Patrick O'Shaughnessy
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Thinking about potential future equilibrium states between the two superpowers, let's just assume these are the two big, important powers.
One of the things that always caught my attention in the U.S., maybe the reason it's become
less interested in global affairs is how self-sufficient it is.
There's actually not a huge percent of the economy that's reliant on the outside.
Pretty self-sufficient in lots of ways in terms of major goods.
Understanding that is one of the future scenarios that these two just sort of exist as separate universes from each other.
Is that one?
What are the other equilibrium states that you could imagine 20 years from now, 30 years from now between the two countries?
has.
The factory story, the retooling to make masks and cotton swabs, it's a very high agency thing.
Which society do you think is higher agency?
We haven't talked at all about the lawyerly tendencies of U.S.
society.
You talk about engineering in China and the U.S.
being run by lawyers.
What are the pros and cons of that very different orientation?
It reminds me of this idea that if you study Eastern portraiture versus Western, in the West, almost all of them are your face is most of the canvas, whereas in the East, often the portraiture is a small person amidst a bigger landscape and quite representative of the two different styles.
I'm curious, just for a side quest for a minute, if you had to write a sequel to the book about a country that's not the U.S.
or China, what next country you would be most interested in writing about and why?
The USSR collapsed at the end of the Cold War.