Only tangentially related, but during the height of the Covid crisis I remember Taiwan's response was particularly efficient. The vice president of Taiwan from 2016-2020 was Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) - a man with a DOCTORATE in epidemiology.
The last time the United States had a presidential figure with any kind of STEM background was probably Jimmy Carter (bachelors of science and served as a navy nuclear engineer) - nearly 50 years ago.
>Only tangentially related, but during the height of the Covid crisis I remember Taiwan's response was particularly efficient
I think it's pretty related on the cultural side. If you look at how Taiwan succeeded, it's basically two fold. On the population's side it was willingness to follow orders, wear masks, get tracked using a smartphone app if you were sick and they were pretty damn strict about this. In particular mask wearing is a common courtesy in much of East Asia long before covid.
On the tech/politics side they were lucky to have people like Audrey Tang. But let's put it that way the chances that the US put a trans hacker who writes Perl implementations in Haskell for fun in a top cabinet position and for Americans to accept East Asian levels of collective discipline is well, not looking to good to put it mildly
Great points. Another reason masking wasn't all that unusual was the prevalence of two-stroke engines in scooters (at least back when I lived there) which tend to put out a bit more pollution.
It's awfully bold to claim that the US is obsessed with making rules, and China isn't. China is similarly full of rules (in fact, likely moreso), but they have less rule of law, so they aren't enforced consistently. The US has more rule of law (for now), so enforcement is (was) more consistent.
And of course, if anyone's too good at making rules, it's the EU.
"It's awfully bold to claim that the US is obsessed with making rules, and China isn't."
Of course China is obsessed with rules just like many countries are, and it's pretty clear it firmly polices its laws.
The difference is that after the death of Mao in 1976 Deng Xiaoping consciously and openly embarked on a task to pull China into the modern technological era, and to do that he deliberately set out to populate China's Politburo with highly educated engineers and like. (I gave references to this in a HN post a short while ago.)
Thus, for nearly 50 years China has been run by the best brains available rather than those who've the gift of the gab and promise the electorate whatever it takes to get them elected.
Sure that's not democracy and many of us in the West find it irksome. However, like it or not, over the last 50 years China's rulers have run a command economy and worked an economic miracle.
Deng Xiaoping's insight of getting the best and brightest to run the country was brilliant, unlike most dictators he chose a course of action that actually benefited China. There's no question about that, the evidence is there for all the world to see.
It's not exactly controversial to generalize HN's sentiment that the US would be better off with more engineers and experts in elected office, which all other things being equal, implies that the US should be more like China.
The problem is that it’s more of a dictatorship now with Xi than it was after Deng. It’s not longer the best and brightest but those loyal to Xi. That’s how you got highly capable people like Li Keqiang sidelined and many others purged altogether on “corruption “ charges. A benevolent dictator can be beneficial for a country in crisis (the original Roman idea of a dictator which was a temporary position), like you could argue Deng was, but it’s not a good model for long-term governance.
"The problem is that it’s more of a dictatorship now with Xi than it was after Deng."
Despite what I said that's very true. Throughout history we've seen many dictators who've had both some degree of benevolence and the best interests of their states at heart only to be followed by tyrants or idiots (right, Rome's one example).
As you say, it’s not a good model for long-term governance. Unfortunately, benevolent dictators are a rare breed.
With China, the key question for the world is whether the country will become increasingly authoritarian and all that's likely to entail, or over time settle down and become more benign without major disruption, revolution and or war. The fact that authoritarianism seems to be on the rise generally doesn't bode well, methinks.
This is the key. The problem with a dictatorship has never been that they are inherently bad, but because they are extremely unreliable long term. Even a "good" dictator that does almost everything perfectly will only be around for so long, and a bad dictator is very likely around the corner.
The other problem is that at some point the primary goal of the dictator is to remain in power and then their decisions are based on the best options to ensure they stay in power (i.e., suppression of anything that could threaten that), and these decisions are often orthogonal or even opposite to the best options for the country and/or its citizens.
china is obsesed with principals, from which rules can be derived in order to facilitate the realisation of those principals
China makes a consistant policy of stateing the principals they are trying to follow and how they are doing that, like every time they stand in front of microphones, and lo, it is actualy working.
The problem for us, is that the people in front of microphones here, use similar language, and we all stopped listening a long time ago, as it is just talky talk noise, and we are only concerend with who gets the money.
China has scale on it's side, and they are lifting people out of the 16'th century, litteral mud brick dirt floor shacks, and moving whole villages into new apartment complexes, together, where they can go or stay, or go back and forth and continue to farm, and so there is a vast number of people, loyal to the state, and the jobs they get, and the astonishing oportunities that they can persue, should they have the wet ware and gumption......more engineers then, many more engineers, working on many more projects.....
a litte known story, sometimes told in different ways, is of a very ancient temple built to honour the worlds first engineer, named Gun, which sits on an island in the middle of the headwaters of the yallu, who is credited with building the first flood control engineering for that same river, some number of millenia, ago
though truth to be told, the mesoptaimians were at it first, but we have only there ditch digging songs and flood laments to remind us of what needs to be done first
Well, okay. But China also has a lot of environmental and governance disasters. One thing lawyers help do is protect normal people from large companies and government officials who exceed their mandate.
Would you be okay with companies near you just dumping toxic waste into the local rivers?
No, on the balance it is lawyers who protect companies from the people they harm and lawyers who constitute the government officials who perpetually exceed and expand their mandates.
Most of the senate are lawyers and it’s the most frequent occupation of a legislator.
You're letting "perfect" be the enemy of "good" here. If the alternative is China, where a mid-level bureaucrat can decide the public good outweighs your health, I'll take the lawyer-filled US.
> Runoff and soil erosion continually pour dangerous chemicals into bodies of water statewide. The pollution starves fish of oxygen. It causes organic material to grow that threatens to sicken humans unless drinking water providers spend huge sums on decontamination. It similarly makes water unsafe for recreation. This spring’s heavy rainfall ended years of drought — and it also, as predicted, led to levels of nitrates in rivers above or near the highest on record.
This is just misinformation. This is an international board. Many readers will take this as fact. There are courts and there are laws on the books, and yes many cases are enforced. Not "enough" for some, "too much" for others.. it is a "Goldilocks Problem" .. comparing the situation across the USA does not make a lot of sense either, since State's Rights historically have played a big role.
What a crock of shit. Yeah, it's an international board but we're talking about the ability of countries to support AI development. And outside of the US and China there is basically nothing going on. Maybe your country doesn't allow rampant pollution to be dumped into water streams. That's great! But then your country matters fuck all to the state of AI development. But it's absolute bullshit to pretend that China allows rampant ecological destruction in their pursuit of goals and then pretend that the US is constrained by some pollution restrictions. It has zero basis in reality and contributes nothing to the discussion. You are the one supporting misinformation.
Common accepted knowledge around here is that greed is good and that capitalism works because of it.
Fine, let's accept it.
But here's my pet theory and here why I think we see cracks forming up in this "greed is good" mantra (which, frankly, hurts common sense of anyone living in a judeo-christian culture, because, well, isn't greed a sin?): this only works in a world of expanding EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Investment).
This cheap energy is basically a giganormous pool of energy slaves. As long as there are slaves to capture, greed is good because it's good for everyone to capture and distribute as many slaves as possible.
When that pool dwindles, greed stops working as well as it did for the advancement of public good and it begins cannibalizing on it (the public good). It still gets accepted as a truism today, but it will soon go back to sin territory.
People in the US thinks it is a bad thing that US is run by lawyers? I would argue differently. The real difference is that China is a developing country, and US is a developed country. China should focus more on growing the pie and US should focus more on sharing the pie, hence lawyers to set up rules and regulations.
The USA is run by too many dummies, China has a far higher number of graduates in tech, although China also has many 'purchased' degrees - the hiring of a winger to pass exams
Implementing rules made by lawyers|engineers makes good environment for lawyers|engineers.
Deregulation implemented by lawyers|engineers makes good environment for lawyers|engineers.
Deregulation implemented by politicians or laypersons doesn't make good environment for engineers or lawyers. So yes, not all deregulation and not all regulation will be good for engineers.
Putting engineers in positions of power will mean that engineers will make and remove laws that are good for engineers. When engineers are happy with rules, they can FINALLY go do what they want which typically results in engineering products, which most people like after lawyers say things like "no, a steel sword is not a good educational toy for children". Reality is not simple.
Only tangentially related, but during the height of the Covid crisis I remember Taiwan's response was particularly efficient. The vice president of Taiwan from 2016-2020 was Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) - a man with a DOCTORATE in epidemiology.
The last time the United States had a presidential figure with any kind of STEM background was probably Jimmy Carter (bachelors of science and served as a navy nuclear engineer) - nearly 50 years ago.
>Only tangentially related, but during the height of the Covid crisis I remember Taiwan's response was particularly efficient
I think it's pretty related on the cultural side. If you look at how Taiwan succeeded, it's basically two fold. On the population's side it was willingness to follow orders, wear masks, get tracked using a smartphone app if you were sick and they were pretty damn strict about this. In particular mask wearing is a common courtesy in much of East Asia long before covid.
On the tech/politics side they were lucky to have people like Audrey Tang. But let's put it that way the chances that the US put a trans hacker who writes Perl implementations in Haskell for fun in a top cabinet position and for Americans to accept East Asian levels of collective discipline is well, not looking to good to put it mildly
Great points. Another reason masking wasn't all that unusual was the prevalence of two-stroke engines in scooters (at least back when I lived there) which tend to put out a bit more pollution.
It's awfully bold to claim that the US is obsessed with making rules, and China isn't. China is similarly full of rules (in fact, likely moreso), but they have less rule of law, so they aren't enforced consistently. The US has more rule of law (for now), so enforcement is (was) more consistent.
And of course, if anyone's too good at making rules, it's the EU.
"It's awfully bold to claim that the US is obsessed with making rules, and China isn't."
Of course China is obsessed with rules just like many countries are, and it's pretty clear it firmly polices its laws.
The difference is that after the death of Mao in 1976 Deng Xiaoping consciously and openly embarked on a task to pull China into the modern technological era, and to do that he deliberately set out to populate China's Politburo with highly educated engineers and like. (I gave references to this in a HN post a short while ago.)
Thus, for nearly 50 years China has been run by the best brains available rather than those who've the gift of the gab and promise the electorate whatever it takes to get them elected.
Sure that's not democracy and many of us in the West find it irksome. However, like it or not, over the last 50 years China's rulers have run a command economy and worked an economic miracle.
Deng Xiaoping's insight of getting the best and brightest to run the country was brilliant, unlike most dictators he chose a course of action that actually benefited China. There's no question about that, the evidence is there for all the world to see.
Which poses an interesting consequence.
It's not exactly controversial to generalize HN's sentiment that the US would be better off with more engineers and experts in elected office, which all other things being equal, implies that the US should be more like China.
The problem is that it’s more of a dictatorship now with Xi than it was after Deng. It’s not longer the best and brightest but those loyal to Xi. That’s how you got highly capable people like Li Keqiang sidelined and many others purged altogether on “corruption “ charges. A benevolent dictator can be beneficial for a country in crisis (the original Roman idea of a dictator which was a temporary position), like you could argue Deng was, but it’s not a good model for long-term governance.
"The problem is that it’s more of a dictatorship now with Xi than it was after Deng."
Despite what I said that's very true. Throughout history we've seen many dictators who've had both some degree of benevolence and the best interests of their states at heart only to be followed by tyrants or idiots (right, Rome's one example).
As you say, it’s not a good model for long-term governance. Unfortunately, benevolent dictators are a rare breed.
With China, the key question for the world is whether the country will become increasingly authoritarian and all that's likely to entail, or over time settle down and become more benign without major disruption, revolution and or war. The fact that authoritarianism seems to be on the rise generally doesn't bode well, methinks.
This is the key. The problem with a dictatorship has never been that they are inherently bad, but because they are extremely unreliable long term. Even a "good" dictator that does almost everything perfectly will only be around for so long, and a bad dictator is very likely around the corner.
The other problem is that at some point the primary goal of the dictator is to remain in power and then their decisions are based on the best options to ensure they stay in power (i.e., suppression of anything that could threaten that), and these decisions are often orthogonal or even opposite to the best options for the country and/or its citizens.
china is obsesed with principals, from which rules can be derived in order to facilitate the realisation of those principals China makes a consistant policy of stateing the principals they are trying to follow and how they are doing that, like every time they stand in front of microphones, and lo, it is actualy working. The problem for us, is that the people in front of microphones here, use similar language, and we all stopped listening a long time ago, as it is just talky talk noise, and we are only concerend with who gets the money. China has scale on it's side, and they are lifting people out of the 16'th century, litteral mud brick dirt floor shacks, and moving whole villages into new apartment complexes, together, where they can go or stay, or go back and forth and continue to farm, and so there is a vast number of people, loyal to the state, and the jobs they get, and the astonishing oportunities that they can persue, should they have the wet ware and gumption......more engineers then, many more engineers, working on many more projects..... a litte known story, sometimes told in different ways, is of a very ancient temple built to honour the worlds first engineer, named Gun, which sits on an island in the middle of the headwaters of the yallu, who is credited with building the first flood control engineering for that same river, some number of millenia, ago though truth to be told, the mesoptaimians were at it first, but we have only there ditch digging songs and flood laments to remind us of what needs to be done first
https://archive.is/tdtMy
Well, okay. But China also has a lot of environmental and governance disasters. One thing lawyers help do is protect normal people from large companies and government officials who exceed their mandate.
Would you be okay with companies near you just dumping toxic waste into the local rivers?
No, on the balance it is lawyers who protect companies from the people they harm and lawyers who constitute the government officials who perpetually exceed and expand their mandates.
Most of the senate are lawyers and it’s the most frequent occupation of a legislator.
You're letting "perfect" be the enemy of "good" here. If the alternative is China, where a mid-level bureaucrat can decide the public good outweighs your health, I'll take the lawyer-filled US.
I don't know what you're talking about. That is the current reality in the US. We have no recourse.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/disastrous-figures-show-poverty-i...
> Runoff and soil erosion continually pour dangerous chemicals into bodies of water statewide. The pollution starves fish of oxygen. It causes organic material to grow that threatens to sicken humans unless drinking water providers spend huge sums on decontamination. It similarly makes water unsafe for recreation. This spring’s heavy rainfall ended years of drought — and it also, as predicted, led to levels of nitrates in rivers above or near the highest on record.
> We have no recourse.
This is just misinformation. This is an international board. Many readers will take this as fact. There are courts and there are laws on the books, and yes many cases are enforced. Not "enough" for some, "too much" for others.. it is a "Goldilocks Problem" .. comparing the situation across the USA does not make a lot of sense either, since State's Rights historically have played a big role.
What a crock of shit. Yeah, it's an international board but we're talking about the ability of countries to support AI development. And outside of the US and China there is basically nothing going on. Maybe your country doesn't allow rampant pollution to be dumped into water streams. That's great! But then your country matters fuck all to the state of AI development. But it's absolute bullshit to pretend that China allows rampant ecological destruction in their pursuit of goals and then pretend that the US is constrained by some pollution restrictions. It has zero basis in reality and contributes nothing to the discussion. You are the one supporting misinformation.
I don't know what you're talking about either. Farm runoff is a whole different beast than mercury compounds or cyanide.
US is run by greed.
Common accepted knowledge around here is that greed is good and that capitalism works because of it.
Fine, let's accept it.
But here's my pet theory and here why I think we see cracks forming up in this "greed is good" mantra (which, frankly, hurts common sense of anyone living in a judeo-christian culture, because, well, isn't greed a sin?): this only works in a world of expanding EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Investment).
This cheap energy is basically a giganormous pool of energy slaves. As long as there are slaves to capture, greed is good because it's good for everyone to capture and distribute as many slaves as possible.
When that pool dwindles, greed stops working as well as it did for the advancement of public good and it begins cannibalizing on it (the public good). It still gets accepted as a truism today, but it will soon go back to sin territory.
People in the US thinks it is a bad thing that US is run by lawyers? I would argue differently. The real difference is that China is a developing country, and US is a developed country. China should focus more on growing the pie and US should focus more on sharing the pie, hence lawyers to set up rules and regulations.
The USA is run by too many dummies, China has a far higher number of graduates in tech, although China also has many 'purchased' degrees - the hiring of a winger to pass exams
If you know your history the US has always been run by lawyers until about 50 years ago when it started being run by MBA's and Finance Capitalists.
Who went on to train the lawyers and judges in the MBA/Friedman orthodoxy.
*ideology.
But if you deregulate America, then you inherently create a market where lawyers rule. I'm fine with the status-quo.
> But if you deregulate America
...how does building more and putting more engineers in positions of power mean deregulation?
To the extent the article has a position on this, it's for deproceduralisation. Not deregulation per se.
Implementing rules made by lawyers|engineers makes good environment for lawyers|engineers.
Deregulation implemented by lawyers|engineers makes good environment for lawyers|engineers.
Deregulation implemented by politicians or laypersons doesn't make good environment for engineers or lawyers. So yes, not all deregulation and not all regulation will be good for engineers.
Putting engineers in positions of power will mean that engineers will make and remove laws that are good for engineers. When engineers are happy with rules, they can FINALLY go do what they want which typically results in engineering products, which most people like after lawyers say things like "no, a steel sword is not a good educational toy for children". Reality is not simple.
The anti-US sentiment is exhausting. If you don’t like the US, stop using our technology and our markets.
> stop using our technology and our markets
That's exactly what's happening. Like, it's happening before our very eyes. Right now.
Hubris, arrogance, and entitlement led us here and the world is taking your suggestion to heart.
> anti-US sentiment is exhausting
How is saying America should have more engineers in positions of power anti-American?
It’s a well known issue that’s been beaten to death.
What a fallacy to equate the status quo of lawyers running the country with the United States itself.
Okay, that’s still not anti-American in any way.
Those two are directly related. The common thread is US imperialism.
As if China isn’t also building towards that same position.