4 ms·

At some point, we just need to admit our auto industry has completely failed multiple times, has exhausted all forgiveness, and rip down the trade barriers. Fo

At some point, we just need to admit our auto industry has completely failed multiple times, has exhausted all forgiveness, and rip down the trade barriers. For those worried about national self-sufficiency, the answer can be public transit, not cars.

NewJazz 1y ago
Or the answer can be aggressive pentesting for foreign tech and mandating network kill switches. But that's too much work. Let's just trust that Ford can design a secure system and pay them 100x what we would have paid the pentesters.
- rfoo 1y ago
  > mandating network kill switches It's really funny that China made non-trivial amount of strategic decisions on the assumption that US tech do have network kill switches [0], including using it solely to justify protectionism, while nobody on the earth are crazy enough to do this, we all just call them out, "just an excuse to justify protectionism", then all at a sudden here we are, trying to say "mandating network kill switches" could be a good idea. [0] Use OpenAI Deep Research or rivals and investigate the word "自主可控".
  - NewJazz 1y ago
    Hi sorry I think I may have used the wrong terminology. I meant hardware switches to make sure a device stays offline when you tell it to, not switches to turn off the internet totally.
CamperBob2 1y ago
National self-sufficiency is about being able to do things like this, particularly in times of emergent crisis or war. And we can say we are able to do it only if we actually do it. And no, the answer cannot be public transit. Public transit won't be a valid response to the next Pearl Harbor.
- kawaiikouhai 1y ago
  Pearl Harbor? Really? bro was talking about public transit & Chinese cars, my guy.
  - christophilus 1y ago
    You cannot win a war without a manufacturing base. That’s the thing that public transit won’t fix. It won’t give us a manufacturing base. Auto builders will. There are probably plenty of ways to ensure a manufacturing base, but having a robust auto industry is one way that is pretty well understood. I don’t like the amount of inefficiency caused by protectionism, though.
    - kawaiikouhai 1y ago
      It's ridiculous to bring up a war scenario when it's about EVs. Go reshore the military. Yes, the Americans and Western Europe lost in EVs. Though, I only ever see Americans turn this event into losing a war.
      - suraci 1y ago
        when I first watched Full Metal Jacket (as well as other films by Stanley Kubrick), I couldn’t understand a lot of the content - for example, the “War Face”
- timeon 1y ago
  Answer or not, you should have done public transit long time ago.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    The public transit problem in the US isn't actually a "build public transit" problem, it's a "remove zoning rules that prohibit the housing density required for public transit to be viable" problem. But it would take decades to fix that even if we started now, and we haven't even started now because people are still trying to fix it by adding bus lanes to places where the density required for viable bus service continues to be prohibited.
echelon 1y ago
No. 1. China got here by using protectionism and stealing trade secrets. They subsidized their domestic producers and forced foreign entities to partner and train domestic nationals. They used protectionism to leapfrog us. We shouldn't just let them in and destroy our own capacity. 2. Manufacturing is necessary for a country that plans to go to war. America (and every nation!) needs a strong industrial plant to counter its enemies. Without the ability to switch to making warplanes, tanks, and drones, you'll be unable to fight a drawn out war. 3. We're really not that far behind and our industry will be fine. There's way too much panic here. > For those worried about national self-sufficiency, the answer can be public transit, not cars. This is highly opinionated r/fuckcars anti-"carbrain" (as they call it). This does not work in America. It's an opinion of city dwellers who have no exposure to the rest of the country. Self-driving cars will transform public Transit in this country to be more automotive and less rail based. Not the other way around.
- brookst 1y ago
  1. While China does engage in industrial espionage, they have also learned from being contract manufacturers. I’m very uncomfortable with the “how dare my unskilled labor learn from what I pay them to do and become skilled” part of this meme. 2. I don’t think anyone could seriously look at the US and worry that we might not be able to make enough military hardware. What country makes more weapons than the US? 3. The US auto industry is somewhere between dead and absorbed into the globalized auto industry. Their cost structure can’t compete and the US’ cratering international reputation means exports are falling and China has growth opportunities. Where I do agree with you is that there’s no reason to panic. All of these things are just fine.
- NewJazz 1y ago
  How can a car factory easily pivot to making weapons or even armored vehicles? I don't think that is a realistic approach to DIB readiness. Armored vehicles can be somewhat useful in some war scenarios, but even Abrams tanks weren't enough to turn the tide in Ukraine.
  - to11mtm 1y ago
leereeves 1y ago
Completely agree that our industries have failed, but not quite ready to give up and become entirely dependent on foreign tech. How can we fix American industry?
- analog31 1y ago
  Industrial policy. Every prosperous country has an industrial policy that includes generous support for basic research, and reasonable immigration. And it's not all that bad. We're something like the number-two industrial country in the world.
- to11mtm 1y ago
  It's a difficult question, because there's both the labor cost difference as well as the environmental cost difference. Plenty of things aren't made in the US anymore simply because the cost of producing them without becoming a superfund site are too high vs a country that's willing to either just designate the whole thing as forever industrial wasteland (or decide that the long term societal damage of pollution is worth the gain at this time). Pragmatically, the sanest thing we might be able to do is find a region of the country that is remote enough in every way and turn it into a free for all industrial park so long as workers aren't exposed to excessive danger.
- const_cast 1y ago
  > How can we fix American industry? Well first off, I think we need to implement basic accountability. American industries routinely fail in the long-term because they're allowed to. They know they're basically invincible and can absolutely run their companies into the ground and leadership will fly away with too much money than what they know to do with. The American school of business is make short-term decisions now, over and over again, forever, until you eventually blow up. This is how basically every company is run. It's an almost debt-driven mindset. It's a greedy algorithm. Take on any amount of loan now, and say "fuck it" when it comes to interest. When the chicken comes home to roost, who cares, you can leave. That's why American industries will be competitive for a couple decades and then quickly be so far behind it seems it's impossible for them to catch up. They get a tiny little taste of market success, and they immediately stop investing into their future and start cashing in right now. We're even seeing this with Tesla.
ars 1y ago
Public transit is the opposite of self sufficiency, public transit means dependence on others for your basic transportation. It can work fine in normal situations, but any kind of stress, and anyone without a car is completely stuck. Bad weather, labor strike, high demand, evacuation, moving day, there's a politician in town and roads are closed, there's a celebrity/show in town and you want to go somewhere else, power outage, windstorm and some roads are closed. Any kind of stress and public transit fails. Which makes it the opposite of self sufficiency.
- NewJazz 1y ago
  Lots of those scenarios you listed show how car based transit fails, too. https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2024/10/07/tampa-bay-traffic-jams-thousands-evacuate-before-hurricane-milton/ https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2024/10/07/tampa-bay-traf...
- Ericson2314 1y ago
  Automobiles do not make for individual self sufficiency. That's propaganda "in the zombie apocalypse the gas stations still work" nonsense. But even if that were true, it also has nothing to do with what I said, which is national self-sufficiency.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
analog31 1y ago
The odd thing is that if our industry has failed, so has Japan, Korea, and Europe, because they all make electrics, and we can buy them in the US. I don't know the extent to which demand plays a role. Ford makes F150s because people buy F150s. They have to be forced to make smaller cars, and lose money on them.
- to11mtm 1y ago
  I'm fairly certain that Ford has gotten to the point where, at least in the US they aren't losing money on their 'smaller' vehicles. Certainly not making as much as they can make on an F150, (I think the estimate on a Maverick is somewhere around 500-600 a car to ford). As far as overall 'demand', there is a bit of market distortion (depending on how you look at it) as far as dealers frequently trying to push people into bigger vehicles because they are inherently more expensive and they get more commission and profit too. [0] [0] - I've had this happen more than once, even when I knew what car I wanted to buy.

NewJazz 1y ago

Or the answer can be aggressive pentesting for foreign tech and mandating network kill switches. But that's too much work. Let's just trust that Ford can design a secure system and pay them 100x what we would have paid the pentesters.

rfoo 1y ago
> mandating network kill switches It's really funny that China made non-trivial amount of strategic decisions on the assumption that US tech do have network kill switches [0], including using it solely to justify protectionism, while nobody on the earth are crazy enough to do this, we all just call them out, "just an excuse to justify protectionism", then all at a sudden here we are, trying to say "mandating network kill switches" could be a good idea. [0] Use OpenAI Deep Research or rivals and investigate the word "自主可控".
- NewJazz 1y ago
  Hi sorry I think I may have used the wrong terminology. I meant hardware switches to make sure a device stays offline when you tell it to, not switches to turn off the internet totally.

CamperBob2 1y ago

National self-sufficiency is about being able to do things like this, particularly in times of emergent crisis or war. And we can say we are able to do it only if we actually do it. And no, the answer cannot be public transit. Public transit won't be a valid response to the next Pearl Harbor.

kawaiikouhai 1y ago
Pearl Harbor? Really? bro was talking about public transit & Chinese cars, my guy.
- christophilus 1y ago
  You cannot win a war without a manufacturing base. That’s the thing that public transit won’t fix. It won’t give us a manufacturing base. Auto builders will. There are probably plenty of ways to ensure a manufacturing base, but having a robust auto industry is one way that is pretty well understood. I don’t like the amount of inefficiency caused by protectionism, though.
  - kawaiikouhai 1y ago
    It's ridiculous to bring up a war scenario when it's about EVs. Go reshore the military. Yes, the Americans and Western Europe lost in EVs. Though, I only ever see Americans turn this event into losing a war.
    - suraci 1y ago
      when I first watched Full Metal Jacket (as well as other films by Stanley Kubrick), I couldn’t understand a lot of the content - for example, the “War Face”
timeon 1y ago
Answer or not, you should have done public transit long time ago.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  The public transit problem in the US isn't actually a "build public transit" problem, it's a "remove zoning rules that prohibit the housing density required for public transit to be viable" problem. But it would take decades to fix that even if we started now, and we haven't even started now because people are still trying to fix it by adding bus lanes to places where the density required for viable bus service continues to be prohibited.

echelon 1y ago

No. 1. China got here by using protectionism and stealing trade secrets. They subsidized their domestic producers and forced foreign entities to partner and train domestic nationals. They used protectionism to leapfrog us. We shouldn't just let them in and destroy our own capacity. 2. Manufacturing is necessary for a country that plans to go to war. America (and every nation!) needs a strong industrial plant to counter its enemies. Without the ability to switch to making warplanes, tanks, and drones, you'll be unable to fight a drawn out war. 3. We're really not that far behind and our industry will be fine. There's way too much panic here. > For those worried about national self-sufficiency, the answer can be public transit, not cars. This is highly opinionated r/fuckcars anti-"carbrain" (as they call it). This does not work in America. It's an opinion of city dwellers who have no exposure to the rest of the country. Self-driving cars will transform public Transit in this country to be more automotive and less rail based. Not the other way around.

brookst 1y ago
1. While China does engage in industrial espionage, they have also learned from being contract manufacturers. I’m very uncomfortable with the “how dare my unskilled labor learn from what I pay them to do and become skilled” part of this meme. 2. I don’t think anyone could seriously look at the US and worry that we might not be able to make enough military hardware. What country makes more weapons than the US? 3. The US auto industry is somewhere between dead and absorbed into the globalized auto industry. Their cost structure can’t compete and the US’ cratering international reputation means exports are falling and China has growth opportunities. Where I do agree with you is that there’s no reason to panic. All of these things are just fine.
NewJazz 1y ago
How can a car factory easily pivot to making weapons or even armored vehicles? I don't think that is a realistic approach to DIB readiness. Armored vehicles can be somewhat useful in some war scenarios, but even Abrams tanks weren't enough to turn the tide in Ukraine.
- to11mtm 1y ago

leereeves 1y ago

Completely agree that our industries have failed, but not quite ready to give up and become entirely dependent on foreign tech. How can we fix American industry?

analog31 1y ago
Industrial policy. Every prosperous country has an industrial policy that includes generous support for basic research, and reasonable immigration. And it's not all that bad. We're something like the number-two industrial country in the world.
to11mtm 1y ago
It's a difficult question, because there's both the labor cost difference as well as the environmental cost difference. Plenty of things aren't made in the US anymore simply because the cost of producing them without becoming a superfund site are too high vs a country that's willing to either just designate the whole thing as forever industrial wasteland (or decide that the long term societal damage of pollution is worth the gain at this time). Pragmatically, the sanest thing we might be able to do is find a region of the country that is remote enough in every way and turn it into a free for all industrial park so long as workers aren't exposed to excessive danger.
const_cast 1y ago
> How can we fix American industry? Well first off, I think we need to implement basic accountability. American industries routinely fail in the long-term because they're allowed to. They know they're basically invincible and can absolutely run their companies into the ground and leadership will fly away with too much money than what they know to do with. The American school of business is make short-term decisions now, over and over again, forever, until you eventually blow up. This is how basically every company is run. It's an almost debt-driven mindset. It's a greedy algorithm. Take on any amount of loan now, and say "fuck it" when it comes to interest. When the chicken comes home to roost, who cares, you can leave. That's why American industries will be competitive for a couple decades and then quickly be so far behind it seems it's impossible for them to catch up. They get a tiny little taste of market success, and they immediately stop investing into their future and start cashing in right now. We're even seeing this with Tesla.

ars 1y ago

Public transit is the opposite of self sufficiency, public transit means dependence on others for your basic transportation. It can work fine in normal situations, but any kind of stress, and anyone without a car is completely stuck. Bad weather, labor strike, high demand, evacuation, moving day, there's a politician in town and roads are closed, there's a celebrity/show in town and you want to go somewhere else, power outage, windstorm and some roads are closed. Any kind of stress and public transit fails. Which makes it the opposite of self sufficiency.

NewJazz 1y ago
Lots of those scenarios you listed show how car based transit fails, too. https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2024/10/07/tampa-bay-traffic-jams-thousands-evacuate-before-hurricane-milton/ https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2024/10/07/tampa-bay-traf...
Ericson2314 1y ago
Automobiles do not make for individual self sufficiency. That's propaganda "in the zombie apocalypse the gas stations still work" nonsense. But even if that were true, it also has nothing to do with what I said, which is national self-sufficiency.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

analog31 1y ago

The odd thing is that if our industry has failed, so has Japan, Korea, and Europe, because they all make electrics, and we can buy them in the US. I don't know the extent to which demand plays a role. Ford makes F150s because people buy F150s. They have to be forced to make smaller cars, and lose money on them.

to11mtm 1y ago
I'm fairly certain that Ford has gotten to the point where, at least in the US they aren't losing money on their 'smaller' vehicles. Certainly not making as much as they can make on an F150, (I think the estimate on a Maverick is somewhere around 500-600 a car to ford). As far as overall 'demand', there is a bit of market distortion (depending on how you look at it) as far as dealers frequently trying to push people into bigger vehicles because they are inherently more expensive and they get more commission and profit too. [0] [0] - I've had this happen more than once, even when I knew what car I wanted to buy.