4 ms·

That is correct but the fear (and conceit) is still that Chine would not be able to compete with the West in the high tech sector. In the classic example for R

by wrnr 5y ago

That is correct but the fear (and conceit) is still that Chine would not be able to compete with the West in the high tech sector. In the classic example for Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage, England is better at producing wool and Portugal is better at producing Wine, therefore each should focus on what it does best and gain efficiencies through trade. But then the industrial revolution happened and England had a far easier time automating weaving than Portugal could grow grape vines. Path dependence is important for technological innovation and this can not be protected with IP law alone.

ajross 5y ago
To be clear, I don't disagree, but that's an orthogonal point. China may very well beat the west and drive the next few generations of innovation and growth, but their dominance of PCB stuffing and volume tantalum capacitor manufacturing will have nothing to do with that. Those things are valueless commodities, by definition the next Big Product will be something else.
- Animats 5y ago
  The obsession with the Next Big Product may be misplaced. There's considerable profit to be made in producing routine items in volume. The US used to lead in that. It's not about the product as much as it is about the production engineering.
  - ajross 5y ago
    > There's considerable profit to be made in producing routine items in volume. The US used to lead in that. The US used to be a comparatively[1] low wage labor environment, though. We used to lead in making cheap goods because making goods in the US was cheap. It's not anymore. That's not a value judgement. Maybe it should be. Maybe we should relax minimum wage legislation, increase immigration quotas to expand the labor pool and make up the human condition shortfall with sturdier safety net programs from the government (call it "progressive libertarianism"). That would be interesting to discuss. But it's not the country we live in. If you want PCB stuffing to be economical in the US as it exists today, you need to figure out how to stuff PCBs economically with people paid $10-15 an hour. (And in such a way that people paid $2/hour couldn't just use the same trick.) That's a technology problem, not a social science one. [1] It's complicated by the development of cheap global trade. The reason the third world didn't get involved into global trade like this until the 90's wasn't that it didn't have lower wages, but that the cost of transporting the goods was so high that it would eat up the advantage. And this is why heavy industry like auto manufacturing still exists in the high-wage west, because cheap labor doesn't make a car cheaper to ship.

by wrnr 5y ago

ajross 5y ago

To be clear, I don't disagree, but that's an orthogonal point. China may very well beat the west and drive the next few generations of innovation and growth, but their dominance of PCB stuffing and volume tantalum capacitor manufacturing will have nothing to do with that. Those things are valueless commodities, by definition the next Big Product will be something else.

Animats 5y ago
The obsession with the Next Big Product may be misplaced. There's considerable profit to be made in producing routine items in volume. The US used to lead in that. It's not about the product as much as it is about the production engineering.
- ajross 5y ago
  > There's considerable profit to be made in producing routine items in volume. The US used to lead in that. The US used to be a comparatively[1] low wage labor environment, though. We used to lead in making cheap goods because making goods in the US was cheap. It's not anymore. That's not a value judgement. Maybe it should be. Maybe we should relax minimum wage legislation, increase immigration quotas to expand the labor pool and make up the human condition shortfall with sturdier safety net programs from the government (call it "progressive libertarianism"). That would be interesting to discuss. But it's not the country we live in. If you want PCB stuffing to be economical in the US as it exists today, you need to figure out how to stuff PCBs economically with people paid $10-15 an hour. (And in such a way that people paid $2/hour couldn't just use the same trick.) That's a technology problem, not a social science one. [1] It's complicated by the development of cheap global trade. The reason the third world didn't get involved into global trade like this until the 90's wasn't that it didn't have lower wages, but that the cost of transporting the goods was so high that it would eat up the advantage. And this is why heavy industry like auto manufacturing still exists in the high-wage west, because cheap labor doesn't make a car cheaper to ship.