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> Something I wish was discussed in the article was the fact that shipbuilding salaries in Japan, while low compared to developed countries at the time, was aro

> Something I wish was discussed in the article was the fact that shipbuilding salaries in Japan, while low compared to developed countries at the time, was around 160% the median salary a Japanese employee could demand in the post-war era [0] ... It appears that this incentivized higher skilled workers to work in the shipbuilding and steel industry in post-war Japan. It would be interesting to use wage and salary controls to drive talented workers out of certain industries and into more productive ones. For instance, cap total compensation and benefits for people working in advertising (including adtech) at say, $130k/year. People working on cryptocurrency could be capped at 2x minimum wage. It's sometimes hard to identify industries that should be supported, but it seems like it would be much easier to identify the handful of well-compensated but problematic industries.

alephnerd 1y ago
> seems like it would be much easier to identify the handful of well-compensated but problematic industries That would only incentivize a brain drain. A good example of this is software engineering in UK, Germany, Canada, South Korea, and Japan, as SWE salaries in those countries are not significantly different compared to other vocations. Also, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies, but they are one of the few industries left in the US that incentivizes NAND-to-Tetris level knowledge, and it did help subsidize the GPU buildout that made foundational models easier to train cost effectively. You can't "command economy" innovation - it can only be nudged. The solution I've seen most industrial planners use is provide tax holidays and subsidizes for targeted industries, as this helps reduce the upfront cost of hiring, and does give wiggle room to raise compensation. Linking that with production, timeline locks, or even tariffs tends to help force an ecosystem to develop - which is what Japan used to build their shipbuilding and automotive industries in the post-war era.
- palmotea 1y ago
  > Also, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies, but they are one of the few industries left in the US that incentivizes NAND-to-Tetris level knowledge, And what does it do with that knowledge? > and it did help subsidize the GPU buildout that made foundational models easier to train cost effectively. Crypto and AI both use GPUs, but I'm not under the impression that AI people repurposed old crypto mines for anything (e.g. crypto mines used janky racks of consumer GPUs, AI typically uses specialized high-end equipment).
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    > And what does it do with that knowledge? Notice how I talked about HPC, distributed systems, and cybersecurity in my comment? > I'm not under the impression that AI people repurposed old crypto mines for anything The crypto boom helped incentivize the scaling out of GPU design and fabrication, just like how video games helped with the first iteration in the 2000s. There's a reason the concept of "dual use technology" has gained currency
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
>It's sometimes hard to identify industries that should be supported, It's sometimes controversial to claim this industry or that industry should be pursued at a national level, but this isn't the same thing as difficult. It's just that politics gets in the way. And yes, shipbuilding should be one of those industries we pursue. For that matter, I think you may have nailed the one industry we should punish.
- caycep 1y ago
  Amazon makes more money doing what it does, and buying its planes made by someone else, vs. making its own planes...
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    And if Amazon were to ever have to go to war with Boeing, which of those two companies would come out on top? Sometimes things are more expensive because they're actually worth it. Should the United States buy all its planes from China because they can make those cheaper than we can domestically?
bobthepanda 1y ago
Japan, Korea, and China kind of did this, but not via direct wage and salary controls. Window guidance is the informal practice where government/finance officials tell banks which industries to prefer for loans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_guidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_guidance It only really works where capital markets are undeveloped or heavily restricted; and it does starve out the rest of the economy, which is bad for the not-chosen-few (e.g. South Korea's chaebols) and can also backfire if you end up being bad at picking winners.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Window guidance doesn't have a great correlation with wage power, as was seen with the loss of shipbuilding capacity in Japan in the 1980s to South Korea as wages rose leading to automation (remember the whole Japanese "robots" trend).
  - bobthepanda 1y ago
    It is good if your concern is relative domestic wages, since favored firms and industries can pay more if they have access to cheap credit. It is hard to maintain that competitiveness as living standards rise and eventually window guidance starts running out of steam, as Japan discovered in the '90s and China is discovering now.

alephnerd 1y ago

> seems like it would be much easier to identify the handful of well-compensated but problematic industries That would only incentivize a brain drain. A good example of this is software engineering in UK, Germany, Canada, South Korea, and Japan, as SWE salaries in those countries are not significantly different compared to other vocations. Also, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies, but they are one of the few industries left in the US that incentivizes NAND-to-Tetris level knowledge, and it did help subsidize the GPU buildout that made foundational models easier to train cost effectively. You can't "command economy" innovation - it can only be nudged. The solution I've seen most industrial planners use is provide tax holidays and subsidizes for targeted industries, as this helps reduce the upfront cost of hiring, and does give wiggle room to raise compensation. Linking that with production, timeline locks, or even tariffs tends to help force an ecosystem to develop - which is what Japan used to build their shipbuilding and automotive industries in the post-war era.

palmotea 1y ago
> Also, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies, but they are one of the few industries left in the US that incentivizes NAND-to-Tetris level knowledge, And what does it do with that knowledge? > and it did help subsidize the GPU buildout that made foundational models easier to train cost effectively. Crypto and AI both use GPUs, but I'm not under the impression that AI people repurposed old crypto mines for anything (e.g. crypto mines used janky racks of consumer GPUs, AI typically uses specialized high-end equipment).
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > And what does it do with that knowledge? Notice how I talked about HPC, distributed systems, and cybersecurity in my comment? > I'm not under the impression that AI people repurposed old crypto mines for anything The crypto boom helped incentivize the scaling out of GPU design and fabrication, just like how video games helped with the first iteration in the 2000s. There's a reason the concept of "dual use technology" has gained currency

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

>It's sometimes hard to identify industries that should be supported, It's sometimes controversial to claim this industry or that industry should be pursued at a national level, but this isn't the same thing as difficult. It's just that politics gets in the way. And yes, shipbuilding should be one of those industries we pursue. For that matter, I think you may have nailed the one industry we should punish.

caycep 1y ago
Amazon makes more money doing what it does, and buying its planes made by someone else, vs. making its own planes...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  And if Amazon were to ever have to go to war with Boeing, which of those two companies would come out on top? Sometimes things are more expensive because they're actually worth it. Should the United States buy all its planes from China because they can make those cheaper than we can domestically?

bobthepanda 1y ago

Japan, Korea, and China kind of did this, but not via direct wage and salary controls. Window guidance is the informal practice where government/finance officials tell banks which industries to prefer for loans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_guidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_guidance It only really works where capital markets are undeveloped or heavily restricted; and it does starve out the rest of the economy, which is bad for the not-chosen-few (e.g. South Korea's chaebols) and can also backfire if you end up being bad at picking winners.

alephnerd 1y ago
Window guidance doesn't have a great correlation with wage power, as was seen with the loss of shipbuilding capacity in Japan in the 1980s to South Korea as wages rose leading to automation (remember the whole Japanese "robots" trend).
- bobthepanda 1y ago
  It is good if your concern is relative domestic wages, since favored firms and industries can pay more if they have access to cheap credit. It is hard to maintain that competitiveness as living standards rise and eventually window guidance starts running out of steam, as Japan discovered in the '90s and China is discovering now.