A breakdown of Where the Two Ledgers Come From, from First Principles Manufacturing, a newsletter by Yuanwei Ma at the intersection of AI, robotics, manufacturing and US–China.
A buyer in Ohio and a supplier in Zhejiang look at the same below-cost quote and reach opposite conclusions. This piece traces the difference back to the high-school textbook. From 2000 to 2015, every Chinese student studied economics in politics class for three years, starting with the commodity and the labor theory of value; about half of American students took one semester, starting with scarcity and prices as signals. We walk through both books, the natural experiment that shows a textbook change moves beliefs, what each side deliberately left out, and three habits for your next price negotiation.
Read the full article: https://www.firstprinciplesmfg.com/p/where-the-two-ledgers-come-from
Voices are AI-generated. The facts come from the original article by Yuanwei Ma; the interpretation is the hosts'.
Chapters
0:00 Why do two people read the same quote in opposite ways?
1:19 Did most Americans ever learn economics in high school?
3:16 What did Chinese high schoolers learn about markets?
5:00 How does a textbook change the way you read a price?
6:12 Do textbooks really change what people believe?
8:11 What did each textbook leave out, and what do you do at the table?
