It's true, there used to be a much greater variety of points of view here back in the day. Von, slarti, bc (who still pops up now and then). Lots of others, some quite good.
Now we're mostly liberal-to-left, mostly (I think) boomer and genx.
It's actually really hard to participate someplace where you are the contrarian voice. It's a lot of work, and is not always particularly rewarding. People yell at you a lot, it takes time and patience to build some credibility. So I can understand why conservatives might not want to hang here.
That said, I'd welcome more conservative voices here. I'd just ask that they not just show up to trumpet their point of view and yell at people. Actual conversation would be good.
I appreciated McK's presence here, but a lot of the time he seemed to just be here to scold us all for being such hypocrites. It was rude and tiresome, which is why he was banned the first time around. And it's why he was banned the second time, having popped up as BigBadBird.
I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
But I personally would be willing to give it a shot.
Regarding the 4th of July, suffice it to say that I was just not feeling it this year. Went to my niece's for her daughter's 16th birthday, ate a hot dog and some birthday cake, hung with family, came home, read a bit, went to sleep. That was my exciting 4th.
In many ways, I feel like I'm about done with this country. Not that I plan to go anywhere else, I just am losing my belief that we are ever gonna get past the same toxic bullshit we started out with. It just never seems to end.
The cruelty - pointless, sadistic, nihilistic cruelty - we are capable of is freaking crushing me.
I don't know if any other place is better, I just know what we are right now, and what we have been, and it breaks my freaking heart.
So that's my 4th of July story.
Grok's summary is not particularly helpful
I know that this is just further proof that I'm an old man yelling at cloud, but I am learning to hate AI.
It's like mansplaining as a platform. Plus, an electricity hog.
Doesn't anybody read a book anymore?
I will now go yell at random kids to stay off my lawn.
This was a really interesting read, lj. Thank you for sharing it.
I haven't read Abundance so to some degree I felt like I lacked some context in following all what was being said - like I was hearing the response to a somewhat large statement, without having heard the original statement. So maybe I should read Abundance?
But even given that, it was a thoughtful and thought-provoking read. I've subscribed to the substack at the free level.
One thing in particular I was struck by came from the comparison of US vs. Chinese "manufacturing culture", for lack of a better term. A number of points are made in the discussion, but the thing that struck me most was more or less summarized in this para:
America definitely has advantages in excavating "innovation points" that have clear commercial value and market acceptance, but when it comes to those "1.1 improvements"—the continuous polishing and optimization—the gap compared to China is obvious. This actually reflects deep institutional design differences between the two countries: America's system encourages high-risk, high-reward winner-takes-all, while China's structure tends more toward stable returns and inclusive distribution. These institutional and cultural differences in risk appetite ultimately show up in the industrial realities and innovation models we see today.
If I were to try to boil this down and restate it in my own words, I'd say:
China is patient, the US is not
In other words, in the US we seem to always be chasing the next "unicorn" - the next disruptive thing that is going to give finance capital that magical 100 for 1 ROI. And we want to see that ROI in a relatively short window of time - 5 or 7 years? Whereas in China, they have the patience to build systems that improve over time through constant iterations to offer more modest, but stable returns, over longer time spans - 10, 20, 30 years.
And the patient, incremental approach is more effective in building out a robust manufacturing sector. Because, as others in the conversation note, while manufacturing processes are reproducible to a great degree (and therefore capable of scaling and moving from place to place), they often require what the contributor Afra calls "tacit knowledge" - information embedded in human minds about how to do things.
Which takes time to build and pass along, and is less amenable to scaling and relocation.
A really interesting - and relevant - read, thank you again for sharing.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “An open thread on July 4th”
It's true, there used to be a much greater variety of points of view here back in the day. Von, slarti, bc (who still pops up now and then). Lots of others, some quite good.
Now we're mostly liberal-to-left, mostly (I think) boomer and genx.
It's actually really hard to participate someplace where you are the contrarian voice. It's a lot of work, and is not always particularly rewarding. People yell at you a lot, it takes time and patience to build some credibility. So I can understand why conservatives might not want to hang here.
That said, I'd welcome more conservative voices here. I'd just ask that they not just show up to trumpet their point of view and yell at people. Actual conversation would be good.
I appreciated McK's presence here, but a lot of the time he seemed to just be here to scold us all for being such hypocrites. It was rude and tiresome, which is why he was banned the first time around. And it's why he was banned the second time, having popped up as BigBadBird.
I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
But I personally would be willing to give it a shot.
Regarding the 4th of July, suffice it to say that I was just not feeling it this year. Went to my niece's for her daughter's 16th birthday, ate a hot dog and some birthday cake, hung with family, came home, read a bit, went to sleep. That was my exciting 4th.
In many ways, I feel like I'm about done with this country. Not that I plan to go anywhere else, I just am losing my belief that we are ever gonna get past the same toxic bullshit we started out with. It just never seems to end.
The cruelty - pointless, sadistic, nihilistic cruelty - we are capable of is freaking crushing me.
I don't know if any other place is better, I just know what we are right now, and what we have been, and it breaks my freaking heart.
So that's my 4th of July story.
On “From the Chinatalk substack”
Grok's summary is not particularly helpful
I know that this is just further proof that I'm an old man yelling at cloud, but I am learning to hate AI.
It's like mansplaining as a platform. Plus, an electricity hog.
Doesn't anybody read a book anymore?
I will now go yell at random kids to stay off my lawn.
"
This was a really interesting read, lj. Thank you for sharing it.
I haven't read Abundance so to some degree I felt like I lacked some context in following all what was being said - like I was hearing the response to a somewhat large statement, without having heard the original statement. So maybe I should read Abundance?
But even given that, it was a thoughtful and thought-provoking read. I've subscribed to the substack at the free level.
One thing in particular I was struck by came from the comparison of US vs. Chinese "manufacturing culture", for lack of a better term. A number of points are made in the discussion, but the thing that struck me most was more or less summarized in this para:
If I were to try to boil this down and restate it in my own words, I'd say:
In other words, in the US we seem to always be chasing the next "unicorn" - the next disruptive thing that is going to give finance capital that magical 100 for 1 ROI. And we want to see that ROI in a relatively short window of time - 5 or 7 years? Whereas in China, they have the patience to build systems that improve over time through constant iterations to offer more modest, but stable returns, over longer time spans - 10, 20, 30 years.
And the patient, incremental approach is more effective in building out a robust manufacturing sector. Because, as others in the conversation note, while manufacturing processes are reproducible to a great degree (and therefore capable of scaling and moving from place to place), they often require what the contributor Afra calls "tacit knowledge" - information embedded in human minds about how to do things.
Which takes time to build and pass along, and is less amenable to scaling and relocation.
A really interesting - and relevant - read, thank you again for sharing.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.