[goatinaboat]

You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.)

Once you lose a capability it’s gone forever. That is why countries cling desperately to domestic steel, shipbuilding, arms and other industries. Once the institutional knowledge is gone and the infrastructure is gone it’s never coming back. And other countries whose interests may not align with your own have you over a barrel.

[lsc]

>Once you lose a capability it’s gone forever

This is... not my impression, from working around Engineers all my life. My impression is that cutting edge manufacturing techniques from the '80s are now available, cheaply, to hobbyists. Stuff these guys put in the basement and work on then they are sick of javascript. (FDM aside, I could walk to several CnC lathes and... three large laser cutters from where I am right now, all dedicated to hobby usage, all of which see pretty regular use)

My impression is that if you paid your professional engineers as much to design automated widget factories as you pay them to design advertising systems, they'd make something serviceable. And sure, rev 1 isn't going to be as good as rev 2, it never is, The institutional knowledge effect is big... I'm just saying it's not insurmountable, and the US is a rich country. If we cared, we'd spend money and solve the problem.

I personally think the big capability we are putting in danger right now is the capability the US has always had to hoover the best minds from all over the world, to persuade them to come and set down roots and work in the US. That's the long term problem I see with the way we're going.

I think the second big capability we are putting in danger is that culturally, my impression is that the US is valuing education less than it used to. As a side effect, we're not paying to educate our people (and, I would argue, my compatriots are becoming harder to educate as a result.)

The long term advantage China has over the US is not really institutional knowledge; the long term advantage is that they are putting a lot more effort into education than we are, (and we are not scooping up those educated minds the way we used to.)

Re-training an Engineer from one field to another is a lot easier than bringing someone up to speed who isn't educated; I've watched both happen, and... one is definitely less effort than the other.

[CharlesColeman]

> Once you lose a capability it’s gone forever. That is why countries cling desperately to domestic steel, shipbuilding, arms and other industries. Once the institutional knowledge is gone and the infrastructure is gone it’s never coming back. And other countries whose interests may not align with your own have you over a barrel.

Not exactly: that's only true if you let neoliberal economists set your economic policy.

Countries like China recently gained those industrial capabilities, and the reason for that is not just because they have access to cheaper labor. More importantly, they have industrial policy that prioritizes the development of domestic industry.

Nothing fundamental prevents Western democracies (perhaps collectively) from implementing industrial policies that prioritize industrial development rather than stuff like finance in its ever more byzantine forms [1].

[1] I read somewhere that financial development is only really beneficial up to a point. Past that point, it actually does more harm than good.

[goatinaboat]

Countries like China recently gained those industrial capabilities, and the reason for that is not just because they have access to cheaper labor.

Don’t forget the psychological side. If an industry is booming then ambitious, motivated people flock to it, colleges teach courses in it, people look to build long-term careers in it. The West had that from the Industrial Revolution up until the 80s maybe. China has it now. There are still a few steelworkers and shipwrights and even miners in the UK but those industries are winding down. If we ever need a lot of warships in a hurry - which has happened not that long ago - we would struggle. The expertise is lost.

[AstralStorm]

Well, you can bring it back with a major expenses. The problem is competition against vertical semi-integration which is present in China. (Multiple companies but same place - cheap transport and high availability plus widespread knowledge.)

The remaining industries are also integrated or partially integrated.

[goatinaboat]

Say you have a century-old widget factory that closes (a common story here in Wales). The widget making machinery gets sold off, even if for scrap. The factory site gets demolished and redeveloped. The widget makers retire or retrain and they tell their kids “don’t go into the widget business, it’s a dead end”. All the colleges cancel their widget courses, no demand.

A decade or two passes and rebooting your widget industry will be an order of magnitude harder than it was to start in the first place.

[lsc]

>A decade or two passes and rebooting your widget industry will be an order of magnitude harder than it was to start in the first place.

Eh, you don't want any of the old equipment anyhow, you want new computer controlled stuff. I mean, sure, the people making that equipment need to have some experienced machinists, but... not so many of them; you mostly want Engineers for this job.

I think the problem America has is not with losing existing factories, but in how little value we place, culturally, on education.

[JoeAltmaier]

Maybe not any more? You can hire internationally now, its never been easier to research widgets. New technologies and manufacturing techniques make it a whole different widget ballgame anyway - you probably wouldn't do it the same anyway.

In fact, many industries reinvent themselves periodically just to stay current. Restarting a factory can't be much different.

[goatinaboat]

Here I’m using widgets as a synonym for the kinds of heavy industries we used to have. Reopening a steel mill or a tin mine is not something you can do overnight.

People forget that a factory itself is a sophisticated machine and operating it is an advanced skill that relies heavily on experience. A car factory is considerably more complex than any of the cars it produces, for example. Or, we never had a fab in Wales, but it’s a similar analogy. And then there’s the logistics, the supply chain, again a massively complex thing that is often overlooked. Maybe the factory had hundreds of suppliers and subcontractors, they would all need to be rebooted too. It’s a fractal problem.

[lsc]

sure, but... I mean, the tech has changed so much and gotten so much better.

If we threw the sort of effort (and by effort, I mean money) into reindustrialization that we throw into, say, selling ads, the problem would fall pretty quickly. Heck, the net effect would be that the same people would work on it, if the money shifted.

(I actually think the bit about using most of the same people is... pretty true? half the programmers I support are actually trained as some other sort of engineer; but writing code is massively more remunerative, say, than actually working as a chemical engineer or mechanical engineer, and programming is something that can be done by nearly everyone who can handle the education, as far as I can tell, required to become a real engineer)