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America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

nytimes.com

11–20 of 194 posts

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#11
post #4

At a certain point, does automation/robotics swing the manufacturing base back towards the west?

It's mostly being deployed in Asia, where the demand is high and the supply of complementary parts is also high.

PCB manufacturing is almost completely automated, for example. Didn't move back.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#12

China 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

If China can move to DCEP (Chinese state crypto) and get their borrowers to follow their lead, the US will find itself in a tough position. In the end game for China, they displace the US and can avoid the dollar in trade.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#14
post #4

At a certain point, does automation/robotics swing the manufacturing base back towards the west?

Unlikely in our lifetime. The same automation will be available in the east, but with cheaper technicians, electricity, taxes, regulation, and land.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#15

We 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 faile…

The stock market and housing prices are higher than ever, so a large part of the population is doing good. Not just the elites have benefited from the spoils, people with retirement portfolios and paid-off houses are sitting nice and flush.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#16

I 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…

Let’s not ignore biotech. It’s experiencing a tremendous boom in SV (and in the Berkeley-Emeryville area). It gets way less attention than Tesla and Facebook, for some reason... probably because its products and innovations are much harder to explain to the public. (Though that may be an overly cynical answer with regards to the media.)

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#18

I 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…

Apple: Made by Foxconn, not in the US. nVidia: Made by TSMC, not in the US.

Intel and Tesla are made in the US afaik, but even the hardware startups we do have still tend to manufacture abroad.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#19
post #7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For Tesla, collecting self-driving training data as well as general fleet data. For Square, collecting transaction data to mitigate risk so that merchants worldwide can take payments. For Uber/Lyft predicting areas where there will be people needing rides to optimize transportation needs.

Plenty of real-world applications other than ads.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#20
post #5

I 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.

Agree, it is deliberately reductionist to provoke discussion about what we're not doing in SV.

What do you think we should be doing in SV in addition these technologies?

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