@josephg Being from the EU myself, I'm surprised in the same way you are. There is certainly something good going on there as well, at least when looking at certain technologies in isolation, where the US leads.

How come there's still no better desktop processor than Intel/AMD on a per core basis? This is just one example. Nobody's made anything at that level still.

Strangely enough, america's tech sector is still exceptional on a global stage. I'm not entirely sure why. There's something magic that happens in the bay area as a result of funding and talent density.

Its weird - I'm australian. We have the same caliber of software engineers here. But there's not the same ambition amongst skilled engineers to solve problems at the world stage. And its far more difficult to convince investors to give you the capital to try.

The technology sector is propping up the US economy. The AI race is - so far - making this even more true.

> Uh....that's more the fault of a president

Who so far has been put into office twice by?

It's more than just "that one president". It's the whole system that brought him to power, where a large part of the population has been trained to hate and fear for almost half a decade now.

That the US military is run by a clown is a feature, not a bug. That an incompetent buffoon like Trump is at the steering wheel is not an accident.

Trump is doing exactly what the moneyed interests behind him have put him in power for - dismantling the system of checks and balances, of regulations and restrictions that prevent the oligarchs from thoroughly screwing the population.

Good luck trying to restore any of your civil institutions after Trump and his ilk - and I don't expect that to be after 2028.

A story Steven Kotkin recently told in an interview:

"And so the anecdote goes that Xi Jinping bragged that they were going to — China - was going to win the competition because they had 1.3 billion people to choose talent from. They had the biggest talent supply.

And the elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, said, 'You're wrong. You have 1.3 billion to draw from, but the United States has 8 billion to draw from, and so they have the upper hand, and don't forget that."

R&D is hit or miss. And a lot will miss. It's really no different from the VC model where 90% of their startups will fail but the 10% that succeed will make up for the rest.

Pointing out a few examples that didn't go anywhere is a meaningless argument. You need to look at it holistically.

The majority of your argument has little to do with your initial complaint about China and India. What does poaching less of the world's best and brightest to contribute to our market and universities have to do with ensuring people are working on meaningful projects?

Even with perfect information regarding R&D outcomes, capitalism is competitive.

Capitalism is duplication of effort.

I've never been particularly convinced by the crusade to eliminate alternatives to capitalism in the name of eliminating a society's wasteful behavior.

The same is roughly true for Silicon Valley investments once the herd mentality sets in. Yet it is celebrated as being the best way for commercial progress.

Almost all advances in deployed PLs come from academic research. Not sure what kind of point you’re trying to make

Less motivation for people to be racist if they have their needs met.

It's a bit reductive to pin this on Ronald Reagan.

The entire western world had been shifting towards neoliberalism as a direct response to the eastern world shifting towards communism since WW2.

Trump also isn't the embodiment of anything other than the guy who didn't take it seriously and suddenly ended up with the job because the voters in the country decided it couldn't be any worse under him than whatever the current situation they were living with was.