Thanks CharlesWT, but Grok's summary is not particularly helpful. Mostly it underlines for me that we don't know much about the author(s) or what sorts of institutional connections or outside funding may be influencing the commentary.
I get that this is true for a lot of popular media sources, but I tend towards sources that do a better, more careful job of practicing research transparency.
CharlesWT - who is behind the Economics Explained channel and where does their information come from? They don't seem to feature much information about who they are, what sort of educational background they have, or what sort of information literacy practices they use to verify their information, which leaves me wondering.
Hard to know how much trust to put into commentary when there is so little transparency.
Genuinely curious, marginally skeptical, but not going to dismiss it out of hand.
I, too, read the substack and found it interesting - probably more informative than anything I have read about Abundance which seems to me to be more of a work of mythology than one grounded in an understanding of technologies and practicalities that it champions. I think Klein has far too credulous a faith in the techbros and has not read widely enough in the literature to see where the silicon valley marketing buzz is all greed and ketamine.
I do agree that the US needs big public works, but those works need to constrain the techbros and aim for slower and wider prosperity. Instead, we have modernity as a casino.
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 “From the Chinatalk substack”
Thanks CharlesWT, but Grok's summary is not particularly helpful. Mostly it underlines for me that we don't know much about the author(s) or what sorts of institutional connections or outside funding may be influencing the commentary.
I get that this is true for a lot of popular media sources, but I tend towards sources that do a better, more careful job of practicing research transparency.
"
nous, here's an overview of the Economics Explained channel. Perhaps the main criticism is that it oversimplifies economics to appeal to a broad audience.
Detailed Report on the Economics Explained YouTube Channel
"
CharlesWT - who is behind the Economics Explained channel and where does their information come from? They don't seem to feature much information about who they are, what sort of educational background they have, or what sort of information literacy practices they use to verify their information, which leaves me wondering.
Hard to know how much trust to put into commentary when there is so little transparency.
Genuinely curious, marginally skeptical, but not going to dismiss it out of hand.
"
China's economy is looking a bit precarious.
China’s Debt Problem Is 300% Bigger Than America’s
"
I, too, read the substack and found it interesting - probably more informative than anything I have read about Abundance which seems to me to be more of a work of mythology than one grounded in an understanding of technologies and practicalities that it champions. I think Klein has far too credulous a faith in the techbros and has not read widely enough in the literature to see where the silicon valley marketing buzz is all greed and ketamine.
I do agree that the US needs big public works, but those works need to constrain the techbros and aim for slower and wider prosperity. Instead, we have modernity as a casino.
"
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.