[hudon]

the gist is: When you can manufacture ships, you can also manufacture warships. When you can manufacture warships, you can protect your economy.

or: If all you sell are financial services, and a pandemic hits and you need to protect your people, where will you find masks?

We don't need to build literally everything ourselves, that's a reductionist argument, we just need to become a lot more productive than we are now.

[snowwrestler]

The U.S. already manufactures warships, though, and we’re already by far the best at it. Not only do we already protect our economy, we protect pretty much all shipping on the high seas by all economies on the globe.

The John F Kennedy—built in the U.S.!—is in sea trials this year to become the 12th nuclear aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet. No other nation has more than two carriers. The U.S. has more aircraft carriers operating as museums than other nations have in military service.

What about subs? Again, the U.S. has more than anyone else and Australia just cancelled a deal with France in order to buy subs built in the U.S. We build the best in the world.

I belabor this to make a point: a lot of what people think we need to do… we already have. Our nation and our economy is already the most secure on Earth. We are already the best in the world at making weapons. That never got outsourced, so we don’t need to dramatically reconfigure our economy to bring it back.

[klooney]

> The U.S. already manufactures warships, though, and we’re already by far the best at it.

We very slowly build a small number of incredibly expensive ships. For any other value of "manufacturers warships", Korea or Italy are better and more reliable.

Also, it's not clear if aircraft carriers are survivable in a vaguely peer context. Missiles and drones have come a long way.

> Australia just cancelled a deal with France in order to buy subs built in the U.S. We build the best in the world

We won't be sending them because we can't build them because our defense shipbuilding industry is moribund, and there is no civilian shipbuilding industry to do double duty.

[pyrale]

> Also, it's not clear if aircraft carriers are survivable in a vaguely peer context.

It's not clear if the planet is survivable in a vaguely peer context. What do you want, build a second planet and make Mexico pay for it?

[jopsen]

Wouldn't you be better off buying ships from allies?

Nobody does everything.

[kashunstva]

> buying ships from allies

In 2025, is the word “ally” even a legitimate term in the U.S. political lexicon?

[mrguyorama]

We were literally buying Frigates from Italy, because they build really good frigates and we can't build a mid-size ship worth a damn it seems.

LMAO does the Navy pay tariffs?

[michaelt]

Practically speaking, I agree.

But theoretically speaking, the time when a strong manufacturing industry is needed is if you get into a lengthy WW2 style conflict, where both sides burn through their stockpiles of tanks/shells/missiles/whatever.

Then whoever can deliver tanks to the battlefield fastest has the numerical advantage. In 1942 the allies had retooled their car/locomotive/tractor manufacturing plants to make tanks and they were literally producing 9x as many tanks as the axis powers. Which is obviously a very good thing, militarily.

So there is historical precedent for the idea that a strong domestic car/locomotive/tractor industry being very helpful in wartime.

Of course, the question you've got to ask is: Will we ever see another WW2 style conflict? Because in a nuclear conflict there's no time to retool and manufacturing plants, and in lower-intensity conflicts like Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan there was no desire to.

[kashunstva]

> we already protect our economy…aircraft carriers…subs…weapons

Except when the threat to your economy and security isn’t something against which those weapons will ever be effective. Even the USS John F. Kennedy, as wonderful as I’m sure it is, won’t fix the giant foot gun that is presently threatening your economy and security.

[mmooss]

> we just need to become a lot more productive than we are now.

To nitpick about terminology:

  productivity = output / input

The US would (and maybe will) become less productive; the US is not as efficient at producing many things as non-U.S. competitors, including ship-building. The US is more productive at other things, such as software. (And in 2025, you certainly would trade ship-building productivity for software productivity. Including in warfare.)

If we insist on building ships in the US, we spend more money on the same ships, and - unavoidably - we must shift more productive resources to these less productive tasks. If your neighbor is a great carpenter and you are a great farmer, wouldn't it be smart to trade your vegetables for carpentry, instead of you trying to do carpentry and the carpenter trying to grow vegetables? If you are a Linux maintainer end and the business down the hall back end, do you try to do back end and they try to design OSes? Why?

(Of course, you probably trade your skills indirectly through the wonderful fungibility of money.)

[hudon]

If the carpenter owns weapons, a lot of my farmland, a lot of shares in my farming business, and my debt… I will learn to build my own crossbow

[mmooss]

Unless you have a lot of skill, you are better off buying crossbows from someone who knows how to make them and is good at it. The carpenter will.

[trhway]

>the gist is: When you can manufacture ships, you can also manufacture warships.

Not really. Most of the complexity and value and technology lies in the difference between a civilian ship and a warship. Guns, radars, missiles, gas turbines - all that much more complex and involved tech than just a metal bathtub with a diesel that a regular civilian ship is. Nuclear aircraft carrier has even less common with a civilian ship. Submarine - pretty much nothing in common.

>or: If all you sell are financial services, and a pandemic hits and you need to protect your people, where will you find masks?

Well, we know that emergency stockpile wasn't maintained as a money saving measure. When you sell finservices you actually have more money to maintain stockpile than when you're manufacturing masks. Yet if you're choosing to not maintain the stockpile ...

[slg]

>the gist is: When you can manufacture ships, you can also manufacture warships. When you can manufacture warships, you can protect your economy.

The counter to this thinking is that if you intertwine your economic wellbeing with your "enemy" to the point that neither side wants to sever the relationship, you won't need to build many warships. Reversing course back towards isolation in order to give yourself the option to build warships increases the odds that you will end up having to build those warships because you have now made it easier for both countries to go to war.

[blululu]

In 2020 during the largest public health crisis in a century, non-woven respiratory masks were found to be an effective intervention. The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so, but you can avoid this scenario repeating itself in the future.

[throwaway173738]

The US had manufacturers of melt blown masks, but instead of giving those manufacturers long guarantees to build up capacity they decided to just wait for China to build up instead.

[mmooss]

> The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so

Yes you can. People have a moral obligation to help others, including when they have to sacrifice, and they do it all the time. People make sacrifices all the time for the greater good.

In fact, many of the extreme self-interest capitalist crowd argues that others should make sacrifices for the greater good of 'the economy' (i.e., for the good of the extreme capitalist). Musk has argued that people need to sacrifice so the economy will be better in some unspecified future.

The new commonplace phrase that 'you can't blame them' is an embarassment. I don't blame you for using it because it's so common, but it's like a core, fundamental belief that humans should not and cannot care anything about anyone else, (or often, anyone but their family). Obviously false and entire, widespread moral beliefs are built on the opposite.

[blululu]

Fair enough. During the pandemic there was an acute shortage of medical supplies and there were really not enough to go around for everyone. It would be a tough sell to convince the person who is actually making these supplies to put the needs to an arbitrary person above the needs of their immediate community. I didn't really enjoy having to be the one to go without on that round, but I would have been pretty angry in a hypothetical situation where my neighbor has needed medical supplies and refuses to provide them to the local fire department because he is trying to sell them to a foreign country for the greatest possible profit. In any case I don't really hold much personal animosity to the people and organizations who made these decisions during the pandemic. I do however want to make sure that we can avoid repeating that the next time around.

[mmooss]

> trying to sell them to a foreign country for the greatest possible profit

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.

[tastyfreeze]

No country has any moral obligation to help any other country. It is anarchy between nations. Every government does have an obligation to its own people. If China didn't take care of their own needs before other nation's they wouldn't be a very successful government.

The only logical way forward is to ensure that your own nation is taking care of its own needs before helping others.

I have always found it interesting that if everybody focused on improving their own conditions first then helped others locally the world would be objectively better for everybody. The better you make the lives of those around you the more you can expand the reach of your goodness.

[mmooss]

> No country has any moral obligation to help any other country. It is anarchy between nations.

You just made that up. First, what defines morality? Second, by what morality are you not obligated to help others? That is amorality, greed, evil. And empirically, countries have long felt, talked explicitly about, and acted on, sometimes at great cost, the moral need to help other countries. Leaders have long made that argument to their fellow citizens (or subjects).

The parent claim is a transparent fiction of nationalists. You can do better!

> I have always found it interesting that if everybody focused on improving their own conditions first then helped others locally the world would be objectively better for everybody.

An even more obvious fabrication with not even an attempt basis. As is often the case with this stuff, the only 'basis' is saying it like it's a fact.

[WalterBright]

Everybody is selfish, including you and I, including the people you believe are selfless.

A functioning society cannot be built around people being selfless.

But a functioning society can be built around selfishness - free markets - and irony of ironies, free markets also do a great job of helping the less fortunate, a much better job than the selfless attempts.

(In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO charity funded by the government had awarded herself a $750,000 salary.)

[jocaal]

"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." - Milton Friedman

[WalterBright]

Good one! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote something similar:

Enforcing equity means nobody has freedom. When people are free, there is no equity.

[mmooss]

Everyone is both selfish and selfless, to different degrees at different times and in different situations, including the people you apparently believe to be completely selfish (you don't really believe that?).

(Obviously a simplistic binary system, but appropriate for HN comments where time and space is limited.)

The religion and worship of selflessness is a cult - who ever followed such an ethos; even what great American? Did Washington? Lincoln? King? Eisenhower? Who before Trump? Who anywhere at any time is admired for it? Any religious figures? Saints? Moses/Jesus/Mohammad? Siddhartha Gautama?

Step back, stop drowinging in Internet ideology, take a even slightly broader view than the immediate tide of ideology - the concept is an absurdity for its simplicity and morality. Wake up sooner, rather than later.

A functioning society can't be built around either extreme, and because no human fits either extreme, it's a pointless debate about science fiction.

Markets are great tools and work with a mix of selfishness and selflessness - markets are destroyed by the too selfish, parasites who, for example, undermine the essential trust, safety, and integrity of the market for their own profit. The tools of selflessness are also great and built a society of freedom, which creates markets, innovation, opportunity, and social stability - universal education, for example; much healthcare is funded that way; many people wouldn't have effective rights without pro bono legal help and advocacy.

They are different tools each relatively better for different problems. Obviously 'free markets' leave a lot to be desired; obviously we can't function solely on selflessness.

> (In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO charity funded by the government had awarded herself a $750,000 salary.)

C'mon; that is a silly point and you know it (though it actually supports my claim in this comment).

[WalterBright]

The US has done quite well with a mostly free market.

[knubie]

> The counter to this thinking is that if you intertwine your economic wellbeing with your "enemy" to the point that neither side wants to sever the relationship

You mean like how Europe has made themselves completely dependent on Russia for energy? How's that working out?

[mmooss]

You've picked one example, but there are many other examples of it working - such as the EU itself. Before the predecessor of the EU was formed, you may recall two massive, Europe-wide wars in half a century.

[gedy]

But China is and has been producing warships at a rapid pace for some time.

[tastyfreeze]

Not only that, all ships they produce are required to meet their military standards. The are all dual use.

[Spooky23]

We had a little event a few years ago that answered your question. You give people money and they make crap. I helped procure like 30M masks. Nature finds a way.

As a society, we’re more productive than we ever have been. We’re not breaking society to create a nation of workshops. This is a cynical power play.

[mmooss]

> We’re not breaking society to create a nation of workshops.

That's what Mao tried in the Great Leap Forward: They tried to shift steel production to a cottage industry in back yards. You can imagine the results.

And also relevant: Everyone learned to say whatever Mao wanted to hear, so they all reported high and increasing production. It turns out that disinformation isn't economically productive, even if it feels that way - you can't make cars out of it.

[WalterBright]

The Soviet Union was famous for imaginary factories cranking out imaginary tractors.

[squigz]

Was mask manufacturing capacity during the pandemic an issue?

[throwup238]

Yes, and the American N95+ mask manufacturers didn't want to risk another boom-bust cycle so when the government wouldn't guarantee them a long term purchase deal, they couldn't ramp up. They had gone through this same scenario during the first SARS scare and almost went bankrupt when everyone went back to buying cheaper imported masks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-d...

[hudon]

Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_related_to_the_COVID...

[manwe150]

Both yes and no. It was a brief lack of available local stock from suddenly unexpected demand, followed by a lack of factories willing to stop doing well paid work to switch to making cheap masks, while we waited for even cheaper masks to get made and imported from countries with cheap labor, followed by a surplus of masks (source: a brief chat with a factory manager in my social network who was considering whether he could at least break even on costs and labor if temporarily switching to making masks)

[mitthrowaway2]

Even then, there weren't enough melt spinning machines in North America to make the necessary raw materials, and the lead time on new machines was too long to address the shortage in time to respond to the needs of a pandemic.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/n95-mask-shortage-melt-blown-fi...

[mitthrowaway2]

Yes, it was a severe and acute issue.

[olyjohn]

I think so, isn't that why they brought in all the KN95 masks? The K meaning "Korean."

[TylerE]

KN95 is Chinese.

[Tiktaalik]

The USA is already a lot more productive than everyone else. This is because the USA generates an enormous amount of wealth through very few people thanks to its technology and finance industry. Irony is that there's no end to handwringing editorials in Canada about our "productivity gap" between us and the USA and the USA under Trump is wanting to move itself backward and become less productive. Everyone else in the G7 wishes they were as productive as the USA.

The solution to the problem posed here is for the USA to use its incredible wealth deriving from its incredible productivity to buy the warships from Poland etc.

[klooney]

> thanks to its technology and finance industry

There's been a great sucking sound from all the electrical and mechanical engineers switching to writing CRUD apps because the pay is double.

[WalterBright]

I switched from mechanical engineering to writing software because of the instant gratification of software machines. If you're designing a gearbox, it takes years to see the actual hardware, and you'd better have gotten the design right the first try, as changing the box gets very expensive.

I would have been much happier as an engineer working next to the shop where I could partner with the machinists.

[Loughla]

Isn't it better just to own the debt of other countries?

[anarticle]

Only if you can enforce it when there is a default. The odds against which was assumed to be zero is becoming nonzero.