5 ms·

> they explained how they believe that the US will never regain what it has given away, in the last couple of decades. Sure we can. It requires pivoting into s

> they explained how they believe that the US will never regain what it has given away, in the last couple of decades. Sure we can. It requires pivoting into stealing or otherwise replicating China's insane level of industrialization, but it's a little funny seeing people become despondent at the idea of merely losing clear economic hegemony over the world and becoming #2. We didn't lose anything in the last 5 decades we can't gain back faster. Here's hoping China's reign comes with fewer invasions.

bluGill 3y ago
The US has not lost industry. We have lost unskilled and semi-skilled grunt labors, but there is a lot of manufacturing happening here and a lot of expertise. If you want to cut a piece of metal by hand to high accuracy - sorry we have moved all that to CNC (often laser) cutters and nobody remembers how to do it anymore. However if you want to take those cut parts and assemble them into something - there is plenty of expertise to be had.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  > If you want to cut a piece of metal by hand to high accuracy - sorry we have moved all that to CNC (often laser) cutters and nobody remembers how to do it anymore. That's just the tooling keeping up with the times. The Chinese don't do this by hand either. They're just way better at doing it at volume.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    One cnc today machine does the work of 100 1950s men. (1950 so no women) that is the point, those factories still exist in the us, but with far less people in manufacturing
- JeffSnazz 3y ago
  > The US has not lost industry. Compared to China's absolutely staggering industrialization it has!
  - pas 3y ago
    yes, as it should have. first of all, there's no point in having all kinds of low-added-value industry in high-income places as long as there are millions of people willing and able to do it all in the same place close to a port. second, US industry suffers from two major problems. protective tariffs keeping productivity low, and the 'exorbitant privilege' of the USD being reserve currency of the world, which counterintuitively hurts export of every non-finance sector
    - Nevermark 3y ago
      Millions of people doing low level things learn higher level things from their experience. If you can’t completely automate something, there are by definition, still useful things to learn. Outsourcing the advancement of low level work to automated work puts a business’s competitive edge in jeopardy.
      - doublespanner 3y ago
        Not inherently true, there is not really a path from manual sheet metal work to CNC for example.
        Nevermark 3y ago
        Sounds like a useful problem to solve - with a different approach perhaps. I think it is fair to expect that everything will get automated in an economically advantageous way. And if the solution is novel & challenging, it is likely to provide valuable unexpected side benefits & capabilities. The automation question is just: when, how, and by who.
      - pas 3y ago
        ... if you automate it there's even more things to learn, of course. this is not a black-and-white thing, outsourcing makes sense in many cases and doesn't in others. the automotive industry does it for quasi-standardized components. (and there's a competitive market, for airplane parts, not so much it seems.) and on top of all this for things that have inherent safety critical aspects there is no real difference between outsourcing or doing it in-house, there's a need for controls (organizational, quality, independent testing lab with random sampling). the fucked up process of gutting companies for short-term profits happened just as well for non-outsourced departments too. as industries mature, companies grow and became organizationally more complex training and advancement itself becomes a challenge. (and many companies just put their heads in the proverbial sand, and hire clueless recruiters - or outsource it - and end up with paper tigers, who have absolutely no idea WTF is going on in the company, but quarterly reports look amazing.) ... finally, if market forces push for short-term thinking (and simple, wrong, but fancy 'solutions') that's what we'll end up. and if society and politics also has the same mindset it's not surprising that industry will mirror it. (and to overuse the overused cliché gestures wildly )
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I believe in something called "Social Infrastructure"[0]. That's basically what folks might label "tribal knowledge," but it goes far deeper. This is something that takes generations to build, but can get lost, very quickly. Folks, these days, aren't actually any smarter than our ancestors. We just have a vast social infrastructure that raises the baseline for our starting point. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/infrastructure/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/infrastructure/
- JeffSnazz 3y ago
  > This is something that takes generations to build, but can get lost, very quickly. Sure, hence my assessment of 5 decades.

bluGill 3y ago

The US has not lost industry. We have lost unskilled and semi-skilled grunt labors, but there is a lot of manufacturing happening here and a lot of expertise. If you want to cut a piece of metal by hand to high accuracy - sorry we have moved all that to CNC (often laser) cutters and nobody remembers how to do it anymore. However if you want to take those cut parts and assemble them into something - there is plenty of expertise to be had.

wkat4242 3y ago
> If you want to cut a piece of metal by hand to high accuracy - sorry we have moved all that to CNC (often laser) cutters and nobody remembers how to do it anymore. That's just the tooling keeping up with the times. The Chinese don't do this by hand either. They're just way better at doing it at volume.
- bluGill 3y ago
  One cnc today machine does the work of 100 1950s men. (1950 so no women) that is the point, those factories still exist in the us, but with far less people in manufacturing
JeffSnazz 3y ago
> The US has not lost industry. Compared to China's absolutely staggering industrialization it has!
- pas 3y ago
  yes, as it should have. first of all, there's no point in having all kinds of low-added-value industry in high-income places as long as there are millions of people willing and able to do it all in the same place close to a port. second, US industry suffers from two major problems. protective tariffs keeping productivity low, and the 'exorbitant privilege' of the USD being reserve currency of the world, which counterintuitively hurts export of every non-finance sector
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    Millions of people doing low level things learn higher level things from their experience. If you can’t completely automate something, there are by definition, still useful things to learn. Outsourcing the advancement of low level work to automated work puts a business’s competitive edge in jeopardy.
    - doublespanner 3y ago
      Not inherently true, there is not really a path from manual sheet metal work to CNC for example.
      - Nevermark 3y ago
        Sounds like a useful problem to solve - with a different approach perhaps. I think it is fair to expect that everything will get automated in an economically advantageous way. And if the solution is novel & challenging, it is likely to provide valuable unexpected side benefits & capabilities. The automation question is just: when, how, and by who.
    - pas 3y ago
      ... if you automate it there's even more things to learn, of course. this is not a black-and-white thing, outsourcing makes sense in many cases and doesn't in others. the automotive industry does it for quasi-standardized components. (and there's a competitive market, for airplane parts, not so much it seems.) and on top of all this for things that have inherent safety critical aspects there is no real difference between outsourcing or doing it in-house, there's a need for controls (organizational, quality, independent testing lab with random sampling). the fucked up process of gutting companies for short-term profits happened just as well for non-outsourced departments too. as industries mature, companies grow and became organizationally more complex training and advancement itself becomes a challenge. (and many companies just put their heads in the proverbial sand, and hire clueless recruiters - or outsource it - and end up with paper tigers, who have absolutely no idea WTF is going on in the company, but quarterly reports look amazing.) ... finally, if market forces push for short-term thinking (and simple, wrong, but fancy 'solutions') that's what we'll end up. and if society and politics also has the same mindset it's not surprising that industry will mirror it. (and to overuse the overused cliché gestures wildly )

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I believe in something called "Social Infrastructure"[0]. That's basically what folks might label "tribal knowledge," but it goes far deeper. This is something that takes generations to build, but can get lost, very quickly. Folks, these days, aren't actually any smarter than our ancestors. We just have a vast social infrastructure that raises the baseline for our starting point. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/infrastructure/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/infrastructure/

JeffSnazz 3y ago
> This is something that takes generations to build, but can get lost, very quickly. Sure, hence my assessment of 5 decades.