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America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#101

Post by ramraj07 »

callalex wrote: post #92
ramraj07 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that you shouldn’t discount what Elon does or says. He’s clearly one of the most important individuals of our time. Doesn’t mean whatever he says is gold though. Same standards should apply. I agree that his naysayers are making a grave mistake of calling him universally stupid. He’s a vile selfish person, who makes a lot of bigoted stupid statements and actions, but ignoring him would be the end of us. A Tam…

The idiomatic translation to English would be: “A broken clock is right twice a day.”

This is again implying that he’s nothing but an idiot. I don’t know why people are incapable of acknowledging he’s an insightful but crazy and evil person.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#102

Post by smileysteve »

narrator wrote: post #73

Has anyone asked Elon how to fix manufacturing in the U.S? Has he given anyone any ideas. The guy probably does as good or better job at manufacturing in the U.S than anyone else, and he has plenty of plants in foreign countries, so he can compare and contrast. Alas, the current administration hates the guy, and you can't have a guy who's clearly on the wrong team get to take credit for anything these days. Edit: He…

Hate seems like a strong word for a person with multiple dod contracts (and a new one recently for military starlink) and one of the most obviously already qualifying companies for the administration's most touted achievement (US made cars + whole home battery systems)

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#103

Post by peyton »

chii wrote: post #89
peyton wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think fiduciary duties get way more nuanced. You can’t always do anything you wish to a company, even if you own it outright.

> fiduciary duties only agents acting on behalf of the owners have fiduciary duty. Of course, if you are a majority owner, but there exists minority owners, you cannot screw the minority owners to profit yourself - i guess this is a form of fiduciary duty. But if you own it outright 100%, then you don't have such a fiduciary duty to yourself.

You’re missing the concept of foreseeable injury.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#104

Post by peyton »

sitkack wrote: post #99
peyton wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think fiduciary duties get way more nuanced. You can’t always do anything you wish to a company, even if you own it outright.

You know this is debunked trope don't you?

Explain?

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#105

Post by edrxty »

aphyt wrote: post #98
narrator wrote: post #73

Has anyone asked Elon how to fix manufacturing in the U.S? Has he given anyone any ideas. The guy probably does as good or better job at manufacturing in the U.S than anyone else, and he has plenty of plants in foreign countries, so he can compare and contrast. Alas, the current administration hates the guy, and you can't have a guy who's clearly on the wrong team get to take credit for anything these days. Edit: He…

Building a subway is infrastructure, not manufacturing. Elon recently said the sheet metal in the cyber truck needed to be machined to the precision of a red blood cell. This is not somebody who understands manufacturing.

The Elon stans need to read up on his history. He claims to have significant engineering experience but in reality he does not, he mostly got lucky a couple times early on and hired well. There are millions of people much more capable than him but will never have their chance because they don't have the resources to make their ideas actionable.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#106

Post by neither_color »

ramraj07 wrote: post #101
callalex wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idiomatic translation to English would be: “A broken clock is right twice a day.”

This is again implying that he’s nothing but an idiot. I don’t know why people are incapable of acknowledging he’s an insightful but crazy and evil person.

Well said. I just sped through his new bio and while the author seemed overly-apologetic about his assholish tendencies(like in the Thai cave diving incident), his ability to inspire his engineers and get things built is undeniable.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#107

Post by edrxty »

bell-cot wrote: post #17

Obvious Solution: Re-establish the military draft, but with a far smaller pool of potential draftees - and make sure the families of current & recent members of Congress, Wall Street big-shots, Fortune 500 CxO's, McKinsey consultants, and such are all assigned to serve in front-line "meat shield" battalions on the western shores of Taiwan, just south of Korea's DMZ, etc.

Do it ancient Rome style. Send the Senate with the troops

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#108

Post by chii »

peyton wrote: post #103
chii wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fiduciary duties only agents acting on behalf of the owners have fiduciary duty. Of course, if you are a majority owner, but there exists minority owners, you cannot screw the minority owners to profit yourself - i guess this is a form of fiduciary duty. But if you own it outright 100%, then you don't have such a fiduciary duty to yourself.

You’re missing the concept of foreseeable injury.

It is not an injury to an employee to sell the company's operations overseas and close shop in the US. Forseeable injury is applicable to negligence suits, and it is not negligent to change the business model resulting in the employee being out of work.

A company has no legal responsibility to maintain the livelihood of their employees at the cost of the business' profit margins.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#109

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

Animats wrote: post #12

Note the absence of tax policy changes that favor manufacturing. Here are a few: * A tax on financial transactions. This is sometimes called a "Tobin tax". The US financial services sector has doubled in size as a fraction of the economy. It's currently around 12%. That's an overhead cost, and a big one. Could be half that. * A tax on advertising. The tax deductiblity of advertising as a business expense should be li…

>A tax on financial transactions. This is sometimes called a "Tobin tax". The US financial services sector has doubled in size as a fraction of the economy. It's currently around 12%. That's an overhead cost, and a big one. Could be half that.

What reason is there to believe that this is an overhead cost?

As I mentioned in another comment, over the past ~10 years or so, US median earnings have grown remarkably fast compared with other large countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=0xDEAFBEAD Hard to argue with results.

Taxing financial transactions intuitively seems like the sort of thing which would put a drag on economic growth. And manufacturers need to transact just like any other sort of business; I don't see how taxing transactions encourages manufacturers relative to other firms.

I like the tax on advertising though. I would tweak it so the tax only kicks in once your spending on ads exceeds, say, $10 million per year. That way innovative new products can advertise to customers tax-free. This method also encourages big monopolies to spin-off individual product lines, which could reduce monopoly power.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#110

Post by edrxty »

wonder_er wrote: post #24

"America" is so hideously crippled by the heavy duty ethnic cleansing and regimes of social control baked into land use laws and transportation/mobility networks that 'advanced' problems are not even eligible to be solved. Sorta a 'do not pass go, do not collect $200, until {x} is solved' situation. If a city still has parking minimums on the books, I evaluate all involved parties as utterly unserious, pseudo-scienti…

> If a city still has parking minimums on the books, I evaluate all involved parties as utterly unserious, pseudo-scientific religious zealots.

You speak the truth here...

The rest I could take or leave. It's not completely wrong but I think it's a more nuanced situation. I'd summarize it more along the lines of "America has become too classist to respect manufacturing. See Britain."

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