Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...
> 6. India’s future is likely to be rather bright too—it looks like a much better economic partner for the rest of the world over the next two generations than does China…
> 11. But actually the hard stuff is institutions, property rights, government—people actually doing what they said they would do, rather than exerting their social power to welsh on their commitments…
Agreed on (11), but doesn't that weight against (6)? Not the comparative aspect but the absolute "rather bright" part of it - India's not a shining beacon of governance either and its ethnic/religious grievance politics are getting worse rather than better; it's not clear to me either they aren't in a variant of the same trap (never mind the possibility of global warming upsetting the Monsoon is nightmarish far beyond the economic disruption, but of course it'd be that too).
Please do no keep using the term AI to imply AGI. ChatGPT is just another machine learning algorithm that is quite a fancy "autocomplete". While we tend to use AI when describing such tools, that is just a shorthand, because clearly any individual ML is not going to get even close to human intelligence. As examples frequently attest, LLMs do not understand the world, but as per Doug Hofstadter's key theme about human intelligence, they are appalling at the key human cognitive skill - analogy making. We do it all the time in a sort of multi-dimensional transfer learning. LLMs cannot do this. ChatGPT isn't all that good when asked to create an analogy between movies or books, even if the analogy has been discussed online and there are available text examples to draw one. Try asking BradBot to make an analogy using content from "Slouching Towards Utopia".
5. Southeast Asia’s future is very bright because of friendshoring…
6. India’s future is likely to be rather bright too—it looks like a much better economic partner for the rest of the world over the next two generations than does China…
Every underdeveloped country will raise their living standards like China and Western rich countries when they are transformed themselves into an industrialized society.
10.We think of technology as the hard stuff…
11.But actually the hard stuff is institutions, property rights, government—people actually doing what they said they would do, rather than exerting their social power to welsh on their commitments…
In case of Chinese society, the real hard stuff is in its diversification culture. It’s usual if you notice gods/goddesses from different religions under the same roof of one temple. It’s usual that each/every local community has its own specialty of food taste.
The diversification culture is not on appearance only, it roots from deep philosophical ideas.
The diversification culture believes that every problem should and always have one solution at least. The practice of diversification makes a large country united and people co-existed. On the other side, it against competition.
12. 12. We are surprised and amazed at China's technological excellence in electric vehicles, in battery and solar technology, in high-speed rail, and so forth…
About 5 years ago, I heard complaints and complaints from Chinese friends that the government wasted trillion of dollars and over 9 years on Electric Vehicles and Solar technologies. Many new businesses were registered to receive free funds from the government; or doing real estate development with easy land and funding under the name of renewal energy research/development. There are all kinds of fraud with it, and the government knows about it very well. At the same time people see no sign of that any Chinese company will be significant in the future EV/renewal energy market.
It’s a typical decision-making style of the current Xi’s government, which is very bad, even dangerous if they meet a dead end for a very important national decision.
15. Is that a middle-income trap? It certainly functions like one…
It’s too early to talk about China peak. Historically, the county may reach its peak after about 150 years when it has her own new philosophical ideas of modernization. We have not seen the idea yet.
Enjoyable. A few thoughts: 1) Given a better political economy, China would have been formidable against global warming. 2) India's corruption is worse than China's; which makes infrastructure awfully difficult. 3) Has Noah read Acemoglu & Simon's book yet? I think he was mostly burning a stick man.
Timothy Snyder has persuaded me that the Habsburgs get a bad rap, particularly in anglophone countries, and in America most of all. Woodrow Wilson's project in eastern Europe was ill-conceived and the cause of much harm. Snyder is writing and speaking from a historical-political-moral perspective, but I believe that comparative economic studies of modern European countries that straddle the erstwhile Habsburg frontier support this view in purely material terms.
So: Debt-deflation then? Monetary policy has severe constraints if it remains too concerned about the exchange rate, right? In which case, fiscal policy. But that brings us back to the polices followed since the GFC, unless policymakers become highly creative. The policy options don't look good, no?
Is the Solow model really appropriate today? Creative destruction reduces the capital stock and depreciation, while computers and software produce output with far less capital stock to be repaired? It may just bend the curves somewhat, but I find it hard to believe there is any stable level of capital stock and output.
> 6. India’s future is likely to be rather bright too—it looks like a much better economic partner for the rest of the world over the next two generations than does China…
> 11. But actually the hard stuff is institutions, property rights, government—people actually doing what they said they would do, rather than exerting their social power to welsh on their commitments…
Agreed on (11), but doesn't that weight against (6)? Not the comparative aspect but the absolute "rather bright" part of it - India's not a shining beacon of governance either and its ethnic/religious grievance politics are getting worse rather than better; it's not clear to me either they aren't in a variant of the same trap (never mind the possibility of global warming upsetting the Monsoon is nightmarish far beyond the economic disruption, but of course it'd be that too).
Please do no keep using the term AI to imply AGI. ChatGPT is just another machine learning algorithm that is quite a fancy "autocomplete". While we tend to use AI when describing such tools, that is just a shorthand, because clearly any individual ML is not going to get even close to human intelligence. As examples frequently attest, LLMs do not understand the world, but as per Doug Hofstadter's key theme about human intelligence, they are appalling at the key human cognitive skill - analogy making. We do it all the time in a sort of multi-dimensional transfer learning. LLMs cannot do this. ChatGPT isn't all that good when asked to create an analogy between movies or books, even if the analogy has been discussed online and there are available text examples to draw one. Try asking BradBot to make an analogy using content from "Slouching Towards Utopia".
5. Southeast Asia’s future is very bright because of friendshoring…
6. India’s future is likely to be rather bright too—it looks like a much better economic partner for the rest of the world over the next two generations than does China…
Every underdeveloped country will raise their living standards like China and Western rich countries when they are transformed themselves into an industrialized society.
10.We think of technology as the hard stuff…
11.But actually the hard stuff is institutions, property rights, government—people actually doing what they said they would do, rather than exerting their social power to welsh on their commitments…
In case of Chinese society, the real hard stuff is in its diversification culture. It’s usual if you notice gods/goddesses from different religions under the same roof of one temple. It’s usual that each/every local community has its own specialty of food taste.
The diversification culture is not on appearance only, it roots from deep philosophical ideas.
The diversification culture believes that every problem should and always have one solution at least. The practice of diversification makes a large country united and people co-existed. On the other side, it against competition.
12. 12. We are surprised and amazed at China's technological excellence in electric vehicles, in battery and solar technology, in high-speed rail, and so forth…
About 5 years ago, I heard complaints and complaints from Chinese friends that the government wasted trillion of dollars and over 9 years on Electric Vehicles and Solar technologies. Many new businesses were registered to receive free funds from the government; or doing real estate development with easy land and funding under the name of renewal energy research/development. There are all kinds of fraud with it, and the government knows about it very well. At the same time people see no sign of that any Chinese company will be significant in the future EV/renewal energy market.
It’s a typical decision-making style of the current Xi’s government, which is very bad, even dangerous if they meet a dead end for a very important national decision.
15. Is that a middle-income trap? It certainly functions like one…
It’s too early to talk about China peak. Historically, the county may reach its peak after about 150 years when it has her own new philosophical ideas of modernization. We have not seen the idea yet.
Enjoyable. A few thoughts: 1) Given a better political economy, China would have been formidable against global warming. 2) India's corruption is worse than China's; which makes infrastructure awfully difficult. 3) Has Noah read Acemoglu & Simon's book yet? I think he was mostly burning a stick man.
Timothy Snyder has persuaded me that the Habsburgs get a bad rap, particularly in anglophone countries, and in America most of all. Woodrow Wilson's project in eastern Europe was ill-conceived and the cause of much harm. Snyder is writing and speaking from a historical-political-moral perspective, but I believe that comparative economic studies of modern European countries that straddle the erstwhile Habsburg frontier support this view in purely material terms.
So: Debt-deflation then? Monetary policy has severe constraints if it remains too concerned about the exchange rate, right? In which case, fiscal policy. But that brings us back to the polices followed since the GFC, unless policymakers become highly creative. The policy options don't look good, no?
Is the Solow model really appropriate today? Creative destruction reduces the capital stock and depreciation, while computers and software produce output with far less capital stock to be repaired? It may just bend the curves somewhat, but I find it hard to believe there is any stable level of capital stock and output.
Isn't India going to be rapidly coming up against a Malthusian problem of ag production made worse by "global boiling"?
I hate listening, but I like the precis,
Isn't there a way to have your SubStack Notes/comments also appear here?