The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by WalterBright » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:34 AM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #336

WalterBright wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. Wealth is not concentrated in a market society. It is created. Some people creating more wealth than others is not "concentrating" wealth in their hands. Another way to put it is it is not a fixed pie, where if one gets more another necessarily gets less. If I buy some art supplies for $20, and paint a masterpiece I sell for $100,000, wealth…

> Wealth is not concentrated in a market society. Respectfully, you should do some reading of basic economics. Absent of external forces to correct for it, wealth absolutely concentrates in unregulated markets.

For economics, I prefer history to academic theory. (But I have read Friedman's "Monetary History of the United States", and books by economist C. Northcote Parkinson, "Capitalism" by Reisman, etc. My dad also had a degree in economics from MIT and an MBA from Harvard and a doctorate in economicis and taught finance in college. We had many many long talks about economics. And yeah, I did take econ 101 at Caltech from a Marxist professor. My dad would have had him for lunch.)

> wealth absolutely concentrates in unregulated markets

The US had more or less unregulated markets for well over a century since its founding. The result? The most stupendous wealth creation, pushing scores of millions of people from poverty into the middle class and beyond.

There was no "transfer" of wealth from the poor people to the wealthy (there couldn't have been, because they, being poor, didn't have wealth).

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by jopsen » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:35 AM UTC

Teever wrote: post #136

jopsen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only the US had allies. But I guess it's hard to count on them when you're actively threading invasion! A war with China won't be won with manufacturing. It'll be won by having allies. If it actually comes to pass, you'll probably declined fighting the hot war, and opt for a cold one. But without allies it'll get real cold.

You can have all the allies in the world but if none of you have weapons and the means to make them you won't win.

Despite the popular narrative Europe still has a sizeable arms industry.

What Europe doesn't is the ability to quickly agree on anything. But when America calls consensus can be reached quickly.

At times 40% of the contingent in Afghanistan were allies.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by mindslight » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:36 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #330

mindslight wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people talk about wealth concentration, they're not talking about artists with high-variance paydays. They're focusing on all of the captive-market middlemen that have been allowed to set up shop playing negative sum games via regulatory capture, externalities, lack of anti-trust enforcement, etc.

When people like Sanders talk about wealth concentration in billionaires like Musk, how did Musk make his money with negative sum games, regulatory capture, etc.?

Oh boy. There have been tomes written on how Musk's companies are set up around capturing government subsidies. If you're earnestly interested, such analyses are not hard to find.

The stock market itself is a shining example of regulatory capture - a perma-bubble due to fake "fiscal responsibility" political marketing that causes massive streams of newly printed money to be handed out to banks to dump into the asset bubble (that newly printed money representing the gains from technology and offshoring that would have otherwise caused price deflation)

But sure, I'll also agree that some of Musk's riches are due to actual wealth creation - before the crippling social media addiction and subsequent spiral into lunacy, anyway.

But that's all focusing on the problematic ways wealth concentration can arise (the context it was originally brought up in). The other critique (likely what you're referencing about Sanders) is about the corrosive effects that concentrated wealth tends to have. And surely you can see how that applies pretty strongly to Musk...

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by WalterBright » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:37 AM UTC

jocaal wrote: post #337

WalterBright wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is selfish, including you and I, including the people you believe are selfless. A functioning society cannot be built around people being selfless. But a functioning society can be built around selfishness - free markets - and irony of ironies, free markets also do a great job of helping the less fortunate, a much better job than the selfless attempts. (In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO chari…

"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." - Milton Friedman

Good one! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote something similar:

Enforcing equity means nobody has freedom. When people are free, there is no equity.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by tomlockwood » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

jmward01 wrote: post #142

I keep seeing people advocating that the idea that we should build everything, and every piece or everything, here is a good one. Why? Is this just an isolationist dream? The reductive, absurd, extreme of this is why don't individual people go out and build all their own stuff like cars and houses. Let's all go out and learn how to mine and refine metal ore so we can get started on building the family sedan! There is…

This idea of self-reliance has been tried, and probably the greatest example of it is an extremely funny one. North Korea.

Their primary ideology is "Juche": "Juche posits that a country will prosper once it has become self-reliant by achieving political, economic, and military independence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche

Maybe America can do it better?

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by watwut » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #182

rainsford wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the US has emphasized college as the only respectable education path, as well as the only path to well paid jobs. There's this idea that the shift to college and white collar jobs was some artificial push, but it seems more like an incredibly natural and obvious move to me. A lot of blue collar work is just not super great from a working conditions and pay perspective and while not every white collar job is…

It was at least partially artificial. The GI Bill post WWII introduced millions of families who otherwise wouldn't have gone to college the ability to go to college. This set off two cycles, one of which is now those folks who went to college on the GI bill wanted to encourage their kids to go to college, which is well and good, but it also showed the economic value to a bigger mass of the country of going to college…

Artificial here meaning some men were able to afford it. Because only natural state is them wanting it, but being unable to get it.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by oceanplexian » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:42 AM UTC

pizzly wrote: post #299

consumer451 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main concern is that de-globalizing trade will remove a large barrier for real kinetic war. Bombing your economic partner is generally a dumb move, and that has been pretty nice for humanity in the last ~50 years.

Its definitely de-globalizing USA's trade but I don't think it will de-globalize the rest of the world's trade. One method for countries to combat US's tariffs is to reduce trade barriers between themselves thus reducing the barriers to sell their goods to other countries instead of US. EU and China just had an initial conversation regarding just this.

I don’t see that happening since the US has historically been the least protectionist of nations.

The EU loves protectionism. The single market is totally dysfunctional with a recent study saying it was equivalent to a 45% tariff between member states for manufacturing, a 110% for services.

If this is the cohort you expect to save the world economy with free trade I certainly wouldn’t be betting real money on it.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by mmooss » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #322

mmooss wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so Yes you can. People have a moral obligation to help others, including when they have to sacrifice, and they do it all the time. People make sacrifices all the time for the greater good. In fact, many of the extreme self-interest capitalist…

Everybody is selfish, including you and I, including the people you believe are selfless. A functioning society cannot be built around people being selfless. But a functioning society can be built around selfishness - free markets - and irony of ironies, free markets also do a great job of helping the less fortunate, a much better job than the selfless attempts. (In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO chari…

Everyone is both selfish and selfless, to different degrees at different times and in different situations, including the people you apparently believe to be completely selfish (you don't really believe that?).

(Obviously a simplistic binary system, but appropriate for HN comments where time and space is limited.)

The religion and worship of selflessness is a cult - who ever followed such an ethos; even what great American? Did Washington? Lincoln? King? Eisenhower? Who before Trump? Who anywhere at any time is admired for it? Any religious figures? Saints? Moses/Jesus/Mohammad? Siddhartha Gautama?

Step back, stop drowinging in Internet ideology, take a even slightly broader view than the immediate tide of ideology - the concept is an absurdity for its simplicity and morality. Wake up sooner, rather than later.

A functioning society can't be built around either extreme, and because no human fits either extreme, it's a pointless debate about science fiction.

Markets are great tools and work with a mix of selfishness and selflessness - markets are destroyed by the too selfish, parasites who, for example, undermine the essential trust, safety, and integrity of the market for their own profit. The tools of selflessness are also great and built a society of freedom, which creates markets, innovation, opportunity, and social stability - universal education, for example; much healthcare is funded that way; many people wouldn't have effective rights without pro bono legal help and advocacy.

They are different tools each relatively better for different problems. Obviously 'free markets' leave a lot to be desired; obviously we can't function solely on selflessness.

> (In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO charity funded by the government had awarded herself a $750,000 salary.)

C'mon; that is a silly point and you know it (though it actually supports my claim in this comment).

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by watwut » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:47 AM UTC

tharne wrote: post #181

absolutelastone wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that the prior situation was sustainable and would have lasted much longer anyway. Using China for manufacturing is like using Amazon for sales. You are required to give them everything they need to take your business away.

> I don't know that the prior situation was sustainable and would have lasted much longer anyway. Using China for manufacturing is like using Amazon for sales. You are required to give them everything they need to take your business away. If if comes to pass that the 21st century is a Chinese one, it will be this long con that launched the whole thing: "We'll manufacture anything you want real cheap, just show us how…

No, the biggest self own is going on now. Even if you plan to bring manufacturing back, it was possible without shooting yourself into own foot.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Post by jay_kyburz » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 5:49 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #266

lesuorac wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an economic theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism The general idea is that when you buy stuff you're losing wealth so if you never buy anything then you never get poorer. Since we constantly dig gold up from the ground we still get richer over time even if nobody buys our stuff. This is also why its importantly to gain colonies (Greenland/ Canada) or mineral rights from other countries so that the…

> historically very popular When? Not for a long time. Slavery and witchcraft were historically very popular ... > when you buy stuff you're losing wealth That's a incredible failure of understanding. I can't believe that's the basis of mercantilism. Why would anyone buy something? If you buy a house for $100,000, your wealth remains the same - you replace $100,000 in cash with a $100,000 house (ignoring complexities…

If you build a house from scratch, you created 100K of stuff. If you buy a house for 100K then sit on your ass for a year, you are no richer than before.