171–180 of 469 posts
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No it is people who have no idea how mass produced a conventional house is. They think there is something for a factory to do. Then they go elsewhere and complain how houses all look the same these days.
Yeah a competent framing crew can bang together a 2-story 4000 square foot home from sticks in 2 weeks.
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This misconception is common among US official/think tanks especially related to DOD because the way Chinese government operated is so counter-intuitive from US perspective (probably many other governments). It's actually same as how China makes economics policy: First assess the "inevitable" future, than make a plan to better adapt to that future (e.g. Battery, EV, Solar...actually a lot more examples before those).…
I think China is building military capability because they think they need it. We don’t know why. If you think about the game theoretic aspects of this, then it makes sense for the US to preemptively mass forces nearby even if they believe China’s ambitions are peaceful. You can’t just assume that because your opponent is telling you that. And vice-versa if you’re China and you see the US massing forces. The fact tha…
Also China is always aggressive to DPP which isn’t something new and US government well understood the reason and used to assure China they will deter DPP’s independence agenda (if you’re familiar with that history. also https://www.foreignaffairs.com/taiwan/taiwan-china-true-sour...). Unfortunately there isn’t much political room now in US for that kind of assurance.
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Every once in a while someone will bulid a house in a day. However it is more costly to do this. you either need expensive really fast cure concrete or a low quality wood foundation. You need to carefully plan who is where and when so plumbers and electritions are no standing in the same spot (think sink with an outlet nearby). You need to specify where everything is to a pipe and wire are not in the same place with…
Tract home builders are building hundreds of homes in quick succession. 1 house in 100 days, but also 500 houses within 2 years. There is no slack, because each team has to be operating in lockstep so work never stops, otherwise margins tank and a profitable project becomes a loss. The expertise of managing and executing this non trivial task is why those businesses succeed, and why landowners outsource development t…
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Not just politicians in general, but people, of course, are always surprised how expensive housing is, but then reject any kind of streamlined mass-manufactured option. They are conditioned to worship at the altar of small businesses and good ol' craftsmanship. (And plot after plot they blindly erect yet another replica of the standard American Dream with the compulsory backyard where they truly can be free, and cond…
The standard tract built house erected in 100 days by DR Horton/Lennar/etc is the streamlined, mass manufactured option. Any more streamline than that is apparently more costly or otherwise unappealing to people. It isn’t not small businesses building most homes in the US, they are large, and sometimes publicly traded businesses.
SFH is itself a waste of money. And land, which is especially expensive where housing costs are high. For every small house different crews need to go there, prepare the site, do the foundation, etc.
Half of the hard costs is labor. (Which is, again, usually high in areas with high housing costs.)
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-makes-housing-so...
And of course the opportunity cost due to lost density effect is substantial, blablabla.
The tragedy is that there's a huge discontinuity here, and overcoming that would require a lot of capital (social, political, financial).
And in general construction productivity is extremely meh, to phrase it politely.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insight...
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They may not attack the US directly like the Japanese did, but China may want to take over its neighbours to expand. Just like Russia could.
I appreciate the worry for everyone else. Truly it makes a huge difference in global politics. Like parent I am still surprised how paranoid the US seems. It’s almost like growing up overprotected you become extremely fearful. There is almost no practical cost to US with going into war so the result is that US is constantly fighting and makes it the core focus of the society (along with innovation and more positive s…
- Europe has under-invested in its military for 30 years.
- Japan by constitutional decree.
- South Korea is rapidly building out an armaments industry, but they're also still at war.
- The UK is gutted and unable to afford much of anything.
- India and Pakistan are laser focused on each other.
If China or Russia feel in an expansionist mood, who other than the US has the capability to stop them?
Historical echoes of the above dynamic are why Americans bristle at criticism of their military spending.
Sure, everyone's a pacifist until someone invades...
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> Not just politicians in general, but people, of course, are always surprised how expensive housing is, but then reject any kind of streamlined mass-manufactured option. You can build a tract of homes in 90 days (or less) using stick frame. They won't be fancy, but they'll be up to code (and with a little extra cost ( A crew of 4-5 guys (plus some subs) can build a custon home in 80 days: * https://www.youtube.com/w…
In my experience pre-built framing just moves the error down into the foundation.
There are ± tolerances at every interface, so if you're off a bit on the foundation, you can balance things out in the rough frame, so by the time you get to finish framing things are pretty square/plumb/level.
But if the pre-built stuff is ±0, then there's no wiggle room in that part of the build, so the rest of it has to be that much tighter as you've not nowhere to adjust things.
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"insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels" This is what I don't get. The Jones Act is about keeping ship building at home, in the US. So protective. By locking out foreign competition. It's a 'protective' law, to isolate and protect US industry. How will opening the US to buy and operate foreign ships, somehow make the US build more US ships? Look…
When you protect industries you get Boeing, you don't get productive markets, you get zombie companies who can fail all day without consequences and still get contracts because they are the mandatory only choice.
Of course. I don't have any answers. Because I agree, protectionism creates "Boeing's". It's almost like global unfettered capitalism is un-stoppable and leading us to a dystopia of lowest bidder, cheapest labor possible.
This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago, but now Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than ours because of their success in civilian shipbuilding. The proposed measures in this aricle are too little too late. The only logical course of action at…
> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago The US used to subsidize the salaries of US merchant marines on ships (US salaries are higher than Filipino ones) so that there would be a trained population, but that was stopped in the 1980s because subsidies are bad, so…
For anyone interested in the topic, highly recommend the What's Going on With Shipping? channel: * https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping/videos AIUI, the problem is that the US lacks a policy. This is what China's strength is: making a decision and getting it done. The article mentions the SHIPS Act which the channel talks about: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iksNr3s2WVs As well as five suggestions for Trump: * h…
> The IRA/CHIPS acts helped bring plants to the US soil. Industrial policy can work. I see a lot of people say the CHIPS act is a success that should be duplicated but is there any evidence of this yet or is it merely because money was committed and promises were made? How much industrial output vs the amount of subsidies etc. It will probably take a decade before we know if it worked.
* https://www.semiconductors.org/emerging-resilience-in-the-se...
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