5 ms·

An example closer to home, though perhaps not as stark, is the loss of expertise in various industries that have been outsourced. The US is a good example. This

An example closer to home, though perhaps not as stark, is the loss of expertise in various industries that have been outsourced. The US is a good example. This is one (of many) arguments against outsourcing your industry just because it's cheaper and increases the profits of the outsourcing company. The tradition and culture that allows a certain industry to flourish is interrupted and destroyed and rebuilding that is no small task.

jimhefferon 5y ago
I had a summer job one year working on space stuff. I was in the clean room and the first day they took me back there, white suit and all, and took some ball bearings off a wire rack. They were maybe a foot in diameter. My job that summer was to test to see which were the least noisy. (Basically, they rotated very slowly, and there was a phono needle resting on the outside with a strip chart measuring the vibration caused when balls hit each other, etc.) The best ones were going up. They told me to be careful. These were the rejects from another project, but this project was legally required to use only US tech and the US no longer had the ability to manufacture bearings this large, since we had outsourced for some time and everyone who could do it got out of the business. So we needed these exact ones. (This was the late 70's.)
toss1 5y ago
Yup, this is a massive strategic blunder of historical scale. While the US and western countries are asleep at the switch and think that they are exploiting cheap Chinese labor, the Chinese have a 100- and 500- year plan and are exploiting our myopia for short-term profits to gain manufacturing expertise and military advantage. It may not be too late to reverse, but it is close. It is really the result of not thinking ahead and letting the business lobbies have what they want today, instead of putting long-term strategic considerations first. Different incentives, different results, tragedy of the commons all over again.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  A 100- and 500- year plan is ludicrous on it's face. They don't even credibly hit their 5 year plans a lot of the time. The idea of planning something so large and complex so far into the future seems like wishful thinking at best.
  - scrumper 5y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with that. Misses on short-term plans are a different concern to progress on a multi-century plan. Pig iron production might've missed its forecast for 2020, but it'd undeniable that China is building tremendous expertise in advanced manufacturing - and at a similar rate to that at which the west is shedding it.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      Th narrative of "the west doesn't manufacture anything" is greatly oversold. The US makes more steel than it did 40 years ago, for example. Sure, we make fewer hairs and t-shirts, but it's natural for that stuff to chase lower labor costs. We're also an agricultural powerhouse. Now, for sure we have fallen a bit behind in making chips, but that may change.
      - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
        So we are the Romans. We can make swords and bread! We'll do great in WWIII!
        ch4s3 5y ago
        That's ridiculous. We're churning out new ideas in biotech, medicine, media, finance, automobiles, airplanes, batteries, some solar stuff, and on and on. We have a huge, dynamic economy that does a lot of things really well. We've uncovered some major issues in the last two years but we've done better I think than one might have expected under the circumstances. I think in particular the rapid development and production of multiple vaccines in record time displays our capacity to innovate and manufacture complex goods. It's impossible to know what's coming in the distant future, but it doesn't feel like any of our problems are insurmountable.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wpietri 5y ago
  An important factor here is not so much the business lobbies, but how we reward the decision-makers. CEOs make most of their money from short-term stock price numbers, something that also determines how long they last in their jobs. Combine that with declining CEO tenure [1] and the incentives are really clear: Do anything that will make the numbers look good in the 1-5 year time frame, get maximum money, and GTFO. A lot of these problems would go away if CEOs were paid a modest amount of cash to live (say, $1m/year) and then the rest of their compensation was in stock that was locked up for at least 20 years. [1] https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2019/ceo-turnover-record-high.html https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2019/ceo-...
- yyyk 5y ago
  >It is really the result of not thinking ahead and letting the business lobbies have what they want today There's a tendency in the West to airbrush history, and pretend that the opening to China was just a result of business lobbies. There was an intentional policy decision based on 'liberalization through trade' theory, which managed to be one of the most disastrous theories out there (far more disastrous than 2000-era US WoT policies). This was pushed by politicians and academics, and up until the oughts businesses were more reacting to the policy as creating it.
  - toss1 5y ago
    YES, this is definitely a huge factor that I failed to mention - the concept that economic free(ish) markets are incompatible with authoritarianism and would lead to political freedom. From a BBC article yesterday [0]: "Indeed the US trade representative responsible for negotiating China's WTO deal, Charlene Barshefsky, told a Washington International Trade Association panel this week that China's economic model "somewhat disproved" the Western view that "you can't have an innovative society, and political control"" I can sort of see how the idea took hold, as the previous large authoritarian states in USSR and CCP had so dramatically and consistently underperformed (to be polite) the democracies that it would seem that the converse would be true, that economic freedom would force democracy. So, ya, it would seem like a good hypothesis, but I sure wouldn't bet a lot on it without solid testing. Yet, the political leaders all turned out to be fools and bet the entire future of democracy itself on that notion. Then, combine that with the MBA idea that the only thing important is the ideas and management and trifling things like manufacturing can be outsourced to their cheapest locale and that manufacturing know-how, innovation, and supply chain control don't matter, and we've come to the brink of destroying the free world. Now, we have a historical fight on our hands to recover from these blunders. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59610019 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59610019

jimhefferon 5y ago

I had a summer job one year working on space stuff. I was in the clean room and the first day they took me back there, white suit and all, and took some ball bearings off a wire rack. They were maybe a foot in diameter. My job that summer was to test to see which were the least noisy. (Basically, they rotated very slowly, and there was a phono needle resting on the outside with a strip chart measuring the vibration caused when balls hit each other, etc.) The best ones were going up. They told me to be careful. These were the rejects from another project, but this project was legally required to use only US tech and the US no longer had the ability to manufacture bearings this large, since we had outsourced for some time and everyone who could do it got out of the business. So we needed these exact ones. (This was the late 70's.)

toss1 5y ago

Yup, this is a massive strategic blunder of historical scale. While the US and western countries are asleep at the switch and think that they are exploiting cheap Chinese labor, the Chinese have a 100- and 500- year plan and are exploiting our myopia for short-term profits to gain manufacturing expertise and military advantage. It may not be too late to reverse, but it is close. It is really the result of not thinking ahead and letting the business lobbies have what they want today, instead of putting long-term strategic considerations first. Different incentives, different results, tragedy of the commons all over again.

ch4s3 5y ago
A 100- and 500- year plan is ludicrous on it's face. They don't even credibly hit their 5 year plans a lot of the time. The idea of planning something so large and complex so far into the future seems like wishful thinking at best.
- scrumper 5y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with that. Misses on short-term plans are a different concern to progress on a multi-century plan. Pig iron production might've missed its forecast for 2020, but it'd undeniable that China is building tremendous expertise in advanced manufacturing - and at a similar rate to that at which the west is shedding it.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Th narrative of "the west doesn't manufacture anything" is greatly oversold. The US makes more steel than it did 40 years ago, for example. Sure, we make fewer hairs and t-shirts, but it's natural for that stuff to chase lower labor costs. We're also an agricultural powerhouse. Now, for sure we have fallen a bit behind in making chips, but that may change.
    - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
      So we are the Romans. We can make swords and bread! We'll do great in WWIII!
      - ch4s3 5y ago
        That's ridiculous. We're churning out new ideas in biotech, medicine, media, finance, automobiles, airplanes, batteries, some solar stuff, and on and on. We have a huge, dynamic economy that does a lot of things really well. We've uncovered some major issues in the last two years but we've done better I think than one might have expected under the circumstances. I think in particular the rapid development and production of multiple vaccines in record time displays our capacity to innovate and manufacture complex goods. It's impossible to know what's coming in the distant future, but it doesn't feel like any of our problems are insurmountable.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wpietri 5y ago
An important factor here is not so much the business lobbies, but how we reward the decision-makers. CEOs make most of their money from short-term stock price numbers, something that also determines how long they last in their jobs. Combine that with declining CEO tenure [1] and the incentives are really clear: Do anything that will make the numbers look good in the 1-5 year time frame, get maximum money, and GTFO. A lot of these problems would go away if CEOs were paid a modest amount of cash to live (say, $1m/year) and then the rest of their compensation was in stock that was locked up for at least 20 years. [1] https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2019/ceo-turnover-record-high.html https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2019/ceo-...
yyyk 5y ago
>It is really the result of not thinking ahead and letting the business lobbies have what they want today There's a tendency in the West to airbrush history, and pretend that the opening to China was just a result of business lobbies. There was an intentional policy decision based on 'liberalization through trade' theory, which managed to be one of the most disastrous theories out there (far more disastrous than 2000-era US WoT policies). This was pushed by politicians and academics, and up until the oughts businesses were more reacting to the policy as creating it.
- toss1 5y ago
  YES, this is definitely a huge factor that I failed to mention - the concept that economic free(ish) markets are incompatible with authoritarianism and would lead to political freedom. From a BBC article yesterday [0]: "Indeed the US trade representative responsible for negotiating China's WTO deal, Charlene Barshefsky, told a Washington International Trade Association panel this week that China's economic model "somewhat disproved" the Western view that "you can't have an innovative society, and political control"" I can sort of see how the idea took hold, as the previous large authoritarian states in USSR and CCP had so dramatically and consistently underperformed (to be polite) the democracies that it would seem that the converse would be true, that economic freedom would force democracy. So, ya, it would seem like a good hypothesis, but I sure wouldn't bet a lot on it without solid testing. Yet, the political leaders all turned out to be fools and bet the entire future of democracy itself on that notion. Then, combine that with the MBA idea that the only thing important is the ideas and management and trifling things like manufacturing can be outsourced to their cheapest locale and that manufacturing know-how, innovation, and supply chain control don't matter, and we've come to the brink of destroying the free world. Now, we have a historical fight on our hands to recover from these blunders. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59610019 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59610019