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But we don't have a shortage of people who understand those things. You can learn them with a passive interest while hanging around with your laptop on the week

But we don't have a shortage of people who understand those things. You can learn them with a passive interest while hanging around with your laptop on the weekends. We have a shortage of people who understand how to actually make things in a non-copy/paste environment. There are so many ways that mother nature says "fuck you, fuck your work" that you never get contact with in virtual environments. In fact the whole point of virtual environments it to remove that brutality. We have a dramatic shortage of young people who are interested in learning how to wrangle with mother nature OS rather than computer OS.

_DeadFred_ 1y ago
When I did IT in manufacturing, we outsourced most of the 'understand how to actually make things' tooling type people jobs. We didn't need them full time and could get way better experts via outsourcing than we could hire. What we needed were wage slaves paid low enough to make the economics work, even in our small town without many employers that was the tricky bit. Especially every year when health insurance premiums went up. You want to help American manufacturing, move healthcare costs off their back and to the government.
- nebula8804 1y ago
  >You want to help American manufacturing, move healthcare costs off their back and to the government. This would be a big help but maybe too little too late. Maybe we just enjoyed an era of living off the backs of Chinese labor. Now with their increasing wealth, their own desire to move up the chain and their abysmal birthrates, that era is ending. India also does not have a great birthrate and other structural problems while other asian countries dont have the numbers to completely replace China. It might be that many products we enjoyed just dont make sense anymore if no other country is willing to pick up the slack or there isn't some amazing innovation in automation. Other products might survive with massive inflation. Watch how this simple bluetooth speaker is made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U Look at how many people are there to assemble the speaker at MSRP ~20-25$ per speaker. Does that make sense in a world where those folks aren't being paid the wages that they are or they don't exist anymore because they have retired?

_DeadFred_ 1y ago

When I did IT in manufacturing, we outsourced most of the 'understand how to actually make things' tooling type people jobs. We didn't need them full time and could get way better experts via outsourcing than we could hire. What we needed were wage slaves paid low enough to make the economics work, even in our small town without many employers that was the tricky bit. Especially every year when health insurance premiums went up. You want to help American manufacturing, move healthcare costs off their back and to the government.

nebula8804 1y ago
>You want to help American manufacturing, move healthcare costs off their back and to the government. This would be a big help but maybe too little too late. Maybe we just enjoyed an era of living off the backs of Chinese labor. Now with their increasing wealth, their own desire to move up the chain and their abysmal birthrates, that era is ending. India also does not have a great birthrate and other structural problems while other asian countries dont have the numbers to completely replace China. It might be that many products we enjoyed just dont make sense anymore if no other country is willing to pick up the slack or there isn't some amazing innovation in automation. Other products might survive with massive inflation. Watch how this simple bluetooth speaker is made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U Look at how many people are there to assemble the speaker at MSRP ~20-25$ per speaker. Does that make sense in a world where those folks aren't being paid the wages that they are or they don't exist anymore because they have retired?