Why are politicians so obsessed with farming and agriculture?
The reasons for both are not dissimilar.
Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
31–40 of 265 posts
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#32Is there some dystopian novel where the majority of workers spend their time taking CAPTCHAs? I almost expect it to happen, as a way to keep the masses occupied in a way that's difficult to automate.
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#33Last week's NYT article on free trade was pretty good: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/business/economy/more-weal... This is the bottom line on American manufacturing: > From 2000 to 2010, the United States lost some 5.6 million manufacturing jobs, by the government’s calculation. Only 13 percent of those job losses can be explained by trade, according to an analysis by the Center for Business and Economic Research…
But there aren't a finite number of factories. If more factory work gets automated, then it will reduce the cost of building more factories and producing even more goods. Whereas service jobs seem more finite. There is only a finite demand for burgers or shelf stockers, unless you increase the population. I really don't understand how a mostly service based economy is sustainable. In any case, the service based jobs…
There's a finite demand for goods too. I don't have unlimited room to fill my house with crap, and if I buy more advanced tools and things that replace a multitude of tools, my total demand will go down.
It may be a generational thing, but I just don't see people owning or wanting to own as much stuff as the generation before. A desk full of organization tools like a rolodex, card holder, pencils and notebooks just doesn't exist anymore.
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there aren't a finite number of factories. If more factory work gets automated, then it will reduce the cost of building more factories and producing even more goods. Whereas service jobs seem more finite. There is only a finite demand for burgers or shelf stockers, unless you increase the population. I really don't understand how a mostly service based economy is sustainable. In any case, the service based jobs…
Factories do not scale as well as service because they need are limited by natural resources. Service can literally be created out of thin air. For example, an AI could create an infinite number of movies or books or insurance contract. A factory making widget will be limited by availability of raw material. They both share the same limitation at the end of the day. At the end, the human being is relatively static. Y…
>Service can literally be created out of thin air.
Not really. It's built on manufacturing base. You need to 'service' something.
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#35Politicians are amateurs. I don't mean that in a pejorative way. Politicians are experts at politics, they can achieve consensus in seemingly impossible circumstances. If you pick a random politician, and ask them to design a transmission, or perform open heart surgery, they'd do as poorly as you or me. Yes, there are politicians from all walks of life, and you can probably find a surgeon politician. In general, the thing they're really good at is politics.
It sucks because they're called on to provide solutions to deep problems, with only the skills of enthusiastic amateurs. Manufacturing solved a lot of problems. It's completely reasonable for an amateur to look at history for past solutions to current problems.
For reference, the us congress has a panel of 700 or so experts in all sorts of fields to help write policy. This is in addition to each congresspersons's staff. There's something on the order of 2000 people available to write legislation. And about 10000 pieces of legislation written. So each potential law gets a few months of effort.
It boils down to a congressperson (probably a lawyer), a few enthusiastic political scientists, and a few economists to shape national policy.
It's not that they don't produce good work. They're smart hardworking people. A trillion dollar budget is probably as difficult to produce as a decent compiler. That's the kind of thing we'll see congress try to slap together right after the election. It's not much different than a team of undergrads trying to get their compiler to pass test cases.
It's not inherently bad, it's that sometimes problems are really hard, and they should probably be handled by experts. We don't have a good way of collectively picking experts, so we pick amateurs and hope for the best.
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#36Automation? Oh is that how you see Foxconn employees? That would explain quite a bit...
Most of light and heavy manufacturing is done somewhere else. Electronics. Housewares. Clothing. Tools. Equipment. Cars. Materials, both raw and those undergoing technological processing. High tech. A service economy? That's nice - but there are only so many prostitutes, bank clerks and Mickey D employees required, so what is everyone else going to do? Navel gaze? Fill jails? Starve? More importantly, what are you going to offer the rest of the world in exchange for all that stuff you can't make anymore? Democracy? Or just bomb them? At some point even bombs will be hard to make, due to lack of necessary facilities, equipment, materials, knowledge and experience. Just see how well "resurrecting" last century's space knowledge has worked out for NASA.
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#37Big factories can be retrofitted in times of world war to build tanks/guns/etc. It's seen as a national security thing.
This seems out of date. World War II is not going to be repeated. WW II could drag on as long as it did -- giving civilian-to-war conversions enough time to matter -- because there were no nuclear or precision guided weapons. If a no-holds-barred Total War breaks out between major world powers again, it's really hard to see how it would last long enough for factory conversions to be meaningful. And if it's just another big war of choice we're imagining in the future, like Americans fighting in Iraq or Vietnam, those haven't been bottlenecked by industrial capacity either.
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#38The memory is that these old factory/manufacturing jobs were high paying (middle class), secure, and accessible to people of low intellect, minimal education, and limited social grace. The proposed replacements "caregivers, retail workers and customer-service representatives" are significantly lower wage and also require more "EQ" that the working man of the prior generation didn't need. The voters these politicians…
> actively resisted it
Honest question. Is this a reality or a degrading stereotype?
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Manufacturing also provides jobs for both high and low skill workers. As such can be seen as more valuable to a community than say, a software company that only hires engineers and a CS center in a different state. Manufacturing was one of the best roads for a low skill worker to earn good money and move up the rung economically - something that only seems to be getting harder as time goes on.
It may seem to be getting harder, but in reality it's not. Rank based measures of mobility are stable. Since income inequality is up, absolute mobility has also increased. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/chettyetalAERPP2014.pdf
"When compared to 24 middle-income and high income countries, the U.S. ranks 16th in the amount of inter-generational earnings mobility. The relatively low level of mobility in the U.S. may arise in part because low-income children in the U.S. tend to have less stable and lower-income families, less secure families, and parents who have less time to devote to their children."
http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-...
Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?
#40Why can't I buy a toaster made in the USA, even if it is off a highly automated line? Because it's still cheaper to make in manually in China.
Even if it's automated, it will still be cheaper to automate it in China.