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Comment by MrSkelter | Hacker News Reader

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> Your comment seems rooted in fear and anger.

It's rooted in neither. Care to explain why you came to that conclusion? Fyi I'm neither American nor Chinese.

I was replying to a commenter who used "how we approach everything" and "Chinese way of thinking" when explaining China's economic dominance. I was questioning whether there is any such "national thinking" in any society, still less in a society of ~1.4bn people.

Fwiw I think that China's achievement, since the mid 20th century, of lifting so many people out of extreme poverty in such a short time is extremely creditable. As is its recent action on deploying clean energy technology. I'm much less impressed with its authoritarian political system. And of course I worry about military conflict.

It's the story the new generations tell themselves that's taken hold last few years. IIRC context is SMEE chairman (maker of PRC litho machine) said EUV is made by man, not god. Became rally for PRC industry and national confidence. X is made by man, not god for anything PRC needs to catchup on. Which circles back to Qian Xuesen, foreign people can build rockets, why can't we. Or more recently, foreign people are good at XYZ events, why can't we. AKA anything they can do we can do.

The bigger undercurrent is divide between faction of people who think EUV impossible or possible. Between boomer/doomers (older, never do better than west types) and young techno-optimists, faction generation/education divided. TLDR PRC technical talent skews young, and techwar as spurned wave of scifi optimists, techno nationalists and industrialist party way of thinking. It's not homogeneous but it's dominant, especially in S&T after quick ascendancy.

As a non-American, I think that Americans are special in that they have the right combination of hard work and personal initiative and efficiency. To oversimplify, Europeans are efficient workers, but unlike Americans, they use their efficiency not to produce more but to work less and enjoy life. East Asians are hard workers but they tend to favor group cohesion over maximizing individual potential, which is not as efficient.

I am not saying that one culture is better than another, but I think the American way is particularly productive, particularly stressful too.

I feel this is true of Americans and Europeans. And as an American, I've been migrating myself more and more into the European mindset. I put in my 8 hours, and I'm done, then I do non-work related activities for the next 8 hours, then I sleep for the next.

As a non-American, but one who worked in US companies for decades, I feel Americans are influenced by economic gigantism.

The American experience is of triumphing with audacious, go big or go home schemes that others wouldn't or couldn't attempt.

To cherry pick one example, during WWII the US created airstrips on tiny pacific islands to fight the Japanese. Few people imagined it was possible to freight in the bulldozers, machines and materials to accomplish this, and it was game changing.

And of course we have the Manhattan project. Railroads. Gigantic IT companies like Oracle, IBM, Apple and more lately Google.

These successes fed into American exceptionalism.

This has its pros and cons.

In a world on the cusp of incredible discoveries, it let audacious American megacorps capture the high ground.

But explosive capitalist success has costs and masks underlying issues. Many people have had the experience of starting work at US Megacorp and being astonished at the waste, ineptitude and back stabbing that happens - yet somehow the corporate continues to thrive and throw off mountains of money.

The experience of that easy money breeds an unhealthy version of American exceptionalism where people start to believe they will and should succeed - just because American.

Things are different elsewhere in the world.

Up and comers make do with what they have and struggle upwards while the USA cruises.

Just one example are the thriving Chinese fabbing companies like JLCPCB. Every tech product contains a PCB. It's pretty obvious now that PCB manufacture is an absolute core competency in tech going forward.

Any two man upstart tech company can use JLCPCB's free online tools to design a PCB, then click to have the factory fabricate the board, solder on all the components and connectors, and have it in the customer's hands a few days later. True on demand manufacturing.

What would have cost thousands of dollars, taken months and required a team of experts a few years ago now takes days and costs a few bucks.

The US is nowhere in this relatively new but critical industry. The only US competitors are stuck in a local minimum where they get assured business at generous prices from security-sensitive govt agencies who can't outsource to China, but they can't remotely compete on price with their Chinese competitors on price or even quality and timeliness.

I often think of the USA as a melting pot in the truest sense. You have a little bit of different cultures percolating and bubbling in the fondue pot. Interesting things can come out of it...

But when the fondue "decides" to melt in a certain way, you get the unified ideas which seem impossible (like your airstrip example). Perspectives from all cultures aligned under one roof, while also aligned in direction.

As an American every self made millionaire I've known outside of software is the opposite of this. American success was about the small business made big. It's leaders were people who often built the company themselves. Who started with an idea themselves, who who grew in the kind of environment you outlined in the last part of your post. But those people are all old now, and the environment barely exists anymore. And they normally made their success in a non-glamorous industry making non-glamorous things.

You outline Jack Welch style American business, but that was a reinventing of American business to 'save it' (stock market 'keep the line going up' saving it, not actual saving it as long term GE was left worse off). This isn't the successful American business style that built the country originally.

Your airstrip to me sounds like basically what any American agriculture guy would have done, and in fact probably did do, all the time. My 2002 white Chevy pickup driving 70s millionaire neighbor does this sort of thing all the time in the forest he manages. He does more road work than the local government in crazy remote forrest

I like your takes. As an American, I agree.

The grass is greener though. Europe's work to live, not live to work aligns more with my sensibilities.

Everybody wants (western) Europe's QoL and American's money. What lies in the middle is tiny and every such place is top notch - Switzerland, maybe Singapore, maybe some more.

Small to tiny, highly cohesive, dont shy hard work and dont have unsustainable social utopias

Everybody wants (western) Europe's QoL and American's money. What lies in the middle is tiny and every such place is top notch - Switzerland, maybe Singapore.

You’re not addressing the parent’s question about how any of this is about the “Chinese way of thinking”. In fact, in offering a purely material explanation for China’s success, that it simply has more people and resources, you’re actively arguing against the idea.

I think the places where American inefficiency is most visible is in construction, urban planning, and healthcare.

America blows a significant amount of its money by having its citizens drive everywhere with no option to take a train, bus, bicycle, or low-speed e-scooter. Americans take a crazy percentage of their income and just dump it into the stagnant automotive industry. Americans blow between $5,000-10,000 a year on transportation. It’s so crazy that there is a pretty long list of American cities where moving from the suburbs to the most walkable part of the metro area of that city will net you more square footage in your dwelling after removing the $750/month expense of owning a personal vehicle.

Then you can’t even really fix this problem in America because construction costs are wildly inflated. China can build a high speed rail network for the entire country for the price of a handful of miles of subway in manhattan. Projects take an insanely long time, e.g., California high speed rail. Multiple US cities have a housing cost crisis because houses aren’t being built fast enough, and that’s more money in the economy being blown on rent and financial products rather than productive endeavors.

Hangzhou metro has 12 subway lines. In 2014 they only had one.

Finally, healthcare. America just blows double the amount of money on healthcare of the next most expensive country, with worse outcomes in part because they sit in their cars all day.

I don’t even think some of the problems you’ve brought up with America like the school system are as big of problems. America has really good public schools and universities, so good that Chinese people still come to the US to get educated en masse, even at pretty standard and average state schools.

The current government doing stupid shit like discouraging research and immigration is certainly not helping though.

Regarding your last point, back when my political views were "evolving", I had thought about if, instead of handing foreigners diplomas and kicking them out of the country as fast as possible, we should do the opposite: have student visas require that the recipient stay in the US at least five years after graduation, and then fast-track them through the permanent residency -> citizenship pipeline. It made no sense to me why we'd educate someone to get a degree in chemical engineering, possibly from a rival nation, and then send them back to where they came from. We should "brain drain" other countries, not the other way around.

Those foreign students usually pay for the education they receive, they might not be willing to do so (or as much) if there are strings attached. Besides, I don't think any country should aim on brain draining any other country, that kind of selfishness will be counterproductive long-term. Who knows, might be what we're seeing right now (the US self-sabotaging). Karma's a bitch.

I like the idea of incentivizing people to stay, but I don’t know how we could “require” it. I don’t want the U.S. to implement exit visas or egress control.

Maybe this could be done with a different mechanism like an incentive to stay or an escrow deposit that you get back once you’ve met the requirements.

I think a streamlined path to real citizenship would be an incredible incentive for a lot of people.

That seems like a pretty good idea that’s worth trying.

I think the current logic is that foreign students pay the full unsubsidized sticker price, so it’s basically a profitable transaction.

I think the world would be better on the whole if such people returned home and improved their countries. The US cannot brain drain the entire world for its own benefit.

Show me these magical cities where an extra $750/mo in rent lets you both move from the suburbs to downtown, and increase your sq footage!

Certainly! Here’s my source: https://youtu.be/kYLPUsn0X

The top 5 or 10 of these you’re basically getting close to equivalent square footage or better once you replace your vehicle spending with housing spend.

Well, the video isn't available. And it's a big ask to make way out there claims and then expect people to watch whatever that video was to fully understand whether the claims are true or not. This is basically asymmetric warfare in trolling.

"Here's my wild claim, to verify it go spend your time watching a video!"

I saw the video a few days ago. It uses some napkin math but the author does at least use a spreadsheet / toy model to arrive at their conclusions.

Ohhh okay ty "throwaway920102" will take your word for this.

Ray is a reasonably well-known current/former professional city planner who does look at data to make his content.

The videos he makes do sometimes use napkin math but in the way a city planner does napkin math - with data.

They also don’t claim to be a comprehensive study and each video is accompanied by a pretty thorough disclaimer on what methods are being used.

Odd and unfortunate that this one was taken down.

Was trying to be at least a little helpful "irl_zebra", not to suggest the video was sufficient evidence.

Interesting, I have never seen CityNerd take a video down. I’ll summarize it below my next couple of paragraphs.

Criticizing a source for being in video format and therefore taking time to digest is an invalid criticism. If I linked you a scientific study you’d still have to take time to read it to properly evaluate it. Just because a source in video form doesn’t make it not a source, and it’s not asymmetric trolling warfare. I’m literally just providing a source that aligns with my perspective and opinion, and trying to have a good faith discussion.

I will also point out that every YouTube video provides a full automated transcript on the desktop version of YouTube.

The gist of the video was that some selected American cities presented in a “worst to best” list have an interesting effect going on where people who live in suburban car-dependent areas can potentially live in their metro area’s most walkable neighborhoods with rich urban fabric without sacrificing a lot of square feet or potentially even gaining more space in their home by removing the cost of owning a car and putting that into their rent instead. Ray Delahanty, a (former?) professional city planner, ran through some data on this based on median rent in various neighborhoods and an assumed TCO of personal vehicle ownership of around $750 a month. Metro areas like New York City fared poorly but others presented an interesting trade-off potential.

Obviously, it was something of a simplified discussion that doesn’t take into account every life factor that determines whether car ownership is a requirement, but he is a guy who lived without a car in Las Vegas of all places, so I think the general point was to present a thought experiment on what kind of lifestyle you can get if you change your perspective to consider the idea of ditching your car entirely and no longer pay the very high average costs that Americans incur to own, operate, store, and maintain their vehicles.

Seriously, delusional take. I live in Manhattan and I’m considering a move to Westchester (large suburban county just north of NYC). Average cost per sq foot to buy in Manhattan is about $1500, and it’s about $400 in Westchester. That’s before you touch the other differences in cost of living (taxes, childcare, groceries, etc).

Manhattan is not one of those areas, and is actually one of the worst on the list. Mostly this applies to a lot of smaller cities, here’s my source:

https://youtu.be/kYLPUsn0X3E

So some or even many people explain America’s success as a result of diversity. If that’s true then either China will need to import a diverse population (axis of diversity is uncertain), or else diversity is irrelevant and they will succeed as a more or less undiverse population (whether people are actually Han doesn’t matter so long as they believe and the government classifies them as Han). It’ll be interesting to see.

Diversity is just short hand for US needs to brain drain from around the world, the success is system that disproportionaly increase size of US skilled workforce vs rest, so people better play nice with each other (worked well until not). When PRC went from making 1% of of global technical talent to 50%, and able to retain them or in this case redrain them, they win talent game for generations (at least until 2070s). They will output more stem in next 20 years than US will increase population, births + immigration, i.e. their technical workforce will be 2-3x US. "Diversity" can't brain drain enough to make a dent on those ratios.

"diversity" is an overbroad concept that covers many disparate social practices, a lot of which have nothing to do with technological progress.

I guess that the more focused question is whether China needs to import some amount of tech talent to succeed, at least temporarily. The reporting on this EUV prototype does suggest that that is what they did, giving foreign researchers special visas and whatnot.

China is in a bad place long-term with an inevitable population decline.

Long term is after you and I die, before that they'll reap the greatest high skill demographic dividend in human history that can put everyone else in a bad place long term first.

Which developed country doesn’t have a demographics problem?

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