
How to Get Rich (1999) - oldgun
https://www.edge.org/conversation/how-to-get-rich
======
cimmanom
This article discusses German beer production and Japanese milk production as
being less efficient than their equivalent industries in the US as a result of
legal and cultural factors (Germans liking local beer, Japanese emphasizing
freshness).

It seems to suggest that more efficient industries would be more desirable;
but I’d argue that freshness and variety are more important than efficiency in
many regards.

(I also say this as someone whose dominant regional milk distributor often
distributes milk that’s already sour when opened minutes after purchase a week
before the sell-by date, probably because it’s more “efficient” to produce
milk a full day’s drive from a factory that’s a full day’s drive from the
city; and more “efficient” not to clean their equipment thoroughly. Since few
stores here carry any other brands of “normal” milk, I’ve had to start buying
a more expensive “organic” brand just to get reliably drinkable milk; but
plenty of people can’t afford that.)

~~~
isk517
In terms of beers I think a lot has changed in the US compared to 1999 when
this was written. Craft beers have become big enough business that the
established brands cannot ignore them because there is a growing amount of
consumers that are choosing quality of efficiency.

~~~
code_duck
Sure, but just like in so many other industries, what the bigger corporations
do is buy the largest small brands and then ruin everything about them that
made them good.

They also invent pseudo-craft brands that dilute the market and practically
mock the entire idea of craft beer by being low quality, mass produced,
nationally marketed and corporate backed. It’s noteable how subtly off their
packaging and marketing is when they do this. If they understood the product
they would have made it in the first place.

The way these companies are not corporate controlled are an integral part of
the quality of their product and experience. People passionate and
knowledgeable about the product are making decisions at every step, not MBAs.
I’d compare it to game studios, or especially music. When a brewery like a
Goose Island gets acquired by a major brewer, it’s like they have sold out,
similar to when a underground band grows and gets signed by an major label.
They lose relevance for true aficionados as the quality predictably decreases
along with any feeling of exclusivity.

~~~
nightski
Meh. I've had great beer from pseudo-craft brands and awful beer from small
independent craft breweries. I also haven't seen this effect at all. Have some
nice craft breweries been bought out? Yes. But we still have over 80 craft
breweries in our metro area alone and we are far from the largest city in the
U.S. The options for great beer are endless.

~~~
stcredzero
_Meh. I 've had great beer from pseudo-craft brands and awful beer from small
independent craft breweries._

I know for a fact that some independent craft brewers make an IPA, even though
the brew master doesn't like them. It's obligatory.

Some of this is on the knowledge and standards of the consumer. My experience
with espresso in Tuscany in the 2000's, was that even ordinary corner store
espresso there was better than fancy espresso in most places in the US. Why?
Simply because the population in Tuscany has higher expectations.

------
swingline-747
_Guns, Germs, and Steel_ is a really good book. Two hospital MD's
independently stopped me at gym to say "that's one of the best books I've ever
read." And the department chair where I worked exclaimed similarly.

Another hypothesis I would posit about the evolution of world powers is that
WWII Axis members later reached population maximums and declines _before_
Allied powers, and that that somehow shaped their political and situational
values to align them together. It's not obvious until you see population
graphs of Japan, Italy and other Axis countries are nearly all in population
decline unless other unqiue factors like immigration bolster their numbers.

~~~
village-idiot
Never mention that to an anthropologist, they _hate_ that book because it’s
largely incorrect.

~~~
ItsMe000001
I've read the book and every criticism of it that I came across, much of it
here on HN. Because I could not care less who is right, I have no emotional
beef on either side, I'm just a mildly interested bystander (nothing in my
life is affected by any of it).

However, every criticism I read felt... thin. It felt like many reddit comment
replies - you post something that you happen to actually know a lot about, but
any human communication requires the other side to work with you. Human
information exchange is not like computer data exchange, not even close. Lots
of ambiguity, lots and lots of unmentioned context, lots of other stuff I
could not even name. Those reddit replies I mentioned, it's things like -
always hard to come up with a concrete example - I think I'll just point to
Dilbert:

\- [http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-07-08](http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-07-08)
(quite a bit of the criticism was like that, I could not match them to the
book that I had read at all)

\- [http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07](http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07)

Also, as another commenter pointed out, the criticism focuses on the tree and
misses the forest. I have yet to see something that lets me conclude anything
even close to your statement.

Also, many - MANY - or, actually, all models are wrong. That's not just some
stupid meme. Every single model is "wrong". When you go through learning
chemistry, for example, at every new step you learn "oh and by the way what we
taught you two years ago is completely wrong". Question is, is it useful? What
is the alternative believe that you work with if that book was never written?
Note the target audience - just like a Ph.D. chemist will find the models
learned in high school useless so will actual anthropologists probably find a
book targeted at the masses useless. The question is, what ideas in the heads
of the people did the book replace, and what is the alternative? If it's so
easy, someone just write a better book and we'll gladly read it and forget
about Guns, Germs and Steel.

I have and ever had any doubts that it's all a lot more complicated and
different than described in one popular book. It's the same everywhere: the
closer you look, the more insane the theories of/for those who don't look
closely seem to be.

~~~
village-idiot
I literally have no idea what the point of this comment was. It's too rambling
to actually come up with a coherent response to.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
He's asking for you (or someone) to say _how_ the book is wrong, in a way that
deals with the substance of the claims of the book, rather than just with a
few specifics.

------
quadcore
Oh actually, it's giving me an idea. Someone should try to setup two teams,
each supposed to develop the same software on its own. The two teams can speak
to each other, they can see the other team code, but they can't merge into one
team. I bet the resulting software (the best of the two software) could be
significantly better than with one team. (at some point one the team could be
instructed to copy the other team's software and work from there for another
competition cycle)

~~~
anotheryou
Isn't that kinda what happens with many open source projects :) ?

\- Libre/Open Office

\- Pentadactyl/Vimperator

\- Nextcloud/Owncloud

~~~
quadcore
I was actually thinking about it as a methodology. Twice the cost, but I bet
the gain could be big.

------
mpax
On a tangent, the Mixed Mental Arts podcast episode with Diamond is _very_
entertaining.

They also interviewed Peter Turchin, who proposes an alternative vision to why
certain nations succeed, namely multi-level selection (aka group selection)
which I find just as interesting. Diamond seems pretty controversial among
anthropologists, likewise multilevel selection is topic of debate among
evolutionists. I don’t know enough myself to make an informed judgement in
these matters.

