Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Dan Wang, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
And so I think my life is really quite simple. [00:00:00] S0: What's next for you? Having completed this really epic project that I think will be seen as the definitive account of what's going on in China vis-à-vis the US for a long time, what do you do next? [00:00:00] S1: Curl up on my couch and read some great novels. Everyone's reading Middlemarch. I haven't read Middlemarch yet, so that is something that's quite exciting for me. I want to be engaged with the broader Chinese diaspora people who have decided to move to Thailand. There's a set of people who've moved to New York. They host feminist standup comedy in Mandarin. And I want to be supportive of these sorts of efforts. Engineers I know in Silicon Valley, I want to help integrate them into society and help them appreciate the good parts of America that I enjoy the most. If there's anything that they can't necessarily access very easily, I want to be helpful in trying to give them a little bit of community and then otherwise, as I always do, think big thoughts and then write them down in my letters. [00:00:00] S0: The closing question I ask everybody is the same. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?
· Dan Wang
[00:00:00] S1: There's a quote I really like from Ursula K. Le Guin, which is that love is not like a stone which only sits there. Love has to be continuously made like bread and remade once again. And that's something I think about with something like kindness. I think we can sub in kindness for love here. That the way that I think about kindness is not only a single act. I think it is more a disposition and a spirit of generosity. So I brought up before earlier, Tyler Cowen, who has been a mentor of mine for over the past decade. We've traveled together in Asia. We've traveled together in Yunnan and Taiwan. We've gone to the opera together here in New York. We've seen a great Brahms concert here in New York. And Tyler has been very generous in helping me orient and tweak my thinking and giving me some degree of ambition because that is something that Tyler is really good at, raising people's ambitions at crucial times. And because I bring up Ursula K. Le Guin, I have to think about my other guru, Arthur Kroeber, who is the founder of Gavekal Dragonomics. We were having lunch once near the end of 2016 when he told me about Made in China 2025, a big industrial plan which I hadn't heard of at the time. And then a few months afterwards I moved to Hong Kong to work for Gavekal Dragonomics. And shortly after that, two years after that I moved to Beijing and then I moved to Shanghai. Two hours from now, I'm going to go to Arthur's home for a book launch party which he is very kindly hosting for me. And I find Arthur not only very wise about China, but very wise about all things. And so for me, kindness is an act that has to be performed again and again. This is something I want to try to do for other younger people, but to have these long lasting relationships in which we try to help mentor each other, guide each other and raise our ambitions at crucial periods.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Dan Wang
[00:00:00] S0: A beautiful closing definition. I've never heard that quote despite having read many of her books. [00:00:00] S1: A new one. Great. [00:00:00] S0: Wonderful place to close. Dan, thank you so much for your time. [00:00:00] S1: Thank you very much Patrick.