11 ms·

What is it about America (or other countries) that makes you think this couldn't happen anywhere else?

foxyv 5y ago
Personally, I think it has a lot to do with American sub-culture, the US dollar, our crazy university system, and immigration. This is speculation on my part so take it with a BIG grain of salt. The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard workers that will sacrifice everything to give their children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are some of the best in the world in my opinion. The US dollar being used as a reserve currency for most of the world means that it is the center of international investment. This means that the billions of dollars that flowed into PayPal and Elon Musk's startups probably came in large part from foreign investment funds. Our universities crank out some of the weirdest and least conventional engineers you can imagine. Most of them are half-crazy in the first place. The archetype of Mad Scientist can be found in physics departments and engineering labs all over the country. Conformity is often seen as a kind of perversity. We idolize professors like Feynman and read novels like Ignition! This is why you see bridges collapsing and power grids failing while we build some of the most advanced technology in the world. We hate boring maintenance and love to launches cars into space. Finally in no small part is American sub-culture. Specifically the science fantasy of space travel and colonization that is in the heart of a lot of American engineers and scientists. The same fantasy that captured the heart of Elon Musk, a billionaire South African immigrant who made his fortune in Silicon Valley. In addition there is the added fact that few other countries would allow some random small company to build ICBMs in their metaphorical backyard. The USA is kinda loose like that...
- e40 5y ago
  > The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard workers that will sacrifice everything to give their children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are some of the best in the world in my opinion. Over the last 40 years I've known and worked with some of these people, and I marvel at their tenacity and the sheer force of will they have to succeed. It just blows me away. Sadly, it seems to disappear from the next generation. I'll admit that I have a small sample size.
  - asadlionpk 5y ago
    Tough times make tough people. But their next generation is usually soft sadly.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      Meanwhile here in Oakland, this is what Mathematics teaching looks like in schools [PDF]: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... These people are actively undermining the American spirit - I am saying this as an immigrant to USA and a person of color. I am fine with understanding racism in USA, it is completely unacceptable to inject this into STEM education. The next generation is going to grow up learning more about race at the expense of learning mathematics. This isn't just my opinion - professors from UC Berkeley/Stanford and many major universities have written an open letter to the California Governor: https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsid=2287 https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsid=2287 Apparently, the message was clear and the California government is pausing this initiative: https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/yr21/agenda202107.asp https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/yr21/agenda202107.asp
      - rpmisms 5y ago
        There was also a recent incident in Virginia: (Virginia Drops Advanced Math)[https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/virginia-to-drop-advanced-math-courses-before-11th-grade-citing-equity/ar-BB1fZe9y https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/virginia-to-drop-adv...] This disgusts me. Some kids are stupid (Apologies for blunt language, but it's true, life is unfair.) or have poor home lives, so let's remove education that can help them have better lives because some of the struggling kids are black. Counterintuitive, oversensitive, and directly hindering Dragging everyone down because some diversity quotas aren't met is awful. Unless there's clear evidence that teaching advanced math directly contributes to racism, teach it, make it harder. Make our kids work and succeed and fail again.
        908B64B197 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Pokepokalypse 5y ago
  >We hate boring maintenance and love to launches cars into space. “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
  - foxyv 5y ago
    Big time! The USA could use a lot more maintainers. People who want to see beautiful, well built, and carefully taken care of cities and streets. People who make sure the power is humming and pipes are clean. Unfortunately the political situation is more of a "Keep building shitty car dependent walled garden suburbs that no one can afford, except investors. Keep that up until the house of cards collapses under the weight of our poorly maintained and expensive infrastructure."
- jollybean 5y ago
  Those are all good points, but the rest of the world turns out, pound for pound, Engineers that are just as good and crazy. But have access to fewer resources, networks, capital, markets etc.. Also, the % of US immigrants that are on the 'high end' is relatively smaller. Migration to the US, when you include off the books migration, is a little bit towards the low skilled end. But definitely the smaller relative portion of 'hardcore talent' is still actually quite large in real terms, and yes, they do disproportionately contribute. It frankly doesn't take a large quantity.
  - pr0v0cat3ur 5y ago
    The US offers unlimited resources for pursuit if one is willing to venture after them with resilience. Having said that, it always comes down to passion and willingness of pursuit and this is why many with lesser means can still achieve greatness and even better in a country with the resources available.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      " it always comes down to passion and willingness of pursuit" I think this mostly populist myth. It's definitely possible for people to do 'great things' but there are innumerable factors beyond that. 'Passion' I would say is not even an important or necessary element. 'Grit' is probably necessary, but not nearly sufficient either. That anything is possible, doesn't mean that it's remotely likely to happen even with unlimited 'passion and grit', or even talent.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > But have access to fewer resources, networks, capital, markets etc.. So their bankers and politicians just can't compete.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - foxyv 5y ago
    This is why I didn't just mention the engineers. It's the conflation of all those factors. Not just a single one. Crazy engineers can get a lot done with no capital, but mostly they will end up doing soul crushing Dilbert style jobs. For instance, look at Russia! Their engineers are probably twice as crazy as Americans, but they have very little room to do crazy things with that talent. They don't have trillions of US dollars being sheltered in their tech startups by VC funds.
narrator 5y ago
One problem with other countries is there is an industrial oligarchy that can't get shake itself out of the "The Innovator's Dilemma." Disruption is not considered valuable. The Russians have two aircraft design bureaus Sukhoi and MiG to help somewhat in preventing stagnation, but it would be impossible for a SpaceX to come out of nowhere in Russia like it did in the U.S. Elon even went to Russia in the early SpaceX days to buy an old ICBM and they told him to screw off.[1] One related anecdote. I read somewhere a while ago about how Apple had a lot of internal security, even between teams. They said the reason for that is that if someone in the iPod department found out about the iPhone they'd realize the threat to their career and work to undermine it. [1] https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-buy-icbm-rockets-from-russia https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-t...
- treespace88 5y ago
  In almost all other countries the rich use the government to keep competition out. All under the banner of national pride. In Canada we lock out all foreign investment in lots of areas.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    I never understood why Canada would restrict international players from disrupting sectors like telecom (a commodity really) but didn't seem to have any problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for almost nothing.
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      > disrupting sectors like telecom Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping Canadians' communications? The NSA listens in on its own citizens with the coöperation of the US telcos, so what chance would foreigners have? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) As a Canadian I would certainly like more competition, but I can certainly see the reasoning.
eplanit 5y ago
Where else does it happen? (sincere question)
asadlionpk 5y ago
Talent is one. Opportunity to become super rich giant is another? (Seeing how China is killing their tech giants).
CamperBob2 5y ago
The fact that it didn't happen anywhere else.
skissane 5y ago
US government space funding, as a percent of GDP, is the second highest in the world. The only country which beats the US at %GDP government space funding is Russia; but in absolute terms government space funding in the US is 7 times that of Russia, due to how much bigger US GDP than Russia's is. SpaceX has received a lot of business from the US government (both NASA and military) and is hoping to receive a lot more in the future. US arguably has the world's easiest access to venture capital. Compared to the US, venture capitalists in other countries tend to be more cautious, demanding much more equity for the same investment, and often much more interfering as well. A low regulation, low corruption business environment. Trying to start something like SpaceX in many other countries, the government will force you into various inefficiencies – using politically favoured suppliers, etc. The US has comparably little of these problems.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Compared to the US, venture capitalists in other countries tend to be more cautious, demanding much more equity for the same investment, and often much more interfering as well. Why not simply... follow the model that worked?
  - mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago
    Because there are a lot of other factors that are different. Other countries have different interest rates, tend to have much smaller markets to sell into, and tend to have much more tightly regulated labor markets. There's also an absence of large tech acquirers that exist in the US. VC economics rely on a portfolio theory of a few gigantic winners making up for the other losses. So if different economic conditions creates a difference in the ultimate size of our 'winners' than you have to figure out how to have fewer (or smaller) losses.
    - skissane 5y ago
      Your points are true, but I think other factors also play a role. What makes, for example, Australian investors behave differently to American investors? No doubt differences in economy size, regulatory regimes, etc, make a difference. But I also think some of it is due to differences in national culture. People have been talking about "tall poppy syndrome" as an element of Australian culture for decades; people don't say the same thing about American culture. (That said, it looks to me like the concept, but not the name, is increasingly making inroads into the US.)
kilroy123 5y ago
I think it certainly could happen anywhere else in the world. After years of living abroad, I've come to realize one thing about America and Americans. We're a bit more willing to risk it and fail. Sure, loads of people would rather have a secure job and not make risky decisions. Still, I think there's a higher concentration of those who will. Compared to lots of places on Earth. Also, for many who immigrate here, there's kind of no choice but to risk it and try to do something bold and crazy to make it.

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with American sub-culture, the US dollar, our crazy university system, and immigration. This is speculation on my part so take it with a BIG grain of salt. The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard workers that will sacrifice everything to give their children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are some of the best in the world in my opinion. The US dollar being used as a reserve currency for most of the world means that it is the center of international investment. This means that the billions of dollars that flowed into PayPal and Elon Musk's startups probably came in large part from foreign investment funds. Our universities crank out some of the weirdest and least conventional engineers you can imagine. Most of them are half-crazy in the first place. The archetype of Mad Scientist can be found in physics departments and engineering labs all over the country. Conformity is often seen as a kind of perversity. We idolize professors like Feynman and read novels like Ignition! This is why you see bridges collapsing and power grids failing while we build some of the most advanced technology in the world. We hate boring maintenance and love to launches cars into space. Finally in no small part is American sub-culture. Specifically the science fantasy of space travel and colonization that is in the heart of a lot of American engineers and scientists. The same fantasy that captured the heart of Elon Musk, a billionaire South African immigrant who made his fortune in Silicon Valley. In addition there is the added fact that few other countries would allow some random small company to build ICBMs in their metaphorical backyard. The USA is kinda loose like that...

e40 5y ago
> The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard workers that will sacrifice everything to give their children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are some of the best in the world in my opinion. Over the last 40 years I've known and worked with some of these people, and I marvel at their tenacity and the sheer force of will they have to succeed. It just blows me away. Sadly, it seems to disappear from the next generation. I'll admit that I have a small sample size.
- asadlionpk 5y ago
  Tough times make tough people. But their next generation is usually soft sadly.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Meanwhile here in Oakland, this is what Mathematics teaching looks like in schools [PDF]: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... These people are actively undermining the American spirit - I am saying this as an immigrant to USA and a person of color. I am fine with understanding racism in USA, it is completely unacceptable to inject this into STEM education. The next generation is going to grow up learning more about race at the expense of learning mathematics. This isn't just my opinion - professors from UC Berkeley/Stanford and many major universities have written an open letter to the California Governor: https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsid=2287 https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsid=2287 Apparently, the message was clear and the California government is pausing this initiative: https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/yr21/agenda202107.asp https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/yr21/agenda202107.asp
    - rpmisms 5y ago
      There was also a recent incident in Virginia: (Virginia Drops Advanced Math)[https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/virginia-to-drop-advanced-math-courses-before-11th-grade-citing-equity/ar-BB1fZe9y https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/virginia-to-drop-adv...] This disgusts me. Some kids are stupid (Apologies for blunt language, but it's true, life is unfair.) or have poor home lives, so let's remove education that can help them have better lives because some of the struggling kids are black. Counterintuitive, oversensitive, and directly hindering Dragging everyone down because some diversity quotas aren't met is awful. Unless there's clear evidence that teaching advanced math directly contributes to racism, teach it, make it harder. Make our kids work and succeed and fail again.
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Pokepokalypse 5y ago
>We hate boring maintenance and love to launches cars into space. “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
- foxyv 5y ago
  Big time! The USA could use a lot more maintainers. People who want to see beautiful, well built, and carefully taken care of cities and streets. People who make sure the power is humming and pipes are clean. Unfortunately the political situation is more of a "Keep building shitty car dependent walled garden suburbs that no one can afford, except investors. Keep that up until the house of cards collapses under the weight of our poorly maintained and expensive infrastructure."
jollybean 5y ago
Those are all good points, but the rest of the world turns out, pound for pound, Engineers that are just as good and crazy. But have access to fewer resources, networks, capital, markets etc.. Also, the % of US immigrants that are on the 'high end' is relatively smaller. Migration to the US, when you include off the books migration, is a little bit towards the low skilled end. But definitely the smaller relative portion of 'hardcore talent' is still actually quite large in real terms, and yes, they do disproportionately contribute. It frankly doesn't take a large quantity.
- pr0v0cat3ur 5y ago
  The US offers unlimited resources for pursuit if one is willing to venture after them with resilience. Having said that, it always comes down to passion and willingness of pursuit and this is why many with lesser means can still achieve greatness and even better in a country with the resources available.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    " it always comes down to passion and willingness of pursuit" I think this mostly populist myth. It's definitely possible for people to do 'great things' but there are innumerable factors beyond that. 'Passion' I would say is not even an important or necessary element. 'Grit' is probably necessary, but not nearly sufficient either. That anything is possible, doesn't mean that it's remotely likely to happen even with unlimited 'passion and grit', or even talent.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > But have access to fewer resources, networks, capital, markets etc.. So their bankers and politicians just can't compete.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- foxyv 5y ago
  This is why I didn't just mention the engineers. It's the conflation of all those factors. Not just a single one. Crazy engineers can get a lot done with no capital, but mostly they will end up doing soul crushing Dilbert style jobs. For instance, look at Russia! Their engineers are probably twice as crazy as Americans, but they have very little room to do crazy things with that talent. They don't have trillions of US dollars being sheltered in their tech startups by VC funds.

narrator 5y ago

One problem with other countries is there is an industrial oligarchy that can't get shake itself out of the "The Innovator's Dilemma." Disruption is not considered valuable. The Russians have two aircraft design bureaus Sukhoi and MiG to help somewhat in preventing stagnation, but it would be impossible for a SpaceX to come out of nowhere in Russia like it did in the U.S. Elon even went to Russia in the early SpaceX days to buy an old ICBM and they told him to screw off.[1] One related anecdote. I read somewhere a while ago about how Apple had a lot of internal security, even between teams. They said the reason for that is that if someone in the iPod department found out about the iPhone they'd realize the threat to their career and work to undermine it. [1] https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-buy-icbm-rockets-from-russia https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-t...

treespace88 5y ago
In almost all other countries the rich use the government to keep competition out. All under the banner of national pride. In Canada we lock out all foreign investment in lots of areas.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  I never understood why Canada would restrict international players from disrupting sectors like telecom (a commodity really) but didn't seem to have any problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for almost nothing.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > disrupting sectors like telecom Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping Canadians' communications? The NSA listens in on its own citizens with the coöperation of the US telcos, so what chance would foreigners have? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) As a Canadian I would certainly like more competition, but I can certainly see the reasoning.

eplanit 5y ago

Where else does it happen? (sincere question)

asadlionpk 5y ago

Talent is one. Opportunity to become super rich giant is another? (Seeing how China is killing their tech giants).

CamperBob2 5y ago

The fact that it didn't happen anywhere else.

skissane 5y ago

US government space funding, as a percent of GDP, is the second highest in the world. The only country which beats the US at %GDP government space funding is Russia; but in absolute terms government space funding in the US is 7 times that of Russia, due to how much bigger US GDP than Russia's is. SpaceX has received a lot of business from the US government (both NASA and military) and is hoping to receive a lot more in the future. US arguably has the world's easiest access to venture capital. Compared to the US, venture capitalists in other countries tend to be more cautious, demanding much more equity for the same investment, and often much more interfering as well. A low regulation, low corruption business environment. Trying to start something like SpaceX in many other countries, the government will force you into various inefficiencies – using politically favoured suppliers, etc. The US has comparably little of these problems.

908B64B197 5y ago
> Compared to the US, venture capitalists in other countries tend to be more cautious, demanding much more equity for the same investment, and often much more interfering as well. Why not simply... follow the model that worked?
- mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago
  Because there are a lot of other factors that are different. Other countries have different interest rates, tend to have much smaller markets to sell into, and tend to have much more tightly regulated labor markets. There's also an absence of large tech acquirers that exist in the US. VC economics rely on a portfolio theory of a few gigantic winners making up for the other losses. So if different economic conditions creates a difference in the ultimate size of our 'winners' than you have to figure out how to have fewer (or smaller) losses.
  - skissane 5y ago
    Your points are true, but I think other factors also play a role. What makes, for example, Australian investors behave differently to American investors? No doubt differences in economy size, regulatory regimes, etc, make a difference. But I also think some of it is due to differences in national culture. People have been talking about "tall poppy syndrome" as an element of Australian culture for decades; people don't say the same thing about American culture. (That said, it looks to me like the concept, but not the name, is increasingly making inroads into the US.)

kilroy123 5y ago

I think it certainly could happen anywhere else in the world. After years of living abroad, I've come to realize one thing about America and Americans. We're a bit more willing to risk it and fail. Sure, loads of people would rather have a secure job and not make risky decisions. Still, I think there's a higher concentration of those who will. Compared to lots of places on Earth. Also, for many who immigrate here, there's kind of no choice but to risk it and try to do something bold and crazy to make it.