Dan Wang joins Ben Yeoh for a conversation about what different societies are good at, what they neglect, and what that reveals about culture, ambition, and power. Starting with Silicon Valley, Dan argues that tech has become thinner-skinned and less funny as harder-edged founder culture has replaced its more playful countercultural roots. That narrowing shows up beyond humour: San Francisco still has legacy cultural institutions, but newer tech wealth is often far less willing to support the arts unless it can see a direct return.
“You have to have a sense of which rules to break. If you break no rules ever in life, you will absolutely get nowhere.”
From there, the discussion opens out into a broader comparison of California, London, and China. London, in Dan’s view, is almost Silicon Valley’s opposite: culturally rich, socially sparkling, and full of serious artistic life, yet held back by pessimism and a deep inability to build.
“The UK has the housing prices of California and the per capita income of Mississippi State.”
Ben pushes on whether Britain could reverse that decline if it fixed planning, housing, and energy bottlenecks. China, meanwhile, is presented as a place of extraordinary physical achievement but increasingly constrained cultural production, where censorship, weaker reading habits, and even food delivery systems are flattening parts of public life.
“The discussions on AI seem to have quasi-religious tones. Either this is going to be utopia or this is going to plunge us all straight into hell.”
They also explore why AI debate has taken on a quasi-religious tone in California, with utopian promises on one side and apocalyptic fears on the other, while more immediate problems such as propaganda, low-quality content, energy supply, and permitting constraints receive less attention. The second half of the episode turns more personal and literary: neurodiversity in Silicon Valley, cadet training and discipline, opera, Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, writing craft, and the underrated practice of retyping great prose or reading plays aloud with friends.
“The immigrants are best able to appreciate what works and what works badly in every particular culture.”
It is a wide-ranging conversation about how people think, what institutions reward, and why culture matters more than technocrats often admit.
Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or on Youtube.
Contents
00:21 Why Tech Lacks Humor
02:09 Silicon Valley Arts Funding
05:28 London Versus California
08:31 China Culture Censorship
12:56 Food Culture US China
18:58 AI Utopia Versus Doom
23:04 UK Building Energy Bottlenecks
30:58 Fixing UK Planning Housing
34:28 Neurodiversity In Silicon Valley
37:04 Cadets Discipline Rule Breaking
39:15 Modern Opera: Mozart. Verdi Debate
42:04 American Shakespeare Picks
45:31 Book Tour Reflections
48:09 Retyping Great Writers
52:56 Reading Plays Together
58:29 Playwrights And Prose
01:01:38 Overrated Underrated Round
01:10:21 Advice For Your Twenties
Transcript (lightly edited, transcribed by LLM AI, so mistakes are very possible)
Ben: Hey everyone, I'm super excited to be speaking to Dan Wang. Dan has written an excellent bestselling book on China and America called Breakneck.
Dan, welcome.
Dan: Great to be here.
Ben: In your recent annual letter, you suggest it's nearly as dangerous to joke about the top Silicon Valley venture capitalist, as is to joke about a Chinese CCP party leader.
Why does Silicon Valley have no humor? And did it ever?
Dan: at one point it probably had a little bit of a sense of countercultural humor. In the days of Steve Wozniak perhaps Steve Jobs, there were slightly playful act personalities back in the eighties up until the nineties.
And then these much harder core nerds took over. Does Bill Gates have much of a sense of humor? Does Mark Zuckerberg have much of a sense of humor? Perhaps so in private but certainly not in public. And so I think that there is this progressively thinner skin where every generation of founders loses a little bit of humor and funny points.
And then they also shave off a little bit more of their skin. And I think that is really well represented now by Elon Musk, who maybe it's not his fault now he's trolled to insanity three times a day before breakfast by all of these crazy people on the internet in a platform that he controls.
I think that this is also, perhaps he is a little bit funny. He certainly thinks of himself as being very funny, but I don't think that there are many sparkling personalities in the tech world such that it is pretty difficult. And I've tried this exercise going up to tech friends and asking who is the funniest founder out there?
It's a pretty thin list of names.
Ben: And they started off in the hippie world. I guess that wasn't necessarily the tech bro. So it is interesting that they do seem to have lost their sense of humor. Also Silicon Valley. And the CCPs seem to me to be less involved in cultural production.
Standup comedy would be one thing, but it also seems to be the case in art and music with some exceptions. So for instance, Patrick Collinson of Stripe fame seems to be very interested in beauty, but do you sense this too, of overall cultural production? And is this narrowness a big problem for Silicon Valley or not really?
Dan: San Francisco has a certain amount of elite culture. And so I am thinking about the art museums. I'm thinking about the opera and the ballet where the old rich, the old money in San Francisco has given fairly generously to the symphony, the opera et cetera. The arts, which makes it look quite a lot more like New York City.
And there is some new money that is also involved in some of these pretty traditional art forms. But generally speaking it seems like these. New billionaires that have been created over, let's say the past 10 years, have become significantly less interested in funding the arts.
Broadly speaking the movie theaters, the indie movie theaters have been closing down in San Francisco. Downtown is generally a mess. There's very little foot traffic. And even the art museums are not necessarily doing super well. And so when you combine all of these things and you have the fact that Silicon Valley billionaires are much more eager to fund the next generation of technology than anything else which has been one of the great factors of Silicon Valley success that you had, the semiconductor people funding, the telecom, people funding the internet, people funding.
Now the AI people. And so I think that has generally been pretty positive. But when creatives go up to billionaires and ask for money for the arts, the billionaires are often asking for a return as if arts could ever be productive. As if the arts could ever be profitable almost anywhere. And so you cannot possibly generate a real return on the arts, whereas it seems like the rich people in New York and LA are quite a lot more forgiving of the fact that if they give money to a documentary filmmaker, they'll never see a scent back of it.
Ben: I think it, Silicon Valley seems to understate that intangible return, the sort of cultural reputational value, social capital, or however you would put it. So do you think if you were to add a cultural institution in San Francisco around Silicon Valley, that would be a good idea and what would it be?
Dan: I'm not sure if I could add a new cultural center. I think it is. It's hard to figure out what the right format is. Could it be something in visual arts? Could it be something in the theater? Perhaps. But I think that something has to grow, probably out of the tech world out of something that the tech world really embraces.
And the challenge is that I don't think that many of these tech people want to go to the opera except as an affectation. Or really see very many plays because the play going audience in the US is generally fairly smaller. Even in somewhat larger cities like Boston or dc or la.
There is a scene, but it is quite a lot more difficult to find than in a place like London. So here's my case to you Ben, that if we had to find the polar opposite in terms of culture to Silicon Valley, is it not London? In Silicon Valley, you speak to a lot of engineers and they don't necessarily have many jokes to tell as I've established.
They don't have much culture that they want to go to in London. It is much easier to find to chat with people where those conversations sparkle. And the plays and the classical music and the visual arts are completely off the charts for even I think for most Americans, even perhaps for a lot of New Yorkers, the cultural scene in London is really amazing.
And whereas the weather in the Bay Area is pretty, pretty perfect the weather in London is by default, fairly gloomy. So isn't London the opposite end of the world from California?
Ben: I think it's, I think that's almost correct. So London or the UK as well, you've said you've argued it's very good at clever sounding industries.
But the offshoot of that is maybe we're overweighted in journalism, also accounting and legal, but we're also overweighted in theater arts, visual arts, music and all of that. So it makes us extremely happy. Culturally rich and actually there's a lot of soft power cultural events. So even nearby there's Glastonbury, you've got the tennis and the rowing and the sporting events and all of those kinds of things as well as that soft cultural power.
On the other hand, we don't build anymore. We've got poorer. Millionaires are still leaving us, although actually non millionaires are still wanting to come to the uk. So I think a lot of Chinese millionaires are leaving China and going all over the place, but some of them are still coming to the UK so that's interesting.
On the other hand, And it also means that I think London in some ways has a little bit like the US some fixable problems because some of the stuff which is around there is more fixable. Then it would seem, but I'm interested. So if San Francisco has maybe this cultural problem, it'd be interesting whether we think that's broadly in some spots of America, and I wonder whether China also has some of these cultural problems as well.
So I'm not sure whether you find, I think in your letter you did say Beijing and Singapore were, Beijing and San Francisco are a little bit similar in that respect, but whether you think that is also a problem of narrowness across a lot of their Chinese cities.
Dan: Yeah there's also something else that Californians have that Londoners and British people do not have, and that is optimism.
And so I think that there is a little bit of this sense. Even among Brits are the first people to say that, yeah, they're all very cynical. There's not that much hope for the future. I find it a little bit odd that there is just this self-professed pessimism gloom within the national culture.
And I think that is probably not a healthy trait when everybody kind of jokes about it. I think I am a little bit more constructive, at least in a lot of parts of culture, in the US relative to China. Chinese culture such as it is, has been very severely squeezed by the censorship apparatus.
Very few art house films anymore. Not that much by way of very popular groundbreaking fiction. That, there's a lot of really creative short form videos and they can AI slop with the best of them. I think in terms of broader culture, I think that China has not done super well, not much in terms of journalism because that has been the part that has been strangled the most.
And so maybe some people are really impressed by dancing robots on really big bridges. But I'm not sure if that is going to be the sort of culture that you and I are very much drawn to. Now, you and I are quite different, but I think that Chinese cultural production has been pretty disappointing.
And I think in general fewer and fewer people read and read books in China these days. That's my sense that the book sales are really falling. At least in the US the book sales have been holding steady over the last few years. Now a lot more people are reading. Romantic and fairy smut, which is fine and whatever.
But I think that it is still pretty striking that book sales are holding up in the US where they're falling in China. So at a first approximation, people are just reading far less in China these days.
Ben: And I think if China does end up stumbling, it will be because they've tried to engineer on the social side, all of their physical engineering, which you described very well in your book, has been so successful.
But the social political engineering has been such a disaster. And I know you're very critical of the one child policy, but reading it over, I wonder whether we understate how catastrophic that could be for the medium term in China. So it'll be interesting to see where that holds.
And I do think you're right that actually Brits in general are a little bit pessimistic for those who've been around, but those who come to London. Immigrants first, second, even third generation, actually remain optimistic. And this is the kind of interesting thing about where they've left and they think of all the great parts of London and the uk and just to really perplex that Brits don't really value that as much.
And I find this is a little bit in Americans as well, they don't quite appreciate what they have yet. The immigrants who come and say this is amazing. Why don't you, why don't you appreciate it? And I'm also immigrant
Dan: immigrants are the best people to assess. I think they're the best people to appreciate local cultures.
The left I think generally is too critical of cultures and the right are too critical of the immigrants, whereas the immigrants are best able to appreciate what works and what works badly in every particular culture. But I do find it a little bit sad.
Immigrants arrive in the UK feeling quite optimistic and maybe that effect persists. But generally the people, the culture around them is trying to drag down their mood or that just happens that most people are, have a bad mood or over the longer term, that feels a little bit sad to me.
Ben: Yeah, I completely agree. I do think London's a little bit of a special exception of, versus the rest of the uk. But I do think that is the general vibe and that it's
Dan: more optimistic or less optimistic.
Ben: It's more optimistic. But then London isn't, probably half of London even something like that has English as a second language or a co language.
It's every immigrant, either first or second generation. So perhaps it's a little bit different and it has such strong agglomeration effects in London, which you really don't see in any other cities, which actually is a real problem for the UK versus even Germany or France.
But particularly versus the us I was in Nashville not too long ago, and Nashville can just go and do their own thing. They're a, I think they were half a million people when I saw them last time, which was maybe 15 years ago. And now they're almost a million person city and growing with their own culture and vibe, and they can stand alone in that.
Whereas a place like Leeds can't even put in a tram or a metro system. And all the best people from Leeds, not quite all, but a lot of them end up in London. So that's one of the UK specific issues. On the other hand, the thing about the immigrants coming in is that means that the London food scene has got, amazingly better over the last 10, 20 years, even the last two or three. I was interested, do you think the differing food cultures coming back to the US and China have anything to explain about how similar or different the US and China are? Obviously China has got quite a monumental headstart on the US which I don't think America will ever close up.
But maybe it might, and I would be interested in what you think the most underrated US food is and whether food cultures explain anything around the US and China differences.
Dan: China has a monumental lead on food production. Perhaps the only other arrival to Chinese cuisine is Indian cuisine.
Now I still prefer Chinese over Indian because I find that there is more variety and better use of better ways to prepare vegetables than Indian cuisine. But I think that China is already at the peak of various ways to prepare, whether these are vegetables and greens or duck and rice and almost anything else.
We care to name the Chinese who have perfected it. Perhaps the only exception is alcohol. They don't integrate alcohol quite as well into the food, but. I think that the Chinese have represented some sort of perfection. On the other hand, if you are in a state of near perfection, it is really hard to grow beyond that.
And I think that there is a little bit of a sense among some foodies in China that food culture in China has gotten just a few percentage points worse over the last five, 10 years. There is just much greater emphasis on these central commissaries to produce food outside of restaurants and then ship it into restaurants for them to essentially reheat.
And that has grown because people value speed over taste. There is just much more of a takeout culture because it's super, super easy to have food delivery. There's something, there's some figures now that the number of people working in food delivery just part-time in China could be north of 200 million people is what I saw in the Wall Street Journal because the job market is so bad.
So what could be really amazing for getting food is not so good for the job market and perhaps not so good for the cuisine itself because people are just so optimized for making food work well inside a box and a container that could be delivered in 25 minutes or less. And as China's grown richer people are more interested in different varieties of foods.
But I think that there has also been quite a lot more standardization within the foods as more chains have taken off as well. And given that the US is so far behind China there's tremendous room to grow. And over the last two decades in the last few years, I think that all sorts of food in the US has grown better.
There is even more of a migration culture into the US where, you know. A lot more Nigerians settle around the Houston area. There's all sorts of different varieties of people bringing their cuisines to the US. I think that Americans are learning to eat better themselves.
They have greater demand for seafood or fruits and the US also has, the US perhaps has very good recreations of let's say a Parisian croissant or anything else. It is just a little bit hard to get to. And so I think that the US has this dynamic churn even though it might perhaps never quite converge to Chinese levels of perfection.
Ben: Yeah, I agree. And I would probably add to that, that I've seemed to sense China because of this. Influenced modern tradition I guess, and the food influencer, they are now slightly cooking to how it looks on the plate over taste. Yeah. So obviously presentation is something. And so that has also maybe taken a couple of points down because they are so good at engineering, like you say, this central planning of food delivery.
That means that maybe the speed and efficiency's gone up, but also at the cost of, at the cost of taste. I also think maybe the most underrated American food for me is barbecue. So they've got this huge barbecue tradition in lots of different ways of doing it. And that seems also to me obviously influenced, but quite quite American.
But do you have an underrated American food?
Dan: I like barbecue, but I think that the challenge with barbecue is that you really should not have it multiple times in a row. Yeah. And for me, that is one metric for thinking about food. I have no hesitation about having Indian food multiple days weeks in a row.
The same goes for many other types of cuisines. If I eat barbecue twice in two days, I think that would be a little bit too much for me. I think that. Probably overrated is Californian cuisine. There has been so much of this emphasis on Californian cuisine, which started with Alice Waters and all sorts of other big chefs in Northern California.
To me that is not very distinctive if we wanted to look at another sort of cuisine. I haven't spent much time in l Louisiana, but I would really like to eat much more in New Orleans which seems to have a very good local cuisine. But just generally, I think what I would bet on is, immigrant cuisines in the US whether that is, the Austin food scene getting quite a lot better, whether that is the Nigerian food scene in Houston. I think that Chinese cuisine still has room to grow. In the US there's a lot of excellent Taiwanese in the, let's say the LA area.
There are all sorts of fantastic Chinese in the flushing area in Cupertino even. I'm getting better and better Chinese food, which is not too far away from where I am at Stanford University. And so I think that there is always room for growth in the US so long as we are still welcoming of people.
Ben: Yeah. Okay. I should move on from food, which we could probably, we should do a long chat just on food. I think we could do two or three hours on that. But I have to mention ai, which is all over everything. And you even mentioned it in your latest letter, and it's interesting when I hear Silicon Valley people or maybe Americans in general they all seem to either talk about existential risk of losing jobs or everything going completely wrong.
Or they talk about a tech utopia where AI solves everything from climate to poverty to manufacturing. And there doesn't seem to be a middle road discussion and maybe not even that much thinking of the kind of economic bottlenecks and things like that. What do you make of this, and do you sense this as well and do you think central planners have any edge in AI because of the energy supply chain and Americans are just too much focused on these kinds of really strange tail risks on either side.
Dan: It is a very strange thing in California. The discussions on AI seem to have quasi-religious tones. Either this is going to be utopia or this is going to plunge us all straight into hell and the machines are going to torture our minds for eternity. And you know what, if we just get a scenario in which which will be amazing in which productivity growth TFP growth goes on for 5% five percentage points for a very long time, I think that would be a pretty positive scenario.
But, when we talk about AI safety in California essentially what that means is how do we stop the machine God from torturing us for eternity rather than, oh how are people engaging with this very strange information ecosystem in which there's gonna be. A lot more slop and perhaps a more adversarial propaganda that is going to turn us all insane.
That to me feels like a very tangible sort of product, that project that we perhaps should discuss and tackle and try to solve. But this might be doing to teenagers. And, but instead, we can only talk about the antichrist. And that feels very strange to me. But tell us about the tenure of AI discussions in London.
Obviously London is one of the big AI hubs in the world. How do folks in London talk about it? Is it more the California variety or in, is it the variety of how do we control the harms and increase TFP?
Ben: I guess there's a little bit of both of that Californian variety and there's a little bit of the harm piece, particularly the bias piece and a little bit we've got a little bit of regulation or start up in terms of regulation in terms of as of now, are there biases?
Is it just gonna do utilitarian decision making? How do we incorporate other forms of thinking in that? But I would say there's another strand which kind of leans towards what I see in Asia, all to do with energy infrastructure and supply chain infrastructure, which slightly crosses over with. The climate conversation, which obviously is really diminished in America for other reasons, but there is this kind of very self-interested saying we've got a real problem if we don't have a supply chain.
If we can't build, we don't have energy infrastructure, and if this is gen, just basically a way of turning energy into some form of intelligence how do we deal with that? Which is this kind of more European wide issue of the fact that we can't build. We can definitely see that China seems to have a headstart in that and America is forming.
So that's the other part which kind of fills in London a little bit. And maybe that's because London is a little bit more connected to old world economies that I guess everyone except the US is underweighted technology versus some of these old world things. And that particularly in the last two or three months has started to come as a conversation, as people go, oh, this bottleneck seems to be these data centers and the energy.
And then they go why can't we produce the energy? And it's not that we don't have the technology as we don't seem to have the permits. We don't seem to have the regulatory things. And they're going, why is that? And why can China build like the equivalent of all of us? Domestic energy in six months or something like that.
And America had taken seven years just to build 10% of that. So those are the questions which are starting to come up, which is intersectional with that AI question. But is coming up with that on the supply chain? So maybe that's somewhere where central planners might have an edge because of all of that?
Dan: Yeah. Generally I think every year China builds about as much as one or two UK's worth of total energy every single year. And I used to collect these figures more actively, but I think that's the rough pace at which they are going. And it, it should, we expect that London can hold on to AI leadership in the longer term if it is impossible to build much more power and really difficult to build transmission lines and really difficult to build data centers because we take a look at some of these headlines around the uk.
The FT has recently written about the fact that home building in London has essentially collapsed. And I wrote this line, which is not quite right, but roughly accurate that the UK has the housing prices of California and the per capita income of Mississippi State. And the third runway for Heath Row, which has been planned for about 20 years now.
Yes. Yeah. It's supposed to cost 30 billion pounds. And so if we can't get the basics right, how can the UK really hold on to leadership for a pretty important technology?
Ben: I think on a 20 to 30 year view, unless we fix a couple of those things leadership will definitely lag. Maybe it's okay being, I think the uk depending on how you score, it's something like.
Number 10 as a kind of power, but slipped. So 10 years ago you probably could have said it was number eight or number nine. And in aggregate it's maybe slipped a place or two, it slipped less than Italy, somewhere like South Korea. Which metric are you
Dan: looking at?
Ben: Which next? You do a blend of things like soft power, GDP education and some of these things.
And if you aggregate it, there's a soft slipping of the uk. Some of it has slipped, more cultural powers probably have probably held on. And so I would see that continuing. But on the flip side, we have got some tail optionality. I wouldn't put it as too high probability, but some and maybe things will still have to get worse to look better because for instance.
If the country changes its mind on things like mini nuclear power or also particularly onshore wind. So we've got the planning for wind, not the interconnections and not the final planning. And actually we've got mini nuclear power SMR technology through British industry. So this is a thing 'cause it can come through some of our engineering, so it won't feel like, oh, we have to rely on foreign technology.
That is possible because you could put mini nukes next to smaller data centers and London could keep up. I'm not sure it will go through with this, but there's been a nuclear power review with, puts it as a possibility. So you really rely on that coming down on the cross curve. Otherwise I Do
Dan: Do you think politically and in terms of permitting people will accept having these mini nuclear reactors spread throughout the country?
Ben: I would say at the moment it's unlikely, but not zero. So we'll have to see where it goes. But there's enough places which are maybe far enough away from cities that it's possible. And also the miniaturization is getting smaller. And there's an argument for building British, there's a couple of British companies which could do that.
So I wouldn't give it a high probability, but I would definitely say it's more than, it's more than zero. I think America's own reassuring attempts are quite Trixie. And so this is where, oh, this is where China might actually have a lead if some of their other things go there.
But there are possibilities.
Dan: Tell me more about a British optimistic case about how they may be able to, instead of slipping through these ranks, how does it regain its position?
Ben: Oh, okay. I guess you would have to have some political consensus. I guess there is a technocratic consensus.
So the number one thing is I think we would need to try and unblock planning both domestically by building buildings. Which we could do. So it's just a legal policy coordination problem. It's not a technological problem. So that's the upside. But we haven't been prepared to burn our political capital to do that yet.
So we shall see. And then on the infrastructure side as well, so this would be building power, putting data centers next to things. So those two things I think are plausible. I also think we might get a one-off. Bonus in our health system because of weight loss medicines, GLP ones coming through.
So they'll be generic in 2031. And we are now seeing there's a lot of second order cost to chronic illness of which the UK isn't quite as bad as America, but it's not brilliant. And that is actually gonna be billions of both first order and second order savings. And if we can use those savings a little bit better, both in terms of making our NHS better and putting a little bit more investment within that and on blocking some of these more pro-growth elements, I think that is actually a possible fix because we've got the capabilities to build more.
And we've all got possibilities of infrastructure and we've got an agglomeration effect of London. Some of our second cities might continue to suffer. So I'm not sure on the UK side whether that is true, but as Americans tell me, the fact that Manchester's only two hours away on, on the train or two, two and a half hours, or even driving, they're like, that's just a suburb in America.
We would, we would drive there. They don't understand why Brits don't drive to like these centers of excellence in that same sort of way. So because it is solvable by political coordination I think there is. And then because there's still a lot of cultural soft power, you've still got finance here, although it's maybe not quite as great as New York or maybe equally as great as New York.
And you've got all of these things where you're second best, maybe not the very best. Biotech, some technology and the like. That still means that you're gonna be a really important non-US hub. And because you're at such a low, because of some of these regulatory issues, you can turn it around.
So that's the optimistic case.
Dan: And are you optimistic about London's agglomeration effects? If millionaires are leaving, is it still going to be a growing city that is growing in population and wealth?
Ben: I'm a little bit more neutral on this. I probably was more optimistic and that has down rated somewhat is not quite as bad as what I think the media has said.
Some are definitely living in millionaire status. But what is also happening is that although they're leaving in terms of permanent domicile, they still come here for three to six months of the year or a few weeks anyway. And particularly actually, if you are in the a hundred millionaire status, who often don't stay in one place that long, they're still passing through London somewhere between four to 12 weeks a year, which actually is enough if you're getting all of these other things going through.
So maybe they come to an auction event, maybe they go to Henley or to. Children go to Glastonbury or they do some of these other things, or they strike a deal. And then if you've got these other things right, they only have to be here a couple of days to sign some kind of check or something like that.
And we've got huge capabilities like around Cambridge, Oxford, there's lots of fields, there's lots of empty fields, which we could build on very quickly if the regulations allowed us to do that. And Cambridge is still only a 40 to 50 minute train ride from central London.
And then that literally is a suburb of the US so you could build out that whole corridor with labs and tech and all that type of thing. And you can get the flying millionaires to visit and you're still getting. The Middle East, some Russia, some China who are still doing business in London and actually in preference to America at the moment because of the politics of the situation.
So there's some hope still for London. I haven't given up my optimism,
Dan: I wanna believe Ben. But let's get building in London started first and then we can build out the corridors. Like why has it that the home building has completely collapsed in London when it is such an urgent thing that we have more homes.
Ben: So the primary reason is our planning system works on a political veto. Actually, this goes back, this is gonna get a little bit boring and technocratic, but post-war 1948 when we put in the British planning system, and you can compare this to France and Germany, which are built more in kind of similar things or even the Nordics.
Their house building is still about double R rates and have always been higher than the British rates. But essentially what happens in France, Germany, even the Netherlands, is once you've passed the planning rules and everyone's got some sort of zoning and guidance, you basically are allowed to build, no one can stop you.
So that has crept forward in all of those nations. But essentially if you pass the zoning and you meet the pattern book or whatever you can build in the uk, not only has our regulations got a little bit quite a lot worse, as has Germany and France. But even once you've passed all the technocratic, tick boxes, you can be called in either by your local politicians, or even worse, even if your local politicians don't call you in or even if they pass it, it can be pulled in by central government. And so your builders can never have a hundred percent certainty. And that is the core is the big difference between actually the British system and all the other systems which are built more.
And I think they didn't realize in 1948 this would be the case when they wrote the law. Any government who really wanted to do this could rip up that planning law and rezone much like Germany, France, or the Nordic countries. So you wouldn't have to go and do it somewhere like Brazil does it, where you wouldn't have any sort of planning and some of that and you could at least jumpstart those rates.
Then there were other issues to do with capital and we had a big fire disaster, so some of our building regulations got tighter and we didn't give it capital. But all of that is actually secondary to the fact that we've got a political veto. The only other way you could do it is you could convince the people doing political vetoes, which are essentially local residents, that it's in their best interest.
In order to do that, you could pay them off. So there are some things like street zones and things like that, where if you give them more money to allow them to build, that is also a possibility. I actually think that's a little bit harder. Some people think that would be easier, but either of those two things could get building going again.
Dan: But the law has been there for a while and there's been like a change, which is that there's basically no new homes in London. I understand that there was this disastrous fire and maybe capital is getting tougher, do you think that, let's say two years from now, that number will be quite a lot higher than it is today of new housing starts
Ben: Not in two years, not on current trajectory.
There is some stuff actually clogged up with our current government, which might pass, in which case that might unclog. I'm currently not too optimistic about that, but potentially after that, if people really sense okay, new young people really can't live where they want to live. And old people are a little bit more willing to give up the fact that they need buildings next to them and that Vata power, again, not high probability, but certainly more than zero.
That's what I would say in that. Anyway, moving on from building, perhaps I'll move on to a couple of other softer things. I have a question here. So someone we're both keen on as a mentor, Tyler Cowen, he once interviewed Temple Grandin in part on the ideas on neurodiversity. And I tend to see some neurodiverse at the head of some big US companies, arguably Microsoft, arguably Tesla, arguably Palantir and a bunch of others.
So there seems to be the silicon subculture which embraces this positive nerd culture. Do you think that explains anything about the US or Silicon Valley, maybe vis-a-vis China or anything out that, or I'm interested whether neurodiversity might be a key unlock for America.
Dan: Yeah, certainly it does feel like there is a lot of neurodiversity in Silicon Valley and not just among these people who make it to the top in terms of these companies, but also just in the rank and file. I think that many more narrow neurodiverse people manage to thrive in the San Francisco Bay area relative to a place like Washington DC or Boston or London or New York City for that matter.
So there is a little bit more of a reward for neurodiversity or at least tolerance for it. But I'm not sure whether it could constitute an unlock. Maybe this has already been unlocked, maybe there are some ways in which the people are able to, people just know that Silicon Valley is a good place for them.
On the other hand, Perhaps the reason that the neurodiverse can't necessarily make it in these East coast cities like DC or New York, is that people generally don't tolerate the neurodiverse very well. Maybe there's a reason that we call Washington, DC Hollywood for ugly people.
We don't have to focus on the ugly, it is like Hollywood, which feels like a much more popular contest from high school. So if maybe most people are intolerant of Neurodiverse, and maybe this is part of the reason that Silicon Valley just isn't very funny, then who's gonna win the neurodiverse?
Throwing their culture out into the rest of America? Or is the rest of America going to engulf Silicon Valley? I'm not sure.
Ben: Yeah, I'm not sure. I guess that's maybe more of a lever for China, not necessarily on neurodiversity, but if they could just loosen up, like embrace some more of their subcultures overall, I think that would be potentially a really big unlock for them.
Obviously that's probably the nightmare of central planners to let loose what your population actually thinks. Maybe turning to a few more personal thoughts. I was interested to pick up that you were a cadet, an army cadet and quite a successful one. So I was wondering what did being a cadet of the year teach you when you were growing up?
Dan: When I was growing up in Canada, I was part of the Royal Canadian Army Cadets and it was a tremendous fun for me. And this is essentially just a big after school program. This is not that much different with Boy Scouts, although we were handed real rifles to do target practice with.
And so that part is a little bit more interesting. And I remember having to go to these drill camps on a formal army basis to run around at 6:00 AM and do a lot of pushups. And so I think that I was definitely more fit in those days than I am today. And I think what the army Cadets Program really taught me was first, you have to have a sense of which rules to break.
If you break no rules ever in life you will absolutely get nowhere if you break the wrong rules. You might be tried for treason or whatever it is. And so you have to have a sense of which rules to break and being in that sort of a formalized system in which rank matters and hierarchy matters, but also moving ahead matters.
I think it is a good thing to have to think about which is the room for creativity. Otherwise I think that it is really good to be part of the Cadets program, just to know, learn a little bit of discipline and I'll learn how to, focus on having a long-term program and figuring out what's important.
And all of these are banal lessons which most of us should not know as an adult. But I, when I say most, there are still many of us who have never properly internalized a lot of these lessons. And so it was a major part of growing up for me to figure out what is important, how do we set priorities and how do we actually work towards them.
Ben: I think SBF should definitely have done that, maybe more effective altruists, but yeah, if SBF done, that would be in better
Dan: shape
Ben: For sure. Much better shape. What do you make of the operas of Philip Glass? Can any modern opera get close to Mozart?
Dan: I guess the only opera of Philip Glass that I've seen on video not live was which is his interpretation of.
The Egyptian Pharaoh. And I've only seen licks and selections of that particular opera. Now has Mozart been superseded? I would argue yes. And I think the peak of opera is represented by Wagner and Verdi. The German great and the Italian Great.
I would say it's mostly downhill from there. And one can identify these perfect in Mozart, but perhaps Mozart is a little bit too now. I see. And perfect. And you have these superior tones of a lot of Mozart, but. But you see a little bit more in Verdi and Wagner is just this total emotional conviction in which they, there is no doubt that the protagonists are feeling as they do, whereas there are some of these climactic scenes in Mozart, which.
Don't feel quite mature. If I'm thinking about something like the marriage of Firo in which the count of ama viva confronts the Countess over allegations of infidelity. And this is a comic opera in which the count is a fearful that the Countess has hidden the page Carino in her closet, and he is trying to identify and find that page this climactic confrontation actually sounds not that he doesn't quite have the conviction in order to not make this as apocalyptic, as it could be.
Whereas there is no doubt if this was in this opera, was in Verdi's hands, the music would be quite a lot more dramatic than faintly comical. There are some things that Mozart could have done maybe a little bit better. I note that the marriage of Figueroa is the first of his three great Italian operas.
Next came Don Giovanni and then came Cozy Tuite. I think that one of these things I wonder it would be, would've been wonderful if Mozart was able to study a little bit more the techniques of Wagner and Verdi and how would he have revised the marriage of Figueroa based on that.
And one of these tragedies is that right before Mozart died for reasons unclear he was supposed to be composing an opera based on King Lear. Imagine how wonderful it could have been to a c one of the c king Lear in the hands of Mozart.
Ben: Yeah, that would've been brilliant. And I agree, Mozart, like perhaps would've been firm or more dramatic would've been really interesting. I think you wrote in your last letter that King Lear is the most Chinese of Shakespeare plays. So I was interested in that comment, but also what do you think then is the most American of Shakespeare plays
Dan: maybe a Midsummer Night's dream speaking to you from California but to be a little bit less glib about the potential drug use there?
Ben: Yeah.
Dan: What could be a very American Shakespeare play? Have you given some thought to this? I'm curious about your review. I
Ben: put it down to two, which may be a little bit more on the nose, but. Being potentially at this point in time Julius Caesar or Corey Elis. So either you've got this tension between like singly an elite or not.
And strong man politics or not. Maybe those are on the nose, but yeah, whimsical, maybe something like Matsu Knight's Dream. I guess you could also make some sort of call for the trading part with the Merchant of Venice or something like that. But as of now, I think he would maybe go for something like Caesar.
Dan: Yeah. It is quite interesting that Steve Bannon in one of his many lives produced this. Was it a Lanis movie that starred? I am Anthony Hopkins.
Ben: I didn't realize that. I'd have to look that up.
Dan: One of these major film adaptations was produced by Steve Bannon, and I believe that he was.
Really obsessed with COIs in particular. Take a look. Take a look with this Anthony Hopkins production. Now, could it be something like McBath? Could it be something like Othello, probably not this. These are not sufficiently political. These are two people. But if we take Tyler seriously, I think that Shakespeare's peak was Henri as a unit.
Now, could that, does that have a contemporary relevance for the US today?
Ben: Yeah, I guess if you take it as a unit for sure it has, for sure. It has some, I'm not sure it's an exact mapping. But yes.
Dan: That's what, and King Lear might have some contemporary relevance for the US as well, which one of the interpretations I have of King Lear is that violence can really spiral and there is no limit to political chaos.
You can have a political figure not really be aware of what he's doing. And then a lot of other people are simply bewildered at what's going on. At least in the case of King Lear. You have these two Dukes, the Duke of cornball, who is married to Reagan. And then the duke of Albany who's married to the other sister, not Cordelia.
And the Duke of Albany seems to be the good guy. He's just bewildered about what is going on and at the very, and come to a census where he has a Cornwall is just a kind of brutal and evil and completely ruthless. And there, there is no limit to the sort of political spiraling of a collapse.
I'm not sure that describes contemporary America right now, but it might, and that's part of the scary part.
Ben: Yeah, and I guess maybe that also shows the similarity between China and America, that actually maybe kingly is also an American play. And particularly you could think about the relationships between the old and young within kingly also could apply to America and actually the politicians in America particularly getting elderly as well across the spectrum.
So it's interesting to think about it from that point of view. Okay. I was also interested in coming off all the book tours and all the many amazing podcasts that you did over last year. Having done all of that, is there anything that you might have changed your mind about in terms of what you've written in the book?
Or maybe not completely change your mind about it, but maybe overweight or underweight compared to when you first rated it?
Dan: I've learned that people can be a lot more kind than I expected, and I've learned that people can be a lot more mean than I expected. There's all of these tanky who love to roast my ass on Twitter, and I think that it is just, there's all this misreading of what I say.
There's nothing an author can do about that. People might say that. Oh, I have forgotten to say that America has been ruled by lawyers forever, but I do say that in my very first chapter that the US used to be a little bit more of an engineering state, which is why I was able to build.
But people either forget to read that part or pretend that I never wrote it. And these are one of these things that authors everywhere have to deal with. And that is just one of these taxes of being of writing that there is just a lot of malicious, creative misinterpretation of one's work.
Now, I don't feel like I have it especially bad relative to a lot of other authors. And it is fine. It doesn't bother me that much. And I also have learned that there is a lot of great interest in this topic. That there are a lot of people who are, who enjoyed this book, who tell me that they enjoyed this book and who are rooting for my success.
And I think that is also a very heartening thing to have. I am surprised that people are still asking me to do podcasts. Generally now I am happy to do podcasts only with people I already know and are friends with like you, Ben. And so all of that is quite positive.
I'm curious for your feedback on my conversation with Tyler. Do you think it worked? What, what did work and what didn't work?
Ben: I thought it was great and I thought you both really enjoyed yourselves and obviously Tyler's got a really large audience, so you did have to cover some of the topics in the book again, I guess in the first half.
But for me, the sort of second half where you both talk about more personal and perhaps esoteric things maybe like this, our conversation here today where we touch obviously on China, but not for the main thing I thought was really interesting and I loved you challenging on, I still haven't heard his list of popes in order which should be, which are the best popes or which not 'cause you could imagine, you can imagine to do that, but I thought it was a very it was a very good conversation.
And I think you mentioned in that one as well as in some of your podcasts that I think maybe you still do this, that you type out. Sentences or write out sentences for writers you admire. So actually I did this with some of your own work recently this week to see what that feels like.
And it was actually pretty good, I noticed. Sometimes you have a good, very good way of using a kind of trilon, a series of three things within your sentences and when you use it, unfortunately chat has made this something that we don't see as much anymore. But you've got a very good use of M Dash generally, and actually when you write that in the pause, it's interesting.
I actually wrote this out by hand because it's not as it's not as emphatic as a, as a.in your sentence, but it is this little dash. I always think of Emily Dickinson within it, but it does punctuate another point. Normally a few words. And then again, I did think that technique was interesting.
I last generally for poems, like writing out poems is really interesting because of where you have the slashes and ate, but I hadn't done it for essays or nonfiction, and I read plays out aloud. I think that's quite interesting. But do you still type out writers that you admire and you still think it's a good technique?
Dan: Not so much anymore, but I keep a running scrapbook of my favorite phrases. And when I sometimes pick up a very nice turn of phrase and either a book or a magazine or wherever else, I paste that in. And every so often I looked through my scrapbook and it. Find some new forms of syntax that I want to play with.
I think it is good that you picked up my tricho as I myself am a Trinitarian, so anything that goes in threes would be really good. Have you tried the exercise of trying to re type rewrite play and has that what has that exercise given you insight into?
Ben: Yes. I haven't done it.
Greatly I've done it particularly on Harold Pinta work and also for some bits of waiting for Gado. And this is because both of them are very interesting, and this is where it started. Essentially pauses and silences, which are quite hard to judge. But in the writing out, and then also when you say it, it does give you this real sense of ah within that pause and what's it be?
And it gives you a stronger sense of the rhythm of language. So writing it, in fact, I would suggest if you're doing this, you actually write it out by hand as well. It tends to be a little bit slower for people versus typing. And then also to speak it, I think for essays and other things, probably not speaking it, but for plays, which will eventually be a vocal form as well, that is quite an interesting write up.
And so you, you are writing the dialogue and then you'll speak it. And it gives you the sense of rhythm and also the pausing. And another thing that shows you both in Pinta actually and in great playwriting overall is punctuation and the use of punctuation. And actually we have some unusual punctuations which have developed over the last few decades, but we use a slash quite a lot as well as hyphens and on and on dashes.
And also this is to try and get overlapping sounds and rhythms. And you only pick that up really by trying to write it or also speak it which you don't. Even just listening or seeing it on the written page isn't quite the same. I'm not sure 'cause I don't really hear music in the same way.
Maybe some people would have the same when they can read sheet music and then also have to play it out or practice it out. But there is something within that. And I also think it's interesting 'cause a lot of art students will, they will have a phase where you just copy what old masters did you, even if you're doing life drawing, you will start out with that to just see, okay, this is what drawing a Michelangelo kind of feels like.
Even though in very modern art, obviously we don't do that, but from that roots. 'cause it does give you that, that sense of feeling. So I think it is an interesting creative practice.
Dan: Yeah, I mean I think it is still a kind of an underrated practice. The reason that I started with sheet music is because I used to be very into reading music and holding a score as I listened to a string quartet or something.
I remembered copying out, I believe it was a Mahler symphony, just like writing a page or two of that out. And you really see what the choices a composer made when you do something like that. And when you retype a story, an article, whatever it is of another writer, you really become much more hyper aware of the choices that they make of particular punctuation or adjectives or syntax.
And you have to start thinking a little bit more about what might you do in that scenario? And that is actually a really good exercise. And it doesn't, it feels surprisingly underrated of a thing to just get into the minds of other people. So this kind of inspires me to ask you.
I've never played, but I haven't really been a big part of my life, although last year I attended I think just two plays. There's a David Henry Huang play on called Yellow Face, which I saw on Broadway. I also saw this new production of Oscar Wilde's importance of being Earnest on the West End, which had this very camp production starring Stephen Fry as Rael the starches of the Victorian matrix.
And I'm thinking of getting into plays more, but is there some sort of analogy where instead of writing out a play can we scare up, let's say two, three other friends to just read out all of these parts and just read these things out and for pleasure? Do you think that is actually a good exercise or that doesn't really work?
Ben: No, it's a really good exercise. Let's do it. So particularly in pandemic times, that is actually what a lot of playwrights and actors ended up doing. So you do it across your favorite plays but it is also the one of the very earliest ways of work shopping your own work is to get people to read it out.
I do these performance lectures, so you like standup. Sometimes you just have to test it with a live audience because you've got this interaction. But certainly simply just reading it out and also reading it out as the parts of others could be can be really good. And I'm sure amongst our group we'll have some to do that.
And then you can do it also. You can go and watch the production or something like that. But yeah, it's definitely worth doing.
Dan: So let's say that I am on holiday next week with three other friends who are as interested in plays as I am. Probably Shakespeare is not the right answer.
But is there some, I don't know, stopper play or something else in which we should just read out the parts to each other? Is there a good kind of starter play if none of us are very familiar with plays to try to have this sort of fun?
Ben: Ooh, I, so with just three, it's interesting that I might start with four, four
Dan: people total.
Ben: I might start with Harold Pinter 'cause they've got really interesting pauses and they're a little bit simpler. And it's also the birth of a lot of. Where Modern Drama goes, or Samuel Beckett, I think I would do Pinter. But actually the one that you maybe do is now, and also 'cause I think it might be his greatest play, although has more characters, I don't think it really matters would be Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, maybe start with Rosen Krantz and Gilden Stern, which is his most philosophical play and actually needs less dramatization for it and has fewer characters.
Rosen Ks and Goldstein are dead, has a slight Shakespeare connotation, not really. And then do Arcadia 'cause Arcadia you get this multilayered time effect where if you are reading it out. And it's really funny and I think it will probably still prove to be as great as play. Yeah, that's why I suggest, what's
Dan: the appeal of Arcadia?
Ben: So Arcadia Whoof. I think it is just a very good reflection of humanity and thinking overall, but also has concepts of time and quantum physics, also chaos. Also maybe the complexity, and then inexplicably inexplicable, of human life. But also has overtones of this reverse of are there patterns?
Are there things which reverberate through time? Are there these narratives that we feel? And he packages up that really well. So not only touches on chaos theory, complexity and quantum ness. So the cutting edge of some science thoughts, which are not fully captured, but also has these characterizations of narrative and pattern and then puts through some of these other obscure things like the patterns of English gardens and French gardens and these other things that humans are grappling with and shows and shows some of that through time.
So I just think it's really neatly wrapped up. And obviously as he's recently died, it's probably the moment of that. So that's why I would highlight that. But it's actually quite quick to do. So Pinta plays are probably, some of them are only for an hour and a half, so you can definitely do that over an evening with some tea.
Arcadia's a little bit longer. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern [are Dead] I think is only about an hour and a half as well [Ed: actually runs 2 hours]. So you could do that quite quickly.
Dan: Let's say that the chaos and quantum and time are just a little bit too philosophical and complex for a starter group. Is there an easier stopper to play?
Ben: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. It's okay. It is philosophical. Comedic as well. So in that sense it could actually be harder than Arcadia because Stoppard is really good at explaining these concepts of chaos theory and butterfly flaps its wings and things like that. So in that sense, I don't think you will struggle whereas Rosenstein and Gilda and have some of these more philosophical overtones.
But structurally and character wise it is simpler. So that's potentially there, but you could just flick the first chapter or two, or sorry, scene or two. And that will give you a sense
Dan:What about Leopoldstadt ?
Ben: So I think I'll have to see it again. I liked it but I wondered whether the first showing may, or may not be definitive and I think maybe we need a little bit more time as it will prove to be his last great work, whether that will prove to be greater.
I still prefer some of the concepts on Arcadia. I. Your podcast dub obviously had a little bit more of a personal connotation. So I would like to, I would like to see it again. I should reread it actually to make that sense. Maybe actually there's a really good biography of him also by Ion e Lee, so maybe putting all of that together, it would give me a more complete sense.
I think it's interesting because playwrights in general, or I guess right in general, tend to lean a more complicated left, say I know it's more complicated than that, whereas Stoppard lent a more complicated and I would say that just because he was very interested in notions of freedom and liberalism because of where he of how he grew up.
So I think that makes it really interesting. And I do think playwriting is one of those things where even. If you're successful, say leftist or rightist. Most successful plays always have very strong and nuanced arguments arguing for the other side, whatever position you have. And in fact, for some of the greatest, you're not even sure within the play where the playwright's actual position might be.
So that's one of the reasons I still think performance is really interesting on that level. And reading it out you get to inhabit a character who might not think well, almost certainly doesn't think like yourself. And so though I think that is a really good way of inhabiting something else, which obviously fiction gives you performance, gives it to you in a very live manner which I think is one step up in importance.
Dan: Do playwrights tend to write distinctive pros in terms of essays? Can you tell who is a playwright based on their essays?
Ben: Oh, I don't know about that. Some playwrights have gone on to write. Quite interesting essays as well. I would have to think, my guess is maybe yes but I can't think offhand.
Maybe more interesting or equally as like some players, like Tom Stoppard famously wrote some very successful Hollywood stuff. Like I think Steven Spielberg used to ring Stop Pod up when he had a problem in his script and sometimes Stop Pod would say, I think that was fa, I can't remember what film it was some famous film and Stoppard said, no, I'm working on this small play.
And Spielberg says what? But this is a million dollar multi thingy hit. And Stoppard was like that, but I'm more interested in this. But I think that's quite interesting in some of those crossovers. But I have to think about the essay question. I'm not sure about that in terms of essayists.
Dan: I've been reading a little bit of this Auden collection of essays called The Dyer's Hand, and this is his only collected series of his essays. And I'm not sure that one can really tell that, oh, this is a poet. I don't know if when poets write essays in prose it, I'm not sure if it usually generally turns out necessarily very well.
I was also, I also read David Mamet's Was it Three Uses of the Knife? And I thought that was pretty good, but it didn't, I also didn't feel like I learned a ton from it. So maybe we should mostly stay in our lanes. But I am still curious if there is some sort of a distinctive training that they can bring into our pros Essay writing.
Ben: Yeah, I'm gonna think about that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna look at my bookshelf and see some of the essays, because I think of more of their memoirs, things like Edward Alby or something like that. But some of them have written some essays some have written quite interestingly about. Theater, although, and now I'm thinking about Peter Brooke and Empty Space, and that was a director writing about theater in general.
So I'm not, yeah, I'm not completely sure. Unanswered. Okay. Maybe we'll do a short last, final section and then some of the things that you're working on in any advice you have, but I guess in honor of Tyler Cowan, he doesn't do this so much anymore, but I thought we should do a short section of overrated, underrated in terms of the podcast.
There's some quick hits and some on some things so we can give this a go. Overrated or underrated US suburbs
Dan: correctly rated, I think correctly. I think that the suburban life, I think that this is, I recognize that this is the dream for a lot of families. Absolutely. To have a lot of space and then to be able to try a kids swimming pool. That's great. There is a lot more culinary diversity in suburbs because the rents tend to be cheaper.
And the people like Costco and those gigantic super stores. I like Costco myself. I don't mind visiting like once every two months or so to buy a lot of Kleenex tissues or something. I think that these things are quite fine. But let's not overdo our enthusiasm for them.
Ben: Yeah. Great for parents, I think. I still think they are too boring for teenagers, but Yes. I think Tyler likes the suburbs a lot though. Great. Hedge funds, overrated, underrated.
Dan: Overrated. These are compensation schemes masquerading as an asset class. And maybe you are more familiar with this data, but I remember reading a while ago that catch fund, quote unquote hedge fund performance has been pretty bad over the last couple of years.
They're not overperforming. And I think where the energy seems to be for a lot of smart people, they're going into these quant funds, and that seems to be where a lot of them are, where the action is. Hedge funds were never very well defined up until, after you moved on from long, short.
But so it feels like it's mostly a marketing category, right?
Ben: Very good for employees. Yeah. I'm not sure about it, I'm not sure about anyone else. Okay. We, I guess we briefly covered this, but I would say AI existential risk is overrated or underrated.
Dan: Maybe correctly rated may probably be overrated by all the Californians.
If we take this view that, okay maybe we will be tortured eternally in our minds by machine, God forever that seems pretty bad. I wouldn't like that. So maybe it's good that we have some people worrying about this. Maybe it is great that we have some people worrying about biotech security, but let's also worry about all of these other things, like what sorts of harms that this might be doing just to our minds every single day.
Ben: Yeah. I think that's the problem with a lot of these things. Yeah. The people really deep into it could probably do with thinking about some other things, but the people who've never thought about it at all could probably do with at least thinking about it a little bit. Okay. Overrated, underrated five year plans.
Dan: Overrated, the Chinese don't take this all that seriously anymore. Maybe the first two or three, five year plans were important. Right after the first the conclusion of the first five year plan felt that he was being excessively constrained and then he essentially did away with much of this concept.
So the gap between the first five year plan and the second five year plan, they didn't do this immediately afterwards because Mao hated them. I think that they are overrated. The Chinese have never paid that much attention to their own five year plans. I think something like this could be more centrally planned than high-speed rail?
High-speed rail arose in reaction to the global financial crisis, which was outside of the plan. So they built this enormous rail system without even planning for it. Yeah. And so that just shows, it's just this sort of aspirational marketing statement because they have to praise marks on his birthdays and sing the internationale to after the party congresses.
But this is actually not all that serious for, at least for the Chinese. Yeah. And if it's not that serious for the Communist Party, I can't imagine that being serious for anyone else.
Ben: Yeah. Mostly signaling. I think non-Chinese analysts are probably the people who read it the most. Okay.
Dan: It's worth reading.
It's an aspirational document.
Ben: Board games underrated or overrated. Yeah.
Dan: Correctly rated. I believe in the efficient market hypothesis. I think that most things are correctly rated. I
Ben: do.
Dan: And I like board games, but I have, it's been, I think, like years since it's really been part of my life.
I think a couple of board games can be great and perfect, but one doesn't need to keep learning new board games. And so in that sense it's not a very vital industry, just like opera. No, I think that it's good for some nerds. Maybe more people should hang out and play board games.
But people just should just find some way to be more social, whether that's to go to plays or to play some board games or just to go on dates more.
Ben: Yeah. I guess I mentioned it 'cause Silicon Valley doesn't have opera, but it does have more board games. But yeah, maybe correctly rated space exploration.
Underrated, overrated,
Dan: overrated. There's. Basically nothing out there within a reasonable timeframe. It's good to serve as an inspirational device. And I think that, maybe we should go find it. I think it is a scandal that there's very likely life within one of the moons of Jupiter and maybe of Saturn as well.
We're not even really trying that hard to go look for it. Now it's like right here within our solar system. What sorts of Moby Dicks lie within the moons of the Moon of Europa. So why don't we go, why don't we, why don't we go find Moby Dick?
Ben: Yeah. But then we've got a lot of problems on Earth as well, so yeah, I guess there's difficulties on that.
And last one then, venture capital. Do you think overall it's underrated or overrated?
Dan: Incorrectly rated. I think that it has definitely been a major factor in discovering the capital market ecosystem in general. What is venture capital exactly anymore? Maybe these are just marketing agencies with an insurance policy attached.
But I think that the general capital ecosystem has been pretty efficient in the US. But also people love to say that VCs don't work very hard, so maybe they also need to be working a little bit harder.
Ben: Yeah. Okay. That's very good. Yeah, I was interested in financial valuations and BC and the, in your letter you mentioned something you've talked about a little bit for looking at, for instance, the valuation of something like AppLovin, although it's actually fallen quite a lot since you wrote the letter.
Dan: Really?
Ben: And you compare that to something like
Dan:, I hope it wasn't because of me.
Ben: No it, there's been this whole revaluation of what software might mean, I think might even be down about 50% since you last wrote it. Wow. But it's still got a larger market cap than Xiaomi, although not by such an incredible amount or more, or something like BYD is maybe more well known for people in terms of EV makers.
But I was thinking that. When you think about it, maybe if you think about it purely in terms of capturing consumer surplus or wealth for the nation, certainly BYD and Xiaomi are doing better for their respective nations than Afin. But that's maybe what the financial shareholder equity people are looking at is that Apple vendor's better for the equity holders, but isn't adding so much more value to the United States.
And so that's part of this disconnect that we have with the financial market cap thing. And where is the actual value going? I think about this a lot in healthcare because actually within biopharma, a lot of the value actually goes into a. Into people, into patients who live longer and some value goes back to the biopharma, but not as much as you might have thought.
And certainly probably less than in, in tech companies. But that's partly because society demands that they might need to capture more of that value. And I think that's an interesting kind of tension between who, who is really getting the value from that.
What are you working on at the moment? Any current projects or any questions you are obsessed over?
Dan: There's two books on my shelf that I really want to read. One is a history of the Royal Navy, actually by a historian named NAM Rogers. It's called The Price of Victory.
This mega long history book and the Royal Navy has inspired a lot of excellent historians. Another is a novel: Middle March. I'm deficient for being a bad California and not having read George Elliot and I'm also, I've also just picked up Dublin nurse. So I'm starting to read a little bit of the short stories of James' Choice, which are pretty charming and not as difficult as I imagined as something like Ulysses.
Ben: Great. And then the last question for a smart 20 something, deciding where to live and what to learn and what to do, what would be your advice for them?
Dan: I think that it is really important to be with ambitious people. I think that the default is to not be ambitious people. And certainly I've felt that my own ambition has ebbed as I've entered as I've crossed into the wrong side of 30.
Certainly, your ambition will get lower and lower, and so it is a good thing to have when you are younger. And this is, and it seems to me like some very ambitious people are in San Francisco as well as New York City. This is where I am a little bit more glum about London, where.
If the default national culture, it's just this cynicism and cleverness about people who are absent and then there it feels like a country in a national decline, even if London is delightful. I think that it is probably a good thing from a civilizational perspective not to be super cynical all of the time.
And so I have many friends in London. I love visiting. It is a superb city, but maybe it is also good to get some optimism and get some sun.
Ben: Yes. So raise your ambition and surround yourself with great people. I will make one further plea for London, although I do think we are a great museum like the rest of Europe.
Good to visit, but not. I think maybe so percentage wise, like we said, there is some doom and gloom here, but there are. Ambitious young people and then all were young, some are a little bit older and they are forming groups. So there's a big emergent venture cluster here. So this is Tyler Cowen’s venture philanthropy.
You've got British progress, you've got abundance for London. So you have got a cluster of young people who are there. There may be absolute numbers numbering in the hundreds and low thousands as opposed to tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. But I still think you do have it here, partly 'cause of where the agglomeration effects are.
But I do think surrounding yourself, the people you surround yourself with, you tend to go, I think, what's the quote? If you want to run faster, you run with the antelopes. So if you want to be a fast antelope, you run with them some quote like that. That's the idea. And I think that has a lot of truth to that.
Dan: Antelopes may have to run really fast because they're being chased by lions. So I've put more emphasis on the lion rather than the herd. And having a bit more of a sense of threat is important too. And I think it is really good to prepare these lists of ambitions… just in case we have to medevac them into California at some point if the gloom pervades too deeply into their hearts.
Ben: Yes. Although the California's aren't they all going to New Zealand instead? So maybe we'll come round full circle.
Dan: Okay. That's right. Just a global tour of the angles here.
Ben: Yeah. Great. With that, Dan, thank you very much.
Dan: Thank you very much. This was a lot of fun. I'm glad that I got to hear more of your thoughts, especially on place.