[nouveaux]

"an inherent trade off between environmental consideration and speed"

It's not just environmental consideration. Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all sorts of corrupt behavior. Evergrande is a great example of speed. Banks in China made the same mistakes that banks in US made in 2008. If banks in China had tight regulations for the last 20 years, real estate growth would be significantly hampered.

China should be given credit in that their leaders learned from other countries and leveraged their population size to grow with incredible speed. However, I would argue that China's rise to power has less to do with their efficiency and more to do with laws of growth. If we exclude Covid, I am willing to bet that China will not be able to sustain double digit growth ever again. In fact, I am willing to bet my house that when China achieves US's per capita GDP levels, China will never achieve double digit growth ever again.

[_dain_]

>Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all sorts of corrupt behavior.

Slowness is surely even better for nepotism and corrupt behaviour.

[nouveaux]

I'm not familiar with this so if you can help me understand, I would appreciate it.

From my understanding, one of the causes of slowness in US is waiting for bids. Government related work is required to open projects up for bids for a period of time, review all the bids and document the process. In many other countries, the project goes to the company with better relations to the project manager or the companies with the best bribes.

[_dain_]

The longer something takes, the longer it is expected to take. Delays compound on themselves, it becomes harder to plan further into the future. Costs skyrocket. More opportunities for bad actors to enrich themselves.

[nouveaux]

Maybe. The way I see it, transparency and fairness takes far more time than nepotism and corrupt behavior. How would you suggest that the government be more fair, transparent and fast?

[bluGill]

Trying to do too much in one large bid instead of splitting out to smaller companies doesn't help either.

[kitsunesoba]

It creates more room for other problems too.

More time for obstructionists to find footing, increased chance of loss of political will, and more opportunities for public opinion to sour among other things.

While rushing isn’t good, protracting the process is also a likely death sentence for the project in question.

[oblio]

China will most likely never reach US GDP per capita levels. Japan or Germany or Sweden aren't.

Maybe GDP per capita PPP levels, even though that's also debatable.

[socialdemocrat]

Many have reached US levels of economic output per hour. The key difference is that while Europeans have opted for better work-life balance, Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends.

The other challenge is that many other countries are more aggressive about keeping resource usage to a minimal. Compare e.g. usage or resources, water, land and energy per dollar of GDP and the US is really high.

European countries, Korea and Japan may not have as high GDP but is often on a far more sustainable path.

[smegma2]

Japan has better WLB than the US? Are you sure? This sounds very anecdotal.

> Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends.

My counter: I don't know a single person working like this

[Spooky23]

There’s two americas.

You have the people upset that their big tech employer won’t do their laundry anymore. Then you have the underclass of people who can lose everything if they get hurt or show up late for work a few times.

[bluGill]

I've heard a few like that. They are in the early years of founding a business, their day job is unpaid, the 2nd job is so they can eat, and theweekend job is more money to invest in the main one. The plan is in a few years the first job makes money and they quit the others.

Or sometimes someone who is laid off in a downturn and works like that for a year while waiting for things to improve so they can return to their previous high spending lifestyle with lots of vacation to enjoy the toys they are now just able to make payments on.

[lupire]

"Early years of founding a business" is not a substitantial part of the population.

[bluGill]

Exactly. Most people only work one job. You hear stories, they are true, but they are the exception. Or they are about a problem unrelated to poverty. (Child support is a big one, courts are sexist in many cases)

[whimsicalism]

Jesus christ, it's like large parts of HN don't even realize people exist outside of their affluent west coast bubble.

[bluGill]

I know some poor people. They live in poor neighborhoods, and have little. However the vast majority are not working two jobs.

Or maybe it doesn't occur to you that in the middle of the country it is possible to afford a (small!) apartment on minimum wage jobs. We hear stories about how high the cost of living is in CA, but it isn't that bad here.

[arvinsim]

Do you think it is because they need it?

Or is it because hustle culture has become so normalized that people could not conceive of the alternatives?

[bluGill]

I am not passing judgement on people's life choices. I'm just observing what I see them do.

[ClumsyPilot]

Is GDP per capita appropriate metric? Japan has higher median salaries than US does.

How much of thay GDP is down to US being a global center of finance and location of corporate HQ of most gl9bal firms, pulling in wealth from across the world?

Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top 0.1% of richest people?

You may argue those things shouls not be remoced from GDP, but if we are discussing working life on an average person, this GDP number might not be reflective of it

[chii]

> Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top 0.1% of richest people?

those richest people don't personally contribute that much to GDP (their companies they own do). Removing them would make not much difference - their spending might be 10x or may be even 100x the average person, but there's so few of them that barely worth mentioning. It's not like they eat more food than normal people, nor wear out cars more than normal people. A few yachts and fancy cars notwithstanding, GDP is a measure of output, not wealth accumulation.

[ClumsyPilot]

Fair enough, but how is this discrepancy between wages and GDP explainable?

[chii]

Wages are the minimum people accept for their labour. GDP is a measure of productivity, which can increase with investment in plant and equipment (and tech via R&D).

If a worker is more efficient, but every worker is also made more efficient (because of the equipment or tech), then their bargaining power doesn't grow with their productivity increase!

The exceptions are where their individual output is higher - aka, skill. Tech workers getting higher wages is evidence of this. At some point, the number of tech workers would saturate as it is such a lucrative profession compared to many others - it's just the 2000 dot-com pop caused a huge drop in enrollments in universities and the lack of graduates is still felt today imho.

Meanwhile, a services industry worker still outputs the same amount of "work" as they've done before in yester-century (not much tech can improve their output). The pay for them have not really grown, because there's no room to grow. Only mandates like minimum wage increases cause it to grow, and those hardly come by.

[mrep]

> Japan has higher median salaries than US does.

Where do you see that? Wikipedia says the US has 2x the median income PPP than Japan [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

[systemvoltage]

I'd honestly prefer the hard working ethic of Americans over lassie-faire hierarchical orthodoxy in EU. No one works to the bone, hard work is also rewarded. They choose to do it. The ease of business is amazing.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I lived in the USA for 32 years, after growing up in the UK for 24. I don't see a "hard working ethic" in the USA. What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent political change seriously and also empowers them to believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than today.

Lots of people in the USA work to the bone. Maybe you don't work with them, or see them when and where they work, but many books and articles have been written by people who've been deep inside this phenomenon. "Nickel & Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich is a great example.

Yes, entrepeneurialism is easy here, and that's a good thing. However, I refuse to believe that this requires the rest of the system to remain as it is, or that by itself it justifies the suffering of the majority of people who do not "make it".

I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the USA. I have tried hard to to allow that to blind me to the fact that it was mostly luck, nor to the immense, unnecessary suffering that our economic and political system imposes on millions of people (even just within the country).

[systemvoltage]

> What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent political change seriously and also empowers them to believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than today.

I disagree with your premises. I love the way things are. I do not agree with current progressive agenda, I stand by the old liberal values.

> I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the USA.

Sorry about your situation. I am an immigrant that came from a place I never want to go back, this land has given everything I asked for in return of honest, good day's work.

Most importantly, I enjoy the freedoms that other nations do not grant.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Sorry about your situation

I think you misread what I said. If you look back up up the thread, you'll find there is absolutely no reason to pity my situation at all.

Sure, I got a LOT back from the USA, much more than anyone deserves really. And even without that stroke of good luck (sure, maybe it favored my prepared mind), a lot of people can live "like kings" in the USA compared to the life they would have led elsewhere.

But I do not believe that the suffering of those who lead much worse lives in the USA can justify my own comfort (or that of anyone else's). Nor the opposite. The fact that it is possible to succeed here in ways that might never have worked "back home" does not justify the oppression that continues to affect millions of Americans.

[grog454]

What is the difference between a "hard working ethic" and "work[ing] to the bone"?

[I-M-S]

One is a choice the other is not

[seibelj]

I’ve met quite a few executives at US companies who emigrated from Europe. At the high end, America kicks the shit out of Europe in every regard. The high end people create the new companies, and thus America has far more equity value than Europe, and new innovative companies, and cutting edge research, etc. etc. Europe might be better for the average person but the hyper successful generally opt to leave.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

We don't need the hyper-successful, certainly not the way you're defining them.

In a society of 350 millions people that is vaguely capitalistic, there will always be people who "win big". The "high end" people are just the living manifestation of serendipidity. If it wasn't Bezos, it would have been someone else.

Also, "the high-end people create the new companies" is almost complete BS. The mythology of the exceptional individual that dominates the USA promotes this story, but the reality is that successful companies are the result of the collaborative, cooperative efforts of many different people (many of them not "high-end"). A company like Amazon was created by a constellation of people with very different backgrounds, socio-economic status and intent.

[jokethrowaway]

You could have been #2 at Amazon but I've seen plenty of companies to fail because their founders screw up the company.

Saying Bezos just won is simply dishonest. His ideas and approach had an impact.

[sangnoir]

> Saying Bezos just won is simply dishonest. His ideas and approach had an impact.

If Bezos never existed, or chose to become a theoretical physicist,there would have been another company filling the niche(s) with some other founder who didn't screw up the company.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

"Not screwing up the company" is a necessary but insufficient condition for startup success.

I did not say that "Bezos just won" nor that his ideas and approach had no impact. As has been noted by others in this sub-thread, the point is that if it had not been Bezos (because he stayed at D.E. Shaw, or fucked up early Amazon) it would have been someone else. Capitalism abhors a vacuum.

[seibelj]

Disagree entirely. Yes, a company is an assemblage of people. No, the guy working the warehouse couldn’t have built Amazon. Bezos is special talent.

[giantrobot]

> Bezos is special talent.

Having family wealthy enough to invest in his early business is a kind of talent I guess. As is being in the right place at the right time. If Bezos lost all of his money tomorrow he could never make it a second time.

[lupire]

USAmerica's great successes are largely in wealth transfer from lower class to upper class, and selling vices. That's why GDP is so much higher than quality of life -- the economy is largely people paying each other to hurt each other.

[seibelj]

America’s greatest success is the rule of law, stable republican government, and the protection of private property. America continues to outdo the rest of the world because it is better.

[oblio]

It's greatest success was in killing or driving off native populations or smaller groups of other settlers (French, Spanish, Mexican) to get 7 million sqkm of prime real estate only found to the same scale in Europe (where it's divided among 40+ countries) and China (surprise-surprise, the main rival).

A place like Germany, for example, I find in no way inferior to the US, population wise, but it's geographically much more constrained and in much less defensible position.

[ncmncm]

America’s greatest success used to be the rule of law, stable republican government, and the protection of private property.

Now, the US has the greatest degree of high-level corruption in the world, second perhaps only to China. In China, corruption is technically still illegal, but permitted to the Party faithful. In the US, it has all been made explicitly legal.

[xvector]

I would counterargue that corners are often cut just as terribly in the US. The corners are simply cut slower, because everything here is done slower.

For example, electronics built in the US are typically shittier than electronics built in China, despite taking significantly longer to build and employees being paid orders of magnitude more (as noted by companies like Apple, Purism, etc.)

Within our culture in the US there is a clear and comically obvious problem of bureaucracy and red-tape. This doesn't really exist in software yet, but the day our government gets its claws into the software industry is the day that innovation in the US can be put to rest. (Well, it's already happening - if you try to create a software startup that processes user data, you are probably breaking tens of laws you don't even know exist.)

There is also a cultural difference. One thing I have noticed when working with my Chinese coworkers is that they do not bullshit nearly as much as my other coworkers. They get straight to the point, deal in metrics and facts, and don't try to inflate their accomplishments. Maybe that's just my current work environment, maybe it's a cultural thing - I suspect the latter.

[nouveaux]

> "I would counterargue that corners are often cut just as terribly in the US."

I would agree with you. The bay bridge had issues with the steel[0]. The millenium tower[1] also has corner cutting problems. The question is the frequency. I believe corner cutting happens far less in the US than say China.

As a Chinese person in the US, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that people in China would prefer foreign products over Chinese ones across the board. The last time I was in China, my friends tell me that they prefer products from Korea over ones in China. The problem is the cost.

> "Within our culture in the US there is a clear and comically obvious problem of bureaucracy and broken red-tape."

People often complain about bureaucracy and broken red-tape in the US but after thinking about this deeply, I'm beginning to suspect that the US government is one of the more efficient governments in the world:

1) How many people in this world can honestly say "Wow my government is so efficient that it's more efficient than the corporations in my country."

2) The US has some amazing departments. National parks, military/CIA/FBA/NSA, federal reserve, state department, FDA, CDC, DOD (research), public universities, community college, consumer protection, USPS, etc. What they actually accomplish is amazing and is at the top of the world or near the top.

3) The US accomplishes so much while maintaining a democracy. The US pioneers human rights around the world.

[0] https://www.wired.com/2015/06/mystery-brand-new-bay-bridges-...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/10/san-francisc...

[BlargMcLarg]

> 1) How many people in this world can honestly say "Wow my government is so efficient that it's more efficient than the corporations in my country."

Quite a few. This isn't unique to the US, and quite a few corporations do not drive themselves to bankruptcy being extremely inefficient or even malicious for multiple years. We've seen plenty of examples in the last few decades.

> 2) The US has some amazing departments. National parks, military/CIA/FBA/NSA, federal reserve, state department, FDA, CDC, DOD (research), public universities, community college, consumer protection, USPS, etc. What they actually accomplish is amazing and is at the top of the world or near the top.

You could replace "the US" with any Western/Northern European country, Japan, Korea, Oceania, Canada and quite a few other countries and they would fit the bill pretty well, give or take a few aspects.

> 3) The US accomplishes so much while maintaining a democracy. The US pioneers human rights around the world.

Same as the above. The US isn't the only country maintaining a democracy. The US has also been leagues behind on several countries in some aspects for decades.

Meanwhile, most of these European countries face the exact same problem the US will in the future if things continue the way they are. Doing things "better" or "best" is not a cop-out for letting problems continue to the point of a crisis. Housing in Europe is a prime example of this, where regulations are arguably hurting us more than they are helping, but the majority of the population still believes we'll be living in rundown apartments if we don't keep these regulations (often citing the US as 'evidence', ironically).

[tablespoon]

> People often complain about bureaucracy and broken red-tape in the US but after thinking about this deeply, I'm beginning to suspect that the US government is one of the more efficient governments in the world:

In a lot of cases, I think US complaints about "bureaucracy and broken red-tape" are more a function of anti-government ideology. It's not like businesses don't have annoying bureaucracy, but the complaints tend to be selectively directed at the government, because for many people government is a boogeyman.

For an example, take Google. Wouldn't it be light-years better if they had customer support that was as good as the the worst DMV's?

[bluGill]

Which DMV? I've been to several different offices in my life. Some were worse than Google, (you have a chance of your story getting noticed and Google helping), some were very nice and friendly.

[bregma]

Government processes tend to be open and accessible so people can see how they work (or don't). Large corporations are closed and secretive so out of sight, out of mind.

[boulos]

The Bay Bridge faults have non-trivially been blamed (rightly or wrongly is unclear) on Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company who provided a lot of the materials [1]. The Wikipedia article doesn't talk about the steel itself (surprisingly!) but does mention they did the deck work, the automatic welds, and so on. There was plenty of blame to go around though.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_...

[robinjhuang]

When’s the last time you were back in China? That used to be the case, but increasingly less so. Especially after Trump’s trade war. Chinese people I know proudly buy Huawei and Nio cars. Even American products that Chinese people love like iPhones and Tesla are produced in China now…

Also 1. I don’t think people generally say that.

2. CDC made a huge mess of the pandemic (eg not stocking enough PPE). USPS is in big financial trouble.

3. This is huge topic but I’m inclined to say US messes up as often as it succeeds. Afghanistan will have 22 million people starving this year because of US sanctions. They promote democracy, but not human rights.

But overall I think you’re right to say the US government is one of the “more” efficient ones.

[vkou]

USPS is in big financial trouble because half the government is actively trying to kill it, by not allowing it to raise prices.

[nouveaux]

"USPS being in big financial trouble" should be considered a crazy idea. To me, it's like saying the "Senate" is in big financial trouble or the Federal Reserve is in big financial trouble. USPS should be a federal entity. They should be managed just like the State department.

What the USPS accomplishes is amazing. For a few dollars, you can send anyone a letter or a package to anywhere in the United States. The amount of productivity and the improved standard of living they provide incredible.

[jamie_ca]

Not to mention a level pension funding obligations that no other government agency has to suffer through.

[seibelj]

I always find that argument hilarious because the USPS was required to actually have conservative, healthy funding for their pensions - something no other state or federal agency does! And this is supposedly a bad thing! Just look at Chicago for an example of unfunded pension liabilities - a ticking time bomb.

[BobbyJo]

> They promote democracy, but not human rights.

A point of contention: Democracy is the surest way to safeguard human right long term in a nation. Historically speaking, there isn't even a second place when it comes to other forms of rule operating effectively on the necessary timescales.

Promoting democracy is promoting human rights the same way promoting exercise is promoting health and well-being.

[sudosysgen]

Democracy is far from the surest way to safeguard human rights. It's just a game of definitions that whenever a democracy commits atrocities, it retroactively stops being a democracy, even when the people are on board with it.

[BobbyJo]

Or maybe they do actually stop being democracies before the bad stuff happens? Care to share an example?

Literally all of the countries that have had continuous constitutions + liberal human rights (that is a long running government that hasn't violated its citizens rights) are democracies right now.

[incompatible]

You'd have to define "democracy" in some meaningful way. Is Russia a democracy? Was Iraq under Saddam Hussein a democracy? Elections were held, he won about 100% of the vote. Is the US a democracy? The winner of the presidential elections doesn't always get the most votes, and is in practice obliged to be a member of one of only two parties.

[robinjhuang]

I think this might be true. But the USA is not simply a democracy. It’s a liberal hegemony, and that brings a whole set of other problems.

I believe that an objective look at US foreign policy shows that US always looks out for #1 (itself).

It helped overthrow an elected socialist leader in Chile in 1973. It made up reasons to invade Iraq. It defended Kuwait, a monarchy. It interferes in other countries all the time. When the dictator supports US interests, it leaves them be. When a democratically elected government resists them, they try to tear it down.

So I think what you mean is democracy is good for advancing human rights for CITIZENS of that country. The empirical evidence is not super strong for advancing human rights in general.

[jokethrowaway]

No government is as efficient as corporations (hard to get anything done when you're eating doughnuts on tax-payers' money and you can't fail or be fired!) but I agree the us government is not the worst.

If you want to see real bad go to some southern European country.

[csomar]

> USPS

You certain? I used them a couple times and they are the most ridiculous postal carrier I've ever interacted with.

[sudosysgen]

I can honestly say that many agencies of my goverent are more efficient than the private alternative.

As far as pioneering human rights around the world, a few million dead innocents disagree. People who say the US is good at human rights always limit it to within their own borders. Internationally, the US has caused more death and destruction than almost any country.

[analyst74]

> Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all sorts of corrupt behavior.

Compare that with SF bay area politics, I don't think speed has any effect on corruption.

[taurath]

In the US bribery is just legal, and harder to access