The insights on American and Chinese industry / tech are undercut by the generic stereotypical “Europeans are smug and backward-looking” comments. A bit disappointing that someone who spends a ton of time analyzing two complex societies (China and the US) falls into Reddit-tier caricature on a third.
The attitude here is quite astounding, seeing how any criticism of the author or this piece is seen as some sort of reductionism of his views and european smugness (?!?), all the while the author reduces an entire nation (Germany in this case) to the anecdote of a Georgian mass murderer, probably one of the most ruthless and diabolical people that ever existed, so yeah, very balanced discussion here.
Indeed, it seems that the gap that is present politically between America and Europe is to some extent also playing out in the individual, even in the tech scene. This is a little alarming to me, as the idea of an alliance can break down on the political level and be repaired in the new cycle of elections, that's OK.
But if an individual American really thinks Europeans are as smug as described in this article, or if Europeans really think the way this article describes, there is a more concerning, deeper issue with the worldview of these historically well-aligned peoples.
I find these comments funny, because a lot of HNers will reduce the behavior of Asians (everything is about “face”), and yet become so acutely aware when it happens to Europeans.
It is a bit of a trope under self-important bloggers, he seems to have copied and as such it reveals one's depth of understanding. On the one hand: who cares, we all have stereotypes when the resolution is too low. And criticism is due, but not this one.
I think it is a bit of a trade-off, his writings are engaging, but to discuss Europe in a serious way a blog wouldn't cut it, and it would make it possibly quite dry nonetheless. One has to not only understand the EU, their limited budget and mandate, but also the various parties in each country. This is just incredibly difficult to form an accurate picture of, even if there wouldn't be things like centuries old cultures and various languages.
To take away from the doom and gloom, iff the EU is really able to integrate in the next decade(s), form a shared market, my money would be on them.
Both the current US government and Russia fear an integrated Europe, as they would be too big as a prey. Meanwhile, many countries want to join the EU, despite it being a "hell hole", at least if one believes the adversarial content promoted on the big tech platforms. At this moment the current US government supports "nationalistic" parties and corrupt kleptocrats like Orban, trying to break it apart from inside.
Yes it's a bit disappointing but probably captures the current American and Chinese opinion quite well.
Europe as a whole has a lot of good things going for it but I do agree that it's less ambitious on average than these 2 power blocks.
However the same dynamic that was described in the article where nobody wants to lack behind is also true for Europe.
Also, yes Novo Nordisk plundered their GTM in the US and lost market valuation but you can still get the same medical outcome in Europe as a patient based on a European invention. Another one: The first Covid vaccine came out of Germany.
More interestingly is the question on degrowth. I personally believe that growth is the more tempting path in general, but we do live on a finite planet and no system is on a path or has a good framework on how to grow sustainably or responsibly. Maybe AI is going to figure it out for us, but maybe it involves some hard tradeoffs that intelligence alone can't solve.
I’m responding to comments like this in the article:
So I am betting that the US and China are more compelling forces for change. Stalin was fond of telling a story from his experience in Leipzig in 1907, when, to his astonishment, 200 German workers failed to turn up to a socialist meeting because no ticket controller was on the platform to punch their train tickets, citing this experience as proof of the hopelessness of Germanic obedience. Could anyone imagine Chinese or Americans being so obedient?
This isn’t a serious analysis of German culture. It’s perfectly fine to argue that certain countries are economically or industrially problematic, but when you throw in comments like this, it really doesn’t help your argument.
And I’m not from Europe, but I have lived here for years. The constant clueless comments by my fellow North Americans about the somehow monolithic entity of “Europe” are irritating.
"I have a hard time squaring the poor prospects of Europe over the next decade with the smugness that Europeans have for themselves. I spent most of the summer in Copenhagen. There’s no doubt that quality of life in most European cities is superb, especially for what I care about: food, opera, walkable streets, access to nature. But a decade of low economic growth is biting. European prices and taxes can be so high while salaries can be so low."
This particular kind of American perspective on Europe always falls into the same trap: Not understanding a world where economic performance is _not_ the be-all-and-end-all, not understanding the connection between the benefits of such a world (things that consider externalities - not individuals - in order to exist) with the costs of such a world (taxes).
One of the best books I read this year. I think a lot of HN readers will like it. A really balanced take on China that also digs deep into the perennial question of “why can’t we build big infrastructure projects in the US?” that comes up here quite often.
It also defies easy summaries, but my biggest takeaways were that 1) the CCP really doesn't care about the costs any of its policies (one-child, zero COVID, etc) impose on its citizenry, and 2) that the CCP is actively preparing China for a world where it's entirely cut off from the West, because it realizes that's the price to pay for invading Taiwan.
I'd agree that China is preparing to be cut off, but it's not because of Taiwan. Dan specifically mentions this:
"In vain do I protest that there are historical and geopolitical reasons motivating the desire, that chip fabs cannot be violently seized, and anyway that Beijing has coveted Taiwan for approximately seven decades before people were talking about AI."
Consider the historical timeline: "Fortress China" policies coincide with the rise of American protectionism on both sides of the aisle and the introduction of chip restrictions and punishing tariffs. Taiwan is an emotional/nationalist issue for China, but it's only one part of their policy, not the lynchpin as your comment suggests.
+1 biggest takeaway from me was that China / Asian societies emphasize process knowledge, which does not seem to be the case for U.S. tech in my working experience.
I spot checked some of this and from what I can find, the median salary in London is about $12k more than Mississippi, and the median house price in London is about $100k less than California.
Bear in mind that obviously the mean salary in London is going to be far higher than the median (the finance industry will skew it), while I'm not sure that's as extreme as Mississippi. Additionally median salaries reflect a lot of service jobs and similar labour. Dubai has a lower median wage than either London or Mississippi, but people don't think of it as economically broken.
Comparing California (an extremely large state that I presume has cheaper housing outside major urban areas) to a city seems a bit of a poor comparison.
I don't disagree that the UK has high energy costs.
If you’re trying to do a rebuttal, saying that wages are slightly higher than Mississippi and house prices are slightly lower than Cali doesn’t refute anything, it just serves to make the example more extreme and concrete. Look at house prices in Mississippi in relation to their income and then compare the same ratio for Cali and for London.
Dubai is absolutely economically broken lol. The city was built on cheap foreign slave labor. And the luxurious amenities of the city are only for the wealthy royal and foreigners. Their main export besides oil is the illusion of a thriving metropolis
> Dubai has a lower median wage than either London or Mississippi, but people don't think of it as economically broken.
Dubai isn’t sold as a place to belong long-term. Most people move there knowing it’s temporary.
The Bay Area is drifting in the same direction too with the increased cost of living around here. (but the same could be said about most big cities, maybe?)
Compare the housing costs of London to the housing costs of San Francisco and then swap out those Bay Area salaries with your “slightly above Mississippi” wages and you’ll see why London looks so broken to people used to LA/SF/NY.
London doesn't have the income level of Mississippi, although that might be true for the UK average. I'd say that the UK may be "seriously broken", but not more so than other post-industrial countries, including the US (or France, or Japan). It's just broken in different ways. E.g. life expectancy in the UK is significantly higher than in America even though they were the same in the '80s. Education levels (and measures such as literacy profficiency and skills etc.) are also significantly better in the UK than in the US. Somewhat tongue in cheek, Americans are richer but they don't seem to be putting their money to good use, as Brits are better educated and live longer.
There are differences, but this is oversimplified, and market is “mostly” working. You need more money in California, for transportation, for health care. The standard is bigger houses (bigger everything) in Cali. Life might be richer, in some ways more pleasant, in London (it’s not weather though), including shorter flights to many interesting places.
From my experience the ratio of savings was similar, but the ppp of course favored US for absolute numbers.
House prices are only "out of wack" in areas with poor social housing programs.
Housing in Vienna is still affordable, only due to their very successful public housing programs. Public housing can be both beautiful and highly affordable if you want it to be, it's not like we don't know how to make good quality homes with lovely public amenities. It's mostly developers that want to skim on everything while selling it at the highest cost possible.
Poor system if this is the outcome: unaffordability.
Countries like Indonesia have banned foreigners from owning land altogether. You can apparently still own property through land-lease agreements and other arrangements, but not the land. I think they've cracked down on illegal rentals too.
Real estate prices are out of whack everywhere. Even in places with no good jobs, low population density, and rapid depopulation, real estate prices are increasing exponentially. There are no market forces in play anymore.
Nobody will admit that the housing is overpriced, so they would have to be forced to do so.
This is terrible for normal people, and slightly bad for the investors, but only a crisis or organized government action can reset the damage done by decades of investment in already existing buildings.
> I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita
Can you elaborate on this?
From what I can tell, the UK's per-capita electricity generation has dropped steadily from a 2003 high[0] (4,069 kWh in 2024, 6,657 in 2003, 5,266 in 1985) and per-capita energy consumption has been going down since 2005,[1] but energy intensity (read: inverse of efficiency) has been decreasing consistently since at least 1965.[2] Domestic electricity production is down 24% since 2000,[3] whilst imports (which I don't think includes Albanians) are up 206% in the same period.[4]
That all reads to me as a country whose domestic generation has been replaced by imports and whose consumption has been reduced by efficiency gains, but I'm aware that I'm conflating figures here for 'energy' and for solely 'electricity'; I couldn't find anything for per-capita energy generation, as you specified.
Would you mind telling me if you are a genuine person who lived in the UK, or at least have some knowledge of the country beyond recent tweets?
Honestly I am shocked at the recent rise of anti-UK comments with horribly incorrect information or skewed views and curious about what is sourcing this.
> while in the US you see automated car washes, in the uk most car washes are Albanians n other immigrants etc
Er what? I moved away from the UK in 2007 but even then the only place I or my parents washed a car was the ubiquitous petrol station automated car wash.
No idea where OP is based but like most suggestions about the UK or London online it's bullshit. Most petrol stations have the same automated car washes they've always had. If you want your car hand washed there are lots of people doing that too, as there always have been. Like all places, the UK and/or London has plenty of issues including serious ones - but I'd still pick it over anywhere in the US regardless of salary differences.
I can only think of one automated wash in my UK town, and well over 10 "Albanian" hand washes. Personally I go to the Albanians every time - they take pride in what they're doing, handle the vehicle with care and do a far, far better job than an auto wash.
I agree. At first I briefly skimmed it and thought it was going to be a puff piece on China's AI efforts (unfair of me), but a couple paragraphs caught me and I read the whole thing. I'm glad I did.
Hard disagree. How many paragraphs of fawning over the unique culture of the Bay Area must I endure before he arrives at the point?
Such gems as
> I like SF house parties, where people take off their shoes at the entrance and enter a space in which speech can be heard over music, which feels so much more civilized than descending into a loud bar in New York. It’s easy to fall into a nerdy conversation almost immediately with someone young and earnest.
> If the Bay Area once had an impish side, it has gone the way of most hardware tinkerers and hippie communes.
Woz had that (still does). He was smart enough to take his winnings and bail. I think that many in SV can't fathom why, but I suspect I know exactly why.
I do remember the tech community as being full of humor and whimsy. I miss that.
In the thread "Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges" [1], I wrote about China'a hardware capability now going far beyond what US can imagine. In Dan's article;
>A rule of thumb is that it takes five years from an American, German, or Japanese automaker to dream up a new car design and launch that model on the roads; in China, it’s closer to 18 months.
Not only is China 3 - 5 times faster in terms of product launches, they would have launch it with a production scale that is at least double the output of other auto marker. If you were to put capacity into the equation as well, China is an order of magnitude faster than any competing countries, at half the cost if not even lower.
Every single year since 2022 China has added more solar power capacity than the entire US solar capacity. And they are still accelerating, with the current roadmap and trend they could install double the entire US solar power capacity in a single year by 2030.
CATL's Sodium Ion Battery is already in production and will be used by EVs and large scale energy storage by end of this year. The cost advantage of these new EV would mean there is partially zero chance EU can compete. And if EU are moaning about it now, they cant even imagine what is coming.
Thanks to AI pushing up memory and NAND price. YMTC and CXMT now have enough breathing room to catch up. If they play this right, I wont be surprised by 2035 30 - 40% of DRAM and NAND will be made by the two Chinese firms. Although judging from their past execution record I highly doubt this will happen, but expect may be 10-15% maximum.
Beyond tech, there are also other part of manufacturing that China has matched or exceeded rest of the world without being noticed by many. Lab Grown Diamond, Cosmetic Production, Agricultural Machinery, Reinforced glass etc. Their 10 years plan on agricultural improvement also come to fruition especially in terms of fruit and veg. I wont be surprised if they no long need US soy bean within 10 years time.
All in all a lot of things in China has passed escape velocity and there is no turning back. China understand US better than US understand themselves, and US doesn't even have any idea about China. I think the quote from the article sums this up pretty well.
"Beijing has been preparing for Cold War without eagerness for waging it, while the US wants to wage a Cold War without preparing for it.".
Whenever the topic of "China Speed" comes up, I feel the need to add that speed is not a strategy but an outcome of the previous four decades of relentless hard work: https://dilemmaworks.com/on-china-speed
That's a very important point that most people missed. China spent decades to achieve the current status. Especially the investment in education, i.e. Human Resource, the most effective ROI but need very long term commitment.
Western countries should do the same and do it continuously without consider the economic reward.
Relentless work, or simply not caring about the people that you need to crunch in order to achieve the outcomes that you want. The western world could also build things fast again and innovate faster, we just seem to value human life a bit more now that we used to...
China doesn't particularly need US soybeans but they're going to have to continue importing soybeans from somewhere (like Brazil or Canada) indefinitely. Like any commodity, soybeans are (somewhat) fungible. China doesn't have the right combination of arable land and cheap fertilizer necessary to be self-sufficient in soy at an economically viable cost. Of course, China's population is now declining so ironically that could increase their food security in a few decades.
Along ops reasoning, PRC will find domestic slop to feed pigs. There's already soybean replacement program in the pipelines, i.e. synthetic science + cheap power = future industrial substitutes. Because soybean conundrum is arable land (all sorts of soybean yield, lack of GMO, small plot farmer complexity mixed in), but pork prices fall under broad food (national) security so expect autarky > comparative advantage / cost when domestic pipeline in place. Like there's no reason for PRC to pay US soybean premium over Brazil, but they would because economic viability not as important.
TBH Anything strategic, expect PRC to adopt energy-to-matter to substitutes when the teach stack is figured out. Or at least have as less economic backup, i.e. PRC has unlimited cheap fertilizer (was top fertilizer producer via coal gasification) just more emission heavy. They're on way to displace all oil imports with coal to olefin/liquidation and EV. HQ steel via simply hammering energy into mid ores. All signs point they're moving towards strategic domestic abundance / autarky where they can.
that's obvious that some country with 1.5B working people will have edge in some niches, and will demonstrate tremendous growth from the bottom where they were 20 years ago.
But for global picture, if we are comparing Western World: US+Canada+EU vs China in technological domination, the picture is likely not super-clear and more complex analysis is required. Even if we consider manufacturing output, where China is supposedly global leader, we see it is 5.5T for Western world vs 4.6T for China (according to my brief google searching).
The tremendous growth is still happening on sector by sector basis, and arguably west only holds edge in few extreme frontier niches while PRC increasingly dominating rest. Relevant PRC joke:
If China can't make something, it's considered high tech.
Once china makes it, it's no longer high tech.
PRC makes high tech products into low margin commodities. That's what happens when they have roughly oced combined in stem talent and vast industrial base to value engineer. And most of it happened in last 15 years. The point is PRC catches up fast (including extreme frontier), and when they do, they can scale and cut margins, which is more interesting direction than west who seemingly can't. The point is that is obviously the superior dominance recipe vs west who has vanishing frontier lead that will continue to be lost because western margins is PRC opportunity. The point is when PRC makes >50% of global stuff materially but charges <50%, it's exceedingly likely that will take over everything, at PRC speed, and will not leave west any high margin, leading edge niches, unless west can learn to operate with low margins as well.
>we see it is 5.5T for Western world vs 4.6T for China (according to my brief google searching).
I would bet the unit volume of manufacturing with those 4.6T is more than double that of 5.5T. And those 5.5T likely have some very high value, high margin leading edge equipment.
Not only is China catching up to those sectors, they are continuing their momentum to accelerate and expand in other low value market. They key here isn't to maximise profits, it is to maximise control.
If Trade is war, which is the fundamental of principle of what "Art of War" is about, then I dont see how the west could win this war without some very drastic changes.
> I believe that Silicon Valley possesses plenty of virtues. To start, it is the most meritocratic part of America.
Oh come on, this is so untrue. Silicon Valley loves credentialism and networking, probably more than anywhere else. Except the credentials are the companies you’ve worked for or whether you know some founder or VC, instead of what school you went to or which degrees you have.
I went to a smaller college that the big tech firms didn’t really recruit from. I spent the first ~5 years of my career working for a couple smaller companies without much SV presence. Somehow I lucked into landing a role at a big company that almost everyone has definitely heard of. I didn’t find my coworkers to necessarily be any smarter or harder working than the people I worked with previously. But when I decided it was time to move on, companies that never gave me the time of day before were responding to my cold applies or even reaching out to _me_ to beg me to interview.
And don’t get me started on the senior leadership and execs I’ve seen absolutely run an entire business units into the ground and lose millions of dollars and cost people their jobs, only to “part ways” with the company, then immediately turn around and raise millions of dollars from the same guys whose money they just lost.
I guess I'll ask since you strongly disagree and ignoring the fact this is very reductionist: In your opinion, what is the most meritocratic part of America?
Isn’t the obvious answer that many would refute the premise of meaningful regional variation? In which case the claim isn’t that somewhere else is that place but rather than all places are substantially equivalent on this difficult to measure concept (or difference is unknown).
Meritocracy is not a single thing. Regions do not have a uniform relationship with merit, as they are made of many different communities all living amongst each other. "Which is the most meritocratic part of America" is not even an especially meaningful question.
I think the OP was making the point that it isn't meritocratic, at least that is how it read to me: they thought people where not meaningfully different in skill level (the people at the exclusive company being comparable to everywhere else) and that where you worked was the new way to find the 'in' people, rather than what university you graduated from (saying they had job offers based purely on getting the job at the exclusive company).
You could argue that getting a job at X or Y company by itself conveys some level of skill - but if we are honest, that is just version of saying you went to Harvard.
There's lots of cliques everywhere in life, and various ways to show status, SV is definitely not immune to that.
meritocratic means "judgement on merit (aka skill)"
and the story told is "no judgement on skill, only on being in-group. It's just the in-group is caused by previous employment and not birth-right/nationality/etc"
note that the first chunk of the piece spends time to analogize SV to the CCP, in terms of its willingness to take attacks (of humor).
So, for your quote, a skeptical interpretation of the text may assert the author was merely praising SV in the same fashion one might appraise the party.
As often the case with Dan's letters, a well balanced take on many issues. I particularly appreciated the thoughts on AI and (what I read) the undertone of infrastructure being the real differentiator between the US effort and China. We'll see how it plays out this year. "May you live in exciting times" etc.
Readit News
But if an individual American really thinks Europeans are as smug as described in this article, or if Europeans really think the way this article describes, there is a more concerning, deeper issue with the worldview of these historically well-aligned peoples.
> I feel it’s impossible to convince Europeans to act in their self interest. You can’t even convince them to adopt air conditioning in the summer.
doing in an article that seems to strive for serious reflection on different societies?
I think it is a bit of a trade-off, his writings are engaging, but to discuss Europe in a serious way a blog wouldn't cut it, and it would make it possibly quite dry nonetheless. One has to not only understand the EU, their limited budget and mandate, but also the various parties in each country. This is just incredibly difficult to form an accurate picture of, even if there wouldn't be things like centuries old cultures and various languages.
To take away from the doom and gloom, iff the EU is really able to integrate in the next decade(s), form a shared market, my money would be on them. Both the current US government and Russia fear an integrated Europe, as they would be too big as a prey. Meanwhile, many countries want to join the EU, despite it being a "hell hole", at least if one believes the adversarial content promoted on the big tech platforms. At this moment the current US government supports "nationalistic" parties and corrupt kleptocrats like Orban, trying to break it apart from inside.
20k people died from heat exposure last summer in Europe! That seems crazy to me, though what do I know? What am I missing?
I presume his eyes are mostly fixed on the "old EU".
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Europe as a whole has a lot of good things going for it but I do agree that it's less ambitious on average than these 2 power blocks.
However the same dynamic that was described in the article where nobody wants to lack behind is also true for Europe.
Also, yes Novo Nordisk plundered their GTM in the US and lost market valuation but you can still get the same medical outcome in Europe as a patient based on a European invention. Another one: The first Covid vaccine came out of Germany.
More interestingly is the question on degrowth. I personally believe that growth is the more tempting path in general, but we do live on a finite planet and no system is on a path or has a good framework on how to grow sustainably or responsibly. Maybe AI is going to figure it out for us, but maybe it involves some hard tradeoffs that intelligence alone can't solve.
On industrial infrastructure
On technology innovation
On internet regulation
On central planning
Otherwise, your comment becomes an anecdote supporting the common stereotypes (assuming you’re from Europe).
So I am betting that the US and China are more compelling forces for change. Stalin was fond of telling a story from his experience in Leipzig in 1907, when, to his astonishment, 200 German workers failed to turn up to a socialist meeting because no ticket controller was on the platform to punch their train tickets, citing this experience as proof of the hopelessness of Germanic obedience. Could anyone imagine Chinese or Americans being so obedient?
This isn’t a serious analysis of German culture. It’s perfectly fine to argue that certain countries are economically or industrially problematic, but when you throw in comments like this, it really doesn’t help your argument.
And I’m not from Europe, but I have lived here for years. The constant clueless comments by my fellow North Americans about the somehow monolithic entity of “Europe” are irritating.
"I have a hard time squaring the poor prospects of Europe over the next decade with the smugness that Europeans have for themselves. I spent most of the summer in Copenhagen. There’s no doubt that quality of life in most European cities is superb, especially for what I care about: food, opera, walkable streets, access to nature. But a decade of low economic growth is biting. European prices and taxes can be so high while salaries can be so low."
This particular kind of American perspective on Europe always falls into the same trap: Not understanding a world where economic performance is _not_ the be-all-and-end-all, not understanding the connection between the benefits of such a world (things that consider externalities - not individuals - in order to exist) with the costs of such a world (taxes).
It also defies easy summaries, but my biggest takeaways were that 1) the CCP really doesn't care about the costs any of its policies (one-child, zero COVID, etc) impose on its citizenry, and 2) that the CCP is actively preparing China for a world where it's entirely cut off from the West, because it realizes that's the price to pay for invading Taiwan.
"In vain do I protest that there are historical and geopolitical reasons motivating the desire, that chip fabs cannot be violently seized, and anyway that Beijing has coveted Taiwan for approximately seven decades before people were talking about AI."
Consider the historical timeline: "Fortress China" policies coincide with the rise of American protectionism on both sides of the aisle and the introduction of chip restrictions and punishing tariffs. Taiwan is an emotional/nationalist issue for China, but it's only one part of their policy, not the lynchpin as your comment suggests.
the UK is seriously broken, I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita
while in the US you see automated car washes, in the uk most car washes are Albanians n other immigrants etc
Bear in mind that obviously the mean salary in London is going to be far higher than the median (the finance industry will skew it), while I'm not sure that's as extreme as Mississippi. Additionally median salaries reflect a lot of service jobs and similar labour. Dubai has a lower median wage than either London or Mississippi, but people don't think of it as economically broken.
Comparing California (an extremely large state that I presume has cheaper housing outside major urban areas) to a city seems a bit of a poor comparison.
I don't disagree that the UK has high energy costs.
Dubai isn’t sold as a place to belong long-term. Most people move there knowing it’s temporary. The Bay Area is drifting in the same direction too with the increased cost of living around here. (but the same could be said about most big cities, maybe?)
Compare the housing costs of London to the housing costs of San Francisco and then swap out those Bay Area salaries with your “slightly above Mississippi” wages and you’ll see why London looks so broken to people used to LA/SF/NY.
From my experience the ratio of savings was similar, but the ppp of course favored US for absolute numbers.
The issue is all the things blocking supply. As long as supply is blocked, prices will go up, Period
Housing in Vienna is still affordable, only due to their very successful public housing programs. Public housing can be both beautiful and highly affordable if you want it to be, it's not like we don't know how to make good quality homes with lovely public amenities. It's mostly developers that want to skim on everything while selling it at the highest cost possible.
Poor system if this is the outcome: unaffordability.
This is terrible for normal people, and slightly bad for the investors, but only a crisis or organized government action can reset the damage done by decades of investment in already existing buildings.
The former is much more likely to happen.
Have you lived in the UK at all, or at least spent considerable time there?
I've lived in the UK and America, and America seems far more broken to me.
Can you elaborate on this?
From what I can tell, the UK's per-capita electricity generation has dropped steadily from a 2003 high[0] (4,069 kWh in 2024, 6,657 in 2003, 5,266 in 1985) and per-capita energy consumption has been going down since 2005,[1] but energy intensity (read: inverse of efficiency) has been decreasing consistently since at least 1965.[2] Domestic electricity production is down 24% since 2000,[3] whilst imports (which I don't think includes Albanians) are up 206% in the same period.[4]
That all reads to me as a country whose domestic generation has been replaced by imports and whose consumption has been reduced by efficiency gains, but I'm aware that I'm conflating figures here for 'energy' and for solely 'electricity'; I couldn't find anything for per-capita energy generation, as you specified.
[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#in-...
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#wha...
[2]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#ene...
[3]: https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#whe...
[4]: https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#whe...
Source: UBS Global Wealth Report 2025
Of course US does has a much higher mean wealth…
Honestly I am shocked at the recent rise of anti-UK comments with horribly incorrect information or skewed views and curious about what is sourcing this.
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Er what? I moved away from the UK in 2007 but even then the only place I or my parents washed a car was the ubiquitous petrol station automated car wash.
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Such gems as
> I like SF house parties, where people take off their shoes at the entrance and enter a space in which speech can be heard over music, which feels so much more civilized than descending into a loud bar in New York. It’s easy to fall into a nerdy conversation almost immediately with someone young and earnest.
As if there is a single Asian-American culture and no Asian-Americans like going out to bars…
The whole piece is littered with weird over generalizations over huge and diverse groups of people.
I’ve lived in both SF and now NYC, and that characterization is painting with a broad brush, but isn’t ridiculous.
Woz had that (still does). He was smart enough to take his winnings and bail. I think that many in SV can't fathom why, but I suspect I know exactly why.
I do remember the tech community as being full of humor and whimsy. I miss that.
>A rule of thumb is that it takes five years from an American, German, or Japanese automaker to dream up a new car design and launch that model on the roads; in China, it’s closer to 18 months.
Not only is China 3 - 5 times faster in terms of product launches, they would have launch it with a production scale that is at least double the output of other auto marker. If you were to put capacity into the equation as well, China is an order of magnitude faster than any competing countries, at half the cost if not even lower.
Every single year since 2022 China has added more solar power capacity than the entire US solar capacity. And they are still accelerating, with the current roadmap and trend they could install double the entire US solar power capacity in a single year by 2030.
CATL's Sodium Ion Battery is already in production and will be used by EVs and large scale energy storage by end of this year. The cost advantage of these new EV would mean there is partially zero chance EU can compete. And if EU are moaning about it now, they cant even imagine what is coming.
Thanks to AI pushing up memory and NAND price. YMTC and CXMT now have enough breathing room to catch up. If they play this right, I wont be surprised by 2035 30 - 40% of DRAM and NAND will be made by the two Chinese firms. Although judging from their past execution record I highly doubt this will happen, but expect may be 10-15% maximum.
Beyond tech, there are also other part of manufacturing that China has matched or exceeded rest of the world without being noticed by many. Lab Grown Diamond, Cosmetic Production, Agricultural Machinery, Reinforced glass etc. Their 10 years plan on agricultural improvement also come to fruition especially in terms of fruit and veg. I wont be surprised if they no long need US soy bean within 10 years time.
All in all a lot of things in China has passed escape velocity and there is no turning back. China understand US better than US understand themselves, and US doesn't even have any idea about China. I think the quote from the article sums this up pretty well.
"Beijing has been preparing for Cold War without eagerness for waging it, while the US wants to wage a Cold War without preparing for it.".
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46273326
Western countries should do the same and do it continuously without consider the economic reward.
TBH Anything strategic, expect PRC to adopt energy-to-matter to substitutes when the teach stack is figured out. Or at least have as less economic backup, i.e. PRC has unlimited cheap fertilizer (was top fertilizer producer via coal gasification) just more emission heavy. They're on way to displace all oil imports with coal to olefin/liquidation and EV. HQ steel via simply hammering energy into mid ores. All signs point they're moving towards strategic domestic abundance / autarky where they can.
But for global picture, if we are comparing Western World: US+Canada+EU vs China in technological domination, the picture is likely not super-clear and more complex analysis is required. Even if we consider manufacturing output, where China is supposedly global leader, we see it is 5.5T for Western world vs 4.6T for China (according to my brief google searching).
If China can't make something, it's considered high tech. Once china makes it, it's no longer high tech.
PRC makes high tech products into low margin commodities. That's what happens when they have roughly oced combined in stem talent and vast industrial base to value engineer. And most of it happened in last 15 years. The point is PRC catches up fast (including extreme frontier), and when they do, they can scale and cut margins, which is more interesting direction than west who seemingly can't. The point is that is obviously the superior dominance recipe vs west who has vanishing frontier lead that will continue to be lost because western margins is PRC opportunity. The point is when PRC makes >50% of global stuff materially but charges <50%, it's exceedingly likely that will take over everything, at PRC speed, and will not leave west any high margin, leading edge niches, unless west can learn to operate with low margins as well.
I would bet the unit volume of manufacturing with those 4.6T is more than double that of 5.5T. And those 5.5T likely have some very high value, high margin leading edge equipment.
Not only is China catching up to those sectors, they are continuing their momentum to accelerate and expand in other low value market. They key here isn't to maximise profits, it is to maximise control.
If Trade is war, which is the fundamental of principle of what "Art of War" is about, then I dont see how the west could win this war without some very drastic changes.
Oh come on, this is so untrue. Silicon Valley loves credentialism and networking, probably more than anywhere else. Except the credentials are the companies you’ve worked for or whether you know some founder or VC, instead of what school you went to or which degrees you have.
I went to a smaller college that the big tech firms didn’t really recruit from. I spent the first ~5 years of my career working for a couple smaller companies without much SV presence. Somehow I lucked into landing a role at a big company that almost everyone has definitely heard of. I didn’t find my coworkers to necessarily be any smarter or harder working than the people I worked with previously. But when I decided it was time to move on, companies that never gave me the time of day before were responding to my cold applies or even reaching out to _me_ to beg me to interview.
And don’t get me started on the senior leadership and execs I’ve seen absolutely run an entire business units into the ground and lose millions of dollars and cost people their jobs, only to “part ways” with the company, then immediately turn around and raise millions of dollars from the same guys whose money they just lost.
You could argue that getting a job at X or Y company by itself conveys some level of skill - but if we are honest, that is just version of saying you went to Harvard.
There's lots of cliques everywhere in life, and various ways to show status, SV is definitely not immune to that.
and the story told is "no judgement on skill, only on being in-group. It's just the in-group is caused by previous employment and not birth-right/nationality/etc"
So, for your quote, a skeptical interpretation of the text may assert the author was merely praising SV in the same fashion one might appraise the party.