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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

I’m just telling you the tradeoffs you’ve chosen. You can’t be an economic superpower in the current regime.

Without your own “hypergrowth” you’ll always be dominated by the hypergrowth of competitors like the US and China. You’ll be in orbit of other powers instead of creating your own gravity.

Where am I wrong?

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To pivot a bit from the point above: I'm not sold on the core premise of the need for "hypergrowth." I think the American economy has been an incredible engine for productivity and I mostly agree that there's a lot of things that get in the way of the same in the EU and other countries. But I look around the U.S. and wonder what exactly the goal is if it's not actually giving everyone safer, more comfortable lives.

When you take the eurozone as a block it puts it only second to the US in terms of GDP, with much better QOL indicators. I don't know how you can think this doesn't place it very much within the realm of economic superpowers.

Being a superpower doesn't mean much to the americans that live in a town that looks like Gummo. There's a lot of them.

Do you propose forcing 27 groups to become the same just so it's easier to sell them things? Isn't that the same as the foreign invasion change of culture you guys are always worried about?

Didn't the US also used to lecture China on how it would never be an economic superpower if it didn't adopt liberal democracy and US-style free market capitalism?

I think the world is less and less interested in the concept of securing economic growth by copying the exact US economic and political model. Different parts of the world are going to figure this out in different ways.

I don't think they are bad tradeoffs. I think there are problems that need to be fixed, and plenty of room for improvement, but the core principles are fine.

Do you know what else focuses on hypergrowth, in biology?

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