I think younger people underestimate how much of the old “work sucks” culture was just literal boredom
You had to be in the office all day and there were long stretches where nothing interesting was happening
No phone to check. No feeds. No remote day. Sometimes barely any internet
You just learned everything about a 52 year old woman named Linda
Mr. Chang gets the political economy of industrialisation backwards.
China didn't industrialise because its business elites were willing to sacrifice returns. It industrialised because the state deliberately distorted the economics in favour of manufacturing cheap directed credit, subsidised land/energy, infrastructure, tax incentives, SOEs, export support and massive investment.
Chinese firms often operated with low/negative economic returns precisely because the state was willing to tolerate misallocation to build productive capacity.
China also had corruption, politically connected businesses and inefficient SOEs. The difference was that the Chinese state could direct capital at scale and force investment despite those incentives.
India's problem wasn't simply “greedy shareholders demanding high ROE.” It was that India historically failed to create the infrastructure, cheap capital, land, labour, export and supplier ecosystem that makes manufacturing commercially attractive.
And R&D is a separate issue: India's low R&D spending is real, but China first industrialised through FDI, technology transfer, imitation, scale and exports, and only later became an R&D powerhouse.
You can't explain India's industrialisation failure by blaming Indian capitalists for wanting returns. China industrialised precisely because its state changed the returns and risks facing capital.
The worst part of tv criticism is how it often privileges mid prestige dramas (that really just want to be movies) over genres inherent to the form, like sitcoms, reality tv, talk shows, etc
Worst experience as a fan. Could’ve won that World Series like 5 different times in that series and somehow it just never went our way. And then with only 2 outs left Hoffman throws a meatball to the one guy who hadn’t gotten a hit in over a month. I genuinely cannot believe it…