Steve Jobs and America's decline

Its not ridiculous at all. For what its worth, it happens to be true at this point in time. Whether it will continue to hold given the poor fiscal health of the US is the crux of the debate.

When I look at my classmates and my peer group, the ones who stayed back in India have (unfortunately) gone absolutely nowhere. The ones who migrated to the USA have gotten multiple graduate degrees in STEM, work at some of the most innovative companies, contribute to technical literature, teach,...

I spoke to a former classmate who came to the US, got his Masters alongwith me and went back home.

"Dude, congratulations, your resume says you are now a Chief Scientist! So when did you complete your PhD. ? What did you study ? More CS ? Math ?"

The guy goes "What are you talking about ? I never studied anything beyond that Masters, and most of that I've forgotten. In India, you just hang around for a couple of years in technology, they make you a scientist. Hang around as a scientist for a couple more years, you are a chief scientist!"

So that's how that goes. I used to wonder when I saw these outsourcing bodyshops ( Infosys, Wipro, TCS etc ) having several Chief Scientists on their staff, as to what sort of "science" goes on at an outsourcing outfit. Now I don't.

In India, its all about 3 things: "ghar, gaadi, biwi". Google that phrase and you will understand the microcosm that is India. When the entire culture of a nation is built around the acquisition of a "house, automobile, wife", why would such a nation breed innovative entrepreneurs at the same rate as the US ? And that's preciely what you'll see if you go shopping for talent in India. The truly talented tech geniuses will give you their right arm for an F1/H1B visa to the USA, and the rest are too busy chasing "ghar, gaadi, biwi". Yes, there are a few exceptions, but that's what they are - exceptions.

I'm not American and I accept it. If you go to Silicon Valley you will see more Indians, Chinese or European people than Americans.(engineering in USA have 60% foreigners)

There are economic "hubs" where people that do things well love to go as they meet other experts and learn a lot, and could make money doing what they love. Like it or hate it,but a lot of these hubs remain in America.

USA is only 4% of the population, but represents 50% of the economy of the world. If you are creative or innovative in Argentina maybe you could survive as you see only corrupt people can earn money, or you could travel to the USA and get a lot of money.

In South America you can not innovate because there is no middle class, as simple as this is. There is only super rich people that own properties the size of the state of California, or those that have very little. No market for you.

Something similar happens in Africa, when tribal leaders(or kings like Mohamed of Morocco) own anything as "fathers for the benefit of the tribe, or country".

In Europe and Asia population is old and society values "security" and innovators are not good considered if they fail just once(and innovators by definition fail a lot).

You couldn't be more wrong.

First, no one ever said "all" the dynamic people were in the US. The implied point was that the majority of them are. I believe that to be true for some very obvious, logical reasons.

The U.S. benefits from some unintended social and genetic engineering because of a few factors...

1. The U.S. has no ethnic culture (since Europeans supplanted the native population and then opened the doors to the rest of the world rather than embracing an "only European" ideal). So innovative people could more easily immigrate here provided there were advantages to doing so (which there were as I'll outline below). I'm not saying that couldn't happen elsewhere but a Frenchman who lives in England is still considered a Frenchman. A Frenchman who lives in America is considered an American and that inclusion makes people more likely to come here.

2. From our founding to the early 1900s the U.S. was far and away ahead of the world in recognizing and rewarding entrepreneurship. We didn't have an entrenched royalty or class system and democracy made sure laws benefited the populace in general rather than a ruling elite. This drew entrepreneurs to the U.S. and their descendants are likely still here (and in many cases inherited that dynamism either by nature or nurture)

3. From WWII to around the mid-1980s the U.S. was far and away wealthier than the rest of the world because WWII caused decades of damage to the European and Asian economies. Remember with the exception of a handful of planes attacking the West Coast there was no fighting done in the U.S. whatsoever. That means no reconstruction needed while the rest of the world was devastated. So again entrepreneurs (who are drawn to where the wealth is) came to the U.S.

4. The U.S. has a culture built around the idea that you can come here with nothing and become rich. That influences a lot of our laws and customs. For example, there's a reason why our tax rates are lower than a large portion of the world. So even today, when the advantages to starting a company in the U.S. are smaller than they've ever been, the U.S. tends to draw entrepreneurs to it.

So in the end it isn't nationalism it's just common sense.

The second part is the idea of American exceptionalism: that the USA is great because it's the USA. This is nauseating, indeed. It's also obviously harmful, since now "greatness" is a birthright rather than an achievement.

We're slowly waking up from our post-WW2 bender, but some people need more time than others. And others are deadly serious about American Exceptionalism. They really believe in it and won't be swayed by contrary evidence.

In Europe there are no global companies based on web technology, no Google, no Facebook, no Amazon. Previous tech booms have left little to show for it, I guess ARM is the shining example.

Some old companies have been pretty nimble and have been ccompetitive in new technology, like Ericsson and Nokia. But the landscape is utterly different from the US, and it is not for the better, there seem to be a glass ceiling for startups.

As long as Europe is so pathetic in tech, we don't deserve better than to read self-congratulatory stuff like that. Maybe it will even spur some competitive instinct...

Yes, sometimes nationalism can be a fog that hides the truth, but it and other cultural beliefs can also be good for people.

It may or may not be correct, but it's hardly ridiculous. If innovative people attract each other, you'd certainly expect some places to have a greater than average number.

As someone from the heart of the U.S., I believe that creativity, intelligence and industriousness are likely to be evenly distributed throughout the world. What isn't evenly distributed are political, economic and cultural systems which encourage highly talented people to build new technologies and companies. The United States has been particularly good at producing this outcome - many would argue that's been the relative apogee among nations/cultures. Personally, I believe that on a per capita basis, it becomes hard to demonstrate that the U.S. is any more innovative than nations like Japan, Germany and Korea.

This is not intended to be nationalistic. We simply seem to have become optimized for this outcome. Other outcomes - economic equality, social welfare, work/life balance, overall happiness, (arguably - it's a slippery concept after all) are not emphasized as much. Consequently, few unbiased observers would place the U.S. at the top of the pack in those categories.

Consider Valley startups - the inequality there is overwhelming. To borrow Occupy Wall St language, the top 1% probably has more than [1] 100% of the wealth.

[1] A simple example showing how this could be possible: 99 startups have lost $1. 1 startup has earned $100. Net wealth = $1 and the top 1% have 10,000% of the wealth.

The economic crisis of the last couple years is not America’s problem. America’s problem is we became very successful a few decades ago and got very rich because of it. That wealth led us to create more and more jobs that “serviced” us. So our economy became service oriented while poor countries (primarily in Asia) were happy to take our manufacturing jobs.

As the article says “Designed by Apple in California, Manufactured in China”

The U.S. still leads in designing things but almost everything we design is manufactured elsewhere and the people in those other countries are putting together just enough wealth to send their kids to college. Meaning eventually we’ll start to see more design work out of Asia at which point we’re going to start losing a lot of our wealth and we’ll be left with a service economy that no longer has enough wealth to support itself.

Fixing this problem means competing on every level with countries like China. But we can’t do that because we don’t want to be like China. Foxconn could open a factory in Texas tomorrow and get enough Mexicans to staff it by the end of the week but our laws won’t allow them to pay the low wages they pay in China. These laws are based on a good instinct on our part but it’s an instinct born out of Arrogance.

“We are Americans so we can dictate what something is worth even if someone else is willing to manufacture it for less”

But the problem is we can’t dictate what something is worth. So China, who is willing to allow their people to be treated far more ruthlessly, always wins out. Until we come to terms with that and find some way to fix it we’ll still have a problem

(For the record I think automation through robotics might be the key to fixing this to a certain extent but that’s a whole different conversation)

As competition in the free market is all about finding ways to do things cheaper, most things should be continually less expensive. The Fed policy mandates the exact opposite, with the ensuing monetary expansion (+ over-encouraged consumer investment) driving the parasitic FIRE economy.

The "way out of this in America" is that we all become slightly poorer, the Chinese all get a lot richer, and manufacturing starts coming back to the US.