America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by jdross » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #10

fermienrico wrote: post #2

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…

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.

There are infinite ways to retort this, but let’s go with the easiest and point to the company literally dealing with plastics recyling and separation that raised $55 million today

https://venturebeat.com/2021/01/04/amp-robotics-raises-55-mi...

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

#62

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #18

fermienrico wrote: post #2

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.

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by bmitc » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #10

fermienrico wrote: post #2

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…

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.

> working on important stuff like how to deal with plastics recycling and separation

Do you happen to have any helpful analysis, articles, companies, etc. along these lines? I have thought it would be a fun thing to work on, but I have struggled to know where to look and haven’t found anything particular in my searching.

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

#64

Post by nicoburns » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

Kranar wrote: post #58

nicoburns wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's also a generational divide. This isn't a good thing.

Well of course there is a generational divide and it's a great thing and exactly what one should expect. Someone who is 60 years old has had approximately 30-35 years worth of time to invest and accumulate assets compared to someone 30 years old who has only had 5-10 years worth of time. What would you have expected to see in the alternative?

At least in the UK it's a lot more uneven than that. House prices have increased far far above inflation over the 20th century (not entirely evenly). So those who invested in property at low prices are now sitting on large nest eggs, while young people are unable to make similar investments as they are already priced out of the market.

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

#65

Post by seneca » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #35

nikanj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So there's also a generational divide. This isn't a good thing.

> So there's also a generational divide. This isn't a good thing.

This almost reads like satire. You're saying it's a problem that people who have worked their entire life have more wealth than people who have more recently begun their career?

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

#66

Post by coliveira » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #51

fermienrico wrote: post #2

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…

Money wants to make more money. And it doesn't care about national boundaries. It also isn't good at pricing catastrophes like the collapse-of-the-US-financial-system-because-of-the-collapse-of-the-electrical-grid catastrophe that we can't recover from because we can't make the transforms anymore and China won't sell them to us and our ports won't work without computers anyway, and so on.

You're mistaken, China will most definitely sell that to us. It is in their interest. To problem is if the US will be able to afford it.

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

#67

Post by Tycho » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #56

s1artibartfast wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Also, what is there to automate in the U.S.? Most of what could be a target of automation is already in China.

Well if cheap labour is not an input then there's no reason that the manufacturing has to be done somewhere with cheap labour costs.

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

#68

Post by cpursley » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #15

recursivedoubts wrote: post #6

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.

Paid off houses? Mortgage rates are under 3% meaning people doing well can deploy that savings and cash into the stock market, other investments, furthering the wealth gap. No reason to pay off property when money is this cheap.

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

#69

Post by haram_masala » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #32

haram_masala wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I thought these technologies are still early and in the research phase. That would make sense for them to operate in stealth mode. Tesla sells vehicles to the public (and let's be real, Elon is a big PR department). Are these companies producing useful products currently? It seems that you're implying that they are and that we (me) aren't aware of them, so I'm curious if you could expand on this and enlighten us. I d…

Regarding products, I'd divide biotech into three very broad categories, medical, industrial, and food. Medical biotech is generally the most well-established, from Genentech (now Roche) on down to the companies being created today. Most of that work are novel and very promising therapies for a range of diseases, and diagnostics/prognostics to detect and track disease states. Both are generally at the level that's popularly known as "personalized medicine" (specific to your genome, epigenetics, and in some cases microbiome). Some of the diagnostics in development and hitting the market now would be considered sorcery just five years ago.

Industrial biotech is harnessing biological and biochemical processes for industry and production. That's much smaller but growing fast; people outside the industry would be shocked to discover what chemicals and other products can and will be produced simply by fermenting various microbes. Zymergen is one company doing this, and among the biggest but by no means the only one.

Recently there's been a surge in biotech-based food production. Most people don't realize that the Impossible Burger (and other products from Impossible) taste so "meaty" because it contains transgenic yeast that secretes cow heme. There are companies that are creating cow dairy products from transgenic yeast - you can actually buy their ice cream today - and companies like Memphis Meats are working on cell-cultured meat, made entirely from animal-free processes , minus the initial cell biopsy. Same with Finless Foods. All of the above are within a couple miles of each other, and these are only a few examples.

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

#70

Post by whatshisface » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

viburnum wrote: post #55

recursivedoubts wrote: post #6

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…

Comparative advantage never made any sense. It's a model of a world without technology, without supply chains, without increasing returns to scale, and only two countries.

You sort of had me until the last claim (no more than two countries), I know for a fact their models are more advanced than that. Any actual economist care to chime in and explain comparative advantage?