6 ms·

The key point is not how many poor people China has and hence we should reboot; but that the rest of the world is sprinting towards new opportunities in spite o

by raheemm 18y ago

The key point is not how many poor people China has and hence we should reboot; but that the rest of the world is sprinting towards new opportunities in spite of their handicaps. 60 years ago (after WW2), there was no real competition to America - we built cars, planes, trains, and the world ate it all up. About 40 years ago, the Japanese started giving us a run for the money in some sectors. Today the competitors are increasing in quantity if not in quality - there is Japan, Europe, China, etc. Friedman uses generic examples such as bullet trains and broadband access. But these are valid nonetheless. The larger point remains - we need a massive reboot.

tptacek 18y ago
How lazy the writing, which cloaks itself in a thesis reinforced in conventional wisdom and flits about a series of misleading and superficial anecdotes. Is Friedman "right"? Either way, he serves his argument poorly by comparing the wealthiest splinter of southeast Asia to the whole expanse of America. Or engage his column elsewhere: are we really losing our most promising engineers to "financial engineering"? Perhaps a less famous writer could support that argument with evidence. For instance, that writer might marry Friedman's argument with the fact that people like John Meriwether managed to nearly destroy capitalism with nothing more than an MBA. Are there nuclear physicists on Wall Street? Of course. Are most nuclear phsyisicists on Wall Street? Prove it! Are the nuclear physicists on Wall Street the ones responsible for speculating on netted-out credit default swaps? The CDS racket was no more complicated than the MBS racket Michael Lewis wrote about in "Liar's Poker", and the BSD's on the Salomon trading desks were definitely not rocket surgeons.
- potatolicious 18y ago
  I think you're losing the message he's trying to push - the wealthiest splinter of southeast Asia has created a beacon for talent to gather, for the rural poor to have something to aspire to (and many do, go to China and you will hear many of these success stories). Yes, the poorest of Chinese are still far poorer than the poorest of Americans, but what we're talking about is the ability for a country to forge ahead, something we haven't done for a while now. Take my (former) home country, Taiwan, for example - it has a massive, efficient, fast, and reliable public transport infrastructure that is both affordable and safe. This is country-wide. How many American cities can say the same? We are losing the war on infrastructure, which in the end means losing every other war that matters. And to answer your question: yes we are. I will be graduating in a few months from a fairly good engineering school, and many of my fellow engineering majors are panicking - they all went down the financial engineering route instead of traditional electrical, mechanical, and civil engineering, and now they're all jobless. Before the big collapse of '08 there was definitely a large sense floating about campus that people who did "real" engineering were suckers. This is not an uncommon phenomenon. Same thing back in high school - everyone guns for the big money. Tons of smart high school students went into business school instead of science or engineering, simply because one pays the bills, and the other not so much. My evidence is anecdotal, but this is based on observation from entire graduating classes.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    Then again, the major problem at the moment seems to be finances, not nuclear physics, so maybe it makes sense if the smartest people turn towards that problem?
    - markessien 18y ago
      The major problem is not finances, it's that moving money around does not create REAL value. Real value is created only in manufacturing, industry and agriculture. Service, finance and so on are add-ons to those fields.
      - Tichy 18y ago
        I think allocating money properly would be creating value. Deciding were to invest could be one of the most important decisions possible. That many finance types might have been involved in something else is another matter. Even if you want to manufacture stuff, you have to somehow organize the manufacturing. To say only manufacturing is worthwhile seems a bit shortsighted. Suppose all the finance guys would go to GM and work in their factories assembling cars, would it help much?
        markessien 18y ago
        Allocating money properly is not creating any value at all. It's just a regulatory service that works according to some rules - it's a bürocratic step in economic system, and though it is possible to create some valuable people by then developing skills or experience, but they don't create value. They move value around.
        Tichy 18y ago
        Allocating money (or time or work hours) is a necessary step in creating anything. I don't think the hard nosed approach to estimating value is very useful. You could say that only the actual workers producing something physical create value, but at the end of the day, all people in the chain contributed to it. Consider a scenario where you have two alternatives: you could ship shit from one pile to another for 5 hours, or you could spend 5 hours brewing beer. Suppose the worker has no idea whatsoever as to which activity is more benefitial, so the finance guy decides whether 5 hours will be spent on moving shit around, or brewing beer. Suppose the value of beer is much greater than moving shit - I think at the end of the day the finance guy will have contributed to bringing the beer into existence. I know that there is this school of economics that tries to define value by the amount of (physical) work that went into it, but it really doesn't make much sense. You don't create value simply by doing something physical - it has to be useful, too. So I think the usefulness of the end result is a much better estimator of value.
Prrometheus 18y ago
What does a "reboot" mean? It sounds scary to me. When they rebooted France, blood ran in the streets. More than likely, though, he means we need a prettier President to waste larger checks. That is certainly in the pipeline.
yummyfajitas 18y ago
60 years ago (after WW2), there was no real competition to America because the competition mostly got blown up during WW2. To go back to the postwar situation, we'll need another war. And it needs to be a real war with firebombs, tank columns and opposing armies, not a stupid "suicide bomb some orphans for the cameras" event like what we have now.

by raheemm 18y ago

tptacek 18y ago

How lazy the writing, which cloaks itself in a thesis reinforced in conventional wisdom and flits about a series of misleading and superficial anecdotes. Is Friedman "right"? Either way, he serves his argument poorly by comparing the wealthiest splinter of southeast Asia to the whole expanse of America. Or engage his column elsewhere: are we really losing our most promising engineers to "financial engineering"? Perhaps a less famous writer could support that argument with evidence. For instance, that writer might marry Friedman's argument with the fact that people like John Meriwether managed to nearly destroy capitalism with nothing more than an MBA. Are there nuclear physicists on Wall Street? Of course. Are most nuclear phsyisicists on Wall Street? Prove it! Are the nuclear physicists on Wall Street the ones responsible for speculating on netted-out credit default swaps? The CDS racket was no more complicated than the MBS racket Michael Lewis wrote about in "Liar's Poker", and the BSD's on the Salomon trading desks were definitely not rocket surgeons.

potatolicious 18y ago
I think you're losing the message he's trying to push - the wealthiest splinter of southeast Asia has created a beacon for talent to gather, for the rural poor to have something to aspire to (and many do, go to China and you will hear many of these success stories). Yes, the poorest of Chinese are still far poorer than the poorest of Americans, but what we're talking about is the ability for a country to forge ahead, something we haven't done for a while now. Take my (former) home country, Taiwan, for example - it has a massive, efficient, fast, and reliable public transport infrastructure that is both affordable and safe. This is country-wide. How many American cities can say the same? We are losing the war on infrastructure, which in the end means losing every other war that matters. And to answer your question: yes we are. I will be graduating in a few months from a fairly good engineering school, and many of my fellow engineering majors are panicking - they all went down the financial engineering route instead of traditional electrical, mechanical, and civil engineering, and now they're all jobless. Before the big collapse of '08 there was definitely a large sense floating about campus that people who did "real" engineering were suckers. This is not an uncommon phenomenon. Same thing back in high school - everyone guns for the big money. Tons of smart high school students went into business school instead of science or engineering, simply because one pays the bills, and the other not so much. My evidence is anecdotal, but this is based on observation from entire graduating classes.
- Tichy 18y ago
  Then again, the major problem at the moment seems to be finances, not nuclear physics, so maybe it makes sense if the smartest people turn towards that problem?
  - markessien 18y ago
    The major problem is not finances, it's that moving money around does not create REAL value. Real value is created only in manufacturing, industry and agriculture. Service, finance and so on are add-ons to those fields.
    - Tichy 18y ago
      I think allocating money properly would be creating value. Deciding were to invest could be one of the most important decisions possible. That many finance types might have been involved in something else is another matter. Even if you want to manufacture stuff, you have to somehow organize the manufacturing. To say only manufacturing is worthwhile seems a bit shortsighted. Suppose all the finance guys would go to GM and work in their factories assembling cars, would it help much?
      - markessien 18y ago
        Allocating money properly is not creating any value at all. It's just a regulatory service that works according to some rules - it's a bürocratic step in economic system, and though it is possible to create some valuable people by then developing skills or experience, but they don't create value. They move value around.
        Tichy 18y ago
        Allocating money (or time or work hours) is a necessary step in creating anything. I don't think the hard nosed approach to estimating value is very useful. You could say that only the actual workers producing something physical create value, but at the end of the day, all people in the chain contributed to it. Consider a scenario where you have two alternatives: you could ship shit from one pile to another for 5 hours, or you could spend 5 hours brewing beer. Suppose the worker has no idea whatsoever as to which activity is more benefitial, so the finance guy decides whether 5 hours will be spent on moving shit around, or brewing beer. Suppose the value of beer is much greater than moving shit - I think at the end of the day the finance guy will have contributed to bringing the beer into existence. I know that there is this school of economics that tries to define value by the amount of (physical) work that went into it, but it really doesn't make much sense. You don't create value simply by doing something physical - it has to be useful, too. So I think the usefulness of the end result is a much better estimator of value.

Prrometheus 18y ago

What does a "reboot" mean? It sounds scary to me. When they rebooted France, blood ran in the streets. More than likely, though, he means we need a prettier President to waste larger checks. That is certainly in the pipeline.

yummyfajitas 18y ago

60 years ago (after WW2), there was no real competition to America because the competition mostly got blown up during WW2. To go back to the postwar situation, we'll need another war. And it needs to be a real war with firebombs, tank columns and opposing armies, not a stupid "suicide bomb some orphans for the cameras" event like what we have now.