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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

#91

Post by chii »

dwallin wrote: post #86
chii wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. If those people don't own the company, what is the owner doing by allowing this to happen? If those people _are_ the owners, then there shouldn't be a problem, since it's their own company, and they ought to be allowed to do anything they wish. Including short term reward for long term loss (if it is worth it in their eyes). So i dont think it's "looting" (imp…

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…

> we should be just accepting it as a society.

This problem is solved using the court system, and then legislation system. Things which _should_ be unacceptable needs to be made illegal. And over time, this has indeed been the case. Things like environmental regulations etc are the examples.

> various responsibilities to the company for them

i think the employees are reading too much into this responsibility, because the only responsibility the company has for the employees are the legals ones: such as OSHA, timely payment of wages, safety from harassment etc.

Longevity of the job, social responsibilities (such as improving the community etc), are all secondary to the financial success for the shareholders.

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

#92

Post by callalex »

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…

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

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

#93

Post by ChatGTP »

dwallin wrote: post #86
chii wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. If those people don't own the company, what is the owner doing by allowing this to happen? If those people _are_ the owners, then there shouldn't be a problem, since it's their own company, and they ought to be allowed to do anything they wish. Including short term reward for long term loss (if it is worth it in their eyes). So i dont think it's "looting" (imp…

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?

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

#94

Post by mortureb »

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…

Honestly we need more strong figures like Musk if we have any chance of pulling this off (preferably the pre insane Musk because that Musk seemed way more capable and productive). Bureaucratic, ladder climbers are not going to be able to pull something hard like this off.

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

#95

Post by mortureb »

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.”

In this case it’s more like the clock was always right until it was broken.

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

#96

Post by radlad »

madengr wrote: post #82
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…

Saving is futile with a 3% loss on your money each year. Unless you invest it you are losing it.

FYI, your account might be shadow banned. I vouched for this comment, but most of yours are dead.

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

#97

Post by sitkack »

CPLX wrote: post #47
liquidpele wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s only half right… the financialization is driven via a priority of short term profits that are incentivized by the market to executives. They play the BS game to just get rich and then dip, company be damned in the long run.

This is the closest thing to an answer. The economy has essentially been ruined by looting. People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. Variations on this include private equity racking up debt and bankrupting companies. Executives doing stock buybacks to boost their options while hollowing out the company's resources. Hedge fund management fees. It's everywhere.

Everyone incentivized by percentage of money changing hands ends up looting whatever asset they have access to, esp if the resource they are burning isn't on the books somewhere.

PMs loot products by throwing in needless features to game some metric, or cutting features that users want but are "too expensive".

Engineers loot by burning resilience and multi-dimensional reliability to eek out 5% more straight line speed.

Sales folks loot by offering huge discounts to get huge deals signed, etc.

They look like heros, then they move on, leaving the place worse than they found it.

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

#98

Post by aphyt »

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.

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

#99

Post by sitkack »

peyton wrote: post #84
chii wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. If those people don't own the company, what is the owner doing by allowing this to happen? If those people _are_ the owners, then there shouldn't be a problem, since it's their own company, and they ought to be allowed to do anything they wish. Including short term reward for long term loss (if it is worth it in their eyes). So i dont think it's "looting" (imp…

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?

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

#100

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

pphysch wrote: post #38
kranke155 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The production of physical goods - physical capitalism - no longer had anywhere to go really when most people employed started having a decent standard of living, so we looked for ways to continue infinite GDP growth and we found it in financialisation. It worked but only by destroying/rotting away everything else.

This explanation doesn't quite convince me, because if this really were the primary issue, USA could have globalized its consumer base not just for low quality products and pop culture, but high quality development. I think the root problem is political: recognizing that USA's extraordinarily successful mid-century economic model was the result of a compromise by the ruling capitalists to avoid facing a European-styl…

The US economic model has been quite successful recently as well.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=t...

As of ~2019, the US had the world's 4th highest median income, even adjusted for cost of living -- easily the highest median income of any large country.

And the median income in the United States has been growing rapidly. Sort the table by "Absolute Change" and you'll see that in absolute terms, the US median income grew the 5th most over the period from 2009-2019. Again, the US is comfortably ahead of other large countries when measured according to this statistic. (For example, US workers saw over 2x as much wage growth as Canadian workers did over the same time period.)

Speaking as an American here, it frustrates me when Americans fail to realize how good they have it compared with people from developing countries. Americans are some of the world's richest people, yet they still insist on hoarding as many good jobs for themselves as possible. When Americans talk of "reducing inequality" it often seems hypocritical.

I genuinely don't understand why it is that the people who are best off also complain the loudest.

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