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Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#61

Post by jfoutz »

white-flame wrote: post #50
jfoutz wrote: post #35

Politicians 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…

Contrast a politician with a juror. There's no real reason for a juror to focus on anything but the case at hand. They don't have a career as a juror to pursue, yet they're expected to learn about things relevant to the case. There's almost no personal incentives involved (which also happens to be heavily policed) besides scheduling. Now, a politician generally does things to further their political career. They don'…

Vaguely related, It would be really interesting to see a government try juries for legislation.

Let representatives do everything they normally do but vote. A jury selected from voters in proportion to representatives is convened. The bill sponsors and opponents make their case to the jury. The jury votes.

It might be an unmitigated disaster. But, it would be interesting.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#62

Post by akiselev »

gutnor wrote: post #28
Houshalter wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

Until we get that Holy Grail of general AI, services are the exact opposite of scalable. Even then, most services will need to be replaced by AI and hardware, which will depend of manufacturing scalability. A single factory can be big enough to mass produce enough widgets for every person in the world but that can't be done with lawyers, restaurants, barbershops, retail stores, or driving instructors until we have advanced robotics, AI, teleportation, virtual reality, etc. at which point it's just software and manufacturing. Just look at how the manufacturing sector output has grown over the decades despite a static labor pool while the service sector employment expands linearly with its size.

More importantly, manufactured goods can be exported much more easily to a growing global consumer base than services (other than software) that are almost always limited locally or regionally.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#63

Post by [deleted] »

golergka wrote: post #38
steven777400 wrote: post #19

The 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?

[deleted]

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#64

Post by titanomachy »

nickbauman wrote: post #12

Manufacturing has a history of high growth and employment. Services do not. Economically, service domination means an overall slow-growth economy. Even highly intellectual services do not come close to the historic growth / employment curve the nation enjoyed when it was dominated by manufacturing. Wealth distribution is also heavily-weighted toward to the top with services. Generally democracies fare better when wea…

Good points. However, the macroeconomic benefits of manufacturing don't necessarily require people to be employed in manufacturing, do they? If America builds enough productive, highly-automated factories, the country is still generating wealth. As long as some of this wealth is captured for the people, then standard of living can increase.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#65

Post by sithadmin »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #49
golergka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actively resisted it Honest question. Is this a reality or a degrading stereotype?

The entire comment is an absurd stereotype, and about what you'd expect to find in this forum. Manufacturing jobs weren't (and aren't) filled with a bunch of meatheads coloring by numbers any more than are construction jobs.

>Manufacturing jobs weren't (and aren't) filled with a bunch of meatheads coloring by numbers any more than are construction jobs.

This is true, but the fact that there are definitely stigmas around higher education in underprivileged and working class communities in the USA is very much a reality.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#66

Post by joe_the_user »

wildmusings wrote: post #43
steven777400 wrote: post #19

The 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…

> Which is easy for a coastal educated person to say, but to a line of family men who have not just eschewed education but actively resisted it, this is a tough pill to swallow. I don't think it's so much a cultural thing as the high intellectual capabilities required for high paying knowledge jobs. Coding, for example, is just too hard for a huge segment of the population, regardless of how much training they get. I…

"I don't think it's so much a cultural thing as the high intellectual capabilities required for high paying knowledge jobs. Coding, for example, is just too hard for a huge segment of the population, regardless of how much training they get."

Maybe but it doesn't matter that much. If some breakthrough in education made it easy for 60% of the population to become good quality coders, it would lower the wages of existing programmers, somewhat increase the pool of working programmers but not give that 60% good jobs.

The type of coding done at Uber, for example, is specifically valuable because it replaces the lower paid labor of other people. We can't all have jobs automating each other out of jobs, now can we?

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#67

Post by dragonwriter »

titanomachy wrote: post #64
nickbauman wrote: post #12

Manufacturing has a history of high growth and employment. Services do not. Economically, service domination means an overall slow-growth economy. Even highly intellectual services do not come close to the historic growth / employment curve the nation enjoyed when it was dominated by manufacturing. Wealth distribution is also heavily-weighted toward to the top with services. Generally democracies fare better when wea…

Good points. However, the macroeconomic benefits of manufacturing don't necessarily require people to be employed in manufacturing, do they? If America builds enough productive, highly-automated factories, the country is still generating wealth. As long as some of this wealth is captured for the people, then standard of living can increase.

> However, the macroeconomic benefits of manufacturing don't necessarily require people to be employed in manufacturing, do they?

"Macroeconomic benefits" as usually measured by aggregate output measures, clearly not.

Distributional benefits, OTOH... well, not a strong requirement. But...

> As long as some of this wealth is captured for the people, then standard of living can increase.

The challenge is establishing the mechanism for that capture outside of employment. A fairly fundamental premise of the existing economic system is that the prime manner of that capture to provide distributed benefits will be employment, and there is fairly strong resistance (including from the people who would retain the benefits in the absence of employment without some knew capture mechanism) to changes to the structure.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#68

Post by tdeck »

jfoutz wrote: post #61
white-flame wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrast a politician with a juror. There's no real reason for a juror to focus on anything but the case at hand. They don't have a career as a juror to pursue, yet they're expected to learn about things relevant to the case. There's almost no personal incentives involved (which also happens to be heavily policed) besides scheduling. Now, a politician generally does things to further their political career. They don'…

Vaguely related, It would be really interesting to see a government try juries for legislation. Let representatives do everything they normally do but vote. A jury selected from voters in proportion to representatives is convened. The bill sponsors and opponents make their case to the jury. The jury votes. It might be an unmitigated disaster. But, it would be interesting.

This is how democracy worked in ancient Athens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#69

Post by choicewords »

steven777400 wrote: post #19

The 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…

The reality is there is still plenty of hard, material stuff that needs to be made.

Just look at SpaceX. It's cool, it's tech and it is most certainly hard material science.

We won't be able to make it with just soft skills and software. Improving our material lives (including not wasting resources) matters.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#70

Post by jfoutz »

titanomachy wrote: post #57
jfoutz wrote: post #35

Politicians 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…

Governments employ experts in myriad capacities. Some of these experts achieved their position through actual merit rather than successful politicking. I think many politicians, despite appearances, actually listen to these expert advisers. It takes a generalist to integrate information from disparate domains of expertise and make a decision. It takes a political expert to establish public support for the decision an…

I agree, but there's an inherent dilution.

It's not hard to imagine and expert proposing something really innovative, that slowly turns into "more manufacturing jobs". Each step dilutes an idea down to something that both sides can understand. The final step is generalists convincing other generalists, politicking. Maybe good parts stick, maybe not.

I have frustrations. Things work ok, i guess. I don't have a grand alternative.

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