This is a map of primary trading partners, US vs China, and how it has evolved over the last 20 years. Think about it, and realize this probably reflects your experience.
这是一个关于主要贸易伙伴的地图，美国与中国，以及它在过去 20 年中的演变。想一想，这可能反映了你的经验。

I know there was a similar panic about Japan in the 80s, but Japan by population has always been 3x smaller than the US, whereas China is 3x larger. In addition, we had and have military bases in Japan. This is not the same situation.
我知道在 80 年代曾对日本产生过类似的恐慌，但日本的人口一直是美国的三分之一，而中国的人口是美国的三倍。此外，我们在日本有并且仍然有军事基地。这不是同样的情况。

The US, since I have been born, has been coasting. The main product made by the US is the dollar, and it used those manufactured dollars to outsource everything. Most jobs in the US are now basically fake. It’s an economy in which five people stick a pipe in the ground, but that pipe is the fed and the oil was the good will built up over 1870-1970.
自我出生以来，美国一直在混日子。美国的主要产品是美元，它用这些制造出来的美元将一切外包出去。现在美国的大多数工作基本上都是虚假的。这是一种经济模式，其中五个人将一根管子插入地面，但那根管子是美联储，而石油则是 1870 年至 1970 年间积累的良好意愿。

In 2008, with the bailouts, it was made clear that the US has no interest in reform. The next decade, in perhaps a spitting in your face move, the fed made the interest rate 0.
2008 年，在救助计划中，明确表明美国对改革没有兴趣。在接下来的十年里，美联储采取了一个或许是对你脸面撒唾沫的举动，将利率降至 0。

Known as ZIRP, this had never been done before. This led to insane perversions. When I got into business, I didn’t understand that business in America was mostly a total scam. Sure, you might look at a single business, and be like, oh, that sounds reasonable, but then you zoom out and look at the entire system, and it doesn’t really make sense. It’s scams feeding other scams.
被称为 ZIRP，这在历史上从未有过。这导致了疯狂的扭曲。当我进入商业时，我没有意识到美国的商业大多数是一个完全的骗局。当然，你可能会看一个单独的企业，觉得，哦，这听起来合理，但当你放大视野，看整个系统时，它其实并不成立。这是骗局滋生其他骗局。

Wanna each start a business, pass dollars back and forth over and over again, and drive both our revenues super high? Sure, we don’t produce anything, but we have companies with high revenues and we can raise money based on those revenues. We’ll both be rich!
想要每个人都开始一项业务，一次又一次地互相传递资金，并将我们的收入都推高吗？当然，我们不生产任何东西，但我们有高收入的公司，并且可以基于这些收入筹集资金。我们都将变得富有！

Let’s do it with a bunch of extra steps so people don’t catch on though. They’ll only see it reflected in the lack of movement of real macro metrics.
不过我们还是加一堆额外步骤，这样人们就不会发现了。他们只会在真正的宏观指标缺乏变动中看到反映。

You see, the US is a “developed” country, which means real growth is over?
你看，美国是一个“发达”国家，这意味着真实的增长已经结束了吗？

You do understand that guns and boats are made of steel, right? Oh, airplanes aren’t, they are made of aluminum. Oh…right, yea, it’s not just steel it is absolutely everything.
你明白枪和船是用钢铁制造的，对吧？哦，飞机不是，它们是用铝制造的。哦……对了，是的，不只是钢铁，实际上是所有东西。

The future is chips you say? All the good chips are made in the Republic of China you say?
未来是芯片，你这么说？所有好的芯片都是在中华民国制造的，你这么说？


This 2021 article lays it out clearly, and it also explains why nothing I saw in Silicon Valley made any sense. I’m not going to go into the personal stories, but I just had an underlying assumption that the goal was growth and value production. It isn’t. It’s self licking ice cream cone scams, and any growth or value is incidental to that. It isn’t until you understand this that people’s behavior starts to make sense.
这篇 2021 年的文章清晰地阐明了这一点，同时也解释了我在硅谷看到的事情为何毫无意义。我不打算深入个人故事，但我曾有一个潜在的假设，那就是目标是增长和价值生产。但事实并非如此。这是自我舔舐的雪糕筒骗局，任何增长或价值都是附带的。只有你理解这一点之后，人们的行为才开始变得有意义。

America really is at a fork in the road. In one world, they abandon all hopes of being an empire, becoming a regional power with highly protectionist economics. This happened before, and it’s called Europe. I know it’s hard to believe now, but Europe used to be the seat of power for the whole world. The sun never set on the British empire. Now they put you in jail for memes.
美国的确处在一个十字路口。在一个世界里，他们放弃了成为帝国的所有希望，变成一个具有高度保护主义经济的地区强国。这个情况以前出现过，那就叫做欧洲。我知道现在很难相信，但欧洲曾是整个世界的权力中心。大英帝国的太阳从未落下。如今，他们因为恶搞图片把你关进监狱。

Protectionist America is a boring place and not somewhere I want to be. It kicks the can further down the road of poverty, basically embraces socialism, is stagnant, is stale, is a museum…etc, again there’s a contemporary example of this.
保护主义的美国是一个无聊的地方，我不想待在这里。它只是将贫困问题推得更远，基本上拥抱社会主义，停滞不前，乏善可陈，就像一个博物馆……等等，这里有一个现代的例子。

When I said on Lex they were gonna nationalize NVIDIA, look at the AI Diffusion Framework, and notice how Trump hasn’t repealed it. It allows export of GPUs to only 18 countries. Nationalization with American characteristics.
当我在 Lex 上说他们要国有化 NVIDIA 时，看看 AI 扩散框架，并注意特朗普并没有废除它。它只允许向 18 个国家出口 GPU。这是具有美国特点的国有化。

It tells the other 177 countries that they should plan on purchasing their AI infrastructure from China.
它告诉其他 177 个国家，他们应该计划从中国购买人工智能基础设施。


The other path, which is the exciting path, is the attempt to maintain an empire. An empire has to compete on its merits. There’s two simple steps to restore American greatness:
另一个路线，也就是令人兴奋的路线，是试图维持一个帝国。一个帝国必须凭借其优点进行竞争。恢复美国伟大的有两个简单步骤：

1) Brain drain the world. Work visas for every person who can produce more than they consume. I’m talking doubling the US population, bringing in all the factory workers, farmers, miners, engineers, literally anyone who produces value. Can we raise the average IQ of America to be higher than China?
1) 人才流失到世界各地。为每一个能创造价值的人发放工作签证。我说的是将美国人口翻倍，引入所有的工厂工人、农民、矿工、工程师，字面上说任何创造价值的人。我们能不能将美国的平均智商提高到高于中国的水平？

2) Back the dollar by gold (not socially constructed crypto), and bring major crackdowns to finance to tie it to real world value. Trading is not a job. Passive income is not a thing. Instead, go produce something real and exchange it for gold.
将美元以黄金为支持（而非社会构建的加密货币），并对金融进行重大打击，将其与现实世界的价值联系起来。交易不是一份工作。被动收入并不存在。相反，去生产一些实物，并用它交换黄金。

The first will bring the value of “American” labor in line with its global market value. It is a particularly unique advantage of the US over China, the US has a potentially much larger pool of talent. Non ironically, diversity is our strength. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of resistance to American labor finding its market value.
第一项将使“美国”劳动的价值与其全球市场价值相一致。美国相较于中国具有独特的优势，其潜在的人才库要大得多。毫不讽刺地说，多样性是我们的优势。不幸的是，美国劳动找到其市场价值的过程中存在很大的阻力。

The second will prevent a lot of the scams. The reason the banking industry is so big is that it is close to the source of the made up dollars. If currency is gold backed, you could imagine something similar happening to the mining industry instead. However, the mining industry is real! It uses steel and aluminum to build physical things. And imagine when we start to mine space. That’s a way better reward function than scamming politicians out of fake dollars.
第二个将防止许多诈骗。银行业之所以如此庞大，是因为它靠近虚构美元的源头。如果货币是以黄金为基础的，你可以想象类似的事情会发生在采矿行业。不过，采矿行业是真实的！它使用钢铁和铝来建造实际的东西。想象一下，当我们开始开采太空时。这比骗取政治家的虚假美元要好得多。

Unfortunately, I doubt either will happen. They very much both can, but people haven’t been demoralized enough yet.
不幸的是，我怀疑这两者将会发生。它们确实都可以，但人们还没有完全失去士气。