Julia Steinberg reviews Dan Wang's Breakneck: the US is a lawyerly society, China an engineering one

six months, um the uh the stock has just been smoothly climbing upwards. Um anyway, we have our next guest, Julia Steinberg, in the studio. Welcome. How you doing? Welcome back. Hello. I am doing well.

I was thinking about wearing like a little hat that said Chinese Communist Party on it to, you know, establish what I was talking about. Yes. But unfortunately, I came up with this idea 20 minutes ago.

And because I am dealing with California infrastructure and not China infrastructure, I could not get it delivered to my house in time. Yeah. You are you driving from LA to SF or vice versa? Where are you going? Yeah. So, uh, this this may be a bit TMI for the good listeners of TBPN, but I was rearended a few weeks ago.

So, my car has since been fixed, but I must drive it up to San Francisco. And I it's actually sort of thinking about with the drive north. It's a lot of what Dan Wayne talks about in breakneck is sort of like, look, China's able to build these good things.

And I was thinking about I'm like, why do we not have a functioning highway for Highway One? Yeah. Why? like PCH, Pacific Coast Highway. It's one of the most iconic American landmarks. Yeah. One of my favorites. Personally, it's ridiculous that it shouldn't work. And I tweeted it just sort of out of frustration.

Like, I'm really frustrated that I have to, you know, do this ugly, annoying drive where my car is going to smell like cow [ __ ] for 6 hours rather than see the beauty of my favorite thing. As a kid, my my parents, we'd be on a road trip. My parents would say like, "Okay, we're going through the the the cow zone.

We're that big cattle ranch. " Yeah. You have to turn on the recirculating. And I was I would just be like, "I'm hitting the window down. " And I would I if I were my child, you would have been like booted out of the car window at that point. Um I was surprised.

Uh so PCH between Malibu and LA was shut down after the fires for a while and then it was open to like specific uh people based on your address and then it got actually open pretty quickly and I think that was probably nuome knowing that like this stretch of PCH is like critical to my popularity in the state because there's just a lot I mean for for no reason other and celebrities drive on that route and if they're and if he doesn't get it open so it was open ahead of schedule.

He was taking a victory lap of like the one is not really critical to many people's commutes. It's more of the Well, especially up by It's Big Su that's shut down, right? Yeah, Big Su. So, I can drive from San Francisco or however far north on the one to Big Su, but I can't.

The sort of Cambria region is cut off that sort of it fell into the ocean. And a lot of people on Twitter were sort of I wasn't expecting the tweet to blow up, but people on Twitter were like, "How can this like girl expect mother nature to want this freeway here? " I was like, "This is absurd.

Like, we've sent men to the moon. we can't have a bridge. Like I'm not a structural engineer, but Dan Wang in his book Breakneck, he was like, "Oh yeah, the Chinese government has built x amount of like the bridges like the top 10 some of the biggest bridges in the world in this like record short amount of time.

" And it's it's frustrating to me that we can't do that. We somehow is admitting that like as a civilization, we're just going to let the mudslides win. Yeah. Here's the solution. If you want one the highway one to open, you got to put a Harris Ranch out there because that's the highlight of I5.

You stop for the A5 Wagu ribeye. You get a big steak at Harris Ranch. This was the highlight of my trips up and down. Harris Ranch is the really smelly ranch. That's the really smelly one. It's I didn't realize you can pull over and get a meal. Oh yeah, I didn't realize that either.

Oh, you're not doing the five correctly then. Yeah. When you're driving from LA to San Francisco, you uh run out of gas halfway because you're driving a terrible car. This is my experience in like 2012. Um and you always stop at Harris Ranch. You get a big steak and it's fantastic.

Yeah, I think most people are are flying by. The other alternative that is actually scenic and nice is there even though we don't have a high-speed train. We do have a train that goes through it takes 24 hours. Like it just takes skill issue. Get a book. I thought you were I thought you were into books.

You're the GM of books. I do like books. the general manager. I like being able to read books while I'm not in a moving vehicle. Oh, it's so nice. This is one of my more controversial book takes is I like being sitting still. Okay. When I'm reading a book, planes are fine. I can read many books on planes.

I've read many books on planes. Okay. Well, speaking of books, take us through your review of Dan Wang's book. Yeah. So, I sort of was introduced to Dan Wang about a year ago.

I was actually on the five listening to one of his articles put through some voice reader technology um how technology grows which is how I first got acquainted with the ideas of process knowledge which is basically that engineering requires a great deal of like verbal uh transmission from one person to another or sort of one like elder me uh elder mentor to a mentee in the United States we've like lost a good deal of that process knowledge in how to make things because we've offshored it to China.

Yep. And Dan Wang really in and breakneck does a really a fantastic job of describing how these communities of engineering have maintained this process knowledge, this ability to build things which in the United States we've just voluntarily shrugged off and lost.

He I would say like the big idea if you're going into the Atlantic, this is the exert they chose was that rather than thinking of the United States and China as a capitalist society versus a communist one or a socialist one, we should think of the United States as a lawyerly society and China as an engineering society.

So in the United States, a lot of our elites go to top law schools. You know, Supreme Court clerkship, one of the most prestigious things you can get. Uh maybe even Supreme Court is one of the most prestigious positions you can get. Whereas in China, the pilot bureau is made out of engineers first and foremost.

Uh I think Cinping doesn't have that big of an engineering background, but pretty much most people in the pallet bureau do. And in the United States, when we focus around rules and regulations, what's getting us from point A and point B is like, well, what is this going to look like?

Is this going to violate people's rights? Can we do this? In China, it's get from point A to point B. It's like, okay, how do we do this? And building something from the ground up. Yeah.

I was listening to Casey Hanmer on Door Cash and he was talking about how like he's trying to install solar panels in the desert and he needs to get some like environmental report that says that like if he puts a solar panel over it, it'll kill this tuft of grass that like a bird might come and eat.

Meanwhile, like if he was building like a chemical plant, it would be like fine because like like the chemical lobbies have like lobbyed to like get it make it easy. And so it's just like nonsense. But my my question is um the the the the engineering uh what what's the phrase he uses? Engineer engineering society.

Engineering society and lawyerly society, right? Um engineering empire or something. Uh so I I understand that and it's very it's very alluring like I like engineering more than I like lawyer lawyers I suppose. Um but my prior my prior is that America is number one and America's the best. Oh.

Uh, should we really try and change horses in the middle of a stream here? Maybe the beauty of America is that we have so many lawyers, uh, keeping us great. What do you think? Well, my my dad, who's probably watching right now, is a lawyer. So, shout out to the lawyers keeping America great.

But, I guess the bigger question is like, is there a world where where we say, "Okay, let's let's try and pivot from lawyerly society to more engineering focused.

we get halfway there and and we actually are worse off because you want to just like lawyer max or engineer max and if you're if you're halfway in between it's just a nightmare. I don't know.

Well, how I view it is that the United States is very good at engineering maxing in the private market whereas China is very good at engineering maxing just having the state do it. You know, Chinese Communist Party. Well, both is there both but the state capacity for engineering the state capacity is a lot bigger.

But it's also like this is my biggest issue with breakneck is that it it was just like way too keynian.

It was like oh it's so great that the government is you know basically getting these people in the middle of nowhere in China to dig holes and by dig holes I'm sort of exaggerating a bit but it's digging these bridges that no one is going to use or these airports in the middle of nowhere that have fewer than half a dozen flights a week.

Like I just don't think that's a good use of market resources there.

It's it's a sort of interesting question that Wing raises though I don't think he says it straight up is like is capitalism even a useful sort of metric in the 21st century and I would say absolutely but we need to prove that in the United States by doubling down on free markets.

Free markets could bring us great things like a beautiful bridge uh that would make PCH work. I I'm a huge believer in market incentives.

I think the issue that Wang sort of highlights though when he talks about siege and paying not wanting like a services economy is just that in the United States maybe the culture is a bit broken where our best minds want to do I don't know like B2B SAS rather than building bridges or building nuclear power plants or other infrastructure.

I do think the sort of culture is changing a bit. We're returning a bit to wanting physical manifestations of American excellence that it's not just my app is like 0. 02% more productive than your app in delivering an AI girlfriend.

But I think that overall what Wang talks about in China's sort of engineering society, it it mixes two it conflates two things. It conflates engineering and it conflates culture.

And when the government is in charge of culture and they can say everyone from this district should want to be a guitar manufacturer which is true in one of the districts in the book that he talks about which makes guitars which is pretty random considering that there's not really a historic guitar industry in this city uh in Gujo.

It's just something that they sort of was like we're just going to make guitars here and it happened and they got very good at it. Mhm. But with the United States, culture is a lot more organic. It's harder for the United States to say, "We're going to make this value really well adopted.

" And this is something that's sort of bad about China, too. And uh Dan Wang talked a lot about the one child policy in China. He talked a lot about zero COVID in China where people John presented the multiple children policy, the three have three kids policy, and Dan rejected that roundly. Got destroyed.

I I like the three kids policy. I think I think it's a I think it's a good policy. They have the money, there's incentives, and and if you if you really really tilt the field the playing field in the favor of having more kids, like people will have more kids. I agree.

And it's like talking, of course, you know, I have to bring up Tavis, uh the engagement that happened yesterday. I was talking to my boyfriend at the end of the day and I was like, Jake, like I I have to tell you something, but you're not going to be interested in this at all. Okay.

And he was like, "Oh my god, like what did she do this time? Like did she get another car accident? " And I was like, "Pravis and Taylor got engaged. " He's like, "I don't know who those people are. " And also like I'm really not interested in that.

He doesn't read the Wall Street Journal because Taylor Come on, you guys need to write something about Taylor wrote a 2014 oped about Spotify about from that. Also, I want to know the I want to know what this engagement means for America. It's a good question from from Arena from you guys.

But it's like this it's one of the weird things. It's like a Taylor Swift baby boom. Like how China is it's not who's a Chinese pop star who's going to get pregnant from a football player and have kids. I don't know. That's a good question. We'll have to get to the bottom.

I do think there should be a Taylor Swift Orchid collab. You know, she's on the older side. I hope she has many kids. Orchid could be a sponsor, you know, there and having D1 athlete that's also world famous superstar kids. That's true.

I mean, they're they're certainly they don't shy away from uh the economic opportunities associated with their um with their announcements. That's for sure.

No, but I but I do really think that the the Tavis sort of engagement announcement, the the royal wedding that will happen in a few years, like I unironically do think this will cause a baby boom. Um because pe people are very mimedic, women are very mimetic and if number one pop star has kids, they found the answer.

Jackie Chan, born in Hong Kong, has two children. That's the answer. We just need to promote Jackie Chan's children in China. That will cause the boom. Well, maybe the thing with Nepo babies, like Nepo, the sort of like weird take on Nepo babies is that we need to have more Nepo babies and just the [ __ ] out of them.

So it's like your kids, if you are successful, your kids will be successful, too. Yeah. Because the line about kids now is like, "Oh, if you have kids, especially if you have kids young, they'll draw away from your success. " Yeah.

But if I'm like, "Oh, my child is heritably going to be like a kung fu superstar because I am a kung fu superstar. I totally have kids. " Force them to do that. I mean, that certainly happens in Hollywood. There's a ton of celebrities that have had that have kids.

I mean John David Washington uh is Danzel's son uh played football and then was in Ballers I believe and tenant. I I have a sort of funny story about that.

I grew up in LA and I was on the debate team at my high school and there was a lot of sort of overlap between girls who wanted to do the debate team and girls who wanted to do the school play.

And this one girl whose parents were both very very famous like super A+ list actors was deciding between doing the debate doing the debate team and doing the school play.

And our debate coach, he said to me, he's like, "Well, it's usually pretty easy to convince them that they're not going to have a famous career as an actor and they're a lot more likely to become a successful lawyer. But if both of your parents have stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, then that's a lot less likely.

" Makes sense. Sorry, I'm prepping a chart. Jordan, you have anything else? Chart for what? Our next guest. Oh, who's in the ream waiting room? Sorry. We've been keeping It's always great to see you. We got to come on more often.

Yes, we should have scheduled more time, but we have we have someone else in the waiting room, so I'm Well, next time I expect a custom chart to be pulled up. Next time you're in LA, come do the show in person. That I said I said I'm here. Okay, fantastic. Fix the car, drive over the accident. Yes. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Always great to catch up.