4 ms·

The reason US manufacturing excellence doesn't make sense is because we let it rot. We don't have cities like Shenzhen, where everything you need to get a prod

by hakfoo 3y ago

The reason US manufacturing excellence doesn't make sense is because we let it rot. We don't have cities like Shenzhen, where everything you need to get a product to market is within same-day courier range. I understand this was a feature of the old "hardware-centric" Silicon Valley, and it made fast iterations on new products a lot more viable. I wonder if we could even build a hub like that today, with property speculators and NIMBYism blocking anything short of grabbing a cornfield in Iowa and declaring it our new national manufacturing centrepiece. We've completely ceded on education, and that was realistically where we could have competed. We could never match the labour prices of China or Viet Nam, but we could offer better trained workers. Our schools are a disaster, and it feels like we've completely lost a focus on competitiveness. It was only a few years ago, we were very fixated about being beaten in test scores, but now the focus has been lost to social battles (scares over LGBTQ+ content) which suck all the oxygen out of the room when people want to ask about actual student achievement. We don't have the right backing for moonshot inventions. The way we lost solar panels to the PRC should be a freaking embarrassment. We knew for 40 years that people are going to want these things. Moreover, it was a new technology-- you didn't need to fight with entrenched players that didn't want to retool (like EVs)-- all you needed was a stream of seed capital and friendly loans to make sure people built here first. This might be helped with some more government intervention-- strong industrial development finance products with a VC-esque mentality of "90% of them will fail, but a few will pay off 50-fold". The state is a good backer here, because they can take the "50-fold" in forms other than raw stock appreciation, like "securing an industrial edge for our country."

coliveira 3y ago
Industry was already lost when solar panels started to become a thing. That was never going to be a possibility for the USA, unless it changed its course.
- gumby 3y ago
  Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. Reagan laughed, removed them, and increased drilling.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    I believe that were solar hot water collectors, not PV. And, indeed, that is a technology of the past now.
- paganel 3y ago
  Exactly, you weren't going to get talented, committed smart young persons into the solar industry in the late 2000s - early 2010s, all the money was in internet tech. No solar company could have competed with the 600k yearly comps provided by companies like Google to middle-rank engineers. Tesla and everything Musk-associated bucked the trend for a while because of the literal personality cult surrounding him back then (a thing easily forgotten by now when everyone likes to hate him), that's why his companies were still able to get young talented engineers and working them very hard while not paying Google-like comps.
  - hakfoo 3y ago
    We have other knobs we could turn. Not every talented engineer is eager for the cut-throat hustle to chase a 600k comp package (which ends up at 70k when the stock implodes). I'd think it might even be slightly less common when you get into research and greenfield stuff-- you've got people motivated by a vision and the opportunity to deliver it. Messaging like "We have the financial and structural backing to keep the project alive indefinitely" and "This is a job for life-- if it takes you 20 years to make the breakthrough, we're willing to wait" might appeal to those people, even if the compensation is a bit lower.
    - paganel 3y ago
      I agree that there are other knobs to bee turned, but housing will most probably get in the way of that, as the people earning 600k per year will chase out of the housing market the people who will go with their passion. Similar (and related) discussion when it comes to education, people earning 600k per year will be able to provide better education opportunities to their children compared to the passionate but earning-less-money people, and if you're part of the second group at some point it will become harder and harder to explain to your spouse that your kids won't get the same chances in life compared to your friends' children because you're going for passion over money, unlike said friends. I know that all this sounds very mundane but it's part of day to day life, maybe the Soviets had a good idea when they basically built scientists-only cities in the middle of Siberia or somewhere like that.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> I wonder if we could even build a hub like that today, with property speculators and NIMBYism blocking anything short of grabbing a cornfield in Iowa and declaring it our new national manufacturing centrepiece. Why is that a problem? Isn't that what "building" a hub means? What do you think Shenzhen was before it got the SEZ designation?
piva00 3y ago
The US seems to have transitioned to a fully financial economy. Nixon and Reagan left to you a legacy that eventually will be America's downfall, just look how the Southern Strategy has eroded USA's democracy, Reagan's economic policies propping up the whole finance sector. Nothing else matters more than finance, and it's shareholder value above everything else (consumer value, employees' well being, return to society be damned) is the ideology Welch instilled in generations of MBAs that went to control most corporations. When everything is judged on a single metric it ends up eaten by Goodhart's Law, the corporate game is to manipulate the books well enough to increase share value, the finance market does not care if layoffs will impact the company's competitiveness in 5-10 years, the finance market does not care if the company is eroding their customers trust (e.g.: Google killing off products willy-nilly), if the books look good and costs are down while revenue is up then share price go up. It will crumble, it's not sustainable, the main issue is when will it crumble and how destructive it will be for normal people.
- concordDance 3y ago
  > the finance market does not care if layoffs will impact the company's competitiveness in 5-10 years This doesn't make sense to me. Are there no 5-10 year derivatives?
  - piva00 3y ago
    Aren't all of them quantitative instead of qualitative? Every trader I know in Big Finance is basically creating/using statistical models based on books' numbers vs other books, not analysing a company's products and labour potential on a human level.
    - htrp 3y ago
      You know all of the quant traders (they work at very obscure places like jump, sig, rentech, shaw, and 2 sig) There are still fundamental investors out there
      - 3y ago
BeFlatXIII 3y ago
> Our schools are a disaster, and it feels like we've completely lost a focus on competitiveness. I do wonder how much of an attitude of "we don't need everyone to be successful, we just need enough" there is among policy makers. At this point, it seems that it's more cultural than a mere policy reorientation could fix to make the average student academically competitive again.
charlysl 3y ago
scares over LGBTQ+ content Indeed, but also aggressively pushing that kind of content in the first place

by hakfoo 3y ago

coliveira 3y ago

Industry was already lost when solar panels started to become a thing. That was never going to be a possibility for the USA, unless it changed its course.

gumby 3y ago
Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. Reagan laughed, removed them, and increased drilling.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  I believe that were solar hot water collectors, not PV. And, indeed, that is a technology of the past now.
paganel 3y ago
Exactly, you weren't going to get talented, committed smart young persons into the solar industry in the late 2000s - early 2010s, all the money was in internet tech. No solar company could have competed with the 600k yearly comps provided by companies like Google to middle-rank engineers. Tesla and everything Musk-associated bucked the trend for a while because of the literal personality cult surrounding him back then (a thing easily forgotten by now when everyone likes to hate him), that's why his companies were still able to get young talented engineers and working them very hard while not paying Google-like comps.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  We have other knobs we could turn. Not every talented engineer is eager for the cut-throat hustle to chase a 600k comp package (which ends up at 70k when the stock implodes). I'd think it might even be slightly less common when you get into research and greenfield stuff-- you've got people motivated by a vision and the opportunity to deliver it. Messaging like "We have the financial and structural backing to keep the project alive indefinitely" and "This is a job for life-- if it takes you 20 years to make the breakthrough, we're willing to wait" might appeal to those people, even if the compensation is a bit lower.
  - paganel 3y ago
    I agree that there are other knobs to bee turned, but housing will most probably get in the way of that, as the people earning 600k per year will chase out of the housing market the people who will go with their passion. Similar (and related) discussion when it comes to education, people earning 600k per year will be able to provide better education opportunities to their children compared to the passionate but earning-less-money people, and if you're part of the second group at some point it will become harder and harder to explain to your spouse that your kids won't get the same chances in life compared to your friends' children because you're going for passion over money, unlike said friends. I know that all this sounds very mundane but it's part of day to day life, maybe the Soviets had a good idea when they basically built scientists-only cities in the middle of Siberia or somewhere like that.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> I wonder if we could even build a hub like that today, with property speculators and NIMBYism blocking anything short of grabbing a cornfield in Iowa and declaring it our new national manufacturing centrepiece. Why is that a problem? Isn't that what "building" a hub means? What do you think Shenzhen was before it got the SEZ designation?

piva00 3y ago

The US seems to have transitioned to a fully financial economy. Nixon and Reagan left to you a legacy that eventually will be America's downfall, just look how the Southern Strategy has eroded USA's democracy, Reagan's economic policies propping up the whole finance sector. Nothing else matters more than finance, and it's shareholder value above everything else (consumer value, employees' well being, return to society be damned) is the ideology Welch instilled in generations of MBAs that went to control most corporations. When everything is judged on a single metric it ends up eaten by Goodhart's Law, the corporate game is to manipulate the books well enough to increase share value, the finance market does not care if layoffs will impact the company's competitiveness in 5-10 years, the finance market does not care if the company is eroding their customers trust (e.g.: Google killing off products willy-nilly), if the books look good and costs are down while revenue is up then share price go up. It will crumble, it's not sustainable, the main issue is when will it crumble and how destructive it will be for normal people.

concordDance 3y ago
> the finance market does not care if layoffs will impact the company's competitiveness in 5-10 years This doesn't make sense to me. Are there no 5-10 year derivatives?
- piva00 3y ago
  Aren't all of them quantitative instead of qualitative? Every trader I know in Big Finance is basically creating/using statistical models based on books' numbers vs other books, not analysing a company's products and labour potential on a human level.
  - htrp 3y ago
    You know all of the quant traders (they work at very obscure places like jump, sig, rentech, shaw, and 2 sig) There are still fundamental investors out there
    - 3y ago

BeFlatXIII 3y ago

> Our schools are a disaster, and it feels like we've completely lost a focus on competitiveness. I do wonder how much of an attitude of "we don't need everyone to be successful, we just need enough" there is among policy makers. At this point, it seems that it's more cultural than a mere policy reorientation could fix to make the average student academically competitive again.

charlysl 3y ago

scares over LGBTQ+ content Indeed, but also aggressively pushing that kind of content in the first place