[dukeyukey]

> it does nothing for the American worker to bring manufacturing back if it means huge buildings with skeleton crews and machines that effectively run themselves

I don't think that right. It still means goods are being produced in America, which means:

1. Greater security of production against geopolitical threats, and

2. More goods being produced overall, meaning cheaper goods.

Even without significant employment, those are good things!

[emseetech]

> Greater security of production against geopolitical threats

I address this in the second paragraph.

> More goods being produced overall, meaning cheaper goods.

I'm not convinced cheaper, more abundant goods are the top problem to solve right now. Especially as wants get cheaper, needs are getting much more expensive. And low and stagnant wages at the bottom means survival becomes increasingly difficult, despite cheaper candy and toys.

[jaredmclaughlin]

These things don't live in a vacuum. Those big skeleton crew shops open the door to innovation at higher levels of abstraction in the supply chain.

Namely, it requires more of a model basis - materials and tolerances in the 3D model. That enables better design automation and things like defined mechanical interfaces in a machine readable format. Think DARPA FANG/AVM. It also includes a mathematically sound definition or approximation of GD&T.

End result is fewer firms, fewer employees, more productivity and lower lot sizes. That means more efficiency and adaptability with higher wages and more intense training.

It also means that designing, making and selling things becomes less capital intensive. In theory every mechanically inclined person can be creating solutions. Hardware gets a little closer to looking like software because open source can be a real thing. Etc.