I rather suspect that it’s just experience. It’s an oft quoted fact that to build an iPhone in the United States would cost 10,000 dollars- because the experti

I rather suspect that it’s just experience. It’s an oft quoted fact that to build an iPhone in the United States would cost 10,000 dollars- because the expertise isn’t here, and the infrastructure isn’t here, and we would be just building one instead of a whole bunch of them. There are network effects you get by having an ongoing industry devoted to some task rather than approaching every project as a one-off. We suck at building railroads because we never do it. A century ago we were the best at it, because we did it all the time. But the muscle memory you build up by having an industry devoted to doing something is lost in a generation or two, when you stop.