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

First, to clear things up, I don't at all mean doing it to maximize profit. Notice that we expect a great degree of selflessness here - they should not be maximizing profit during the pandemic. We require it - we put them in jail otherwise.

It's all hands on deck.

> It would be a tough sell

There are definitely challenges here; I agree about that.

I think what sells to most people is to appeal to fairness. Democracy's foundation is fairness - rights to all, all get a vote. Fairness actually sells very well everywhere, despite the modern authoritarian's false critique. Law of the jungle is highly undesireable to most people; they like having civilization and rights.

But not universally; some will fight it. You need leaders and neighbors standing up for what's right. Also, enlightened self-interest can be convincing - help those in need, and you'll get help when you are in need.

You also need a way to determine what is fair; good leaders build consensus and navigate the politics - that is their job definition. Probably you put supplies where they do the most good. Start with hospitals and nursing homes, where contagion and vulnerable patients combine for the greatest risk. Then other vulnerable people (e.g., elderly or ill in private homes), then the first healthy recipients being front line workers like firefighters.

I think most healthy people would happily give up their medical supplies for those who need them more. There are always some malcontents, but we can't hold up society and progress for them.

> convince the person who is actually making these supplies to put the needs to an arbitrary person above the needs of their immediate community

Manufacturers provide them outside their employees, and health care professionals help strangers all the time. If we asked someone in downtown SF to provide them to someone across the Bay, would that be too far? To LA? NY? Rural Georgia? What about from Seattle to Vancouver? Belgium to the Netherlands? To Germany? To Turkey? To Japan?

My probably obvious point is, ''community' and 'us' are amorphous, changing concepts. Of course people in LA and Toronto and anywhere deserve the medical supplies as much as people next door.

Some do extremely well, many don't do well at all.

> with a mostly free market.

We both know there are massive social programs, and the market is unfree in many ways - powerful participants often make markets very non-free for others, and of course some are highly regulated to the point of distortion.

I actually favor using the free market whenever possible, most importantly because of the first word - people should be free to do as they like in business too, as much as possible - and because it works very well for the great majority of things.

I think we need freer markets - open to all competitors. Extreme capitalism is destroying the free market because capitalists are driving out competition. It's become capitalistism - an economy allocating things for the capitalists, not for capital.

You still have to spend money on materials and labor - they are never free. You need to take them from other uses, and people may outbid you for them. There isn't infinite lumber and labor lying around the US for free - building houses is expensive!

The core of economics is there is a scarcity of resources and we want to allocate them as efficiently as possible. Money's fungibility allows us to move resources easily and rapidly. I can send you $50,000 much more easily than my car - you might be on a different continent; you might not even want my car or agree on its value, but I can count on you wanting $50K because you can buy whatever you need with it (a car, a few servers, a trip around the world ...).

It turns out in reality that someone with better skills and capital (hard resources, such as heavy equipment) can build a house so much more efficiently than you, that you would save money by hiring them rather than doing it yourself. That's specialization, another economic fundamental. Think of most work - orthopedists, C developers, pipe fitters, etc. They are so much more efficient than you are, you wouldn't dream of trying to do it yourself (on any significant level) - even if you are in the same domain, such as internists or Python developers.

You don't lose out at all, because they also hire you to do what you are specialized at. Then instead of the farmer building a house and the carpenter growing squash, both get better and more houses and squash for much less money.

> If you can take resources from some part of the world that you don't really care about, then you are adding wealth to your own country for basically free.

If you shoot someone on the street, you can take their wallet for 'free'!

... You are arguing against fundemental economics and even basic accounting. If you care about these things, learn about them a little. Microeconomics is actually fascinating, and basic double-entry accounting is essential.

I agree with that critique, though it may be a problem with this specific version of Globalism, not globalism itself.

But do you think there is more equitable distribution with mercantilism or protectionism? Why would that be? In those systems government officials choose who gets the benefits; you can't get them for yourself. Also, they tend to oppress less powerful countries - globalism's astounding record of raising people from poverty all over the world is absolutely unmatched. People take for granted the relative prosperity in China, India, Brazil, ... - nothing like it ever happened before.

> if the USA had continued to practices mercantilism post-WW2 then we wouldn't have complaints about the lack of manufacturing.

You assume this mercantilist government can effectively manage manufacturing, and that it wouldn't deteriorate, having no competition. Industry without competition tends to do that. Basically, enshittification is doing that intentionally.

With only 5% of the population the US would not have nearly enough manufacturing capacity to meet modern needs.

Finally, keeping people in manufacturing (how? by force?) would prevent them from taking the newer, higher productivity jobs that followed.

The US was much less wealthy - order of magnitude at least - in the 1950s (or whatever golden age people think of). You don't want to go back to that economy.

> The industrial plants in China would've never been built by US investment because that's literally handing money away to another country.

If it was handing away money, then why would someone invest in it? They invest because the investment generates returns, in this case massive returns that changed hundreds of millions of lives and provided wealth that was used to buy and invest in yet more things.

What is? You haven't spelled out your theory. And I know economics well, and class 101 is free markets and specialization.

> how the US built and defended it's manufacturing base before the pivot to a "service" economy

Who wants to return to an economy of decades ago? The US was much poorer then. I want to move to the future. Services are much easier on people physically - you don't want to work in a coal mine.