fgf

yeah, but the less rich of the intelligent have better, safer and more widely respected jobs (I have met door to door salesmen that make more than members of parliament). They had opportunities to chose other more lucrative careers, but they didn't.

tl;dr ... a minor objection tough ... it is not at all impossible for 70 percent of drivers to be better than average, you just need the lower 30 percent to (on average) be really bad

you're being either difficult or dense ... nice gardens are nice, people generally agree that clean homes are too, this is a fact and it won't change cause it'd be neat if professionals did that and kept working even tough they would rather have a clean house than a bit more money (that isn't enough to have the house cleaned)

Or live in new york...

"social status" that doesn't get you laid =//= social status that does

ability in sport = martial prowess / hunting skills / good health in general / good genes in general -- It has always been more or less universally respected.

Jazz players always had subculture specific social status, same with hip-hop pioneers, early rock musicians etc.

might be hard to do that somewhere over poland if ww3 just started

start business =//= start startup

business = plumbing, food stall, import/export, constulting, YC company etc.

startup = YC companies and other similar intense low odds/high reward businesses

edit: vaksel stole my thunder

why don't you get a hepatitis vaccine?

"Three and a half years and 70 countries later, I've gotten the equivalent of a Ph.D in general knowledge about the people and places of Planet Earth."

A contradiction in terms.

"Linking to PG's older posts to help you make a point." The notion that this is bad is baffling. Citation is central to all serious science it also has a place in other forms of (rigorous/serious) thinking. If a scientific article proves something you cite it. If I think you're wrong in a way described by someone else, I'll cite that. This isn't as neat. You prove very little. But you do show what you think about the matter. The aversion against doing this (wich is normal for those who spend a lot of time reading and thinking about for example policy) is strange. It's not an appeal to authority if you agree with it, if it can serve as a description of your position. The fact that pgs essays in particular get cited alot may just be that 1) a lot of people here have read them 2) they're densely argued (you don't expect a lefty to read hayek cause you say he should, a paragraph of a pg essay is more reasonable and 3) they are carefully argued, wich makes it more likely you'll agree with it than more bombastic works or works built on the assumptions and arguments of other people (wich isn't necessarily a bad thing but it does create additional points of failure)

you might have found at anyway, and now, at least, you can avoid the subject

other people will read that question too..

there is no position to disagree with, just a well known fact posted as if it was in opposition to the quoted statement..

switzerland, the US and the UK haven't had any restarts for a long, long time. they are doing good. canada, australia and new zealand never had one (after the initial settlement). the wealth of germany and japan was a re-convergence in spite of bombing.. try again=)

An interesting comparison I'm not really qualified to make is between the relatively secure (?) and cohesive (!) chinese communist party elite and the chaotic free for all (?) in russia. The countries elites both help themselves to quite a bit of wealth but the russians seem to experience an unsolved tragedy of the commons issue. If this is true, will united russia (or whatever it's called) solve the problem of maximising returns from their control of the country (it did take the PRC communist party a few decades)? How could they?

I didn't know this, do you have a source? (because I want to read more about it not because I doubt it)

I don't.. It's population is as big as russias and bigger than any other nation with a comparable average national IQ (besides the US) and some kind of capitalism. I can't think of a single example of this combination not leading to convergence with the highest gdp capita countries.

Yes, but don't forget pronunciation.

I'm also very interested in more info about this.

The word rebuttal could be misleading, Mencius is not against romers idea. If memory serves me right he thinks he doesn't go far enough and is annoyed with the intellectual dishonesty necessary (?) to sell this idea to the media/universities etc.

it would not be too hard to find out for yourself; google china wages rising...

I don't see this as creepy at all, have you never checked PGs latest comments or that of a commenter with interests/opinions you share?

anyway, thank you for making this!

ps. I'd prefer rss

xenophobia |ˌzēnəˈfōbēə; ˌzenə-| noun intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries : racism and xenophobia are steadily growing in Europe. DERIVATIVES xenophobe |ˈzēnəˌfōb; ˈzenə-| |ˈzinəˈfoʊb| |ˈzɛnəˈfoʊb| noun xenophobic |-ˈfōbik| |ˈzinəˈfoʊbɪk| |ˈzɛnəˈfoʊbɪk| adjective

The subject of the article was not what I expected.

I'm interested in Chinese, Malaysian and the Philippine cities, anyone familiar with a startup scene in these countries?

Odds are his parents are net tax contributors, including whatever the state spent on him. Only people with poor parents really owe what they got to the state, as opposed to productive people like their parents.

I love it.

Yes there is. Niall ferguson describes it as "the empires [Indian colonial administrations] distinctly celtic tinge" if memory serves me right.

Ah, I assumed the college was Ivy League or Oxford/Cambridge. I want to get seriously off topic here with questions about cramming for the JEE. If you'll indulge me there is a mail in my profile.

That sucks. Do you sleep well? If no the obvious advice applies, walk outside every morning, install flux or avoid bright screens at night etc. etc.

For your year off have you considered doing something like volunteer work somewhere? 1. you'll be useful to someone 2. it will be cheap 3. your friends and the college admissions people won't think you're wasting your time (nor should they, you or anyone) 4. you will be able to live without stress from various obligations and social pressures (assuming this is a factor) 5. It's easy you could have it arranged in no time and just be off.

And medicines supposedly work as well, if you haven't you should probably talk to a psychiatrist.