Huh… I’ve seen this comment a lot in this thread but I’ve really been impressed with both Anthropic’s latest models and latest tooling (plugins like /frontend-design mean it actually designs real front ends instead of the vibe coded purple gradient look). And I see it doing more planning and making fewer mistakes than before. I have to do far less oversight and debugging broken code these days.
But if people really like Codex better, maybe I’ll try it. I’ve been trying not to pay for 2 subscriptions at once but it might be worth a test.
> And I see it doing more planning and making fewer mistakes than before
Anecdotally, maybe this is the reason? It does seem to spend a lot more time “thinking” before giving what feels like equivalent results, most of the time.
Probably eats into the gambling-style adrenaline cycles.
Anthropic and OpenAI are both well documented as losing billions of dollars a year because their revenue doesn't cover their R&D and training costs, but that doesn't mean their revenue doesn't cover their inference costs.
Does it matter if they can't ever stop training though? Like, this argument usually seems to imply that training is a one-off, not an ongoing process. I could save a lot of money if I stopped eating, but it'd be a short lived experiment.
I'll be convinced they're actually making money when they stop asking for $30 billion funding rounds. None of that money is free! Whoever is giving them that money wants a return on their investment, somehow.
At some point the players will need to reach profitability. Even if they're subsidising it with other revenue - they'll only be willing to do that as long as it drives rising inference revenue.
Once that happens, whomever is left standing can dial back the training investment to whatever their share of inference can bear.
> Once that happens, whomever is left standing can dial back the training investment to whatever their share of inference can bear.
Or, if there's two people left standing, they may compete with each other on price rather than performance and each end up with cloud compute's margins.
Sure, but they will still need to dial it back to a point where they can fund it out of inference at some point. The point is that the fact they can't do that now is irrelevant - it's a game of chicken at the moment, and that might kill some of them, but the game won't last forever.
It matters because as long as they are selling inference for less than it costs to serve they have a potential path to profitability.
Training costs are fixed at whatever billions of dollars per year.
If inference is profitable they might conceivably make a profit if they can build a model that's good enough to sign up vast numbers of paying customers.
If they lose even more money on each new customer they don't have any path to profitability at all.
But only if you ignore all the other market participants, right? How can we ever reach a point where all the i.e. smaller Chinese competitors perpetually trailing behind SOTA with a ~9 month lag but at a tiny fraction of the cost stop existing?
I mean we just have to look at old discussions about Uber for the exact same arguments. Uber, after all these years, still is at a negative 10 % lifetime ROI , and that company doesn't even have to meaningfully invest in hardware.
IMO this will probably develop like the railroad boom in the first half of the 19th century: All the AI-only first movers like OpenAI and Anthropic will go bust, just like most railroad companies who laid the tracks, because they can't escape the training treadmill. But the tech itself will stay, and even become a meaningful productivity booster over the next decades.
I am also thinking long term where is the moat if it will inevitably lead to price competition? Like it's not a Microsoft product suite that your whole company is tied in multiple ways. LLMs can be quite easily swapped to another.
I'm curious just because you're well known in this space -- have you read Ed Zitron's work on the bubble, and if so what did you think of it? I'm somewhat in agreement with him that the financials of this just can't be reconciled, at least for OpenAI and Anthropic. But I also know that's not my field. I find his arguments a lot more convincing than the people just saying "ahh it'll work itself out" though.
My problem with Ed is that he's established a very firm position that LLMs are mostly useless and the business is a big scam, which makes it difficult to evaluate his reporting.
He often gathers good information but his analysis of that information appears to be heavily influenced by the conclusions he's already trying to reach.
I do pay attention to him but I'd like to see similar conclusions from other analysts against the same data before I treat them as robust.
I don't personally have the knowledge or experience of company finance to be able to confidently evaluate his findings myself!
At least until they are running out of customers. And/or societies with mass-unemployment destabilize to a degree that is not conducive for capitalists' operations.
Models are fixed. They do not learn post training.
Which means that training needs to be ongoing. So the revenue covers the inference? So what? All that means is that it doesn't cover your costs and you're operating at a loss. Because it doesn't cover the training that you can't stop doing either.
No they are not. They are exponentially increasing. Due to the exponential scaling needed for linear gain. Otherwise they'd fall behind their competition.
Fixed cost here means that the training costs stay the same no matter how many customers you have - unlike serving costs which have to increase to serve more people.
I used the word "fixed" there to indicate that the cost of training is unaffected by how many users you have, unlike the cost of serving the model which increases as your usage increases.
Eh, I think you made the best decision you could given the info you had.
I’ve poked around on EquityZen and was shocked at how little information is available to investors. In some cases I did not even see pitch decks, let alone one of the first companies I looked at had its top Google result: CEO recently arrested for fraud and business is almost worthless now.
Unless you are willing to take a blind punt or have insider information, those platforms are opaque minefields and I don’t fault you for not investing.
Matt Levine has a fun investment test: when presented with an opportunity, you should always ask, “and why are you offering it to me?”
Meaning, by the time it gets offered to retail investors (even accredited ones are retail) we’re getting the scraps that no one else wants.
I think GP is probably implying that this particular vertical requires obscene amounts of capital to keep up, which makes it really hard for a startup if you’re going up against businesses with giant free cash flow machines.
It’s the same reason Reid Hoffman sold his AI startup early… he realized he just couldn’t beat Google/FB/MSFT long term if it devolved into a money race.
The fact that EU sees dependence on American tech in the same way as Russian oil now is saddening and telling.
Americans and American companies had it really good - our tech extracted money from the world, and they were mostly willing to pay for it. And it was an incredible advantage to the US.
But now, it seems that we are happily throwing all that away, for what benefit I do not yet see. Regardless of whether this effort succeeds, why stoke this fire at all?
I would say I hope Americans realize what they’ve done by making their own companies enemies of the world at large, but I’m not holding my breath for any sort of self reflection.
trump is disliked by the majority of Americans, and his actions antagonizing Europe are disliked even by most republicans. this is an obvious fact accessible to anyone who reads the news. he will only be around for 2 more years and will be effectively a lame duck after republicans get crushed in the midterms, starting 2027.
all of this infrastructure Europe claims to want to build will take many many years to realize, particularly at the relaxed European pace. trump will be out of office by the time the EU has held it's fifteenth planning meeting to issue it's first strongly worded letter of intent.
The Europeans spent years scolding us for being warmongers. Then when Ukraine got invaded, they quickly switched to scolding Biden for not warmongering harder in Ukraine. Zero self-awareness.
America was called an "enemy of Europe" (before the Greenland stuff) even though it was more generous towards Ukraine than a bunch of European countries, and essentially every country outside of Europe. Polls showed that China has higher approval than the US in Europe, despite the fact that China actively supplies war material to Russia. Again, this was before the Greenland stuff (I'm against that obviously).
There's no point in trying to please these people. They regard us as a vassal state. They're not joking when they say they think of Americans as idiots. We should've withdrawn from NATO a long time ago. Hopefully Europe's corporate boycotts will help to pass Massie's withdrawal bill.
Is there a problem? Americans keep saying that China has no combat experience and its weapons have not been proven in actual combat. Is there any doubt that a country that hasn't fought a war in decades is more popular than countries like the US and Russia, which are constantly at war?
I'm an advocate for the US withdrawing from NATO so we don't have to fight so many wars. I'm an isolationist, and I advocate a non-imperialist, Swiss-style foreign policy for the US. If you'll join me in that advocacy, then good.
Aside from Ukraine & Afghanistan war(and this one is for US self), what wars have been fought because the US intervened due to threats against NATO members?
By withdrawing from NATO and pulling our military bases out of Europe, it becomes more difficult for the US to "intervene" in the Middle East at the pleasure of Middle Eastern interests.
Furthermore, if Russia invades more countries in Europe, I don't want the US to "intervene" with yet another "humanitarian" operation.
We can slash the size of our military and spend that money at home on healthcare, debt reduction, etc.
So here's the problem. Assuming what you said is correct, the US, UK, and France want NATO to be more than just a defensive organization. But what about other NATO members? They don't have as many interests to protect in Africa and the Middle East, but they need NATO to defend against Russia. So why should they care about competition between China and the US elsewhere?
and you said China actively supplies war material to Russia. but in early 2025, China’s top UAV export destinations were Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and the United States,
https://www.airmobi.com/from-billion-dollar-orders-to-global...
why Netherlands need so many UAV? That's why polls showed that China has higher approval than the US in Europe.
I don't know why you expect us to solve your Russia problem. Why don't you ask your new friend China for help? As Europeans themselves have said many times, the US does not do a good job playing world police. We need to stop warmongering and involving ourselves in the affairs of other countries. It never does any good.
Furthermore, Europe has very little soft power in the US at this point. There's no region of the world I am less interested in helping. With every post I read from you guys, I understand more and more why my ancestors left that place. Think of it this way: We need to reallocate money away from our military, and towards our healthcare system which you guys are always making fun of. Does that help make my point clear?
As a user named raven12345 stated:
>Is there any doubt that a country that hasn't fought a war in decades is more popular than countries like the US and Russia, which are constantly at war?
We in the United States need to stop involving ourselves in so many wars. Plain and simple. You said it yourself.
>So why should they care about competition between China and the US elsewhere?
Where did I say that? I don't want the US to be competing with China. I'm an isolationist. I prefer a Swiss approach to foreign policy for the United States.
>That's why polls showed that China has higher approval than the US in Europe.
So we need to drop sanctions on Russia, like China has done, so that the Europeans will like us more?
"...companies — possibly with the tacit approval of customs authorities — have also engaged in classification fraud, concealing sensitive goods under misleading labels. In addition, some shipments are routed through third countries to disguise their final destination in Russia. By continuing to publish detailed customs data, Beijing openly signals its disregard for Western trade sanctions against Russia. But the data reveals only what China chooses to make visible — and it remains unclear what volume or categories of trade may lie beyond the published figures."
"To help prevent a further deterioration of Russia’s economy and defense industrial base, Russia has leaned heavily on China. China-Russia trade reached nearly $250 billion in 2024, up from $190 billion in 2022.46 China has been Russia’s top trading partner since 2014, with its share of Russia’s foreign trade increasing from 11.3 percent in 2014 to 33.8 percent in 2024.47 In addition, Russia relies on oil exports to China, which now make up about 75 percent of China’s imports, compared to a pre-2022 average of between 60 and 65 percent.48
In the defense sector, China has significantly increased exports to Russia of “high-priority items,” a set of 50 dual-use goods that include computer chips, machine tools, radars, and sensors that Russia needs to sustain its war efforts.49 While Russia lacks the capacity to produce many of these goods in sufficient quantities, China’s massive manufacturing sector can produce a number of them at scale.50 Chinese exports helped Russia triple its production of Iskander-M ballistic missiles from 2023 to 2024, which Russia has used to pound Ukrainian cities.51 In addition, China accounted for 70 percent of Russia’s imports of ammonium perchlorate in 2024, an essential ingredient in ballistic missile fuel.52 China has also provided Russia with drone bodies, lithium batteries, and fiber-optic cables—the critical components for fiber-optic drones used in Ukraine, which can bypass electronic jamming.53"
Contrast the $250 billion Russia/China bilateral trade figure, with the $146 million worth of drones which the Netherlands imported from China. Like comparing an apple to a grizzly bear.
When you buy weapons from the US, it's a worrisome dependence on an evil warmonger. When you buy weapons from China, it's "yay we are buddies with China now". See why I've had enough of your "friendship"?
For years, Europeans have sharply criticizing the United States for sometimes partnering with authoritarian countries. It's fascinating to see the rapidity of your reversal: how eager you now are to partner with China, an authoritarian country which happily trades with Russia. It goes to show that this "don't partner with authoritarian countries" stuff is just disingenuous virtue signalling.
Unless you have already prescribed to the acceptance of big countries swallow the small ones at whim, it is not only our problem. Also Russia gaining control means often the USA loosing.
> Why don't you ask your new friend China for help?
Who said China is the friend of Europe? The USA has become a new unpredictable adversary, while China is an old enemy. Human nature is just to choose certainty over uncertainty even if that is actually worse.
> We need to reallocate money away from our military, and towards our healthcare system
I don't think EU countries have a problem with that. They rather complain, that you are currently allocating money to a military, that wants to attack EU states and to a para-military that attacks USA citizens.
> So we need to drop sanctions on Russia, like China has done, so that the Europeans will like us more?
It is that China is seen as evil anyway, so nobody expects them to sanction Russia for real, while we didn't saw the USA that way.
> For years, Europeans have sharply criticizing the United States for sometimes partnering with authoritarian countries.
You don't criticize enemies, you criticize friends. I think the criticism also was more that you create authoritarian countries, partnering was also done by European nations, that's called realpolitik.
>Unless you have already prescribed to the acceptance of big countries swallow the small ones at whim, it is not only our problem.
The US is a big country. Why would it be affected by a problem of big countries swallowing smaller ones?
The Europeans always argue that the US only acts in its self-interest. But then when they explain why helping Europe is in the self-interest of the US, they always have the most nonsensical arguments.
>Also Russia gaining control means often the USA loosing.
I favor a policy of neutrality and world peace, not rivalry between major powers like the US and Russia.
>It is that China is seen as evil anyway, so nobody expects them to sanction Russia for real, while we didn't saw the USA that way.
Why is China more popular than the US in European opinion polls?
>You don't criticize enemies, you criticize friends.
That doesn't make any sense, you criticized Russia plenty. Furthermore, European "criticism" of the US is far too mean-spirited for it to be plausible that you are our friend. (That's been true for decades.)
>I think the criticism also was more that you create authoritarian countries, partnering was also done by European nations, that's called realpolitik.
Interesting how "realpolitik" can be used to explain European behavior but not American behavior.
That's exactly the problem. US foreign policy analysts think that every issue is the next WW2, and that leads us to military misadventures all over the place. Utter foolishness.
It's always the same double bind. If we are involved, we're called imperialist. If not, we're called complicit. There's no way to win.
Both intervening with the military jimmy like toppling democratic regimes and turning a blind eye like going isolationist are two sides of the same coin of ignorance and thinking it won't actually affect you.
> US foreign policy analysts think that every issue is the next WW2
If "US foreign policy analysts" would actually think that these situations might lead to the next WW2, then you wouldn't counter them with destabilizing countries, that leads to the rise of extreme parties and then treating them with ignorance. Because THAT is exactly how WW2 happened.
> If we are involved, we're called imperialist
Deploying the military is not the only way to get involved.
> It's always the same double bind. If we are involved, we're called imperialist. If not, we're called complicit. There's no way to win.
If other countries say that has bad consequences, you deploy the military, if they say we need your help here, you turn the blind eye. I mean you are a sovereign country and can do what you like, but you do it, because your administration thinks that is a good idea, not because all the other countries would tell you to. You frame it like other countries called for action and you did them and now they complain. No, they told you they won't like that, and you did it either way.
>Both intervening with the military jimmy like toppling democratic regimes and turning a blind eye like going isolationist are two sides of the same coin of ignorance and thinking it won't actually affect you.
Nope. Just the opposite. The reason the US did regime changes during the Cold War was because we were paranoid that communism would affect us. We need to be less paranoid.
>Deploying the military is not the only way to get involved.
Doesn't matter, we're called imperialist however we choose to get involved. Ever heard the term "neocolonialism"?
>If other countries say that has bad consequences, you deploy the military, if they say we need your help here, you turn the blind eye.
Even when US military action is requested or approved of by people in the country, we're still called imperialists. Consider the war in Vietnam. The South Vietnamese were attacked. We came to their aid for some time. They kept fighting after we left. Yet this was still described as "neocolonialist" activity on our part. That's how our actions are always described.
> Nope. Just the opposite. The reason the US did regime changes during the Cold War was because we were paranoid that communism would affect us. We need to be less paranoid.
I was more thinking of "post" Cold War interventions.
> Doesn't matter, we're called imperialist however we choose to get involved. Ever heard the term "neocolonialism"?
Yes. The US isn't alone in that situation. The EU is described as neocolonialist in the same way. Personally I think that is stupid and we shouldn't have let us be influenced by that. Now Europe stopped being "neocolonialist" and the Chinese has taken over that role in Africa. Now it's much worse both for us (EU) and for Africa. Great.
> Consider the war in Vietnam.
Honestly I wasn't alive and don't know the public opinion of that time. I basically only know it from history class. The rough sentiment is that the French messed up and the US has payed for it. It's true, that some actions in the war are portrayed as bad, most famously Agent Orange, but I think the war in total isn't blamed on the US.
> That's how our actions are always described.
Reading the other thread you linked, I think you have a worse view of the public opinion of the US then it actually is.
> I favor a policy of neutrality and world peace, not rivalry between major powers like the US and Russia.
The thing is, nobody's offering you that. In the ideal scenario for Russia, the US would be mired in internal conflict and instability to such an extent that it would be unable to function as a country, leaving Russia to dominate the world:
> Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and separatism against neoliberal globalist Western hegemony, such as, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists" to create severe backlash against the rotten political state of affairs in the current present-day system of the United States and Canada. Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".
In other words, they want an endless line of Donald Trumps to ruin your country and turn it into a banana republic so that you wouldn't have the energy to pay attention to Russia stomping over the rest of the world.
Why would any American voluntarily choose this fate?
So according to you, the current state of the US is a result of us trying to "contain" Russia and protect Europe through NATO. Can you see why I wouldn't be particularly enthusiastic about continuing to do this?
None of this would've happened if we had avoided imperialism post-WW2.
I'm not sure exactly what you refer to with "the current state of the US". Domestic issues (e.g. personal financial struggle of the populace, "immigration", and cultural war like ICE), economic issues (bubbles, monopolies) or the role of the USA in world politics? It's the latter, that was the topic of the discussion so far, but I'm not sure if you call that "the current state of the US".
"mopsi" stated how you going isolationist and stuck in domestic struggles, is following Russias plan. So no, the current state of the US results in you stopping to
> "contain" Russia and protect Europe through NATO.
So this is what the EU complains about and tries to tell you: you follow Russians plan and that can't be in your best interest. (Not that the EU would be free from such interests either.) Do you think Russia would leave you alone when there plan succeeded? That would be the biggest success of Russian policy since 1945. When they can get you from the major world power to being a isolationist country with domestic struggles, why would they stop?
> None of this would've happened if we had avoided imperialism post-WW2.
I think you need to define terms here. What exactly counts as "imperialism post-WW2" and what not? I mean the arms race let to the collapse of the soviet union, so I guess until to the 90s it went pretty good for the countries part of the "First World".
If you wouldn't have stayed in Europe after WW2, the USSR would have reached to the Atlantic. And no not just in 1945, they also tried that in the 50s and continued to want that. Not sure, if you already know, but Putin was in prison in Germany in the 90s for trying to topple the German government and his goal was to expand the "Soviet/Russian" empire to the Atlantic. He was already ~40 and has served in the KGB before, so I guess he hasn't changed his opinion since.
>When they can get you from the major world power to being a isolationist country with domestic struggles, why would they stop?
Why would they continue?
>If you wouldn't have stayed in Europe after WW2, the USSR would have reached to the Atlantic. And no not just in 1945, they also tried that in the 50s and continued to want that. Not sure, if you already know, but Putin was in prison in Germany in the 90s for trying to topple the German government and his goal was to expand the "Soviet/Russian" empire to the Atlantic. He was already ~40 and has served in the KGB before, so I guess he hasn't changed his opinion since.
Interesting. So the US saved Europe, you say. Yet we get nothing but complaints, mockery, and condescension from Europeans. You mock us for the same military-industrial complex which saved your butts. Wonder why we aren't interested in saving Europe again?
Because they like to increase their influence and territorial control and already did the hard part? Granted the USA becoming like Iran or Venezuela today seems a bit of a stretch. I honestly lack the imagination how a USA in ten years, that hasn't had elections that actually affect things, serves the best leader of all time and is a major ally of Russia looks like. There will also be so much other territorial changes in that scenario.
> Interesting. So the US saved Europe, you say. Yet we get nothing but complaints, mockery, and condescension from Europeans.
I don't think you get much mockery about the US cold war policy *in Europe*. Granted these people exist, but they also often do sit in the same party that merged with the ruling party of the GDR.
> You mock us for the same military-industrial complex which saved your butts.
I think a military industry propped up in war times by the government, and the resulting military complex having subverted civil rights and politicians are different situations. A military that is conjured by the people makes a country stronger, large "dead capital" in weapons and industry starting to control the government becomes dangerous.
> Wonder why we aren't interested in saving Europe again?
To some point yeah. I'm not going to say the EU hasn't made bad decisions in the last 30 years. I don't see it that black an white, so e.g. "So the US saved Europe, you say." I would say the US in alliance with West-European nations did save Europe, the Morgenthau plan wouldn't have helped against the USSR either. But my main argument for this discussion is, when the USA go isolationist now, it first messes up a lot of other things in the process and second the same will repeat that happened in the 1940s, there will be the need for the USA to intervene, because it affects their bottom line, and the situation will be much worse, and it causes much more loss (of human life).
This is essentially the same that process the EU just went through. It did "nothing" in 2014, because that is not NATO and we don't want to get involved in a war, and now it became worse. (I think our "we did get involved too much" is Yugoslavia, to some point participation in wars with the US and of course WW2.) Now we did get involved, because the next border will be a NATO and EU border. Sure, we can say it won't happen, Russia is not THAT strong, but the next decision would be to either get the EU in a complete war against Russia, or to give up on the territorial integrity of EU states. And we don't want to face that.
If we continue the discussion, I think it stops to make sense to treat both the US and the EU as single entities, because in both there are parties that have been arguing for one policy and for others.
No, the Euro-Atlantic alliance produced incredible prosperity in its heyday.
The current deteriorating state of the US is the result of departure from the previously held values and forms of cooperation. Nothing illustrates this better than the US president openly threatening the sovereignty of Canada and Denmark while accepting massive bribes from Arab sheikhs and calling genocidal dictators like Putin his "friends". This is the wet dream of people who want to see the US fail.
Why would any American want to hit the gas pedal and accelerate even further down this road?
You yourself just explained how Russia saw us as a threat and destabilized our politics, which lead to the current situation. We would have been better off if NATO was never formed.
If you believe I'm a Trump supporter then you're misunderstanding my position.
> You yourself just explained how Russia saw us as a threat and destabilized our politics, which lead to the current situation. We would have been better off if NATO was never formed.
No, Russia fundamentally wants to see you fail and take your place in the world. Without NATO, that would've been simply easier. You can castrate yourself, but that will not change their goal.
But it doesn't matter--you're arguing that prosperity for the average US worker began stagnating about 20 years after the formation of NATO. That's basically an anti-NATO argument, from the US perspective.
>Russia fundamentally wants to see you fail and take your place in the world.
My goal is to abandon our place in the world and be like the Swiss. I don't want to destabilize yet another country (Russia in this case). We're gonna have to live with Russia whether we like it or not.
> But it doesn't matter--you're arguing that prosperity for the average US worker began stagnating about 20 years after the formation of NATO. That's basically an anti-NATO argument, from the US perspective.
Irregardless of what the economic data actually says, why is this to be blamed on the NATO? I don't see the causal relation. If there was indeed something in the 1970s then I would default to blame the oil crisis.
> My goal is to abandon our place in the world and be like the Swiss.
They were directly in between the other nations in WW2 and capturing them made no sense for the others. They are also pretty small and lie in naturally protected mountains. I doubt the USA can become that, they are just too large.
"Consumption" figures are also misleading. In monetary terms, Americans consume more health services than anyone else, yet have fallen behind in life expectancy: https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8... Key life milestones like getting a college degree, starting a family, buying a house, or retiring have all become much more difficult to achieve despite skyrocketing GDP figures. Less and less of the total wealth (which is growing) is reaching the average American family.
> But it doesn't matter--you're arguing that prosperity for the average US worker began stagnating about 20 years after the formation of NATO. That's basically an anti-NATO argument, from the US perspective.
The prosperity of the average worker did not begin to stagnate when NATO was formed, but indeed decades later, when the US began to diverge from shared values to pursue financialization of the economy, deunionization and other forms of free-market radicalism that have set it apart from other advanced economies. NATO allies and US workers have been abandoned alike to pursue short-term gains, whether from outsourcing to China or cozying up to kleptocrats who promise to share their loot personally with the US president, his family, and his business buddies. Why should any American support this?
> My goal is to abandon our place in the world and be like the Swiss. I don't want to destabilize yet another country (Russia in this case). We're gonna have to live with Russia whether we like it or not.
I don't think you understand what it means in practical terms. Switzerland is entirely surrounded by the EU, and its economic prosperity depends on access to the European Common Market. Switzerland must follow the policies adopted by the EU without having a voice in the process, because it is not a member of the union, yet the Common Market is vital and losing access is not an option. Switzerland has to abide by EU's state aid and competition rules, manufacturing standards, and countless other policies, but Switzerland cannot even restrict entry of people from the EU to live and work in the country. Again, why should any American want to lose control over their country to such extent? Are you really ready for an European-South American economic alliance that dictates how many Mexicans can enter the US or how much subsidies you can pay farmers? I seriously doubt that.
As for Russia, you have the luxury of shaping the kind of Russia you live with. Is it the Russia that enslaved half of Europe and is using their brains to build a massive stockpile of nuclear missiles to blackmail you while you dig shelters in your backyard out of fear for your life, or is it a different, more peaceful Russia that has abandoned imperialism like Germany was forced to? Isolationism is a fool's errand. You can very well pretend that the war in Ukraine doesn't affect you, but consider that the nuclear missiles Russians tried to set up on Cuba were built in Ukraine. Would you rather have Ukrainians living under Russian boot and building nuclear missiles to burn down American cities, or have them building rocket engines in support of NASA space explorations programs like they did in the same Soviet-era nuclear missile factories in the early 2000s? It's not a difficult choice.
Most countries in the world don't have a choice and have to deal with whatever the life throws at them. You do have choice. Use it wisely.
I don't see why they would be, generally speaking.
"it’s very difficult to look at a country where the typical person lives in a larger house, is more likely to own a car, eats more meat, and uses more electricity than people in other rich countries, and to conclude that this is “a poor society”."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-the-us-is-not-a-poor-societ...
>In monetary terms, Americans consume more health services than anyone else, yet have fallen behind in life expectancy
>The prosperity of the average worker did not begin to stagnate when NATO was formed, but indeed decades later
My claim is simply that NATO is not key to our prosperity. Post-NATO stagnation, insofar as it exists, is quite compatible with that claim.
>Switzerland is entirely surrounded by the EU, and its economic prosperity depends on access to the European Common Market.
None of the objections in this paragraph would apply to a more geopolitically neutral US. The US economy is large and relatively self-sufficient. Imports and exports are a relatively small fraction of our GDP.
>nuclear missiles Russians tried to set up on Cuba
...after we set up missiles in Turkey...
The Cuban missile crisis demonstrates the danger of American belligerence, and the importance of us being more peaceful, less paranoid, and more neutral.
Russia sees you as a threat since 1917 and you aren't going to change that. You can blame that on Germany if you want, but the German regime has been toppled since four times, so good luck holding anyone accountable for that now.
Russia has made major leaps in destabilizing your politics since we (the EU too) believed we won the cold war and stopped treating the Russian empire and allies (which China definitely was, now it's more equal or the opposite) as a threat. The USA also has a superiority complex, like most European nations also had, which certainly isn't helping now.
> If you believe I'm a Trump supporter then you're misunderstanding my position.
You said the USA going isolationist is going to solve problems, which granted isn't as extreme as the Trump foreign policy, i.e. it won't fuel the worsening of the current situation, but it isn't going the improve it either.
> Why would it be affected by a problem of big countries swallowing smaller ones?
Because of less trading partners? Because supply chains exist? Because big evil empire is still better than bigger evil empire that is also a neighbor? Because treating problems when they are "small" is less resource-intensive then when they have grown? Because you have military-bases in these regions that you use to project power across the world? Sorry, but don't say you don't find them useful. If you wouldn't have a use for them, you wouldn't use your software power and money to maintain and them. Europe has long appeased the national interests of the USA as inheritance of the world war two, which like you say has also raised reluctant opinions.
> they always have the most nonsensical arguments.
Do you seriously think, that globalization can let you reap the world as a cash cow, but aggression, war and destruction in a not so far part of the world, even if it is no longer your ally, won't affect you?
> Why is China more popular than the US in European opinion polls?
I already addressed exactly that:
>> The USA has become a new unpredictable adversary, while China is an old enemy. Human nature is just to choose certainty over uncertainty even if that is actually worse.
It is just not known what the USA are going to do in the next 10 years. From slippery-slope to an open alliance with Russia to do a Polish-style division of Europe and America, over war with China to actually having midterms and a 180° turn in policy, all seems possible.
> That doesn't make any sense, you criticized Russia plenty.
While believing to have some power via financial ties. Now it's back to formal complaints and deadlines.
> European "criticism" of the US is far too mean-spirited for it to be plausible that you are our friend.
From the European viewpoint the criticism on the US administration is what would be also in the interest of the US populace. The US electorate of course begs to disagree, they elected Trump after all. Sorry, that protesting against expansion of corporate and state surveillance, influence of the military industry conglomerate and erosion of worker and environment regulation offends you personally. I fail to see how that is mean-spirited.
> That's been true for decades
The same criticism has existed for decades, but the official policy has stayed the same for a long time, namely that supporting "our" camp in world politics is worth compromising on international law, human rights and national security interest.
> Interesting how "realpolitik" can be used to explain European behavior but not American behavior.
It literally just used the word to explain American behaviour.
>Because of less trading partners? Because supply chains exist? Because big evil empire is still better than bigger evil empire that is also a neighbor?
None of these arguments make much sense.
>Because treating problems when they are "small" is less resource-intensive then when they have grown?
I don't think it is a problem for us either way. No one is going to attack the US.
>Because you have military-bases in these regions that you use to project power across the world? Sorry, but don't say you don't find them useful. If you wouldn't have a use for them, you wouldn't use your software power and money to maintain and them.
The US has made many mistakes in its foreign policy. I've made my opinion clear on that. Just because we did something in the past does not make it a good idea.
>Europe has long appeased the national interests of the USA as inheritance of the world war two, which like you say has also raised reluctant opinions.
Well you'll be glad to stop then.
>Do you seriously think, that globalization can let you reap the world as a cash cow, but aggression, war and destruction in a not so far part of the world, even if it is no longer your ally, won't affect you?
Tell that to the Swiss.
American soldiers should not die due to European ineptitude. There were only 2.5 years between Pearl Harbor and D-Day. Russia invaded Ukraine almost 4 years ago. If you truly believed this was an existential threat, then you've had plenty of time to prepare.
>It is just not known what the USA are going to do in the next 10 years. From slippery-slope to an open alliance with Russia to do a Polish-style division of Europe and America, over war with China to actually having midterms and a 180° turn in policy, all seems possible.
How about you respect our ability to determine our own foreign policy, and take responsibility for your own issues? As I said, stop treating us like a vassal state and telling us you know what is best for us (as you do in your comments). I'm not the only one who notices you doing this: https://substack.com/home/post/p-158145261
Look at this argument I had the other day... a European spent a bunch of time condescending to me, and wasn't able to muster a single factual argument in favor of their position. This sort of thing is very typical in my discussions with Europeans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46742363
When Elon Musk endorses parties in Europe, Europeans complain he is interfering in their politics. The trouble is that Europeans have been doing the same in US politics for a heck of a lot longer. It's always the same patronizing and ignorant interference, based on a caricatured view of the US: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/eurocope "Haha, Americans are dumb. Haha, Americans die in school shootings. Haha, the American healthcare system sucks." All along, we've been deterring Russia for Europeans, and now as a result, Russia is working to destabilize the US (according to another commenter in this thread). I'm sick of it.
Think of it this way. I want out of NATO, so as to reduce the influence of the evil "military industry conglomerate". Just like you yourself said, we need to reduce its influence -- which means reducing our military size and commitments. Get it? I'm just taking your arguments to their logical conclusion.
Someone once said to me, be very careful about negotiating with leverage… when you twist someone’s arm, they’ll say, “I’ll remember that. You may have won this one, but I’m gonna win the next one.”
Sadly, the US has done this to ourselves… all this arm twisting and strong-manning is coming home to roost.
It’s not clear that patchwork EU government back offices migrating off Teams will hurt US tech, but long term, in aggregate, this is going to be a headache for American tech.
EU can’t out innovate US tech, but they can make it harder to dominate their markets.
I hope you're right! I mean, at the level of personal relationships I fully agree[0]. However, institutions tend to be forgetful.
[0]: Someone once said to me something very similar to what you quoted: "Be nice to people. People will remember you. And they will gossip if they don't like you and you have wronged them. It's much easier to ruin your reputation with a single action done to a single person than to build up a good one."
If so, I think the onus would be on you to prove it, not me.
Or, more importantly, if you really think the EU will be a tech powerhouse, shouldn’t you be writing checks to their startups left and right?
Because I think that would be the revealed preference here. I’m guessing you’re not heavily invested in EU tech companies, right? Because that would say a lot about your true beliefs.
A lot of the worlds actual problems are not about innovation but correctly using existing technologies and making the right investments in the needed infrastructure.
> Sadly, the US has done this to ourselves… all this arm twisting and strong-manning is coming home to roost.
No it's not. This is theater to give the impression that they are "getting the orange buffoon". They'll be back in short order, and even if they aren't, it'll just be an insignificant blip on a financial chart somewhere, not even big enough to warrant someone's attention. They did similar things in Trump's first term, and came back groveling.
Maybe, and you might be right. These might be one-off posturing things from the EU.
Sure, a few back office shifts to OpenOffice aren’t a big deal today, but I’m worried about where we are in 10, 20 years. There is no EU tech competition to us today, but who knows… tomorrow is a new day.
Fantastic book called Range that talks about this phenomenon. Surprisingly, the child prodigy to adult superstar pipeline is less common than the generalist to adult superstar pipeline.
Tiger Woods is the classic example of a child prodigy, but it turns out his path is unusual for superstars. Roger Federer’s (who played a wide range of sports growing up until he specialized in tennis as a teen) is more common.
It's not really surprising when it's a few thousand child prodigies competing against 7 billion people for a small handful of slots 10 years in the future. Everyday stuff like depression, changing interests, financial pressures, lack of desire to compete, will knock out more than half of the child prodigies, making room for the other 7 billion people.
It depends on the field, afaik. I know someone who was an exceptional classical pianist, but they told me they knew they'd never make it in that field: They started at age 15, which was much too late to acquire the skills needed. Professional musicians I spoke to agreed.
I thought it was supposedly way easier to develop perfect pitch at a young age, compared to people who learned music later. Between things like that and the "10,000 hours" idea, I think some part of being exceptional is a function of: starting young, natural talent, and parents who can push/enable that skill.
Range goes into this. Epstein talks about Kind and Unkind learning environments.
In Kind environments, the feedback is quick and ranking is easy to know. So the evidence says that the optimal strategy is drill ans kill.
In Unkind learning environments, the feedback is slow and ranking is difficult and untimely. So the optimal strategy is to learn as much as you can in as many very different disciplines as possible.
The paper that the Economist talks about extends this and (paraphrasing) says that the very top elite level, even Kind learning environments turn back into Unkind ones again as you try to push the field more.
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