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Comment by midnighthollowc | Hacker News Reader

That's pretty amazing, honestly.

Here I can't even get a tradesperson to give me a quote, much less show up on a dime. I guess I need another eight billion dollars, give or take a penny

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> a Foxconn factory in China woke up about 8,000 workers when the glass screens arrived at midnight

Yea must be really amazing living a crowded factory dorm room with suicide safety nets under the windows only to be abruptly woken up because some schmuck in California demands his precious phones be assembled. Must be a wonderful gig.

Project this a decade or two into future and I honestly don't have a solution for the west but a gradual decline into mediocrity. We have less corruption and communicate directly also about problems, so at least that will work for us for some time too.

But maybe China and similar places will elevate their overall prosperity enough that people will refuse to be treated like this en masse, so there is some hope.

These anecdotes come from the very peak of Chinas demographic dividend. In a decade or two their demographic dividend will be in a steep decline.

China also needs to change something drastic to avoid brain drain. The migration of competent people is still one-way. There no path to become a Chinese citizen. China has come a long way, but Europe is still ahead on building liveable communities and wok/life balance, while the US is still attractive to those seeking freedom and prosperity. China has avoided issues due to a huge population and that demographic dividend. But eventually it’ll become an issue

>China also needs to change something drastic to avoid brain drain.

Why does this matter? I hear this a lot but at the same time I look at what's coming out of China, especially in the AI space, and it's clear that brain drain isn't really hampering them.

It's almost as if you don't need the absolute best and brightest. Heck we used to get by retraining people from other industries to be programmers. I know companies absolutely can't do that now nor be expected to help grow their workers and can only work with exact match H1Bs, but it used to be a societal expectation of companies.

>very peak of Chinas demographic dividend

No, 2000s-2020s was peak blue collar dividend, think world combined, but low value dividend. When PRC had lots of hands but few brains, i.e. fraction of STEM vs US / west.

2040s-2080s is PRC peak tertiary skilled dividend. They'll have about 2-4x US in just STEM who'll be in workforce for most of our and our children's life times, even while tfr math starts eating away at future cohorts. The TLDR is they've just started cooking, their highend human capita pool will be exploiting greatest high skill demographic dividend in recorded history for high value. Their final form is OCED combined in talent and world combined in bluecollar backstopped by robots/automation (currently on trend to be more than world combined).

Brain drain barely a problem now, this isn't 2000s where there's shit domestic opportunities and PRC lose large % of the few best they produce. They now they mint so much talent, brain drain a rounding error, top talent increasingly stay in PRC. And many of the best that went abroad are returning. Or future trend is many of best that are leaving will recirculate back to PRC eventually. TBH most of those go abroad now are frankly PRC B/C tier talent, i.e. most international students are those too mid to do well on gaokao and even then they turn into A students in west. Like there's still some sectors where west can draw because they can afford to pay magnitudes more (which is matter of FX/geopolitics), but PRC now also in position to attract foreign talent via $$$, so much so that places have to ban nationals from working in PRC strategic sectors. China's expat draw is it's PRC, if you're high end talent and you want lab built in a few months, bottomless access to resources including human capital, dynamism of Asian tier1 cities, that EU+US can't offer. But immigration point really secondary to fact that when PRC produces plurality of high performing global talent, and retains most of them, they don't need to worry about immigration of competent people, just need to hold on people they have, which by and large is happening, i.e. Tsinghua brain drain rate went from 30% to single digits in last few years and returnee rate higher than ever. As in west depend on PRC talent surplus (because western talent pipeline shit vs PRC), trains them, and now that PRC rich with opportunities, many recirculate/reverse braindrain back to PRC anyway when they're high level.

At end of the day _most_ people are economic migrants, they move for $$$ not muh freedom/community. Ultimately US/EU strength is they have money/FX money multiplier, US way more than EU. When that goes away/decline people start making different choices. And again, PRC demographics will be lingering in background... but just means cheaper housing/less crowded cities, i.e. less drag on PRC living. It terms of active demographic dividend, most of us will be dead before PRC declines, imo not really worthwhile extrapolating on that timescale.

I just wanted to thank you for sharing your opinions on this site -- the sole poster here who I actually bookmarked to read like a blog.

Cheers.

I think all these factory manufacturing labor problems will be a thing of the past soon. The way robots are improving in China and the US, they will probably end up being an equalizer. It might become just as cheap to produce goods in either country at that point.

less corruption?

maybe time to check your priors

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