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Depends. SpaceX pretty much owns the global launch market, and has out built and out innovated every other country's aerospace companies. Speaking of Musk, Tesla is now worth more than most automakers, is on a tear, and most likely will be outproducing everyone at making batteries. I don't think this is purely an 'access to labor' problem. It's a problem of vision and risk tolerance. Musk is willing to try new approaches, even if they fail (eg trying to make a 3D almost 100% tesla factory before having to retreat to using humans) Silicon Fabs are one of the first industries to be almost 100% automated. So clearly the issue isn't access to labor, but for Intel, it's more like they made a bad bet, and didn't "fail fast", they've been doubling down on bad bets and not willing to be more dynamic. When you look at Aerospace: SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, it's clear, small focus teams can pull off amazing things, even in high-capex high-risk high-regulatory industries. The failure of GE and owners is due to bean counters being put in charge instead of missionaries. Take GE's Nuclear division, why are they still putting money into BWRs & PWRs? Decades went by, they are not dropping any money on pebble beds, molten salt, thorium, etc. And why wait for MIT's SPARC to limp along? If they had an Elon Musk figure, he would have put them on a race to build a prototype, even if it failed, in a year, not 5 years. Monopolies, and access to cost+ government contracts I think have killed a lot of innovation. And if the big 3 automakers want to compete with Tesla, they need to replace their management with hardcore EV geeks who have passion and LOVE the space, and give them the resources to spin up a new division with all new people and processes. Otherwise, they're going to shamble along, and continue to try and milk their existing business lines until they die. This is a management problem, not a labor problem. You can't solve this problem by shoveling more STEMs straight outta college onto it. There's a tendency to think China's massive stem graduation firehose will magically mean leadership, but that's million man-month thinking. It's not simply about access to labor that's the problem. Companies with 100 employees outcompete companies with tens of thousands all the time (take WhatsApp vs my employer, Google, in the messaging space) |
Most big companies just want to collect rent rather than make investments.