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The US is building factories at a fast rate

businessinsider.com

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Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#261

Post by vineyardmike »

Solvency wrote: post #203
vineyardmike wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ll think about it from the tech perspective: the companies that control marketplaces and access hold all the power. Sure you have companies like apple that make $$$ from hardware, but most HW players in tech get slowly replaced offshore. Silicon Valley was silicon valley because of hardware. Now it’s mostly software, and HW is increasingly a commodity. It’s the same thing elsewhere in the economy… it’s easier to s…

What's stopping software from becoming a commodity?

Software is a lot closer to service work than hardware. It’s way less interchangeable and mostly sits “at the top” of the stack. DuckDuckGo Vs Google Vs ChatGPT shows why a lot of software isn’t a commodity, it’s a service.

And software that could be a commodity is often given away for free (Open Source).

The lower in the stack you are, the closer you get to commodity. Eg SQL databases - often somewhat interchangeable for different target features, but also language and expectations don’t match exactly, so there’s high cost to switching. That’s why Oracle now has to fight cloud providers, MSFT, and a ton of open source projects for business. Comparably, several languages (C, Java/Script, Python) have multiple compilers/interpreters with much better compatibility and little commercial options.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#262

Post by User23 »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #248
User23 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US federal government spending obviously isn’t constrained by tax receipts. You’d think that would be clear in this day and age of consistent trillion dollar annual deficits. Thus spending programs should be judged based on outcomes and not nominal cost. I’m all for a strong middle class. However, I don’t see how an inheritance tax that forces children to sell their parents farm or business to pay estate taxes is sup…

inheritance tax kicks in around 10 million dollars. it doesn't touch the middle class. it touches billionaires who die and leave a hundred million to everyone in their family.

Billionaires have trusts and foundations and lawyer knows what else. It doesn't touch them at all.

Also a 700 acre farm, which is an at most medium size family farm, could easily have a nominal value north of 10 mil even though there's no way it's returning 1 million a year net. Same for a modestly profitable small business.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#263

Post by bruce511 »

BetaDeltaAlpha wrote: post #256
maxilevi wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I doubt your average tradesman starting a business is targeting billion dollar markets. Scaling software to the same level of revenue as a trade business is as easy if not easier. For one you don’t need that many employees

Scaling software to the same level of revenue as a trade business is a sure way to get run over by the VC backed competition.

I get that when you live in a forest all you see are trees, but 99% of software companies are not in rather VC markets, nor have VC competitors.

There are massive problems that come with "scale" - problems most people don't want. The VC model is all about the exit, whereas, again, 90-something-% of businesses, trades included, are focused on long-term sustainability, not on the "exit".

Sure, the VC space us very visible, very "loud", gets a lot of press, and so on. And of course 100% of non-vc owners don't get to be billionaires, but to VC world is a tiny sliver of the software world.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#264

Post by pas »

marianatom wrote: post #251
pphysch wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tell any story you want by cherry-picking headlines and ignoring the broader context. Pundits like Gordon Chang have been predicting post-Mao China's imminent collapse since 1989. They've always been spectacularly wrong because they don't understand China and don't want to.

You can brush any counterpoints away you want by mentioning pundits who are too early in their prediction. Sure, let's talk about broader context and macro trends. unless something big changes, these macro trends won't go away: - alignment of dictatorship vs free countries. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran vs US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Australia, Philippines, Canada. - dictatorship is losing. Chin…

unfortunately far-right populist illiberalism is on the rise globally. (and also far-left populist demagoguery too, maybe unsurprisingly.) although, hopefully, that'll pass as the current median voter gets a grasp of reality (and get inoculated against social media fueled craziness at least a bit)

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#265

Post by pas »

mhuffman wrote: post #183
marianatom wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China does seem to have clear eyes with it comes to world politics You're hyping up Xi Jing Ping, who is considered an idiot in most elite circles including Putin, too much. One belt and one road is now considered a failure with Italy, the most prominent member, dropping out of it this year. Most of the countries that took on the debt are unable to pay it back, and China has had to forgive a lot of the loans recent…

>You're hyping up Xi Jing Ping, who is considered an idiot in most elite circles including Putin, too much. I don't really care what Putin says but I do think they are thinking more long-term. Only here and in Europe do people think in terms of election cycles. Don't get me wrong, I am not a Xi fanboy, and I definitely don't want to the US to be like China in general terms, but I just disagree with you. I think they…

pivoting to service economy is a step-up.

there is a lot wrong with starryeyed libertarianism, but free trade with allies is absolutely not in the bad parts.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#266

Post by marianatom »

pas wrote: post #264
marianatom wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can brush any counterpoints away you want by mentioning pundits who are too early in their prediction. Sure, let's talk about broader context and macro trends. unless something big changes, these macro trends won't go away: - alignment of dictatorship vs free countries. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran vs US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Australia, Philippines, Canada. - dictatorship is losing. Chin…

unfortunately far-right populist illiberalism is on the rise globally. (and also far-left populist demagoguery too, maybe unsurprisingly.) although, hopefully, that'll pass as the current median voter gets a grasp of reality (and get inoculated against social media fueled craziness at least a bit)

here's the thing, humanity got lucky. there was a nonzero chance that china and the dictatorships could have triumphed. if China didn't botch the chance to overtake US in 2008 with a capable dictator. if China got its hands on many advanced US military technologies. if Russia didn't botch the Ukraine invasion. if covid didn't have a vaccine, except one that China developed.

I'm sure most of us are aware of the gulags that China ran in 2022, in the most prosperous city like Shanghai, with welded doors, lack of food, arbitrary killing of pets, moving their own citizens against their wills to camps or cells with no running water and unsanitary conditions. with cries in tall buildings from families in the middle of night for food. If. you haven't seen these things, go watch it online. Imagine if somehow China succeeded, and that's all of humanity's fate.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#268

Post by evv555 »

karaterobot wrote: post #240
yCombLinks wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any competent tradesman is making a living wage on basically day 1 with his business. A software business (not writing software for someone else, selling your own software) is much more difficult.

Why compare a tradesman to a software entrepreneur? The tradesman sells his skill and labor in exchange for money. A more direct comparison would be a SWE selling his skill and labor in exchange for money. Or, a manufacturing entrepreneur creating a product and selling it. In both apples-to-apples cases they either make money on day one, or it takes a long time to make money.

The apples to apples comparison that pops to mind is a tech consultant. Where you own a client funnel and have some potential to scale and delegate. How hard is it to create this client funnel in IT vs manufacturing?

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#269

Post by hellotomyrars »

ako wrote: post #65
api wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of why the US working class has been so angry isn't just the economic misery but the decades of being gaslit by politicians pretending that outsourcing to countries with no OSHA, no EPA, no concerns about carbon emissions, no workers rights, no unions, and radically lower wages is going to create jobs in America. It's a clearly absurd proposition on its face. Of course that's going to depress wages and destroy j…

These agreements are not the only cause, if everyone would have kept on buying locally produced products, the jobs would have remained. Problem is that we bought the cheaper products, making it impossible for companies producing locally to stay profitable. We want our cake and eat it too.

Not an entirely honest appraisal of the dismantling of US manufacturing in the 80s.

Big corporations didn’t reluctantly close down factories, hat in hand, because people weren’t buying their products. They moved the manufacturing offshores and people kept buying the products they always have.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#270

Post by runsWphotons »

no_wizard wrote: post #215
Aunche wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>have the benefit of actually owning their own businesses This sounds like a business is just something that happens to fall on your lap while you're fixing a pipe rather than something that you build with your blood sweat and tears. Most tradespeople make nowhere close to 300k. Their success is credited to their hard work, not their happening to choose the trades.

I should have addressed this more sufficiently, but there are a couple different things I'm saying here so let me clarify: One is being the trades is rewarding, yes not all bring in 300K+, but I don't know a single trades person, many often my junior, who don't bring in a good income pretty comparable to software engineers at non FAANG companies make (typically 150K+) and I don't think any of them are carrying high d…

I dont know what trades you have in mind, other than that you mentioned industrial robotics, but most trades people without college are not making anywhere close to 150k. The really successful ones do though, and maybe thats who you are talking to.
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