consumers spending a large
| percentage of their money on products built in... China?
| Surely the Chinese products available to Americans are
| also available to the Chinese? I have to imagine they are
| orders of magnitude cheaper in China too given the
| drastically lower cost of shipping and warehousing.
| nradov wrote:
| Shipping and warehousing only accounts for a tiny
| fraction of the cost of most consumer products. It's
| hardly an order of magnitude difference.
|
| Chinese consumers can buy pretty much the same products
| as Americans (with a few limited exceptions such as
| weapons and narcotics). But they tend to save more on a
| percentage basis. Some of this is cultural. But mostly
| it's a practical reaction to a lack of a social safety
| net. Even though China is nominally communist, as a
| practical matter most consumers have to pay out of pocket
| for healthcare and retirement hence they save for those
| things. They also save to purchase residential real
| estate since it is seen as the only safe store of value
| and owning a home is somewhat necessary for marriage (at
| least for men).
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Lenin "He who does not work shall not eat"
| smolder wrote:
| Our cars are full of Chinese parts. The makers home country
| is hardly relevant, today.
| torginus wrote:
| Top down government planning is the only thing that has
| consistently worked in high technology sectors, especially
| things like semiconductors or spaceflight.
|
| Watch some Asianometry. The guy explains how Japan's
| semiconductor industry was built on high-level planning and
| industry/academia collaboration with long-term planning and
| workshare division rather than competition between companies,
| to develop the necessary technologies for semiconductor
| manufacture. Same thing happened in the US.
|
| R&D heavy industries cannot be bootstrapped without deep
| government pockets and expert oversight, and a risk tolerance
| that cannot be justified on balance sheets.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Top down government planning is the only thing that has
| consistently worked in high technology sectors, especially
| things like semiconductors or spaceflight.
|
| That's what gave us Intel processors? SpaceX? Google?
| ChatGPT?
|
| I strongly disagree with your reading of events. (Yes,
| there was government involvement in the origins of the
| semiconductor industry, and in the origins of US
| spaceflight. No, top down government planning is _not_ the
| only thing that has consistently worked. Having the
| government seed things and let private businesses run with
| it has worked pretty well.)
| thriftwy wrote:
| Intel (Fairchild) has the following in their biography:
|
| > By the end of the 1970s they had few new products in
| the pipeline, and increasingly turned to niche markets
| with their existing product line, notably "hardened"
| integrated circuits for military
| Aloha wrote:
| How was America's semiconductor industry built?
|
| Yes, the megabucks put in by the government for Apollo and
| Military Programs were important, they created static
| demand - but the government neither planned nor built the
| technologies needed. It largely happened organically.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| I think that just came down to capital requirement
| thresholds. Some circumstances required the collective
| funding because the payoff window was so long.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Government planning and investment can certainly bootstrap
| and protect a nascent industry in its infancy, but once the
| industry becomes competitive it is to the Democracy's own
| advantage to remove the training wheels and back off.
|
| This book review of How Asia Works[0] gives excellent
| examples of how South Korea applied this strategy to break
| out of from economic despair to become a leading economic
| power, and how other Asian countries failed to apply this
| formula when their governments were too heavy handed in
| their approach.
|
| [0] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-how-asia-
| works
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| But a lot of that is due to protectionism and
| sanctions/restrictions.
|
| I used to have a Huawei phone, now I don't because it can't
| use the Google App Store.
|
| Here in Europe, there was a lot of controversy over the
| electric car tariffs too - as China produce high quality,
| cheap electric cars that could help us with the Green
| transition, yet we slap sky-high tariffs on them to protect
| Volkswagen shareholders.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > yet we slap sky-high tariffs on them to protect
| Volkswagen shareholders.
|
| Well, 10% tariffs, which isn't exactly prohibitive.
| berserk1010 wrote:
| How is it that some europeans like yourself don't realize
| that China is actively supplying military goods and funding
| to Russia, to help Russia attack Europe??
|
| Why would you want to pay for cars that help to grow your
| enemy to cause your countries to fall?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| One of the biggest Volkswagen shareholders is the state of
| Lower Saxony. A bad arrangement for many reasons, and this
| is one of them.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > What gives me hope is that we're not driving in North
| Korean or Russian cars, nor use their chips, or airplanes.
|
| Most of the things we're using in the western world have
| parts manufactured in China. Less and less in the US or
| western europe.
| berserk1010 wrote:
| percent of parts manufactured in China is declining over
| time, and quickly.
| paganel wrote:
| China is already number one on the EVs industry, so if we
| continue going down that route of forced electrification of
| our cars there's a big chance many of us will be indeed
| driving Chinese cars going forward. Granted, neither North
| Korea nor Russia are big in that industry.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| >Top-down economic planning has never worked and I don't see
| why it would be different now.
|
| Countries have national currencies and central banks.
| Countries have borders where imports / exports are taxed and
| inspected for safety, illegal smuggling, etc. The US made
| Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to maintain liquidity in the
| mortgage market. All these things are not perfect, but what's
| the alternative? Where do you draw the line?
| petre wrote:
| > I do worry a lot about Western domination declining, and
| China taking its place
|
| Chairman Xi made sure that won't happen. Maybe they'll take
| over Taiwan with disastrous consequences for everyone, but if
| they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give up. They
| might also exert their influence in Africa, the Midlle East and
| Central Asia, at the expense of Russia. I'd argue Chinese
| influence in Central Asia is somewhat better than Russian
| influence, which has only created frozen conflicts that Russia
| can reignite whenever it's convenient for them (see Nagorno-
| Karabah).
|
| If Chinese trade with the US stays at current rates, there's
| less risk of war between China and the West.
|
| As usual, Dan Wang's yearly letter is not only beautifully laid
| out but also an eye opener.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "but if they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give
| up."
|
| I am not that sure anymore. The Russo-Ukrainian war shattered
| a lot of my illusions with regard to rationality of leaders.
| A country with a very bad demographics started a war by
| deploying clearly insufficient forces (200 000 soldiers are
| _nothing_ when compared to the size of Ukraine; Germans
| deployed 12x as more soldiers in 1941 to conquer Ukrainian
| SSR) and the result is an enormous fuck-up and unendong
| slaughter of young population which, with current TFRs, will
| never be replaced.
|
| If Putin can make such a bad judgment, Xi can as well. It is
| not as if Xi tolerates more dissent/negative feedback to his
| rule than his Russian counterpart.
| dmpk2k wrote:
| It seems the Russians were trying to scare the Ukrainians
| to the negotiating table. And it worked too, for a while: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russ
| ...
|
| Now it's just butchery on an industrial scale. How nice.
| petre wrote:
| These are "negotiations" held in bad faith like the Minsk
| agreements. They're meant to buy time for Russia to build
| up another invasion force.
| graemep wrote:
| Yes and no. Putin could rationally expect no direct western
| intervention or even the level of support we have given. We
| did nothing when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014, and
| we did nothing when they invaded Georgia. The threat to
| invade Ukraine was originally made at least as early as
| 2008 and we did nothing in the intervening years to deter
| it.
|
| Taiwan is very different. Xi also knows it is of far
| created economic importance to the west (and the US in
| particular) than Ukraine is.
|
| The miscalculation was primarilly political rather than
| military. They expected the Ukrainians to roll over rather
| than fight. Possibly they believed their own propaganda
| (and their experience from the 2014 invasion) and expected
| a lot of Ukrainian support. The invaders were not even
| prepared to fight and the planning was lead by the FSB, not
| the military. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ym9TDs6Dg
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Yes and no. Putin could rationally expect no direct
| western intervention or even the level of support we have
| given. We did nothing when the Russians invaded Ukraine
| in 2014, and we did nothing when they invaded Georgia."
|
| This still sounds like a huge gamble with very high
| stakes. Ukraine received a lot of Western weapons between
| 2014-2022, and it was those weapons like Javelin that
| helped stop the original Russian armored onslaught.
|
| International politics does not reliably work on the
| principle "actor X hasn't done Y before, so actor X won't
| do Y now". There may be thresholds that, once reached,
| change the entire situation.
|
| To look at a historical example, the Allies did nothing
| when Hitler re-occupied the Ruhr, they did nothing when
| he annexed Austria, they allowed him to take Sudetenland
| and later they did nothing when he annexed the rest of
| Bohemia and Moravia. But with Poland, the threshold was
| crossed once and for all.
| badcppdev wrote:
| TFR = Total Fertility Rates
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| Thank you I googled and got only got Tensor Flow docs and
| something about aviation.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Russia has nothing to do with Nagorno-Karabakh (indeed, in
| many ways this ethnic conflict has _caused_ the demise of the
| USSR, not the other way around). Nagorno-Karabakh is not in
| Central Asia. There are no frozen conflicts in Central Asia,
| though there are some feuds.
| petre wrote:
| Any one of these can be re-ignited. Ukraine or Nagrono-
| Karabakh are just two more recent examples.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territor
| y...
| thriftwy wrote:
| Any Muslim country indeed may have an islamist insurgency
| and/or a Cotton revolution staged by CIA. Not sure China
| is great against either one threat.
|
| But the claims that there are any frozen conflicts there
| are unfounded (no strong claims of one country on the
| lands of another country in the region), and about
| Russian involvement also unfounded (it did help secular
| Tajik win the civil war in a coalition but that's mostly
| it).
| maxglute wrote:
| >but if they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give
| up.
|
| Why? PRC is currently extracting the greatest high skill
| demographic divident in human history in the next 30 years,
| and even with shit tier TFR they're producing more bodies
| than any modern military needs, and will continue to under
| the most pessimestic demographic projections until end of
| century. They have decades to try and try again, because they
| can replicate US expeditionary military model with even less
| than fraction of their population and industrial output.
| Ultimately IMO PRC doesn't need to dominate, or take over
| west/really US tier of hyperdominance, which it can't. But
| that's also exactly why it's fine and even prudent for PRC to
| take over TW and bring pyrrhic disaster for everyone. In
| terms of cold interest calculus, the west, being at the top
| has more to lose, and historically, you displace regional
| hegemon with force. Meanwhile PRC got plenty of
| excess/surplus workforce past 2050s for reconstruction. The
| TLDR is PRC comprehensive power by herself is going to
| increase / close gap with west. And even if she doesn't want
| war, structure forces / trends won't dissuade her, and if
| anything incentivizes escalation.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| Its weird to see a country refered to as "her".
| berserk1010 wrote:
| > PRC is currently extracting the greatest high skill
| demographic divident in human history in the next 30 years
|
| China is not. There is a trend in China for companies to
| not hire people over the age of 35. Also, their unofficial
| youth unemployment rate is something like 45%. In addition,
| 1 billion people live in poverty in China
| https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-
| censorship-1-billion-.... That means those people don't
| have the knowledge/connection/skillset to contribute.
| Lastly, Chinese population is expected to shrink to 600B
| even faster than 2050
| maxglute wrote:
| China is.
|
| At current PRC STEM / skilled labour production rate,
| they're on trend to generate 50-100M new skilled workers
| in the next 20 years. Those are growing bodies already
| born and accounted for. That's multiple times more than
| US is set to gain in people via all methods
| birth/immigration. In the next few years, PRC will have
| more skilled talent IN WORKFORCE than US in absolute
| numbers. It's exactly beause relative skill across
| workforce is still low, currently 20% vs developed
| countries for 60-80% that PRC has incredible skilled
| demographic divident to squeeze. It's how JP/SKR GDP
| doubled/tripled after TFR crash 20 years ago, by training
| up new generations into more skilled/productive work.
| Hence PRC similarly marching to advanced economy
| workforce composition is - objectively the greatest
| concentration in high skilled talent within one
| coordinated system in human history. Even at lower
| relative % of skilled workforce, due to PRC population
| denominator, that means PRC will have significantly more
| aggregate knowledge/skill/connection than any other
| competitor.
|
| PRC broad unemployment rate is 5%, youth find jobs within
| a few years. Right now you have massive cohorts of new
| graduates post academic expansion who don't want to
| settle for jobs they think are beneath them, but
| eventually, like all humans, they will. It's going to
| take a few years because PRC kids have no crippling
| student debt, can mooch off parents living at home, and
| don't need to work 2 part time jobs to make ends meet.
| Even if 40% of youth unemployemnt was durable, implying
| 40% of PRC skilled workforce end up not working, which is
| an idiotic hopium position to draw analysis from, the
| remaining 60% is still MORE aggregate skill pool than
| again, any other competitor, at any time in past or
| projected future in next 30-50 years. Which if you care
| about geopolitical balance/stragetic competition, is the
| cohort and period worth considering.
|
| There's no credible model where PRC population will dip
| to 600M in 2050.
|
| On poverty: there's 600M, on 1000rmb disposable household
| income, 900m on 2000rmb. That again, that's precisely why
| they don't matter for growth. That 60% of population
| constitutes merely 10% of GDP. Most of GDP/productivity
| in advanced/modern economy driven by the minority of
| skilled workforce. In PRC case, the minority in developed
| tier1/2 regions. The same cohort responsible for 90% of
| the GDP is set to increase by order of magnitude within
| the next 20 years. They're the real growth drivers. That
| growth will trickle down so the bottom 60% can eventually
| charge 10rmb for a haircut instead of 5rmb and live on
| 2000/4000rmb instead of 1000/2000, but ultimately their
| contribution to development is/was always going to be
| marginal. You don't need everyone to be high skilled, and
| with PRC population, modernization timeframe, they
| couldn't. But going forward they can certainly have more
| absolute/aggregate skilled labour than US+partners, and
| still have a few 100 million stuck in informal economy
| doing shit all. And right now that's where impactful
| demographic trend is heading.
| berserk1010 wrote:
| > generate 50-100M new skilled workers in the next 20
| years
|
| You're overestimating the impact since
|
| 1.) 80% of the top minds will study abroad and stay
| there, not in China, like they are now. More smart people
| are realizing if they live in a freedom-less
| dictatorship, being just a chive to be cut down, they are
| better to move. When they see their hero Jack Ma was
| imprisoned and stripped of power. When they hear their
| hero Ma Huateng of Tencent actively proclaiming one
| should not attract attention and to lower profile
|
| 2.) rote studying + cheating culture + mandatory Xi Jing
| Ping learning for 3 hours every day for these workers in
| college make them inferior workers than workers in the
| West. Chinese colleges are already not as good as Western
| colleges to start with.
|
| 3.) when these skilled workers graduate and can't find
| jobs, much like now when tsinghua graduates are forced to
| become didi drivers, they won't be able to learn the
| actual skills to contribute, since college learnings are
| just that, college learnings.
|
| 4.) US can get skilled immigrations from around the
| world, and can ramp up whenever they want. They also have
| skilled partners like Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea
| to work with
|
| > settle for jobs they think are beneath them, but
| eventually, like all humans, they will
|
| Yes, these new college grads now are driving for didi and
| delivering for meituan, which they will continue to do
| for 20 years. There is no magic bullet to turn an event
| like Great Depression around
|
| > There's no credible model where PRC population will dip
| to 600M in 2050
|
| There are many, but first you have to not buy China's
| word that it has 1.4B to start with. (why would you when
| they still proclaim 5% GDP growth in 2023) Many guesses
| are 1.2B, before all the unreported covid related deaths
| maxglute wrote:
| I'm estimating the trends correctly:
|
| 1) Subtantially less (like single digit %) PRC tier1
| talent are leaving now, and more skilled talent are
| flowing back from west to PRC due to better
| opportunities. Record number in last few years. What
| you're seeing is some old wealth, accumulated in PRC at
| time when you didn't need high skill talent, capital
| flighting. And a bunch of low skilled migrants trying to
| enter from south America to flip burgers. This isn't the
| 2000s where best of best PRC goes abroad, some do, but
| largely it's the extra mediocre/dumb who can't hack
| Chinese gaokao. This isn't diasphora from 90s where every
| Chinese group has friends who were like top10 from their
| province. The common story now is my kid too dumb/fragile
| to survive PRC tertiary, lets send them abroad. Which
| relates back to old wealth fleeing, a lot of rich
| peasants who guanxied their way into wealth and know
| their kids aren't smart enough to do well in PRC but
| maybe can coast in west where talent pool is shallow.
| Like this
|
| 2) Except they're climbing/leading science/innovation
| indexes in west controlled for quality. As if university
| in the west don't have retarded waste of time rereqs. No
| one is learning XJP app for 3 hours a day. They're
| studying their courses and farming primogems.
|
| 3) Yeah they're going to spend years bumming a round
| while job creation meet talent creation, which is
| expected artefact of PRC overcapacity. That'll sort
| itself out in a a few years. Supply/demand etc. The
| important point being, right now there are host of
| significant, strategic industries where there's lots of
| demand and having excess talent is net good, i.e. PRC is
| basically the only country on trend to not have talent
| shortage in semiconductors in 5 years. And guess what
| happens when there's extra demand, companies take and
| retrain less qualified applicants. It's better to have a
| pool of STEM taxi drivers who can skill work because you
| know they were filtered by tertiary system than the west
| who has excess demand for skill work, and taxi drivers
| who can't.
|
| 4) Now break down the numbers. US has access to global
| talent, but what US actually has access is 400M english
| speakers, 600m with some english proficency, from a few
| countries with skill development. And guess who they have
| overwhelmingly chose in the last 10-15 years. PRC talent,
| that they are now making harder to brain drain due to
| domestic policies. Meanwhile, PRC has 900m mandarin
| speakers, but realistically like US, the subsect of
| viable tertiary talent is much lower. But PRC talent bias
| skill/technical work, vs gender studies and has much
| bigger pool for high skill work. Meanwhile, they've been
| retaining significantly more talent due to more
| opportunities, and frankly produce so much that US/west
| can't even brain drain enough to make a dent, assuming
| US/PRC domestic politics allows prior levesl of brain
| drain. US has access to "more" talent, but realistically
| can only takein/incorporate so much. Meanwhile PRC has
| access to MORE talent, more than US can ever take,
| including top end.
|
| Very few are skilled youths driving did/meituan. Some do,
| but youth umemployment stats concenrates low skill.
| Credentialled youth and taking their time job seeking,
| looking into teaching/government, and eventually will
| settled into bluecollar work that pays better than
| delivery work if they can stomach the shame. Broke,
| medicore skilled youth, the C students are desperate
| enough to do low end work. If you're an A level talent,
| you're already working sometime nice. No so different
| from advanced economies as they deal with academic
| inflation.
|
| Conspiracy/FLG/and that one professor guess 1.2B. Which
| doesn't even matter since output of PRC exports and value
| chain can be measured by proxy. That 1.2B is consuming
| resources for previous 1.4B, and living 10% better. It's
| fine. And as if PRC having 200M less mouth to feed and
| fuel is actually a problem. Meanwhile commodity imports
| and energy increase trend is clear and can't be
| systematically fudged over timescale. Dang's not going to
| be happy if I interrogate every luny claim on PRC.
| Suffice to say, PRC skilled demographic boom, and ability
| to to coordinate them is so large, that they have large
| advantage even if you think they're fudged by double
| digit percentages.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| What if innovation requires a bit more then a big number of
| people who've studied at a university? What if it requires
| a culture that allows for it?
| maxglute wrote:
| I think the answer is, it doesn't. It requires
| coordinating bodies, industrial base, and resources. Not
| ability to vote or unfettered media. See PRC recently
| moving up value chains, topping science and innovation
| indexes in western publications, controlled for quality.
| That's PRC goign from fraction of high skilled talent in
| 2010, to near parity in in last few years after boosting
| tertiary education. If you buy into the
| innovation+freedom argument and also PRC is less free
| argument, then innovation is negatively correlated to
| free thought. Regardless, whatever system PRC has in
| place, it's been driving innovation in last few years
| with less talent than west, and soon more talent, with
| more experience. Absurdly more. Meanwhile everyone else
| is adopting PRC industrial policy, or rather re-adopting
| indy policy that PRC copied from Asian Tigers who copied
| from US. And ultimately even if you presume leading edge
| innovation requires the "right" culture, PRC is still
| good at replicating and commercializing. Hence whatever
| lead an innovation an "innovative" culture produces, PRC
| can still replicate and commercialize and at scale faster
| and cheaper and reduce market share / R&D of those
| companies on global market.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| That's a common western view and wishful thinking but life is
| about power, not happiness. They can be all dissatisfied they
| want but a few crackdowns always put them in line, and in the
| end this is what matters.
|
| I know it reads harsh but there's little to no morality in
| this, they are "unhappy" because the expectations of having a
| good job, money, a big house and general prosperity forever is
| not materializing. In the past when China was really growing at
| 10% a year, there were also no freedom and horrible things were
| happening to many people, yet people where "very happy", again
| no morality just a matter of power/money.
|
| "Meaningful change" will happen if they align with who has the
| power at that time and there is no indication "young people"
| will relinquish their power when they finally have it.
|
| Current old powerful people were also young at some point.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > life is about power, not happiness.
|
| But sufficiently unhappy people, in sufficient numbers, have
| more power than cynics think. (Though less than optimists
| think. But enough to change things, at least sometimes. Not
| always, but sometimes.)
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Agreed, that's why functional governments ( democratic or
| not ) always offer some kind of "candy" for the plebs. It's
| an optimization problem, what it the exact point where we
| lose control of the situation? then dial it back a few
| notches.
|
| It's not because of morality of being "good", it's a
| practical mechanism for every power structure.
|
| The "saving grace", is that these power structures tend to
| become so corrupt they can't assess that threshold anymore
| and then "people revolt", which by itself is far from any
| guarantee of success or any meaningful change. That's one
| of the reasons the "silent majority" is not too adept of
| "revolutions" and always wait to see which horse they
| should bet.
| maxglute wrote:
| And the Q is are they as unhappy as youths in the west? And
| at what point of unhappiness does that translate to systemic
| change? Is that point different in PRC system. PRC youth are
| behind west in adjusting to expectations in post academic
| inflation world. You have the % grinding away in good jobs
| being sad about cost of living just like in the west. Then
| you have % living at home on parents dime, with no onerous
| student loans, who doesn't want to work a well paying blue
| collar job (lot's of manufacturing opportunities out there
| that a poor Americans would work) because they wasted their
| life getting degrees. They're not working 2-3 part time jobs
| to get into 5-6 figure debts. They're currently on a
| different point of the disenfranchisement spectrum.
|
| The light at end of tunnel is PRC kids will have more livable
| options as PRC develops interior provinces and bring them up
| to tier2 status. Many adequate, lower cost, decent QoL cities
| in PRC that rivals tier1 western economic hubs in convenience
| and lifestyle, versus most of west where it seems we'll be
| trapped in a handful of increasingly unaffordable areas. But
| it will take a mass change in culture, kids and parents
| accept their mediocrity - inevitable with normal distribution
| - and all those years cramming in involuted academic gamble
| won't pay off in top 1% job in air conditioned office of a
| tier1 city.
| berserk1010 wrote:
| > And the Q is are they as unhappy as youths in the west?
|
| that's not comparable, as average Chinese youths are in
| poverty, living off $300/month.
| https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-
| censorship-1-billion-...
|
| > The light at end of tunnel is PRC kids will have more
| livable options
|
| That's very unlikely as China continues in its Great
| Depression https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2024/0
| 1/22/chinas-.... And with all economic engines declining
| (export, internal consumer, real estate), and no big
| systemic change happening, it will continue this path for a
| very long time. Remember that Japan's downturn lasted 30
| years, and Japanese citizens were making $2000/month on
| average, not $300/month.
| maxglute wrote:
| No the average unskilled Chinese elderly left behind by
| modernzation are stuck in poor informal economy. Average
| skilled labour in skilled jobs pays significantly better.
|
| TIL 5% growth great depression. What china did was remove
| 3% of excess real estate malinvestment. Housing is down
| as expected, but that's a good correction. Other sectors
| broadly are still growing. Consumption is fine about
| world average factor in gov social transfers. Everyone's
| export is down, PRC relative down less after capturing 1T
| more in value over covid (greatest on record). And export
| @20% of GDP isn't even a big driver. Export dependant is
| when you're at 40-50%+. PRC continuing this path of 4-5%
| grown is... great? Big change happening is PRC ramping up
| skilled talent and skilled jobs in high value sectors to
| take on profitable western incumbants. It takes time, but
| EV/renewables just the start. Indicators everywhere PRC
| broadly moving up value chain.
|
| If you're going to do JP 2000/month per capita, then PRC
| is ~2000 per month right now. Right about where JP/SKR
| was when TFR crapped out. Bottom quartiles are poorer.
| THat's basic statistic inevitablility. But guess what?
| Lots of japanese and korean grandparent farmers were poor
| back then to. Many still are. It's kind of a phenomenon
| if you follow east asian reporting. But their kids who
| were in manufacturing were comfortable, and their
| grandkids in high skilled sectors were "rich".
|
| But this thread is about happiness and livable options.
| JP/SKR fucked up because they concentrated opportunties
| in a few regions. That's the trap (western) urbanists
| wanted for PRC 10 years ago, noting PRC tier 1 cities are
| remarkably not dense, and they should 2x/3x population,
| as if it was not affordable enough. Now PRC did opposite,
| expand developement in land, and lots of new cities/hubs
| are openning up. Tier 2/3+ cities will be a lot more
| livable in PPP terms if everything goes right. And give
| it a few years, 1-2 child policy 1-2:2:4 ratio means
| every Chinese kid is almost guaranteed to inherit housing
| whena grand parent croaks. The TLDR is PRC engine for
| growth is fine, it's not overheated anymore. And PRC
| urban/develpment/social patterns is trying to avoid the
| pitfalls of modern SKR/JP. Keyword being trying. Edit: I
| just realized we're engaging across multiple threads. I'm
| going to stop because I don't think it will be productive
| for either of us.
| wiremine wrote:
| > They can be all dissatisfied they want but a few crackdowns
| always put them in line, and in the end this is what matters.
|
| Until it doesn't. World history is the history of power being
| consolidated and then (often forcibly) distributed, either to
| new consolidators or democracies of various types.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| For many years I've been worrying that this becomes harder
| and harder as surveillance technology improves. I'm also
| concerned that free media makes it much easier for foreign
| powers to disrupt things. An issue that doesn't destabilize
| authoritarian countries. These two potential trends or
| forces have me very worried about the long-term future of
| mankind with authoritarian becoming a one-way road.
| prossercj wrote:
| > but life is about power
|
| This is the most western view
| dools wrote:
| Yeah cos young people in Western Democracies are totally not
| dissatisfied :\
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Not many young people in Western Democracies risk their life
| to immigrate to china.
| prossercj wrote:
| I share many of your sentiments, but I have a theory that it
| won't be China or the West, but a blend of the two, which
| dominates the future (or, hopefully, rules without dominating).
| It's like our cultures are mating, and posterity will be the
| child of both. And like actual mating, the courtship is often
| rocky and marked by conflict. We'll sort it out.
| sscarduzio wrote:
| Thanks ChatGPT for the summary:
|
| Dan Wang's 2023 letter reflects on his experiences of a walk-and-
| talk event in Thailand, interactions with Chinese youths who have
| emigrated due to dissatisfaction with life in China, and
| observations on China's current economic and political state. He
| discusses the challenges China faces, the reasons behind the
| growing trend of Chinese youths emigrating, and his views on the
| future of China's global influence and internal dynamics. The
| letter also touches upon the broader implications of these
| developments for global geopolitics and cultural shifts.
| khazhoux wrote:
| This was useful. I understand why gpt summaries are frowned
| upon, but this is a fine TLDR for anyone looking for one. And
| you've properly attributed it.
| badcppdev wrote:
| Thank you for reminding me of how important it is to read the
| full original text.
| yyyfb wrote:
| I do local walk and talk all the time with my alumni association
| and other hiking / biking meetup groups. No need to travel so far
| for it
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > It's easy to forget that the Politburo is entirely made up of
| old men.
|
| I wonder whether there are any other countries entirely governed
| by old men ... and women.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > One of the questions I ask my SF friends is what the
| entrepreneurial 20-year-olds are doing these days. Are they
| starting a billion-dollar company, or are they more interested in
| becoming a memelord who is trying to incite a movement on the
| Internet? I'm not sure we're seeing a surge of exciting startup
| creation, but we sure are seeing a lot more online craziness.
|
| This is a fun question. These things could mean the same thing:
| Starting a website. But too many people think that "becoming a
| memelord" and "inciting a movement" means trolling around on
| someone elses website. The only reason people start their own
| website today is to start a billion-dollar company.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > I've written seven annual letters. Every year, a few weeks
| after I've published a letter, I would open up a new notepad for
| the following year's. That's where I put in data, observations,
| and book recommendations that should go into the next year's
| letter. These notes are not organized. In the last two weeks of
| the year, I sort through everything, try to coax out a structure,
| and then write the damn thing. I've complained about how much
| work it demands, but I also want to say that it has been great
| fun. I don't understand why more people aren't writing them. It's
| not just about sharing your thoughts and recommendations with the
| rest of the world. Having this vessel that you're motivated to
| fill encourages being more observant and analytical in daily life
| too.
|
| I think the reason that more people aren't writing them is that
| they don't have the patience, that they want to immidiately tweet
| every thought they have, get feedback, approval/disapproval.
| userabchn wrote:
| In the past few months I have talked (separately) to three
| Chinese students who were doing PhDs in different countries. I
| asked each what their plans were for the future, and was struck
| by how determined all three were to not return to China. This is
| obviously a biased sample, since they already chose to do their
| PhD outside China, but conditions in China, such as 996 culture,
| definitely seem to be pushing some talented young people away.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-25 23:02 UTC)