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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

#141

Post by Qwertious »

ramraj07 wrote: post #81
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…

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…

>ignoring him would be the end of us.

How so? That's an extraordinary claim that you haven't remotely justified.

While it's possible for anyone to say something smart, Elon Musk is no more likely to have clever insight than the average janitor.

He makes a bunch of insightful-sounding claims that only make sense if you don't have a clue on the subject he's talking about - like when he stack-ranked by lines of code, at Twitter.

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

#142

Post by Qwertious »

neither_color wrote: post #106
ramraj07 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>his ability to inspire his engineers and get things built is undeniable.

I deny this. He provides money and hype, and hires the best engineers in the industry who then get results. In some cases things gets things built, but that doesn't mean Elon Musk was personally useful to any given project besides providing hype and money.

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

#145

Post by b800h »

Rooki wrote: post #138
ChatGTP wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because a behavior may end up profitable for its owners doesn’t mean we should be just accepting it as a society I 100% agree with you, but isn’t this how capitalism works? I do notice similar sentiments to use more frequently on HN lately. Feels like people are actually aware there are problems now but unsure what’s to be done?

> but unsure what’s to be done? Can feel Lenin spinning in his tomb from here.

Ah yes, Communism! So successful at delivering productive happy societies that they needed walls around their countries to keep people in. Great idea.

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

#146

Post by bhb916 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #137
no_wizard wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that being said, there are ways this could be beneficial both ways instead of one way. I’d also argue that it’s perfectly fine for the US and any other nation to think in terms of putting their domestic economy first, regardless of anything else

As I stated elsewhere, America's median income, adjusted for cost of living, is one of the world's highest. Americans benefit from cheap goods from other countries. It might be socially acceptable to put the domestic economy first, but that doesn't mean it is right. Ultimately, it's basically the same as the "looking out for #1" philosophy that rich people allegedly have, which is being condemned in this thread -- bu…

To top this all off, our ability to "put the domestic economy first" through policy is non-existent. Any attempt to fix this "problem", that you accurately described as a problem only because it's socially unacceptable, would end up harming us in some way. There is a mountain of evidence over the last century to back this up, we just refuse to listen.

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

#147

Post by b800h »

ChatGTP wrote: post #93
dwallin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because a behavior may end up profitable for its owners doesn’t mean we should be just accepting it as a society. Also viewing a company as just a collection of assets owned by capital can be somewhat limiting. Companies are generally made up of human employees, and many schools of thought treat employees as one of several stakeholders in a company and assign various rights to them and various responsibilities t…

Just because a behavior may end up profitable for its owners doesn’t mean we should be just accepting it as a society I 100% agree with you, but isn’t this how capitalism works? I do notice similar sentiments to use more frequently on HN lately. Feels like people are actually aware there are problems now but unsure what’s to be done?

Stronger national cultural and industrial policies.

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

#148

Post by sudosysgen »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #122
yterdy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. As GGP mentioned, the necessity of keeping stock prices (and property values, and anything else securitized) high so as to not impoverish pension funds, 401Ks, IRAs, etc., is real. That is, if you care about Silent, Boomer, and Gen X retirees - who invested , but didn't save - being able to cover their myriad outlays. Millennials and younger need not apply, of course; we're just never going to be able to r…

>As GGP mentioned, the necessity of keeping stock prices (and property values, and anything else securitized) high so as to not impoverish pension funds, 401Ks, IRAs, etc., is real. I'm confused about how your model of the economy works. It sounds like you believe CEOs are selfish and greedy when it comes to workers, but when it comes to pension funds, they keep stock prices high out of the goodness of their hearts?…

CEOs are employed by the board, the board is made of major stockholders, those are pensions funds and other investors mainly interested in stock prices. No need for conspiracy theories or pitchfork waving, it's just all working exactly how it's openly designed to.

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

#149

Post by ajmurmann »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #87
mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

I work in one of the last remaining large industrial manufacturing labs in the US. Some of my colleagues worked at Bell before that was shuttered. My sense from talking to the previous generation is that financialization of the US has started (finally) failing the American people. The previous generation cashed in on major profits by off shoring (Kodak), but we overdid it. In a round about way our company is run by p…

An important point is that the recent wave of globalization has been very good for poor people in developing countries outside of the US. From the perspective of US workers, outsourcing looks greedy. From the perspective of foreign workers, outsourcing looks altruistic. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief Even with recent globalization, Americans are still far richer than most people in other countrie…

It's also important to not that China has lost more jobs to automation than the US has lost to China.

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

#150

Post by Rooki »

b800h wrote: post #145
Rooki wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but unsure what’s to be done? Can feel Lenin spinning in his tomb from here.

Ah yes, Communism! So successful at delivering productive happy societies that they needed walls around their countries to keep people in. Great idea.

Sorry, was a 1/2 hearted attempt at a joke about his pamphlet titled "What is to be done?", similar to the wording used in parents comment. No need to alert the inquisition here just yet.
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