[api]

I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't actually save any money or make anyone much more money. It's just a result of mindlessly fetishizing the past and misattributing past periods of rapid industrial growth to lack of regulation. The real cause was rapid population growth at the time, war, and extremely rapid adoption of bedrock industrial age technologies like electricity.

Today we have a fully deployed modern infrastructure and slow to negative population growth. Cutting regulation won't change that.

[da_chicken]

Yeah it turns out when Europe is a giant crater and the rest of world hasn't figured out electricity quite yet that your massive industrial capacity can be a bit of a boon. Especially when you loan out a bunch of money to Europe so they can buy all your stuff! Wow! Having over 50% of the world's industrial capacity when the world just spent 7 years on fire and everyone needs new everything means it's a bit of a seller's market!

[delfinom]

Yep, all these baby booomers lucked the fuck out being born in an era where the entire world needed the US after WW2. But over time the rest of the world slowly recovered and suddenly US goods became overpriced.

I blame much of the current US economy on the shenanigans of baby boomers and their parents. Who after having a booming economy for 3 decades, needed to quickly financial engineer themselves out of their infinite growth pension hole.

So what did they do? They started offshoring to compensate for the big mismatch in domestic debt financing and actual domestic wealth creation.

While they were doing they, they put the pedal to the metal on wealth inequality as those already with excessive wealth could leverage themselves to the tits to buy up the competition.

The problem is, alot of this is the net result at the macro scale and there were many independent decisions that led to everything.

[jhgorrell]

Think you might like to read "Adrift: America in 100 Charts" by Scott Galloway. He covers the impact of babyboomers on America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Galloway_(professor)#Bib...

[fallingknife]

I don't really buy this since China has industrialized rapidly without much population growth at all. They have built infrastructure like high speed rail that we are unable to build in the US, so I also don't buy the "fully deployed modern infrastructure" line.

[danparsonson]

Yeah but their starting point was different again - they already had the population, and were able to piggy back on technological progress from other countries by borrowing or stealing it. The other thing they have is an authoritarian government; a country can achieve a lot in a short time when it can freely sideline the concerns and needs of its citizens.

[cayley_graph]

I'm not a China defender, but sidelining the concerns and needs of its citizens isn't why China is able to do things like high speed rail or build high density infrastructure in general. Lots there view having their property taken by the government and relocated as a good thing, because it almost always happens way above market rates. There are exceptions, of course, but my impression is that it is not the norm. Feel free to correct me. This isn't a defense of China in general, but it is totally possible to have good public transit in the United States.

And mind you that China isn't unique in bootstrapping its industrial revolution by mass theft of IP. If I were you, I'd look into the stunts us Americans pulled during our industrialization. The sad fact of the matter is that the government of this country no longer works for its own people, and that's why so many things are far below par. For many things, we _could_, but simply _don't_.

[winrid]

In my personal experience with in-laws in China you're correct (got fully compensated + given a nicer house). Another family, when they were laid off from their government jobs, were given the option of cash or office space and storage for like 30yrs to run their own business...

[danparsonson]

Nothing really to disagree with here tbh; I didn't mean to say that authoritarianism was the reason for everything they've achieved, but rather that it greases the wheels so to speak.

I was really just responding to the discussion that ensued when an earlier commenter said that poor regulation was not the reason the US modernised rapidly but rather population growth and post war economics, and another responded with China as a counter example to that, my point being that China's situation was much different than the US so it's not really a useful comparison.

I am neither a defender of China, nor the US ;-)

[grumpy-de-sre]

I always liked the bit where they often compensate folks not directly financially but rather with a generous share in what they are building. Eg. the building containing your one bedroom apartment gets torn down by developers and as compensation they offer you a three bedroom apartment in the new building.

Definitely plays an interesting role in combating/moderating NIMBYism.

[api]

China went from a few tens of millions of modern people to over a billion modern people. Look at it that way. They weren’t new people but they were economically speaking.

The US is all modern people with little population growth. We have no giant wave of latent demand.

[qmatch]

How are so confident in causality here?

[api]

The population thing is pretty elementary. If population is flat to declining, then growth is demand constrained.

There are some areas where you could uncap growth by cutting regulation, but they're not this. The #1 one I'm aware of is housing construction in high cost metros.

[qmatch]

I see your point, but not totally buying it. The US innovates for a global population, one that’s still growing.

The best way to infer causality is through experimentation. If regulation does go away, we’ll measure and learn if it actually worked.

[mikem170]

Reagan cut regulation, and manufacturing still left, quick as ever.

I assume that is due to larger trends. Population growth has slowed considerably and there's more competition than ever. Worldwide fertility rates have dropped from 4.7 to 2.3 in the last 75 years, and in that time the U.S. share of world GDP dropped from about 50% to 25%.

My two cents: We may be already be in uncharted economic territory with regards to shrinking workforces, retirees, pollution, etc. How much of our economy is dependent on growth? We may find out. Places like Japan, Korea and Europe are leading the way. Ponzi schemes won't work forever. The world is getting smaller and older. And evening out. There's less room for arbitrage. Innovation is coming from all directions. Technology can still increase productivity. But it could also put masses of people out of work, leaving not enough demand for the latest and greatest. That, and a pie that is no longer growing, could cause a lot of social friction.

[vharuck]

>We’ll measure and learn if it actually worked.

I don't believe that will happen, and I base that belief on all my decades of watching American politics. Bureaucrats may do this (I personally work with ones who do), but politicians generally do not. And the current administration definitely does not care about actual numbers.