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This gets back to why there is a "we need to start making things in America again" sentiment. We made a national policy decision and underwent an economic trans

This gets back to why there is a "we need to start making things in America again" sentiment. We made a national policy decision and underwent an economic transformation based on financialization and globalization. Kept the design and services aspects of our greatest companies in the US but the nuts and bolts of manufacturing and assembly went overseas, relying on patents and IP law to control production from afar. This approach was always going to have holes in it and sure enough we're now facing a difficult and uncertain endeavor, for example, to ever be able to make the best chips in the world on American soil again. (Or as in the headlines today, to source and process rare earths for all manner of production.) It turns out that, surprise surprise, there was tons of process knowledge and tons of capacity for innovation in the people who were closest to the actual work of production, now those people are no longer American and couldn't care less what America can and cannot do. So we're in a bind. Americans keep claiming they can build all the things but they haven't actually done so in many years. There's no way to solve the problem other than to try, and that entails clawing back as much of the people, processes and materiel as you can by whatever means you can until you start cobbling together some genuine innovation. My gut tells me enough of the political class supports the idea that the financiers will just have to get used to capitalizing a lot of production on domestic soil again, politicians will of course be happy to print billions more dollars of free money and hand it to them for this.

mlrtime 1y ago
100% Agree and it would never happen if not for some major changes. People want their cheap stuff made somewhere else.
- safety1st 1y ago
  It's OK for people to want cheap stuff. But to me when I see the insistence that to get it cheap it has to be made somewhere else, I think that belief comes from cynicism and from ignorance of history. Like, the whole story of the Industrial Revolution is that we invested continually in technology, training, process and plant, and the cost of producing things as measured by both dollars and labor decreased by orders of magnitude. It never stopped. It kept on working right up until we stopped trying and shipped production overseas. In fact even though they have cheaper labor and don't care as much in some of these overseas locations, usually it STILL happens. Technology, training, process, machinery, all get better, per unit cost of production just keeps on falling. Bring it back to America and focus on these four things and it will happen in America again too. The failure to see this comes from putting the bean counters in charge. A bean counter can't model innovation. They don't know if and when a 10x cost reduction is going to happen somewhere in the industry and then spread. It's not their job to know, and they don't care. They see they can slash a cost by 20% right now by sending those jobs and factories offshore so that's what they do. In most industries in America today the cost of production is still getting cheaper, but what's ballooning is management and administrative costs. They've grown so much that consumer prices are actually going up even as the cost of the essential process of producing the thing has gone down. That's the bean counters replicating. It's all smoke and mirrors and lies. The forces that drove industrialization never stopped working. End the IP regimes, actually make stuff again, fire the bean counters, create competition for the consumer dollar in places where it was all acquired and consolidated into oblivion. The innovators will step in, deploy the next generation of plant, train the next generation of workers, stuff will get cheaper, and wages will actually be decent to boot because new and better processes create demand for new and scarcer skills.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  You realize this statement is outdated. China is no longer cheap. They make stuff now because no one else can make them. Not a joke, and not trying to attack. This is the literal reality. Take a look at Tim Cook saying this: https://youtu.be/L9f5SQQKr5o?feature=shared https://youtu.be/L9f5SQQKr5o?feature=shared Like this isn’t just manufacturing. If you go to China if you visit the tier one and tier two cities they look and feel Like cities of the future. You can’t even compare with US cities. One Chinese friend of mine visiting Los Angeles told me he didn’t realize that los Angeles was the country side. He says it because The country side of China is literally just like Los Angeles. He’s talking about the backwardness and level of tech and density of the population. https://youtu.be/AJ6a2vpLxGA?si=k7n9ibMlV6fIeNgz https://youtu.be/AJ6a2vpLxGA?si=k7n9ibMlV6fIeNgz This all happened in the last decade so it’s not surprising to see people who don’t get it. It’s a total paradigm shift in the balance of power.

mlrtime 1y ago

100% Agree and it would never happen if not for some major changes. People want their cheap stuff made somewhere else.

safety1st 1y ago
It's OK for people to want cheap stuff. But to me when I see the insistence that to get it cheap it has to be made somewhere else, I think that belief comes from cynicism and from ignorance of history. Like, the whole story of the Industrial Revolution is that we invested continually in technology, training, process and plant, and the cost of producing things as measured by both dollars and labor decreased by orders of magnitude. It never stopped. It kept on working right up until we stopped trying and shipped production overseas. In fact even though they have cheaper labor and don't care as much in some of these overseas locations, usually it STILL happens. Technology, training, process, machinery, all get better, per unit cost of production just keeps on falling. Bring it back to America and focus on these four things and it will happen in America again too. The failure to see this comes from putting the bean counters in charge. A bean counter can't model innovation. They don't know if and when a 10x cost reduction is going to happen somewhere in the industry and then spread. It's not their job to know, and they don't care. They see they can slash a cost by 20% right now by sending those jobs and factories offshore so that's what they do. In most industries in America today the cost of production is still getting cheaper, but what's ballooning is management and administrative costs. They've grown so much that consumer prices are actually going up even as the cost of the essential process of producing the thing has gone down. That's the bean counters replicating. It's all smoke and mirrors and lies. The forces that drove industrialization never stopped working. End the IP regimes, actually make stuff again, fire the bean counters, create competition for the consumer dollar in places where it was all acquired and consolidated into oblivion. The innovators will step in, deploy the next generation of plant, train the next generation of workers, stuff will get cheaper, and wages will actually be decent to boot because new and better processes create demand for new and scarcer skills.
ninetyninenine 1y ago
You realize this statement is outdated. China is no longer cheap. They make stuff now because no one else can make them. Not a joke, and not trying to attack. This is the literal reality. Take a look at Tim Cook saying this: https://youtu.be/L9f5SQQKr5o?feature=shared https://youtu.be/L9f5SQQKr5o?feature=shared Like this isn’t just manufacturing. If you go to China if you visit the tier one and tier two cities they look and feel Like cities of the future. You can’t even compare with US cities. One Chinese friend of mine visiting Los Angeles told me he didn’t realize that los Angeles was the country side. He says it because The country side of China is literally just like Los Angeles. He’s talking about the backwardness and level of tech and density of the population. https://youtu.be/AJ6a2vpLxGA?si=k7n9ibMlV6fIeNgz https://youtu.be/AJ6a2vpLxGA?si=k7n9ibMlV6fIeNgz This all happened in the last decade so it’s not surprising to see people who don’t get it. It’s a total paradigm shift in the balance of power.