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> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. It's much more to do with the steadily increasing complexity of products due to humanit

> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. It's much more to do with the steadily increasing complexity of products due to humanity having become very much a global species with heavy interdependence. Look around the room you are sitting in: There will be items in it manufactured all over the world, from components also coming from all over the world. That's not only how we manage to make these things so affordable, that's how we got them at this scale and complexity in the very first place. The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Isolationism like that doesn't lead to progress or innovation, it leads to North Korea style impoverished hermit kingdoms. It's mind-boggling how few people seem to understand this reality in the year 2021, we are so interconnected that we can instantly communicate with somebody on the other side of the planet by just pulling a small device out of our pocket, it's considered the most normal thing in the world. Instead we get shortsighted and small-minded nationalist blowback in the form of Brexit and "America first!" politics. Even with the EU showing that economic cooperation and integration is one of the best and most constructive ways to ensure peace, stability and prosperity, particularly vs the alternative of alienation and vilification of whole nation states and their people as "enemies" that need to be fought in every way possible.

crmd 6y ago
>> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. > The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Who is this “single country” straw man you are referring to? The western world is comprised of 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP.
- freeflight 6y ago
  And these 50+ nations have their very own industries that grew out of a demand for them to the scale of the demand for them with interdependence reaching all the way into Chinese tech manufacturing. If you retool all of that to suddenly do something else, than you will be missing something else. Because it's not like these 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP are just sitting there and wondering what to do with all of that productivity, they are already plenty busy doing those things that got them all that GDP, the things they are good at. That's why it's not really a "straw man", as the original argument implies globalized supply chains that emerged out of a given supply&demand could be artificially transplanted and rebuild in "the West", however that's even defined, to somehow reverse the reality of globalization.
  - topspin 6y ago
    > That's why it's not really a "straw man", Except that it is a straw man. This "childish" nation that seeks to thrive with no foreign trade ("in complete isolation") is a fiction inside your head that you're sharing as a target for your argument. It doesn't exist except as a straw man.

crmd 6y ago

>> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. > The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Who is this “single country” straw man you are referring to? The western world is comprised of 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP.

freeflight 6y ago
And these 50+ nations have their very own industries that grew out of a demand for them to the scale of the demand for them with interdependence reaching all the way into Chinese tech manufacturing. If you retool all of that to suddenly do something else, than you will be missing something else. Because it's not like these 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP are just sitting there and wondering what to do with all of that productivity, they are already plenty busy doing those things that got them all that GDP, the things they are good at. That's why it's not really a "straw man", as the original argument implies globalized supply chains that emerged out of a given supply&demand could be artificially transplanted and rebuild in "the West", however that's even defined, to somehow reverse the reality of globalization.
- topspin 6y ago
  > That's why it's not really a "straw man", Except that it is a straw man. This "childish" nation that seeks to thrive with no foreign trade ("in complete isolation") is a fiction inside your head that you're sharing as a target for your argument. It doesn't exist except as a straw man.