30 Days, 8 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

Peter Thiel recently did an interview with the Free Press about his 2020 email to Mark Zuckerberg.

彼得·蒂尔 (Peter Thiel) 最近接受了《自由报》采访，谈论了他在 2020 年给马克·扎克伯格 (Mark Zuckerberg) 发的电子邮件。

The title of the piece is “Capitalism isn’t Working for Young People 1 ”.

这篇文章的标题是《资本主义不适合年轻人1》。

He has benefited from capitalism more than almost anyone alive.

他从资本主义中受益最多，几乎比任何活着的人都多。

If he admits something has failed, we need to pay attention to it.

如果他承认某件事失败了，我们就需要注意。

It echoes something I’ve heard everywhere this year: people feel like the system isn’t working for them anymore.

这与我今年在各地听到的一句话相呼应：人们感觉这个系统不再适合他们了。

Housing, student debt, AI, trust in institutions - all of it is converging into a very real sense that prosperity has gone missing.

住房、学生债务、人工智能、对机构的信任——所有这些都汇聚成一种非常真实的感觉：繁荣已经消失。

So I spent 30 days on the road to see what prosperity looks like up close.

于是我花了30天的时间在路上，近距离看看繁荣是什么样子。

DC, Berkeley, Baltimore, New Hampshire, New York, two cities in Florida, then Prague and Kilkenny, Ireland.

华盛顿特区、伯克利、巴尔的摩、新罕布什尔州、纽约州、佛罗里达州的两个城市，然后是布拉格和爱尔兰的基尔肯尼。

The same theme surfaced: people don’t feel the prosperity that’s supposedly surrounding them.

同样的主题也出现了：人们感觉不到周围的繁荣。

They feel the physical friction.

他们感受到身体的摩擦。

What became clear almost immediately is that the prosperity is real, it’s just not showing up in the places people actually live.

几乎立刻就清楚的是，繁荣是真实的，只是没有出现在人们实际居住的地方。

It exists in balance sheets, in stock portfolios, in data centers behind chain-link fences.

它存在于资产负债表、股票投资组合、铁丝网后面的数据中心中。

But in daily life like in commutes, in childcare costs, in housing, in safety, in community, people are feeling decay.

但在日常生活中，比如通勤、儿童保育费用、住房、安全、社区，人们感到衰退。

I kept running into the same contradiction: a wealthy country where everything visible seems to be slowly breaking while everything invisible keeps getting richer.

我不断遇到同样的矛盾：一个富裕的国家，一切看得见的东西似乎都在慢慢崩溃，而一切看不见的东西却不断变得更加富裕。

That tension shows up everywhere, even in the way people talk about politics and culture.

这种紧张关系随处可见，甚至在人们谈论政治和文化的方式中也是如此。

Thiel ties the broader culture war to economics - the rise of the groyper, angry young men 2 , as detailed by Rod Dreher , is rooted in the economy.

蒂尔将更广泛的文化战争与经济联系起来——正如罗德·德雷尔（Rod Dreher）详细描述的那样，猥亵者、愤怒的年轻人 2 的崛起植根于经济。

As Rob writes:

正如罗布所写：

I asked one astute Zoomer what the Groypers actually wanted (meaning, what were their demands).

我问一位精明的 Zoomer，Groypers 到底想要什么（也就是说，他们的要求是什么）。

He said, “They don’t have any.

他说：“他们没有。

They just want to tear everything down.” […] The problems are mostly economic and material, in his view (and this is something echoed by other conversations).

他们只是想毁掉一切。” [……]在他看来，问题主要是经济和物质方面的（其他谈话也呼应了这一点）。

They don’t have good career prospects, they’ll probably never be able to buy a home, many are heavily indebted with student loans that they were advised by authorities to take out, and the idea that they are likely to marry and start families seems increasingly remote.

他们没有良好的职业前景，可能永远买不起房，许多人背负着当局建议他们申请的学生贷款，而且他们结婚成家的想法似乎越来越遥远。

I’ve written about the economic situation facing young people before .

我之前写过关于年轻人面临的经济状况的文章。

It does seem like same cluster of things: housing costs and the American Dream, the way social media turns everyone into a comparison engine, and the tech industry’s constant threat that you’re about to be replaced by an AI robot cyborg.

这看起来确实是同一组事情：住房成本和美国梦，社交媒体将每个人变成比较引擎的方式，以及科技行业不断威胁你将被人工智能机器人取代。

Demographic shifts too - Americans aged 70 and older own almost 40% of all stocks in the US and t hose 55 and older own over half of all homes .

人口结构也发生了变化——70 岁及以上的美国人拥有全美近 40% 的股票，55 岁及以上的美国人拥有全美一半以上的房屋。

It’s invisible prosperity and visible decay.

这是看不见的繁荣和看得见的衰退。

If you’re making decent money but your boss keeps hinting that AI might replace your job, and you can’t afford to buy a house in the city where you work, and the train you take doesn’t run on time (or you’re in 55 minutes of traffic or the bus never shows up or you feel unsafe or without community - you get it), you’re not going to feel prosperous.

如果你赚了可观的钱，但你的老板一直暗示人工智能可能会取代你的工作，你买不起你工作的城市的房子，你乘坐的火车不准时运行（或者你遇到 55 分钟的交通堵塞，或者公共汽车永远不会出现，或者你感到不安全或没有社区 - 你明白的），你不会感到繁荣。

You’re going to feel like you’re treading water in a system that’s slowly giving up on you.

你会感觉自己在一个慢慢放弃你的系统中原地踏步。

James Madison called institutional safeguards “auxiliary precautions” - backup systems for when civic virtue failed.

詹姆斯·麦迪逊将制度保障称为“辅助预防措施”——当公民道德失效时的备用系统。

But auxiliary systems only work if you can see them - if they’re trusted and functional.

但辅助系统只有在你能看到它们的情况下才能发挥作用——如果它们是值得信赖的且功能齐全的。

What happens when those safeguards themselves become invisible?

当这些保障措施本身变得不可见时会发生什么？

When wealth compounds in hidden ways, in dark data centers, in algorithmic feeds, while the visible world like housing, transit, safety, community…

当财富以隐藏的方式、在黑暗的数据中心、在算法源中复合时，而在可见的世界，如住房、交通、安全、社区……

cracks?

裂缝？

Everywhere I went, people were trying to repair something - sometimes literal infrastructure, sometimes something more abstract like a sense of purpose or a reason to believe the future might accommodate them.

无论我走到哪里，人们都在试图修复一些东西——有时是字面上的基础设施，有时是更抽象的东西，比如目的感或相信未来可能容纳他们的理由。

This is what I learned.

这是我学到的。

This is a reader-supported publication.

这是一本由读者支持的出版物。

To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

要接收新帖子并支持我的工作，请考虑成为付费订阅者。

When I landed in DC, the first thing I saw was the National Guard by Union Station, with their tanks parked in front of marble columns, while a man in a clown costume filmed them.

当我降落在华盛顿时，我首先看到的是联合车站旁的国民警卫队，他们的坦克停在大理石柱前，而一个穿着小丑服装的男人正在拍摄他们。

Power as performance, threat as theater, all filmed by the iPhone 17.

权力即表演，威胁即戏剧，这一切都是由 iPhone 17 拍摄的。

I was there for a Brookings conference on AI and work.

我参加了布鲁金斯学会关于人工智能和工作的会议。

Senator Chris Murphy opened with a warning about AI psychosis, t he blurring line between real and synthetic life.

参议员克里斯·墨菲 (Chris Murphy) 在开场就对人工智能精神病提出了警告，即现实生活与合成生活之间的界限变得模糊。

We’ve beta-tested a cognitive experiment on an entire generation without asking for permission: first social media, now AI.

我们在没有征求许可的情况下对整整一代人进行了认知实验的 Beta 测试：首先是社交媒体，现在是人工智能。

An unregulated behavioral test run by private companies at national scale.

由私营公司在全国范围内进行的不受监管的行为测试。

But there is increasing pushback - the villain in Toy Story 5 is an iPad , and I imagine that’s going to be the beginning of a cultural shift.

但阻力也越来越大——《玩具总动员 5》中的反派是 iPad，我想这将是文化转变的开始。

There are also ways to reorient this.

还有一些方法可以重新调整方向。

Tim Wu has a good piece in the NYT on how we can rightsize the very concentrated tech platform-extraction model (Meta makes 10% of its revenue from ads for scams , for example), writing:

Tim Wu 在《纽约时报》上发表了一篇很好的文章，介绍了我们如何调整非常集中的技术平台提取模型的规模（例如，Meta 的 10% 收入来自诈骗广告），他写道：

An entire generation has grown up thinking that extraction, as opposed to building, is the path to riches […] To recover the sense of optimism and opportunity that once characterized American commerce, Americans need to be confident that — even if they don’t work for a platform — they can reap what they sow.

整整一代人在成长过程中都认为，与建设相反，开采才是致富之路……为了恢复美国商业曾经特有的乐观和机遇感，美国人需要相信——即使他们不为某个平台工作——他们也能收获自己所播种的果实。

Ann Manov captures what this extraction economy feels like in a recent piece :

安·马诺夫 (Ann Manov) 在最近的一篇文章中描述了这种开采经济的感受：

The most humiliating aspect of being alive today, I suppose, is feeling like one is living through a single, unending commercial break.

我认为，当今生活中最丢脸的事情就是感觉自己正在经历一次单一的、无休止的广告中断。

As the human race disintegrates into increasingly atomized particles of recluses and rejects, one can only “stay in touch” through increasingly dystopian social media feeds that consist mostly of ads, whether traditional influencer trash and/or semi-real short-form video.

随着人类分裂成越来越原子化的隐士和拒绝者，人们只能通过日益反乌托邦的主要由广告组成的社交媒体来“保持联系”，无论是传统的有影响力的垃圾和/还是半真实的短视频。

It shapes how our institutions function too.

它也决定了我们机构的运作方式。

Yuval Levin argues that Congress is weak because its members want it to be weak (the shutdown is perhaps a lesson in that).

尤瓦尔·莱文认为，国会之所以软弱，是因为其成员希望它软弱（政府关门或许是一个教训）。

They’ve abandoned the actual work of legislating in favor of what he calls “performative outrage for a partisan audience.” A congressional seat now offers a platform for building personal brands through social media engagement and cable news hits.

他们放弃了实际的立法工作，转而支持他所谓的“对党派观众的表演性愤怒”。国会席位现在提供了一个通过社交媒体参与和有线电视新闻点击来建立个人品牌的平台。

Success gets measured in invisible metrics like followers and fundraising emails - while the visible work of governance atrophies.

成功是通过关注者和筹款电子邮件等无形指标来衡量的，而可见的治理工作却萎缩了。

It’s the same inversion: institutions optimizing for performance that compounds in attention economies while the actual infrastructure of democracy decays.

这也是同样的倒转：机构为了绩效而优化，在注意力经济中加剧，而民主的实际基础设施却在衰退。

Going back to the conference, everyone on my panel agreed that AI isn’t ready for mass adoption, that there has to be some way for the supposed wealth it will generate to be redistributed, especially if it takes all the jobs.

回到会议，我的小组中的每个人都同意人工智能还没有准备好大规模采用，必须有某种方式来重新分配它所产生的所谓财富，特别是如果它夺走了所有工作岗位。

But we landed on the same cautious conclusion that AI is indeed a tool.

但我们得出了同样谨慎的结论：人工智能确实是一种工具。

A hammer can hang a picture or break a skull.

锤子可以挂一幅画或敲碎头骨。

The difference is intent.

区别在于意图。

That framing is helpful until you examine it.

在你检查之前，这个框架是有帮助的。

We don’t market hammers as ‘skull-crusher 1000s’ but AI gets sold explicitly as a job-taker.

我们不会将锤子宣传为“1000 台碎颅机”，但人工智能却被明确宣传为“抢夺工作机会”。

The CEOs are going on various podcasts and demanding the energy capacity of India 3 as well as likely inevitable government backstops.

首席执行官们正在各种播客上要求印度 3 的能源能力以及可能不可避免的政府支持。

The difference is who is holding the tool and what they are promising to break.

区别在于谁持有该工具以及他们承诺打破什么。

By the time I got to Berkeley a few days later, I was thinking more and more about Junior Extinction, or the apparent goal of AI to replace entry level jobs.

几天后，当我到达伯克利时，我越来越多地思考“初级灭绝”，或者说人工智能取代初级工作的明显目标。

The Berkeley AI conference had all the optimism you’d expect from the Bay Area with bright people genuinely trying to solve hard problems.

伯克利人工智能会议充满了你对湾区所期待的所有乐观情绪，聪明的人们真诚地试图解决难题。

I interviewed two people I respect a lot about this, and the conversation kept circling back to the same place: we have to prepare people.

我就此采访了两个我非常尊敬的人，谈话不断回到同一个地方：我们必须让人们做好准备。

Reskilling isn’t enough.

重新培训还不够。

The problem is not just jobs, it’s what happens to purpose and meaning when work disappears.

问题不仅仅在于工作，还在于当工作消失时，目的和意义会发生什么变化。

If we erase the first step of the ladder, we can’t just tell people to climb harder.

如果我们抹掉梯子的第一步，我们就不能只是告诉人们要更加努力地攀爬。

There’s solutions, of course.

当然有解决方案。

An interesting paper The Death of the Social Contract and the Enshittification of Jobs explores how we can establish a federal job guarantee that prevents the degradation of work and preserve ‘dignity and purpose’ during a time of immense technological change.

一篇有趣的论文《社会契约之死和工作的效率化》探讨了我们如何建立联邦工作保障，以防止工作退化并在巨大的技术变革时期维护“尊严和目的”。

After our talk, someone asked me if we were all falling prey to the Luddite mindset, which is usually shorthand for “backwards technophobe,” but the actual Luddites were more interesting than that.

谈话结束后，有人问我，我们是否都陷入了勒德分子心态的陷阱，这通常是“落后技术恐惧症”的简写，但真正的勒德分子比这更有趣。

Luddites weren’t anti-technology.

勒德分子并不反技术。

They were pro-coevolution with technology.

他们支持技术的共同进化。

They smashed machines when those machines were used to devalue their labor without improving their lives 4 .

当机器被用来贬低他们的劳动价值而不改善他们的生活时，他们就砸毁了机器 4 。

The goal is to make technology something that extends human potential rather than reducing it to nothingness - to create visible prosperity rather than just extracting it.

我们的目标是让技术能够扩展人类的潜力，而不是将其化为虚无——创造看得见的繁荣，而不仅仅是榨取它。

Baltimore was the next stop, three days of conversations about whether the United States has the collective will to survive the AI era.

巴尔的摩是下一站，为期三天的对话讨论了美国是否有集体意愿在人工智能时代生存。

The mood was less sunny than Berkeley.

气氛不如伯克利那么阳光。

People kept using the word “bubble” - not quite accusing, more like they were testing whether anyone else would say it first.

人们一直在使用“泡沫”这个词——并不是在指责，更像是在测试是否有人会先说这个词。

The questions became existential very quickly.

这些问题很快就变得关乎生存。

Could America remain the world’s economic center if it kept isolating itself while China industrialized at hyperspeed ?

如果美国在中国高速工业化的同时继续孤立自己，它还能保持世界经济中心的地位吗？

If military power and economic power are the same thing, are we already losing the war?

如果军事实力和经济实力是同一回事，我们是否已经输掉了战争？

If we don’t know what we are fighting for (is it really generative AI TikTok slop?

如果我们不知道自己在为什么而战（这真的是生成式 AI TikTok 的废话吗？

or something else?) can we fight at all?

或者别的什么？）我们可以打架吗？

Tracy Alloway recently compared the AI industry to coffee pods , comparing China’s commodification strategy for AI to the US valuing AI like a $5,000 espresso machine while China just gives away the Nespresso pods for free.

TracyAlloway 最近将人工智能行业比作咖啡包，将中国的人工智能商品化战略与美国将人工智能视为价值 5000 美元的浓缩咖啡机进行比较，而中国只是免费赠送 Nespresso 咖啡包。

She points out that the real AI fight is power availability, not the models.

她指出，真正的人工智能之战是电力可用性，而不是模型。

Many data centers are sitting empty because they can’t get electricity.

许多数据中心因无法获得电力而空置。

The valuations are wild.

估值非常疯狂。

The return profile is shaky.

回报情况不稳定。

China is conquering the renewable age .

中国正在征服可再生能源时代。

JP Morgan pointed out in a note recently that every iPhone user would have to pay $34 a month to drive a 10% return on all the various AI investment deployed.

摩根大通最近在一份报告中指出，每个 iPhone 用户每月必须支付 34 美元，才能使所有部署的各种人工智能投资获得 10% 的回报。

This is invisible prosperity in its purest form, with billions flowing into server farms and data centers that sit empty, waiting for electricity that may never come.

这是最纯粹形式的无形繁荣，数十亿美元流入空置的服务器群和数据中心，等待着可能永远不会到来的电力。

Meanwhile, the college graduates who were told to invest in themselves are experiencing very visible decay - working service jobs with degrees they can’t use, debt-laden, watching AI threaten to eliminate even those fallback positions.

与此同时，那些被告知要对自己进行投资的大学毕业生正在经历非常明显的衰退——他们的学位无法使用，他们在服务业工作，负债累累，眼看着人工智能甚至威胁要消除那些后备职位。

I interviewed New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber in Baltimore about his forthcoming book Mutiny which tracks the downward mobility of college-educated workers and their turn toward unions.

我在巴尔的摩采访了《纽约时报》劳工记者诺姆·沙伊伯（Noam Scheiber），了解他即将出版的新书《叛变》，该书追踪了受过大学教育的工人的向下流动以及他们转向工会的情况。

These are people who did everything right - got the degree, took on the debt - but couldn’t get jobs in their fields.

这些人做的一切都是正确的——获得了学位，承担了债务——但却无法在自己的领域找到工作。

So they went to work for Starbucks or REI or Amazon.

所以他们去星巴克、REI 或亚马逊工作。

Now they’re unionizing at rates that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

现在他们加入工会的速度在十年前是不可想象的。

Noam’s book (which you should read when it comes out) and our conversation really circled the question of work and its purpose.

诺姆的书（出版后你应该读一下）和我们的谈话确实围绕着工作及其目的的问题。

Support for unions among college graduates sits at 70% .

大学毕业生对工会的支持率为70%。

The professional managerial class - supposedly individualistic, supposedly above such concerns - is converging with the working class on populist economic views.

职业管理阶层——据说是个人主义的，据说超越了这些担忧——正在与工人阶级在民粹主义经济观点上趋同。

Tax the rich.

对富人征税。

Regulate big business.

规范大企业。

Protect workers from being replaced by algorithms or outsourced to cheaper labor markets.

保护工人不被算法取代或外包到更便宜的劳动力市场。

It’s the inverse of what we’re told about education and upward mobility.

这与我们所听到的关于教育和向上流动的说法相反。

The college degree was supposed to be the golden ticket.

大学学位本应是一张金门票。

It hasn’t quite worked.

但它还没有完全发挥作用。

Now those graduates are looking for collective solutions to individual failures that were never really individual at all.

现在，这些毕业生正在寻找针对个人失败的集体解决方案，而这些失败从来都不是真正的个人失败。

The bubble question lingered.

泡沫问题依然存在。

Have we bet everything on vapor?

我们是否把一切都押在了蒸气上？

Or are we watching the formation of a political coalition that might actually demand something different?

或者我们正在观察一个实际上可能要求不同的东西的政治联盟的形成？

New Hampshire surprised me.

新罕布什尔州令我惊讶。

My parents got married there 30 years ago, so they came up from Kentucky to spend a day with me.

我的父母 30 年前在那里结婚，所以他们从肯塔基州过来和我一起度过了一天。

Then I went to a housing conference.

然后我去参加了一个住房会议。

The problem everyone was trying to solve felt pretty concrete - how do you build when no one wants change?

每个人都试图解决的问题感觉非常具体——当没有人想要改变时，你如何构建？

The headline answer is zoning reform, but the real answer involves water systems, sewage expansion, labor shortages, financing costs, and the politics of aging.

标题的答案是分区改革，但真正的答案涉及供水系统、污水扩张、劳动力短缺、融资成本和老龄化政治。

New Hampshire is the second-oldest state in the country.

新罕布什尔州是美国第二古老的州。

The median homeowner is in their late fifties.

房主的中位数年龄在五十多岁。

People can’t afford to leave and people can’t afford to move in.

人们无力离开，也无力搬入。

Rising mortgage rates have created what economists call “housing lock-in” - your 3% mortgage is now a golden handcuff.

抵押贷款利率上升造成了经济学家所说的“住房锁定”——3% 的抵押贷款现在成了金手铐。

When people can’t move, neither can labor, families, or fertility.

当人们无法流动时，劳动力、家庭或生育能力也无法流动。

There’s a new study showing that housing costs account for about half the US fertility decline between 2000 and 2020.

一项新研究表明，住房成本约占 2000 年至 2020 年美国生育率下降的一半。

It’s childcare too - a new paper from Abigail Dow reports that a 10% increase in the price of childcare leads to a 5.7% decrease in the birth rate.

儿童保育也是如此——Abigail Dow 的一篇新论文报告称，儿童保育价格上涨 10% 会导致出生率下降 5.7%。

The affordability crisis compounds - without affordable homes, young families don’t form.

负担能力危机加剧——没有经济适用房，年轻家庭就无法形成。

Without young families, the tax base ages.

没有年轻的家庭，税基就会老化。

Without young taxpayers, resources shrink.

没有年轻的纳税人，资源就会减少。

The system eats itself.

系统会吞噬自己。

In New Hampshire, people talked openly about trade-offs.

在新罕布什尔州，人们公开谈论权衡。

They don’t have an income tax, so it relies on property taxes, already among the highest in the country, to fund services.

他们没有所得税，因此依靠财产税（已经是全国最高的财产税）来为服务提供资金。

Expanding infrastructure means higher costs somewhere.

扩大基础设施意味着某些地方的成本更高。

Hard problems require hard math.

困难的问题需要困难的数学。

But there was this question underneath all of it: how do we grow without losing what feels like home?

但在这一切背后还有一个问题：我们如何在不失去家的感觉的情况下成长？

New York felt like the opposite of that question.

纽约感觉与这个问题相反。

Not “how do we preserve what we have?” but “how do we get to yes?”

不是“我们如何保存我们所拥有的？”但“我们怎样才能达成一致呢？”

I was there for a week or so, which was the longest stop on the trip.

我在那里待了一周左右，这是旅途中最长的一站。

Filmed a documentary, shot a commercial, spoke at the Aspen Ideas Conference, joined a NPR debate that felt like being in the eye of a cultural storm (read about that here ).

拍摄了一部纪录片，拍摄了一个广告，在阿斯彭创意会议上发言，参加了一场 NPR 辩论，感觉就像身处一场文化风暴的中心（在这里阅读相关内容）。

New York is exhausting and alive in equal measure.

纽约令人筋疲力尽，但同样充满活力。

I think the present moment requires some fight with conviction in values, strength in uncertainty and New York has that in abundance.

我认为目前需要对价值观有坚定的信念，在不确定性中保持力量，而纽约拥有这些。

I spoke with Dean Fuleihan a few days ago, who’s about to be first deputy mayor under Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani ( Semafor has a good write-up on Lina Khan’s role on the transition team).

几天前，我与 Dean Fuleihan 进行了交谈，他即将成为当选市长 Zohran Mamdani 领导下的第一副市长（Semafor 对 Lina Khan 在过渡团队中的角色有一篇很好的文章）。

Mamdani’s campaign was built on affordability 5 , on the premise that government can work if people who believe in it actually try.

Mamdani 的竞选活动建立在可负担性 5 的基础上，前提是只要相信政府的人真正尝试，政府就能发挥作用。

Fuleihan said “New York is not about saying no. It’s about figuring out how to get to yes.”

富雷汉说：“纽约不是要说‘不’，而是要弄清楚如何做到‘是’。”

I won’t overromanticize the city, but New York remembers itself.

我不会过度浪漫化这座城市，但纽约会记住它自己。

Maybe that’s because it’s older, or because the architecture forces you to look up.

也许是因为它比较旧，或者因为建筑迫使你向上看。

History lives in the buildings here.

历史就存在于这里的建筑中。

Being surrounded by old things makes you aware of the responsibility of keeping them standing.

被旧事物包围会让你意识到让它们屹立不倒的责任。

This is what visible investment looks like - infrastructure you can see working (at least somewhat) and architecture that reminds you something was built to last.

这就是可见投资的样子——你可以看到正在运行的基础设施（至少在某种程度上）和提醒你某些东西是经久耐用的架构。

The question is whether the will to maintain exists elsewhere.

问题是其他地方是否存在维持的意愿。

Florida felt strange after New York.

继纽约之后，佛罗里达州感觉很奇怪。

I drove from Fort Lauderdale to Marco Island to West Palm Beach, and the whole state felt like it was aging and aspiring at the same time.

我开车从劳德代尔堡到马可岛，再到西棕榈滩，整个州都给人一种既衰老又充满雄心的感觉。

Lovely place.

可爱的地方。

I spoke at Palm Beach Atlantic, where my first economics professor is now Dean of the business school (he was the person who first told me that economics was an actual major - I owe him a lot!).

我在棕榈滩大西洋大学发表演讲，我的第一位经济学教授现在是商学院院长（他是第一个告诉我经济学是一个真正的专业的人 - 我欠他很多！）。

The students were amazing.

学生们太棒了。

Their questions were practical: How do we afford housing?

他们的问题很实际：我们如何负担得起住房？

How do we navigate AI?

我们如何驾驭人工智能？

How do we find meaning in work that might not exist in ten years?

我们如何在十年后可能不存在的工作中找到意义？

They’re right to worry.

他们的担心是对的。

Florida is what America could look like demographically within a decade - older, hotter, more expensive, still trying to grow.

佛罗里达州是美国十年内人口结构的样子——更古老、更炎热、更昂贵，而且仍在努力增长。

It is the most rent-burdened state in the country.

它是该国租金负担最重的州。

You can see wealth in West Palm Beach - the waterfront towers, the private clubs , $175 million dollar condos (!) - but it’s tough to see a path toward it.

你可以在西棕榈滩看到财富——海滨塔楼、私人俱乐部、价值 1.75 亿美元的公寓（！）——但很难看到通往这些财富的道路。

By the time I landed in Prague, I’d spent three weeks watching Americans argue about whether we could still build anything.

当我抵达布拉格时，我已经花了三周时间观看美国人争论我们是否还能建造任何东西。

Prague answered soundly - yes, we can still build things.

布拉格给出了明确的回答——是的，我们仍然可以建造东西。

I was there to interview Morgan Housel and give a talk on what I’ve started calling the uncertainty smoothie - AI, geopolitics, demographics, fiscal chaos, all blended into one overwhelming question mark.

我在那里采访了摩根·豪塞尔，并就我开始所说的不确定性冰沙进行了演讲——人工智能、地缘政治、人口统计、财政混乱，所有这些都混合成一个压倒性的问号。

I was haunted by jet lag the entire trip, so I walked ten miles through the city.

整个旅程中我都受到时差的困扰，所以我步行了十英里穿过这座城市。

It was so deliberate .

就是这么刻意。

Trams that ran on time.

准时运行的有轨电车。

Wide sidewalks.

宽阔的人行道。

Leaf vacuums instead of leaf blowers.

用真空吸叶机代替吹叶机。

Each small choice accumulated into proof that someone thought about how systems should work.

每一个小小的选择都积累起来，证明有人思考过系统应该如何运作。

You could feel the economy in public space in trams, bridges, parks, civic buildings.

你可以在电车、桥梁、公园、民用建筑等公共空间感受到经济。

Economists call this “middle-income convergence.” Czechia is catching up to Western Europe in productivity and wages, but it’s still small enough that growth is visible.

经济学家称之为“中等收入趋同”。捷克在生产率和工资方面正在赶上西欧，但其规模仍然很小，增长是可见的。

Again, in the US, growth happens in spreadsheets and server farms, in data centers behind chain-link fences that hire only 800 people for a $50b investment , on social media apps, in private, gated communities.

同样，在美国，增长发生在电子表格和服务器场、铁丝网后面的数据中心、投资 500 亿美元只雇用 800 人的数据中心、社交媒体应用程序、私人封闭社区。

Our prosperity is increasingly invisible.

我们的繁荣越来越看不见。

The result is this strange alienation where people sense the economy is humming somewhere, but not for them.

结果就是这种奇怪的疏离感，人们感觉到经济在某个地方蓬勃发展，但对他们来说却并非如此。

Economies that invest in visible competence generate trust, and trust is an economic asset.

投资于可见能力的经济体会产生信任，而信任是一种经济资产。

When systems decay, even rising GDP feels hollow.

当系统衰退时，即使是GDP的增长也会让人感到空虚。

Infrastructure is emotional architecture.

基础设施是情感建筑。

When things work, people believe life can too.

当一切顺利时，人们相信生活也会如此。

Maintenance generates trust.

维护产生信任。

Trust compounds.

信任复合。

Ireland was the perfect final stop.

爱尔兰是完美的最后一站。

My grandparents immigrated from Roscommon and Sligo in the 1950s, went back once, then came back to the States for good.

我的祖父母在 20 世纪 50 年代从罗斯康芒和斯莱戈移民，回国一次，然后永远回到美国。

Going there felt important.

去那里感觉很重要。

I went for Kilkenomics, the world’s best economics festival.

我参加了基尔肯经济学节，这是世界上最好的经济学节。

Just phenomenal.

太棒了。

I joined four panels - a podcast with David McWilliams, one on America’s economy, another on data, and a final one on algorithms.

我参加了四个小组——大卫·麦克威廉姆斯的播客，一个关于美国经济的播客，另一个关于数据的播客，最后一个关于算法的播客。

The audience questions were remarkable.

观众提出的问题非常引人注目。

“How would Keynes feel about all of this?” “How do we measure crony capitalism?” Everyone was wrestling with the same question that followed me all month: How do you keep a system human?

“凯恩斯对这一切有何感想？” “我们如何衡量裙带资本主义？”每个人都在思考一个困扰我整个月的问题：如何让系统保持人性化？

Inside Kilkenny Castle, I felt the fatigue of the trip catch up with me.

在基尔肯尼城堡内，我感受到了旅途的疲惫。

The fortress has changed hands through conquest and crisis for nearly a thousand years and now stands open to anyone who wants to walk its halls.

近一千年来，这座堡垒在征服和危机中易手，现在向任何想要漫步其大厅的人开放。

I then climbed the narrow staircase of St. Canice’s Cathedral to the old monks’ tower.

然后我爬上圣卡尼斯大教堂的狭窄楼梯，到达老僧侣的塔楼。

It’s been standing since the sixth century, where bells once rang to call monks to prayer.

它自六世纪以来一直矗立在那里，钟声曾响起来召唤僧侣祈祷。

Standing there, I thought about the past month.

站在那里，我回想起过去的一个月。

The tanks and the clown in DC.

DC的坦克和小丑。

The engineers in Berkeley.

伯克利的工程师。

The union organizers in Baltimore.

巴尔的摩的工会组织者。

The housing advocates in New Hampshire.

新罕布什尔州的住房倡导者。

The students in Florida.

佛罗里达州的学生。

The people in New York.

纽约的人们。

The quiet competence of Prague.

布拉格安静的能力。

Everyone trying to keep something upright, whether it be an economy, a community, a sense of self.

每个人都试图保持某些东西的正直，无论是经济、社区还是自我意识。

St. Canice is the patron saint of the shipwrecked - of those who have gone through great trial and somehow survived.

圣卡尼斯是海难者的守护神，是那些经历了巨大考验并以某种方式幸存下来的人的守护神。

In a way, the tower itself is the answer to the question I’d been unknowingly chasing all month.

在某种程度上，这座塔本身就是我整个月不知不觉地追寻的问题的答案。

America’s problem isn’t that we lack wealth - we have enormous wealth - it’s that we’ve made our wealth invisible while letting everything visible decay in a way.

美国的问题不在于我们缺乏财富——我们拥有巨大的财富——而是我们让我们的财富变得隐形，同时让一切看得见的东西都以某种方式腐烂。

We’ve inverted the formula.

我们颠倒了公式。

Northern Ireland’s peace process, as Robert Saldin and Robert Eisinger wrote about succeeded partly because communities deliberately shifted focus from the existential debate between nationalists and unionists to local projects where compromise was possible.

正如罗伯特·萨尔丁和罗伯特·艾辛格所写，北爱尔兰的和平进程取得了成功，部分原因是社区有意将焦点从民族主义者和工会主义者之间的生存辩论转移到可能妥协的当地项目上。

It was maintenance.

这是维护。

Working together on visible problems created space for former enemies to reconcile themselves to living as neighbors.

共同努力解决明显的问题，为以前的敌人和睦相处创造了空间。

When I started crying in that tower, I think it was partly exhaustion.

当我在那座塔里开始哭泣时，我想部分原因是精疲力尽。

Partly standing in a place my family came from.

部分站在我家人来自的地方。

Partly sadness for what feels so challenging at home.

部分是因为在家中感到如此具有挑战性而感到悲伤。

Partly hope that enough people are still trying to rebuild what matters.

部分希望有足够多的人仍在努力重建重要的事物。

Partly because I’d spent 30 days watching people try to make prosperity visible again - to build systems you can see, touch, and trust.

部分原因是我花了 30 天的时间观察人们试图让繁荣再次变得可见——建立你可以看到、触摸和信任的系统。

This is a reader-supported publication.

这是一本由读者支持的出版物。

To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

要接收新帖子并支持我的工作，请考虑成为付费订阅者。

Derek Thompson did an interesting interview with Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson

德里克·汤普森对迈克尔·巴特尼克和本·卡尔森进行了一次有趣的采访

The WSJ has a good piece on the very interconnected data center financing deals being built involving “private equity” and “30 banks” and “investment grade bonds” that pose quite a bit of blowup risk

《华尔街日报》对正在建立的相互关联的数据中心融资交易进行了很好的报道，涉及“私募股权”和“30 家银行”以及“投资级债券”，这些交易构成了相当大的爆发风险

Interesting piece from Jeremiah Johnson on what it looks like to build technology without vision and from Christopher Hale on what some see as Silicon Valley’s desire to be God

耶利米·约翰逊 (Jeremiah Johnson) 的有趣文章讲述了在没有远见的情况下构建技术是什么样子，而克里斯托弗·黑尔 (Christopher Hale) 则讲述了硅谷渴望成为上帝的想法

There’s an interesting article from the Cut on how “Upper East Side Moms” are reacting

剪辑中有一篇有趣的文章，介绍了“上东区妈妈”的反应

Of course, we need to address inequality by moving the invisible wealth into our local systems.

当然，我们需要通过将无形财富转移到我们的当地系统来解决不平等问题。

Maybe we can re-frame "wealth taxes" into "system builders" and "make the wealthy feel good again."

也许我们可以将“财富税”重新定义为“系统构建者”并“让富人再次感觉良好”。

I think a hidden part of this discussion lies in how the process of accumulating and storing wealth fundamentally changes how your brain functions.

我认为这个讨论的一个隐藏部分在于积累和储存财富的过程如何从根本上改变你的大脑功能。

Greed, or another mental health description one could better devise, should be an official mental illness and documented/treated as such.

贪婪，或者人们可以更好地设计的另一种心理健康描述，应该是一种正式的精神疾病，并据此记录/治疗。

I've come from privilege and have had a front row seat for most of my life to what happens when people accumulate or are born with massive resources.

我出身于特权阶层，在我一生中的大部分时间里，我都对人们积累或生来就拥有大量资源时所发生的事情处于最前排的位置。

Very few are immune to these effects.

很少有人能够免受这些影响。

I've chosen many paths towards rejecting this wealth, for better and for worse.

我选择了很多拒绝这笔财富的途径，无论好坏。

Until we address (or force) this fundamental human nature problem, I believe we'll continue to see forces oppose disbanding and re-distributing all the invisible wealth of the world towards building real prosperity for all.

在我们解决（或强制解决）这一基本的人性问题之前，我相信我们将继续看到反对解散和重新分配世界上所有无形财富以为所有人建立真正繁荣的力量。