America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
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Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#2I wish Silicon Valley wasn’t just about software, particularly adtech. Some of the most brilliant minds are working on optimizing click ratios. There is some hardware tech (Apple, nVidia, Intel, Tesla), but vast majority of the engineers are working on cushy jobs paying $400k to serve ads.
SV should be leading investments in Semiconductors, automation and manufacturing tech. It doesn’t even live up to its name. If you’ve been following how difficult it is to manufacture things at scale (Tesla), it’s a hard problem. Manufacturing is difficult.
Serving ads isn’t of national strategic importance. It’s just juicy. “Someone’s gotta make stuff” - Elon. It’s true even if you don’t like the guy.
Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#3China is able to manipulate its exchange rate to regulate the relative prices of imports and exports. So are ~200 other economies in the world. The US doesn't have an exchange rate to fiddle with. Hell, it can hardly produce domestic inflation with its low interest rates, let alone devalue its currency.
Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#4At a certain point, does automation/robotics swing the manufacturing base back towards the west?
Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#5I wish Silicon Valley wasn’t just about software, particularly adtech. Some of the most brilliant minds are working on optimizing click ratios. There is some hardware tech (Apple, nVidia, Intel, Tesla), but vast majority of the engineers are working on cushy jobs paying $400k to serve ads. SV should be leading investments in Semiconductors, automation and manufacturing tech. It doesn’t even live up to its name. If yo…
Thinking about SV as just adtech is pretty reductionist. Through another lens, SV basically solved big data and global software distribution and scalability.
Big tech has contributed to both the tools that allow handling massive data streams and ML. That foundation is what is helping data-driven manufacturing companies pull ahead.
Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#6We were sold down the river by our own elites, particularly on Wall Street and with the full complicity of the Economics Departments of the west.
"Comparative Advantage", something something about corn and wool, meanwhile the whole supply chain was moved to China, our middle class was decimated and we went into tremendous amounts of debt to pretend everything was fine...
Left, right... whatever. The elites have failed us.
Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#7I wish Silicon Valley wasn’t just about software, particularly adtech. Some of the most brilliant minds are working on optimizing click ratios. There is some hardware tech (Apple, nVidia, Intel, Tesla), but vast majority of the engineers are working on cushy jobs paying $400k to serve ads. SV should be leading investments in Semiconductors, automation and manufacturing tech. It doesn’t even live up to its name. If yo…
Thinking about SV as just adtech is pretty reductionist. Through another lens, SV basically solved big data and global software distribution and scalability. Big tech has contributed to both the tools that allow handling massive data streams and ML. That foundation is what is helping data-driven manufacturing companies pull ahead.
And what purpose is that big data stuff typically used for? Something related to serving ads.
Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#8China is able to manipulate its exchange rate to regulate the relative prices of imports and exports. So are ~200 other economies in the world. The US doesn't have an exchange rate to fiddle with. Hell, it can hardly produce domestic inflation with its low interest rates, let alone devalue its currency. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege
True, but there is a reason it's been called "exorbitant privilege" - while nothing here is clear cut there lots of reasonable people would argue that there is a net benefit to US.
Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#9I wish Silicon Valley wasn’t just about software, particularly adtech. Some of the most brilliant minds are working on optimizing click ratios. There is some hardware tech (Apple, nVidia, Intel, Tesla), but vast majority of the engineers are working on cushy jobs paying $400k to serve ads. SV should be leading investments in Semiconductors, automation and manufacturing tech. It doesn’t even live up to its name. If yo…
Investment follows returns, or at least the speculative possibility of returns. Unfortunately, semiconductors, automation and manufacturing tech doesn't have the same upside capability. If you want 10-100X returns, you look elsewhere.
Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented
#10I wish Silicon Valley wasn’t just about software, particularly adtech. Some of the most brilliant minds are working on optimizing click ratios. There is some hardware tech (Apple, nVidia, Intel, Tesla), but vast majority of the engineers are working on cushy jobs paying $400k to serve ads. SV should be leading investments in Semiconductors, automation and manufacturing tech. It doesn’t even live up to its name. If yo…
Very true. It would be great if these brights were working on important stuff like how to deal with plastics recycling and separation. Instead it’s about extracting as much as possible from existing tech.
It reminds me a little of the situation with journalism and news. We have less and less reporters collecting information but more and more websites and blogs that dissect and debate the same information.