It's not just that; it's the culture of the people themselves. The OP mentioned high-speed rail. Such a thing just isn't of interest to the American people, because they've chosen a car-based lifestyle, and built every city and town not named "Manhattan" around that model, making rail transit non-viable economically. (HSR might be useful to some people in certain regions, but you still have to rent a car when you get to your destination city because going anywhere in that city (unless it's Manhattan again) requires a car.) This isn't because of regulatory capture; it's the predominant culture of the American people, and has been since the 1950s with White Flight and the rise of car culture.
Add on top of this the anti-intellectualism that's been in American society forever, and the more recent terrible state of pre-college education and lack of interest in anything STEM unless it's programming with the goal of getting FAANG salaries and it's obvious why America has fallen behind so far. It's really just coasting on 3 things: 1) a huge population, so at least some minority of people are exceptions to the poor education I mentioned, 2) a lot of immigrant families who actually do believe in education and STEM achievements, contrary to popular culture, and 3) waning economic power that came from past achievements.
It’s hard not to choose a car based lifestyle when outside of cities there is basically little or no public transit in many places. On top of that, when many people’s experience with travel by train is the outdated and slow infrastructure that already exists, why would they support more of that experience? I’m not anti- these things, just adding to the context.
Well they could just look at how many other countries do it... I know, Americans hate to look outside their own borders for examples on anything.
There's no public transit in many places because Americans don't want it and don't support it, and refuse to build densely enough to make public transit economically viable in the first place. You can't have a good transit system when everyone lives far apart from each other in spread-out subdivisions.
> because Americans don't want it and don't support it
Exactly - most Americans want the car lifestyle. They don't really wake up dreaming of being packed like sardines into public transportation: busses, metro, rail.
I live in the Netherlands, and many people here are increasingly opting for the car lifestyle because of all of the issues associated with public transportation. Sure, it's more cost-effective. But it's not faster. It's smelly, loud, chaotic. And no one wants to stand around waiting for the next bus to be canceled. Or the next protest shutting all transportation down.
Americans don't want to live in one of those countries. They don't want to risk having to sit next to one of "those people". It's why they like driving everywhere, and living in gated communities where they can keep out the undesirables.
> living in gated communities where they can keep out the undesirables.
Most Americans, including me, who live in areas that aren't large, dense cities with good public transport don't live in gated communities, and our only definition of "undesirable" is someone who commits crimes, which I would have thought would be any law-abiding citizen's definition. Your patronizing description is simply inaccurate.
The vast majority of Americans have no idea what those countries are like, and have never visited a city with good public transit. It's a matter of ignorance more than anything else.
> It's a matter of ignorance more than anything else.
You have no basis for any such presumption. Plenty of Americans, myself among them, have lived in large, dense cities with good public transit--and we have then chosen to not live in such places because we prefer not to. You might believe that living in a large, dense city with good public transit is the best way to live, but that doesn't mean everyone else has to agree with you or be ignorant. Other people simply have different preferences from you. In a free country, which the United States of America is, people with difference preferences for what kind of place to live in can simply live in different places without making presumptuous claims about ignorance.
Being generous, there's only one, maybe two or three cities in the US with good public transportation. NYC has the best system in the US, but it's old and decrepit.
You have to travel outside of the US to see really good systems. Many European cities have decent systems, but the best systems - by far - are in East Asia. The Shanghai metro is as dense as the NYC subway, but it's clean, safe and modern.
Most Americans have not traveled to these places, so they've never seen what an actually good system looks like. At best, they've seen the NYC subway, which they might view as convenient but disgusting. More commonly, they've only ever been to cities with little to no public transit.
You say that Americans have the ability to choose, but that's really not true, unless they move to one particular city or leave the country. The infrastructure that exists determines what choices people have and what's convenient.
> there's only one, maybe two or three cities in the US with good public transportation.
NYC's is, as you say, old and decrepit, but its coverage is pretty good. I don't think it's the best system in the US, however. I lived in Boston for some time; the T was better than NYC's system. I have visited Portland, and at least when I visited, its system was better than NYC's.
> Many European cities have decent systems
I have visited both London and Paris, and both of their systems were comparable to the T in Boston when I lived there in terms of coverage and usability.
I have not visited any cities in East Asia, but I can easily see their systems being better since those countries have made huge investments in that kind of infrastructure.
> You say that Americans have the ability to choose, but that's really not true
By your logic nobody has the ability to choose. Nobody has access to all of the possibilities. So using that as the standard for "ability to choose", which is what you are doing, is pointless.
I could just as well say you don't have the ability to choose anything but a city with public transportation, because that's all that even appears to be on your radar.
> The infrastructure that exists
Is, at least in America, determined by the choices of ordinary people in the past. And choices ordinary people make now will end up causing changes in the infrastructure that exists.
Sure, maybe nowhere in America meets your personal standard for "good public transportation", but why should I care? I have a reasonable spectrum of alternatives open to me and I choose the one that suits me best. I don't waste time agonizing over alternatives that might exist elsewhere but are not accessible to me. Most Americans are the same way. So, I suspect, are most people everywhere, even if what alternatives are reasonably available can vary widely in different parts of the world. Maybe that's a problem for you, but it's not a problem for me, and I suspect it's not a problem for most people everywhere, and I don't see why it should be.
The way you define Americans making a choice sounds a lot like a simple hill climbing algorithm. Once you're on the path of your nearest hill you're stuck there until conditions change, even if you can see a mountain in the distance you would have our whole society ignore it and stay on our little hill? That's why China is and will continue lapping us at transportation. Yes you should care, or at least be able to expect someone to care, or at LEAST not try to talk someone who does care out of it.
>I don't waste time agonizing over alternatives that might exist elsewhere but are not accessible to me.
But you're happy to waste time arguing against them?
Not at all. There is no such thing in a landscape that is changing on time scales that are visible to people, as our societies are. You can't stay stuck on a local maximum if the landscape changes it out from under you. You have to keep reconsidering things.
> you're happy to waste time arguing against them?
The (pretty limited) time I have spent posting in this discussion has not been wasted. I'm having fun.
You can get tightly boxed into one solution. In the US, car culture has caused a fundamental transformation of cities, which makes it extremely difficult to reintroduce public transit. Roads are very wide and there are massive parking lots everywhere, so it's difficult to reorient cities towards walking and public transit. You would have to eliminate those huge parking lots and reduce the number and size of roads in city centers, but because everyone already owns one or two cars, most people are dead-set against such changes.
There is another local optimum, which is extensive public transit and walkable city centers. I'd argue that that other local optimum is far preferable, but transitioning there is very difficult.
But because the vast majority of Americans have only ever been exposed to one solution, they have no idea if they would prefer the alternative. That's my point.
> the vast majority of Americans have only ever been exposed to one solution
I disagree. It may be that the vast majority of Americans have never been exposed to your particular preferred solution, but that's also true of the vast majority of people who live anywhere except a few East Asian cities, according to you. So I don't see why you are singling out Americans. You should be chastising basically everyone outside of East Asia for being backward. (And then, of course, you would just have even more people ignoring you.)
Most Europeans have a decent idea of what good public transit looks like, and the "few East Asian cities" include almost every large city in China and Japan.
As for why I'm singling out Americans: this thread began with a discussion about Americans.
The Boston T is not anywhere near as good as the NYC subway, but this is really beside the point: both systems are decrepit, and in no way stack up to modern public transit systems. Yet these are the best systems the US has to offer.
> Nobody has access to all of the possibilities.
Most people don't know what's out there, so they can't make an informed choice about what would be good public policy. That's my point.
> Is, at least in America, determined by the choices of ordinary people in the past.
I don't think most people understood the consequences of the decisions they were making. The transition to cars and the building of the interstate system had a huge number of ripple effects, and have completely transformed American cities, and as a consequence, public life. People didn't understand all these changes beforehand, and now they're locked in and taken for granted.
> I could just as well say you don't have the ability to choose anything but a city with public transportation, because that's all that even appears to be on your radar.
The reason I'm saying what I'm saying is that I've spent enough time on the three continents we're talking about to have seen the differences in public transit and how it affects city life.
> The Boston T is not anywhere near as good as the NYC subway
My experience of the T is some decades old; I understand it has indeed deteriorated quite a bit since then. But when I used it, I had reasonably contemporary experience of the NYC system as well, and the latter, at that time, was not as good. Any such comparison will of course change over time.
> how it affects city life.
Which, again, is all that appears to be on your radar. But not everyone's life is "city life".
They obviously don't have metro systems in Chinese villages. But Chinese cities do have great metro systems, while American cities are lucky to have any metro at all, or even a decent bus network or a few tram lines.
> My experience of the T is some decades old
Yes, it's extremely old. The Green Line looks like something out of the early 20th Century, and an important stretch of the Red Line had to be shut down a few years ago for emergency repairs, because they suddenly determined that it was too dangerous to continue operating. The whole system is on life support.
The NYC Subway is the only American system that could possibly compare to systems like the Paris Metro or the London Tube. But as I said, all these systems are terrible compared to the standard metro system you'll find in large cities in East Asia. Mainland Chinese cities have fairly standardized (which is how they keep costs down), very modern systems based on the Hong Kong metro. Taipei has a great metro system with a similar design. Japanese cities also have very extensive metro systems. I've heard great things about the Seoul metro system (though I haven't seen it first-hand).
But my point is that 90+% Americans have no idea about these systems. Without some basic exposure to the alternatives that are out there, it's pointless to say that Americans have made an informed choice. They make due with what they have, and largely don't know what the alternatives could be.
I've lived in various American cities with different levels of public transit. As I said, I far prefer the typical city layout in Europe and East Asia.
I've lived in a large, dense city where the public transport was excellent. Having had that experience, and having also had the experience of living in a less dense area where I used a car to get around, I prefer the latter.
Have you lived anywhere except where the public transport was excellent? Do you realize that people, like me, who prefer to live in other areas see benefits to doing so that outweigh the costs of having to have a car?
I have. I lived in Dubai for two years. I drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I suspect they have modelled after a (rich) American city traffic, except they have had a green slate.
I travel routinely for work(300+ days/year) and I’ve had many different living conditions. I also spend a lot of time in the UK and BENELUX, both regions that are predominantly car first but with mediocre public transport.
Switzerland is the only country I’ve seen who does it right. I’ve heard Japan does it well, I wouldn’t know.
Boston, some decades ago. As I noted elsewhere upthread, I understand that the T has deteriorated quite a bit since then. But at the time I lived there, I never felt any need whatsoever for a car and I never had any problems getting where I needed to go safely and in a timely manner.
My whole point was that you should try to live in a country with excellent public transport. I have been tried many places, and I would only consider Switzerland to fit that description(maybe Luxembourg, which has fantastic _free_ public transport).
Would you describe Bostons public transport (decades ago) as “excellent”, or are you just being obtuse?
Mind you, most of Europe has pretty good public transport, I wouldn’t call it excellent.
> My whole point was that you should try to live in a country with excellent public transport.
And my whole point is that you have no idea what my preferences are and you should not be presuming to dictate to me what I should do. If you like where you live, great, enjoy it. And let me choose where I like to live and enjoy that.
> Would you describe Bostons public transport (decades ago) as “excellent”, or are you just being obtuse?
Get off your high horse. I have already described my experience. I'm not going to describe it again just because you feel like being insulting.
I don't think the idea that the general, informed will of Americans somehow chose cars over public transportation holds water. What was the mechanism of that choice on an individual level, free of influence from car companies, between a future with car infrastructure with all the impacts understood (including the land space costs preventing density and efficiency) and other solutions?
It is demonstrably the correct answer, regardless what the largely un- or just as often mis-informed think, not that they were really "asked" in the first place.
> the general, informed will of Americans somehow chose cars over public transportation
This is a fantasy in any society, not just America. No piece of social infrastructure on the scale of "cars vs. public transportation" in any country gets decided by "the general, informed will" of all the people.
The "mechanism of choice on an individual level" in a free country is simple, and I've already described it: people look at the alternatives reasonably available to them and choose the one that suits them best. And the aggregation of all those individual choices shapes the infrastructure, which in turn of course affects what alternatives are reasonably available to the next generation. That's how free markets and free societies work. But of course such a process does not involve any "general, informed will" of the people as a whole. It just involves a huge number of individuals interacting.
The other possibility, in a country that's not a free country (such as one large East Asian country one city of which has been mentioned, not by me, in this overall discussion), is for some small group at the top to decide how they think things should be arranged, and then just impose that on everybody. In such a country there is no "mechanism of choice on an individual level" regarding large scale infrastructure at all; it is imposed by those in charge. People do of course still make individual choices in such countries, but their choices don't really affect the social infrastructure the way they can in a free country.
The US today is not fully a free country in the sense I described above, since there is quite a bit of top-down imposition of things (and not just by governments--there were of course a number of large corporations pushing car-centric infrastructure in the late 19th and 20th centuries), so it's really a mix of the two possibilities I gave. But neither possibility involves "the general, informed will of Americans" deciding anything.
Sorry, but this is just wrong. The simple truth is that people's opinions are usually a product of their upbringing and experiences. People raised in a warmongering society tend to favor warmongering, and people raised in a peaceful society tend to favor peaceful societies, for instance. In the case of cars, Americans really do favor cars and the car-based society they live in, because it's what they know and are familiar with.
So, if you try polling a bunch of suburbanite Americans and ask them if they'd favor abolishing their suburbs and turning them into extremely dense and generally car-free (or at least "car-inconvenient", i.e. narrow, slow roads and very little parking) urban areas, of course the vast majority of them are going to say "no". You can see it right here on HN every time this kind of discussion comes up: regular Americans like things the way they are. If they didn't, they'd be voting for something radically different, but they aren't. Sure, there's a minority of anti-car-culture Americans and even some activists, but they're a minority.
As for your characterization of Japan as an authoritarian society, that really seems extremely ignorant and probably even racist. It's a democracy, in case you've never read Wikipedia, so just like any democratic society, if people get angry enough, they'll vote for someone different, which happens from time to time.
Given the characterization of Americans that you gave elsewhere upthread, and which I responded to, you are in no position to make any such accusation, even if I were in fact talking about Japan, which, as I have posted already, I wasn't.
> ...the anti-intellectualism that's been in American society forever...
That seems to be a bit of a stretch, the US lacks many things but a high-skilled workforce isn't really one of them. The issue is more the anti-industrial trend. The systems that China used to get ahead and build things like all that high speed rail are mostly illegal, nonviable or - at best - politically hazardous in the US (massive amounts of low-quality construction, lots of coal fired plants, low wages, ignoring IP laws, experimenting with different legal structures in specific areas to see what works).
You can afford hundreds or thousands of dollars for transporting your car by train? Putting a car on a train isn't free, or even remotely cheap. Even regular Amtrak tickets in coach class are quite expensive.
And define "very popular". I was reading an article this weekend about some Amtrak line between Chicago and Minneapolis being unexpectedly "very popular", which apparently equated to a whopping 300 passengers per day. Here in Japan, that's about half of one of the smallest bullet trains, and less than a quarter of the larger ones, and those are just single trains, which usually run multiple times per hour, sometimes more frequently than every 10 minutes. In a country of 310M people, 300 people per day doing something is not what I would call "popular".
Because it doesn't scale. A single car takes as much space as 10-15 passengers, and station times are much longer if you need to load/unload cars. Popular passenger rail systems often operate at capacity, with delays sometimes cascading into network-wide disruptions. It's often impossible to add more trains without building new sets of parallel tracks, while train length is limited by the size of the stations.
Make the rail cars intelligent and autonomous. Arrange them behind the engine in a way that the first car(s) behind the engine are filled with automobiles for the terminal destination. The following cars for intermediate 'stops', and the last car(s) for nearer stops. Let the train pass through, while decoupling the last wagons automagically shortly before the station, switching them onto some side track with on- and off-ramps, engaging their brakes, or use some system which does that in switching yards after they roll off the 'hump', let the automobiles roll off, collect the wagons and send them back with any another train travelling in the opposite direction, or whereever there is demand.
Networks..., tokens..., packets..., switches..., routers..., NOT fixed circuits.
But people want to board the train at any station, not just at the point of departure. If your train is a stack, you can't support arbitrary trips without excessive delays.
Transport optimization is an established subfield of operations research and theoretical computer science. The algorithms for something like sorting railway cars are quite interesting, as they have to deal with physical constraints not present in networks and software.
In support of HSRs; I recently took a car train in Switzerland. They have - I think - 5 of these, which take a shortcut tunnel through various mountains, and saves you quite a bit of time, as well as angst driving through narrow and windy mountain roads.
So I could see similar HSR car trains saving quite a bit of time, between HSR hubs in appropriate cities in the US, versus spending e.g. 20+ hours driving from Dallas to New Jersey.
>In support of HSRs; I recently took a car train in Switzerland
>So I could see similar HSR car trains saving quite a bit of time,
There's no such thing as an HSR car train anywhere, nor is there ever likely to be. What you rode on is simply called a "train", not a bullet train. You can obviously transport cars by train, but you're not going to do it at high speeds.
- I saved a lot of time taking a car train, instead of just driving my car through windy roads
- Similarly, I could see a HSR car train, if there was such a thing, saving a lot of time (and of course, freeing up the driving time to be able to do other things, whilst in transit)
I did say you can't have an HSR car train. It simply isn't possible: it would take far too much time to load and unload cars. Also, the weight of the cars is probably too much for HSR tracks. There's a reason HSR can't share rails with freight trains.
I am all for pointing government mistakes, for they are legion.
But let's also not forget the pusillanimity of our MBA overlords and their mantras: Cut Costs and Stock Buybacks and leverage and merge and acquisitions.
Maybe the US reached the limit that free market can get a country to. A planned economy works better for the citizens (and consequently for the whole country) than a lobby-based one.
If the US has reached the limit of something (which I'm not sure about), it's the limit of a society organized in that one specific way. The US is an old country. It's far older than the current incarnation of China or most European countries. If a country remains stable that long without having to reinvent itself, it may risk stagnation.
I was not talking about civilizations but countries with their current institutions.
The current incarnation of China was born in the late 70s, when Deng Xiaoping managed to consolidate power after generations of chaos. Most major European countries collapsed at least once in the 20th century. The UK was the main exception, but it also fell from a global superpower to a regional power.
In contrast, the US still has the same centuries-old constitution, and it hasn't faced a serious challenge to its continued existence since the Civil War.
We have not had an example of a consumer society in a planned economy, that I know of
But the Soviet example is illuminating. They had fabulous infrastructure, built the best rockets, the fastest fighter jets, even had very good super computers.
But they never made a TV with a remote control.
I would love to see a study of consumer appliances in the USSR, but I bet there was a toaster available. One.
China may blaze a new trail and show us something new.
But now they have returned to "Leader for Life" I am expecting them to return to the days of Mao and loose their edge.
If the people are just "consumers" and not "citizens", that's too passive. They're not involved with keeping the society running. That way lies collapse, sooner or later.
If the people are just "citizens" and not "consumers", that's all duty and no enjoying the benefits. That's a society that treats the people as means to an end, not as valuable in their own right.
A balance is needed. The country exists for the people at least as much as the people exist for the country, but the people also have to care for and work for the society.
Why? Even now most countries do not have anything like a "citizen". Only 21% of the human population lives in democracies today and that is an all-time-high, not an all-time-low.
And if you discount supposed democracies that have a form of apartheid, ie. a portion of the population excluded by law from participation (and thus from effective citizenship), you can at least halve that number. Even an extremely moderate islamic country like Morocco has legal apartheid for non-muslims, even if a majority of the population supports it. Do such countries have citizens? I think it's at best 50% true, and the truth is that Morocco is probably the best and most open islamic society (this, despite the fact that I do believe the large majority of muslims, including in Morocco, do NOT want apartheid anymore, but let's just say extremists don't accept majority votes and kill, so ...). Pakistan is still "a democracy", but has extreme apartheid, and regular attacks against minorities (whether you mean Christians or Afghans by minority)
In the vast majority of human history democracies were a rounding error. And it may go back down. At this point, is there really any reason to consider countries Russia, or Egypt, democracies? You have to count both to get to 21%. You'll find you need to count quite a few "democracies with very significant defects" like Pakistan and Russia as normal democracies to get above 10% of the human population.
Btw: consumer is still a very positive word. It still means to me that the country is dependent on the approval of the citizens. The difference is what is measured: heads ... or dollar bills. But approval is what really matters. The majority of Russians, Egyptians (and frankly even Moroccans) do not approve of the basic structure of the state they live in. Either they can't change it or they think changing would be a disaster and status-quo is good enough.
Raising such speculation without any explanation as to why there's even a limit to free market societies, much less any proof that the US is close to reaching such a limit, is very poor pandering.
A few days ago, I attended a candidate forum (for upcoming elections to statewide office) that was hosted by a Chamber of Commerce affiliated business group that bragged about how they successfully stopped various public transportation projects. The reality is many Americans have been informed that public transportation is incompatible with a growth oriented economy so they naturally vote against it (or fund groups that file lawsuits and other tactics to slow down the development of public transport infrastructure).
I don't think high-speed rail is what the future looks like. The platform to beat is the transit agency-owned robo-taxi. Calling it a taxi is a disservice, though. It's really a 1-, 2-, 5-person bus. If needed, it can scale to 10-, 15-, 20-person and so on.
Consider the following:
- Door to door is massively more convenient than door to hub to hub to door. What's usually overlooked is that it's often more efficient, too.
- In many cities, transit can't compete with cars unless it's in sub-15 minute wait range. But to provide that service level with buses/trains, you need to move around 20000lbs/350000lbs of steel whether there are 5 passengers or 50/500.
- Once a city offers municipal robo-taxi service, it can completely ban privately-owned cars. This means it can remove all non-commercial parking spaces and convert them to lanes. It also means robo-taxis can travel 1 or 2 feet apart and use optimized routing. This can multiply effective road capacity by 2 or more.
IMHO, the real question is whether we need any regional trains at all. Robo-taxis and planes might be enough.
Yeah there’s no need to do that. Cooperative autonomous vehicles would make congestion near zero. In fact it would be like a self assembling train in all directions. The value of the train goes down dramatically when you factor commuting to and from the stations if you can eliminate human drivers. Vehicles would be high speed and capable of essentially congestion free transit by using basic graduate level control theory. I don’t think China built them something particularly useful in 10 years.
I mostly agree, but there's no need to ban private cars. Just make it both cheaper and more convenient to not have one, and let people figure it out and act accordingly.
I am afraid we might be too late for maglev party with self driving on the horizon. Non-functioning last mile transportation and ruined cities (as in for pedestrians and density) are another shadow.
India is pretty far behind. There is a lot of progress economically and socially in India but I doubt it’s at the cutting edge of anything besides digital financial networks.
If you read nothing else from the article, read table 1. I’ll summarize it here.
The US leads in the following industries: IT and Information Services, Pharmaceuticals, Other Transportation
China leads in the following industries: Computers and Electronics, Chemicals, Machinery and Equipment, Motor Vehicles, Basic Metals, Fabricated Metals, Electrical Equipment
The authors mention that although China’s workers are still less efficient than American workers, this is changing, and by the time Chinese workers are 80% as efficient as their American counterparts the Chinese economy will be 2-3x the size of America’s.
China's population is rapidly aging and forecast to shrink by 1/3 by the end of the century. This is the primary reason why I think they might not overtake the US.
PRC population of skilled talent (ones driving innovation) is exploding even if net population decreasing. Last ~20 years of aggregate new births ~200m, at current rate of tertiary enrollment (60%) and talent generation which bias STEM/technical, will be adding ~120m tertiary talent, who'll be in the workforce to 2040s-80s and beyond. About ~40M STEM, around current US STEM total, and estimated US pop increase by 2040s. AKA US can keep pace if EVERY new birth and every immigrant coming to US somehow end up STEM by 2040s. Charitably US is gaining skilled talent at 25% rate of PRC (education + immigration). That's not mentioning some % of remainder 80m new PRC tertiary are still going to be doing some sort of technical work, just not STEM credentialled. It's not an exaggeration to suggest in next 20-60 years, PRC is going to benefit from the largest HIGH SKILLED demographic divident in recorded history.
Meanwhile most of PRC population loss will disproportionately be low skilled, old unproductive cohorts (farmers/informal workers who never had chance for tertiary or even secondary education). One way to contexualize that ~400m loss in population by 2100 is that there are ~400m extremely unproductive low income farmers (by design as jobs program) who can be replaced by 40m skilled farmers using machinery. Of course losing 400m of consumption hurts, but buttom 40% of PRC GDP is like 700B... around 3% of total GDP. 40% (really ~60%) of PRC is EXTREMELY unproductive, and will remain so by virtue of being left behind by modernization and too old to be retrained. If 120m new skilled workers makes more than ~6000 USD per year, or ~50% of current per capita, then productivity wise, that cohort would have broken even. The transition to 2100 is present PRC with ~4x more people than US but with near parity in skilled talent to a PRC with 2x more people than US and 2x-3x more skilled talent.
E: Ultimately, it's about ability for talent to innovate / capture market share / reconfigure global trade patterns for high end goods. IMO total population will be less useful indicator for predicting GDP (especially nominal) / productivity since they're down stream over big levers like FX / reserve status that's dependant on ability to control / influence critical tech.
This is the geopolitics of scale that West is playing against at the moment which easily showcases the intent behind “unrestrained” immigration that is taking place in certain parts of the world. Make no mistake, it’s all planned.
Simply put: you need to throw many many bodies at the problem to even have a shot at keeping up with China. Collectively, the West is way behind in this regard.
This will only be true as long as the quality of life gradient is so heavily tilted towards the US. As developing nations improve and if the US continues to starve its social institutions (schools, infrastructure, housing) that calculation may look considerably less rosy. And to top it off, the US foolishly forces some of the smartest immigrants in the world to leave rather than give them a path to citizenship!
Nonsense. People don't like to leave their homes. The immigration which is troubling to the US and Europe (in contrast to skilled immigration) is almost entirely from unimaginable suffering (Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Venezuela, etc.). If the West wasn't shunning to engage these conflicts, this migration would cease.
That’s not true at all. People will migrate for a higher quality of life, more opportunities and better financial gains even if they are not suffering. That’s essentially the bulk of legal immigration in the US and it’s mostly from India and China.
China has historically always been a leader in Asia. At its peak, it controlled an empire as vast as the entirety of the EU. Its cultural influence in Asia rivals that of Rome in the West, except that Rome is no more, but China still is.
The US is younger than a single Chinese dynasty. And like all great historic empires, with Chinese ones being great examples, the US is fracturing from the inside. Corruption, apathy, a false sense of exceptionalism, etc.
China has went through this rise and fall dozens of time. This might be the first time for the US.
The reports of the US's death are greatly exaggerated. It's still the world hegemony. China is a regional power. The US is a global one. The US's force projection, alliances, economic integration are and will be unmatched for decades at the very least.
Spain, France, Holland, Britain - they all rose and fell as major powers.
The US Steven Bradbury'd it's way into world hegemony less than a hundred years past following a European home goal that took out Britain and Germany.
China hasn't been just a regional power for a few decades now; eg: how many nuclear power stations (long term big infrastructure) are being built by China in other countries right now .. how many are the US building?
The US will be around for a century and more most likely, but it's alliances and economic integration are alteady on the wane.
Depends whether the US can bring back proper diplomacy or whether it'll continue to rely on force projection.
There are many differences, is this a difference that will reverse a historic trend of world powers rising and faliing, of waxing and waning?
Will the diversity within the US enable it to pull together as a nation, overcome infighting, and out innovate China with it's plethora of phone and EV types, overnight pprototyping, on demand cheap bulk bespoke pharma production, etc?
To be fair, the germans were (let's lump both world wars here) attempting to replace the brits with themselves, not just play spoiler[0] and take them down.
(I've seen at least one economist claim that given the growth differentials, they would've been better off peacefully outcompeting them, but maybe the "Thucydides trap"[1] was already sprung? Even so, it's still an own goal)
[0] although this does make doing a Bradbury even more apt
[1] compare "always two there are. no more. no less."
China is helped by a straight forward "interests" based foreign policy
The USA has a "principles" based policy, that is hypocritical and is actually a private property based interests based policy.
It makes the Chinese straight forward to deal with, whereas the USA is not easy to deal with, you can never be sure where you will stand with them in a decade.
Henry "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests" Kissinger would disagree.
(I'm willing to bet that in a decade the US will still consider their interests to be closer to the Athenians at Melos than to JFK being summoned by the trumpet. In particular, I'll bet that the US will remain interested in carrier strike groups, and remain uninterested in having either universal health care or skilled labour)
Would Henry “to be an enemy is dangerous, but to be friend fatal” Kissinger not agree to the immigration of skilled labour? Do you mean that, as a first order effect, both sides implicitly understand that imported skills would not survive generation 1?
Tough question: as a 15 year old immigrant of different culture and religion and concepts, he seemed happy enough to have emigrated, but as a 100 year old he wasn't so sure about whether that ladder should be pulled up.
(or maybe he was just miffed that instead of loanwords from hebrew, eg Tacheles reden, the kids in germany are shocking their elders by getting their loanwords from other semitic languages, eg Ahki?)
which sides are both sides again? in this case I claim that it's difficult for imported skills to be transmitted to the next generation when the US educational system is (or at least it was during my time) built around producing the sort of highly fungible Schumpeterian worker bees who play well with others.
Who in america doesnt argue for skilled immigrants from Europe/China/India/Russia is an enlightened fella, who doesnt just listen to the people, he thinks for himself & the world. cependant, they shant get the party nomnom, or even the afterparty nomnom
(Bernie? Chomsky? DJT, only whilst on goldplated throne?)
(although I guess every consequentialism has to have a steep discount factor, otherwise putative desired consequences arbitrarily far in the future could be claimed to justify obviously undesirable actions today? Note also that Gov. Long didn't die in bed.)
The facade of principles-based foreign policy falls pretty quickly once interests are at play.
The US used to be a supporter of an international trade framework, based on the WTO. Now, the US is probably the WTO's greatest antagonist.
The US talks about human rights and international law, but then backs Israel as the latter flattens Gaza and kills tens of thousands of civilians in a massive turkey shoot.
These analyses don't make any sense. The people born in China right now are much more influenced by a combination of contemporary Western and Chinese media/tech than anything having to do with ancient Chinese dynasties.
Cultural influence isn't just popular media. The language (Latin based), the government (democracy/senate), architecture (the white house), etc. They are the sum of a nation identity, how it appears, act, interact with others.
You can see Rome's traces in almost everything in the West, from entertainment to moral norms. Same thing in Asia, except they are Chinese, like the language (Japan, Korea, Singapore), architecture (Vietnam, Japan), entertainment (see that new Wukong game), etc.
The culture of a nation morphs and changes on the surface but deep down, it is based on a rather stable foundation. In the West, it is Greek-Roman, in the East, it is Chinese-Indian.
> The US is younger than a single Chinese dynasty.
Eh? There are like 60 Chinese dynasties throughout history. The US has been around longer than most of them. And some of the dynasties that were around longer than the US has been will lose that title if the US lasts another ~30 years. The Qing, Ming, Tang, etc. dynasties all lasted ~275 years, and the US has been around for 248 by now. But the vast majority of the Chinese dynasties lasted like 10 to 50 years.
I mean, China _was_ _the_ poster child for exceptionalism, they called themselves the middle kingdom and still call themselves the central country. For much of their existence they despised the outside so much they became very insular --and still are, yet they thrive and thrive despite no superficial diversity we so clamor in the West. Their strength is their unity and long-view.
They kicked out all the people that did not fit the Han identity, so lots of the peoples that populate SEAsia today lived in what is now China. Those left in China, see themselves as unified Chinese people --they all adopted the mainstream prevalent culture --and don't long any erased ancient culture they might have had. They do not consider themselves as the remnants conquered tribes who were abused or decimated and subjugated by the Han. They see themselves, from their point of view as Han Chinese. Even Manchurians who at one point subjugated and controlled China, today see themselves as Chinese as any other Chinese in Beijing or Wuhan. They assimilated and took to Han culture and practice Han culture so much they are all one and the same today --with two exception and that is in their northwest and southwest --and those because those were very recent conquests. Most likely those in the southwest will assimilate despite a an exiled renegade spiritual leader who opposes the inevitable.
Even when they do copy, they excel. I remember reading an article in Wired 15-20 years ago about counterfeit cloth. Not regular cloth, but the kind that is highly sought after by premier designers. They took a copy to the original manufacturer, and they were blown away by the quality, saying it was better than their original.
It takes tremendous capability to accomplish this, and I thought to myself, What happens when they realize that they can lead?
As an avid user of both DJI and Bambu products, US-based equivalents, if they even exist, are so far behind the quality and capability curve it makes me genuinely sad.
As an example, I had a heatbed issue with an early X1C. I went back and forth with the Bambu support folks a few times, busting out a multimeter and thermal probe. They had no trouble interpreting the information, and sent me a replacement part, under warranty, ASAP. Can you imagine any company stateside that would engage in actual troubleshooting nowadays? At best it's going to be some poor guy stuck reading through a script they can't change, and aren't empowered to resolve anyway. Maddening.
I mean TikTok’s “magic” algorithm should be considered innovation here as well, and it has been quickly copied by Reels, Shorts, and whatever Snapchat has. Although I am pretty sure YouTube’s is still mainly just channels you follow.
It was the first I’m aware of that learns your preferences from purely passive interaction (i.e. not liking and subscribing, not following topics, not relying on a social graph).
I put magic in quotes because if you read their paper it’s nothing too crazy but (ignoring the addictive quality) it still feels pretty cool.
This meme is based on a premise that copying others is bad. But I would argue the opposite: why keep reinventing what already exists?
Take software engineers, for example. Most spend their entire lives rewriting code that's already been written at many companies simply because sharing is verboten. They might go their entire lives redoing what's already been done for a revolving door of bosses, without ever creating something truly new. The scale of wasted potential is stupendous.
If we all agreed on a mindset of more sharing and copying, those engineers could focus their efforts on real innovation and build the future. And there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of them.
This is not a radical new idea. This was the mindset many software engineers had in the gaming industry (my industry) in the 90s and 00s. Carmack famously released his code under what you might call a "have fun" license[0]. Around late 90s it was re-licensed under GPL to promote open-source/hacker development. This is why DOOM (and Quake) has been hacked to run on everything and used as a base for many games and game engines – real innovation instead of reinventing the same game.
Today game companies guard their code fiercely. I'm not only talking about serious trade secrets, but most frivolous basic libraries, like they would go bankrupt if they shared. Well, guess what, EA shares EASTL[1] and that didn't make them any less dominant in games. Source Engine is also available under a fairly permissive license, as is Unreal Engine's source code. What's the common denominator? They both were written by people very closely aligned with Carmack's hacker culture. Source was born out of Quake, for example.
The hubris of this closed-off approach is evident when new tech like Copilot arrives. Many tech companies panic about it "using their code" when in reality, that code already exists in numerous open-source libs. And Copilot can write 80% of what a mid level engineer writes in games anyways. Even for a principal/fellow level engineer, it is helpful in boilerplate. You can't escape the absurdity of rewriting what's already been written.
How many ways can you allocate memory for a dynamically allocated array anyways? How many ways to implement the PID controller to steer an AI car in games? How many ways to do occlusion culling in graphics? A few, but not many. Yet every company guards it like it's their own secret sauce.
So yeah, it would be pretty mature to revisit our values and go back to what worked in computing.
I am frustrated by the West. In my country alone (Australia), there will probably never be high speed rail between cities. The entire market investment is dominated by bloated real-estate. There is almost no progress. We're pretty much in decline.
A leading innovator (not the leading) on metrics that you can disagree. Article's stats are about patents, "top 100 innovators", unicorns, number of supercomputers, number of innovation clusters(?) and almost everywhere China is behind US and sometimes Japan.
But also some of these stats do not show to me the amount of actual innovation. Approaching US on "share of highly cited researchers" seemed to me like maybe the biggest deal but then I thought how easy it is to cheat that metric...
> Foreign companies still dominate many key areas, but their IP has been eroded over time.
China has been and is being shut off from the West's most innovative industries. The goal is to slow China's progress. I suspect that it's only a matter of time before they innovate their way into technology that will surpass what they lack now. A great advantage they have is that they can focus their resources on single points of need. There is a great advantage in that but there's also the danger that they choose the wrong technology and they get lost and never get anywhere. We'll see what happens. One thing for sure is that they won't just wait and see what happens. They are going to work hard to move forward.
They'll respond by having their politicians (both sides) ban or add 100%+ tariffs on superior Chinese goods.
The whole new Cold War narrative the natsec state in the US has adopted about China is not moored in reality.
The realpolitik is that neither side of the strait wants a significant disruption in commerce. Both sides should figure out a way to practice detente and reduce militarism. The US should do this in good faith.
This assumes that China will make a good faith effort not to invade Taiwan sometimes 2028+. Current geopol intel is that they fully intend to without immense US deterrence.
Right now, you're more of the post-2014 invasion of Crimea camp, "let's not act too rash about helping Ukraine against Russia, hopefully they won't do anything more."
China hasn't fought a war in more than 40 years. China fought limited border wars with India many decades ago. The Sino-Vietnam war was 1979.
The invasion of Tibet is the most relevant example here. Tibet was internationally recognized as part of China, but was de facto independent, similarly to Taiwan nowadays. The PRC invaded as soon as it won the civil war, because it was one of the last parts of China that was still beyond the control of the central government. However, I think it's clear that the PRC today views an invasion of Taiwan as a last resort, not as the policy of choice.
The parallel is a little rougher if one believes the Monroe Doctrine (1823) had been motivated by the anti-slave-trade resolution (1815) annexed to the Congress of Vienna treaties.
(which among other things mentioned "putting an end to a scourge, which has so long desolated Africa, degraded Europe, and afflicted humanity.")
That's an interesting connection that, to be honest, I don't think played a great role in being opposed to further European colonisation and|or influence in the New World.
I see it more as the beginnings of US regional Hegemony and notable for two things, how it began and future attitudes to world affairs.
In the beginning (from the wikipedia link):
Great Britain shared the general objective of the Monroe Doctrine, and even wanted to declare a joint statement to keep other European powers from further colonizing the New World. The British feared their trade with the New World would be harmed if the other European powers further colonized it. In fact, for many years after the doctrine took effect, Britain, through the Royal Navy, was the sole nation enforcing it, the U.S. lacking sufficient naval capability.
This is a reality of just how intertwined the actual USofA and the actual Great Britain were, despite that whole little hiccup with "Independence".
In real politik the thirteen colonies were business investment startups by British Venture Capitalists who retained contacts, contracts, and business ties after reducing the meddling abilities of that pesky king in finnancial arrangements.
The now independent colonies and new independent nation remaind largely Anglophile while the old order saw no conflict of interest in the use of their navy in the defence of mutual interest.
EDIT: looking at en.wikipedia's entry for the results of the War of 1812, it offers pretty heavy evidence for your position:
- Anglo–American status quo ante bellum
- Spanish control over West Florida weakened and Mobile territory claimed
- Tecumseh's confederacy decisively defeated and dissolved
I think it strange to have a war that doesn't alter the positions of the principals, but does allow them to take a few third parties off the board; on the other hand that just may be my naivete.
Come to think of it, the causus belli of 1812 was Royal Navy impressment of US sailors: I can easily imagine some Sir "stick close to your desks and never go to sea" Joseph being surprised and wondering why the americans had been so confused as to miss the main point: providing manpower for Britannia's rule of the waves was in their own best interests, after all.
The author of that book is part of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a natsec state think tank.
Ukraine is a different affair. The CIA funded political parties during the Euromaidan/Automaidan, which resulted in internal conflict that led to the current state of affairs. The only reason they could predict it was that it was their goal.
which resulted in internal conflict that led to the current state of affairs.
The "current state of affairs" is due entirely to Putin's conscious decision to invade, starting in 2014, in the total absence of any meaningful threat to Russia's security.
Not due to anything happening inside Ukraine, or anything the US supposedly did or did not do there.
Right, and the KGB was an innocent party in Ukrainian politics until the evil CIA forced their hand. /s
You talk about CIA operations during the Euromaidan, but forget the elephant in the room that is objectively true: the Euromaidan was a response to a Russian controlled Ukrainian president betraying his people who were expecting closer ties with the EU and instead doing a deal with Russia last minute.
Sure, that's why they named it Euromaidan and flew EU flags, because it was totally unrelated to the people's will to be closer to Europe. /s
It is true that it was a revolt against a corrupt regime, but it's also true that this regime was openly pro-Russian and Russian backed, against the will of its people.
You again have a big ol' blindspot for Russian corruption and meddling in Ukraine.
You've made up your mind a long time ago and arguing with you is useless, you're just crafting a narrative that confirms your faith.
Many of the industries mentioned in the article are heavily regulated union industries in the U.S.
China also has zero independent unions.
I'm not a union hater, but there was a post here recently about unions in shipyards, with one commenter saying something like "we need to prevent any automation and broaden unions across all shipyards".
That's just not helpful in the long run and if that's the mentality of unions in this country then we're doomed.
The USA, overall, does not encourage the development of high-tech engineering, improved infrastructure, cultural growth, appreciation for academic rigor, etc. By a mixture of miracles we became the world's superpower, but many of our fortuitous circumstances were accidental (mass migration of talented Europeans/Asians in the wake of famines/persecutions, WWII decimating manufacturing in Europe and Asia, abundant natural resources and perfect geography).
However to improve as a country we have to abandon the puerile notion that the US is special for some metaphysical, divine reason. We got lucky and became a perfect environment for the development of the world's leading industries, but that providence is being quickly ceded to China. In terms of overall lifestyle quality we are far behind much of Europe anyways.
The only thing America has that are the best in the world are its research universities (due to money and being able to take advantage of brain drain from around the world), its tech industry and high cultural soft power, areas it once held an overwhelming lead in that are evaporating fast.
Bingo. You hit the nail in the head. Most people who have never been to the US will be surprised when they land as it lacks many features of the developed world (as in comparing to Europe and Japan). What the US has right now is particular access to capital that enables it to attract talent from across the globe. It also has a relatively open system, so you can trade. This made it possible for highly innovative and powerful companies to exist. If you remove these companies and this capital; something that could happen rather quickly (most of them are in Software), a US citizen will probably have the same purchasing power as someone from Brazil.
I wouldn't go as far as to assume US would suddenly become a middle income country. The US still has a strong industrial backbone, robust education system, high immigration across income levels, reasonably developed infrastructure, natural resources far beyond any other country.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true. Every empire has had its day in the sun and its inevitable fall. What makes the fall inevitable? It's that during the seeding years of the fall, the notion that the ascendant, ever-present power surrounding everything could one day falter seems laughable to most.
The USA, overall, does not encourage the development of high-tech engineering, improved infrastructure, cultural growth, appreciation for academic rigor
is not true in the slightest. In my lifetime the USA brought to critical mass most technology that makes the modern world modern.
Infrastructure issues are a lack of holding local government accountable. My area our infrastructure is mostly new with several large bridges recently replaced without incident, most highways recently expanded, train infrastructure greatly improved and capacity expanded (and soooo much quieter it's awesome). Sewer expanded AND releasing less into the river. Oh and water policy changes (made possible by infrastructure improvements) allowing the re-establishment of Salmon in our rivers, improved sturgeon population.
The average American males attitude towards women in my lifetime has taken a huge cultural shift for the better. Huge changes have been made to reduce domestic violence (and peoples indifference to it) in my lifetime. Huge strides against inequality and racism have occured in my lifetime. Huge strides in LGBT+ rights. These are just off the top of my head cultural growths that have occured in my lifetime.
The education of the average American is soo much better than it was of my parents generation, or the one before them. People are much more empathetic, inquisitive, understand more tech, are more well read. I agree we don't place unreasonable academic expectations on our children, but don't mistake that for a lack of intellectual inquisitiveness. In fact, I would say our attitude sparks it more, and to a deeper, more passionate level. I can't recall running into young people who can't sign their name, while that was not uncommon in my grandparents generation and I know multiple people like that in my parents.
The USA is doing so much better than we were in the 1970s. The USAs willingness to vocalize our doom and gloom feelings is just one of our strengths, not a sign of our impending collapse.
I love China. My dad was a hippie, we had so many books on China and communism (I even grew up on a commune in the 70s). I have visited China and loved it. I have friends there, and many friends in the USA who were born in China (and got stuck in the USA when they were students during tiananmen). I wish China the best. It doesn't have to be an us versus them, this isn't Civ. Lying about the USA doesn't accomplish anything. Those trying to doom and gloom the USA into Russian style indifference are mistaking the 'tragically online' attitude of despair for a general American one.
I agree with you that the US is markedly better than it was in the 1970s. The problem is is that we are improving at a pace below par for our wealth. Our progress compared to China over the past 50 years is basically a snail's pace, when they've gone to near universal poverty to on par with us technologically in that amount of time. America could have built high-speed rail, a robust universal healthcare system, better public education, more walkable cities beyond Manhattan and more in that time.
>I wish China the best. It doesn't have to be an us versus them
I wish it were that simple, but China sees itself as a strict competitor to the USA in a geopolitical sense. Once they believe they can take the thrown without catastrophic casualties, they will make the shot, even if it means a period of suffering and contraction, which they certainly have accepted in the past to further their aims.
If China were some backwards North-Korea type country then we could rest easy, but their rapid growth despite having a very controlling government has presented an alternative thesis to the "ideal system" that the US has touted as having since the end of WWII. All of our progress in these areas of social justice, equality, etc. will mean nothing once we are in China's sphere of influence.
I disagree. What we have seen is the absolute best possible case for China's command economy and I don't think that model will handle the current downturn, combined with Xi changing from a wild west environment to tight controls, combined with local government cutoff from their main source of funding which is new land leases. Have you seen the latest where China is requiring startup founders to personally guarantee profitability? China's highspeed rail isn't paying down it's debts yet alone setting aside funding for future large maintenance expenses.
(I hope this doesn't sound confrontational) Did we setup a universal healthcare system and fail? Did we intentionally start projects to build walkable cities and fail? I think Universal healthcare is a given at this point, we are reaching critical mass, but we need to actually do stuff to keep working to get there (including educating others in a way they can hear), not just complain or say we tried nothing and are all out of ideas. But not enacting specific things you or I want is very different from failing. I haven't seen the USA fail at those things, just not move in those directions. So lets put in the work, not spin out on the internet. I get so motivated in my local community. We lost our major employers but we've improved our downtown, added so much flowers/art/beauty, added walking/hiking/mountain biking/snow shoeing/cross country skiing trails. We have community gardens where you can go and grow your own food. Every year the people here make the town better instead of letting it go back which it easily could have.
Again I really like China and its people. I am so happy so many have been lifted out of poverty, I am ecstatic at their success even, it is something to celebrate. I look forward to us reaching a balance, just like 80s freaked out America reached a balance with juggernaut Japan that was going to own the entire USA.
"To enable those policies, America should embrace a “national power capitalism” suited to the current existential competition. Government must identify key sectors that are critical for national power and invest adequately to win the techno-economic war."
One could even call it capitalism with American characteristics. These days China is often framed as lacking soft power but the degree to which the US is basically adopting Chinese developmental policy, the sentence above could come out of a party study session if you reversed the actors, is kind of funny. I saw someone joke that Jake Sullivan moving the semiconductor factories to Ohio is his version of Mao moving the factories to the hinterland.
From a realpolitik standpoint, China has embraced elements of capitalism as a key strategy for economic growth. If I were to offer a speculative (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) recommendation for Xi Jinping, it might be to create a free zone modeled on Western liberal traditions to compete more effectively with Silicon Valley and the U.S. Of course, Hong Kong was arguably positioned for this role, but given its recent trajectory, it raises the question of whether such a zone could exist within China's current political framework. Could a new experiment along these lines reconcile liberal economic freedoms with centralized political control?
It won't work. Even if some carveout is made so that it is not "within China's current political framework", after Hong Kong, who can be sure that it would remain so? A "new experiment" along these lines won't be trusted enough to work, at least not during Xi's lifetime.
I agree that this hypothesis has a very low chance of materializing, and, as you pointed out, it seems already "priced into the market".
That said, given China's extensive involvement in many countries, such as in Latin America, Africa, and others through infrastructure projects and strategic investments, I'm curious: do you have any contrarian views on what moves China could make to boost its growth?
Stop stifling dissent. People who can think freely on software, or chemistry or whatever, are not eager to accept a situation where they cannot also think freely about politics and international relations.
Accept reality in international situations. (Taiwan is a de facto separate country; the nine-dash line is a mapmaker's aberration rather than any kind of reality.)
Accept reality in economic statistics. (A number of those apartment buildings are worth zero.)
Accept reality in society. (People don't like being fed propaganda. People don't like thinking that they can be in trouble for saying what they think.)
But I don't think they can do those things and keep any kind of "business as usual"...
New experiment is Hainan Free Trade Port FTZ but that's not really vs silicon valley. IMO software/services downstream of hardware/silicon, and geopolitically, PRC competing on that would really spook US. But medium term, need to be done, especially via industrial policy vs US encumbants whose been around for decades. I think once PRC gets a whiff that entire domestic semi supply chain secure they're going to push hard on 5 year plans for software... i.e. go after microsoft, adobe, autodesk... the productivity suites that run the world, and everything else in between, if only as jobs program for stupid amount of software engineers they'll churning out.
Also HK won't won't work because it's been tried and failed. HK existed for 20 years post handover and continued to double down on being financialization with very little technical/innovation relative to her resources. There were explicit efforts to try to build out HK tech / silicon valley and they failed. IMO liberal economic freedoms is also why HK has some of the worst tertiary enrollement stats relative to OECD... it's a city of to be blunt, lazy kids (referring to new gens under liberal education vs their mainland immigrant parents). At least relative to east asia. Propped up by importing foreign and mainland talent. If it sounds like I just described the state of America education and the various indigenous problems this report covers, then bingo.
China has 28,000 miles of high-speed rail. United States? Close to zero. Low-speed maglevs look interesting: https://crrczelc-europe.com/medium-low-speed-maglev-changsha...
For some reason, we just want to drill more oil and make our highways wider.
Who's getting to Mars first?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/china/china-mars-mission-tian...