The question for the United States is what is the best strategy? Is it to go big? To go with a global scale? This has been a thread throughout US history for at least the last 100 years. There was a sense that the US should always operate on an even bigger scale. [21:17]
In some sense, this [to lean into the bigness of the country and go even bigger] was a very good strategy for the US. But I think there are ways we need to update this in the world of 2019. It [the reason] is shaped by the rivalry with China. [22:16]
When you have a rival that is also big, simple bigness is not necessarily the right strategy. [22:47]
The four vectors of globalization:
1) Movement of goods.
2) Movement of people.
3) Movement of capital.
4) Movement of ideas.
[In the past] It made sense for the US to lean into all four because we would get outside returns due to scale. Today the US has a powerful advantage in two of these. Finance and the Internet. [22:50]
In the 1950s the CEO of General Motors could still say what is good for GM is good for America. It would be inconceivable today for the CEO of Goldman Sachs or Google to say the same. [23:50]
It is striking how much better China is at moving goods and people than we are. China has had the greatest internal migration of any country in the last 30 years. Shenzhen had 60,000 people in 1980. It has 12 million today. [24:55]
The US can scale finance and tech. We are really bad at scaling people. [25:29]
There is an urgent need to rethink all of these scale questions. To think about where we can be good and where it will be much more challenging. [25:54]
I would say that perhaps we have to switch from quantity to quality. This means back to innovation. Back to intensive growth. Not just doing more of the same. [28:00]
The United States needs to settle for greatness. [31:20]
Full video here: Peter Thiel delivers the 2019 Wriston Lecture: The End of the Computer Age
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