[eyko]

It's also worth considering that certain industries (fisheries and agriculture for instance) are subsidised. It's in our national interest to maintain production capacity, so profits are the least of our concerns. Both the UK and the EU's agricultural sectors are heavily subsidised mainly for this reason. It's cheaper to import than to produce locally, especially with our environmental standards and targets, but we need to keep producing. More so in the current geopolitical climate.

And whilst nobody wants to risk being starved to submission, it's also equally important to promote more profitable sectors, and tax accordingly, so that we can support our more strategic sectors. I wouldn't say we're doing a good job at that for what its worth.

[aylmao]

+1, exactly. Focusing too much in the money makes you forget about the power. At a national leadership level, there isn't much power in having a local Warhammer industry, fishing is much more strategic.

In broad terms, this is related to the error the USA made. Manufacturing in China was a very profitable deal for the USA. A lot of companies view labour first and foremost as expense, wealth as as the goal, and power in wealth— so it's not surprising as a whole the industry opted to "contract out" labour across the globe.

A lot of power lays in labour though. Money doesn't produce, invent, move, feed, etc— money is only good if someone will take it at the amounts you have it to do that specific labour you need for you.

[seanmcdirmid]

This is a bit harsh: the USA didn't devalue labor in general, just manufacturing. They hired software engineers from all over the world, along with a lot of higher value engineering and product development jobs. The error the USA made was in pushing the workforce up the value chain faster than everyone could handle, and a lot of Americans got left behind.

China is moving up the value chain also, they are being forced to by their demographics, and they are investing heavily in the change ATM (just like they started investing heavily in green energy 10 years ago) so I don't think they will make the same mistake as the Americans are making right now.

[kilolima]

Did they hire those software engineers along with their unions?

Not quite. It's all about labor and getting rid of the class that used to (and could have) threatened the elites.

[consp]

SE will one day realize they are as screwed as the average worker and unionize in some way. The endless money pits are not for every SE, even today the majority does not work for the creme-de-creme of well paying companies. While specialists and smooth talkers might profit from the current model, as always is the case, most won't.

[IX-103]

Unions are a bad solution to the problem of companies not vaulting their employees. Unfortunately, without altruism by the corporations or governments action, they are also the only effective solution.

I'd prefer we look to other countries that have solved the problem in other ways, such as including representatives of the employees in the board.

Also, we need to remember that corporations exist at the mercy of the state, having received a special dispensation (corporate charter) to exist. Those companies that are not a net benefit to society have no right to exist and ought to be dissolved.

[briandear]

Then when they unionize, all the software jobs will head to cheaper locales. Unless of course you’re suggesting that the U.S. use tariffs on labor to prevent that?

[LPisGood]

“If you unionize, all the jobs will leave” is the oldest refrain in the book for those opposed to united labor.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

If the goal is to have high paying jobs in the US, then yes the government should put penalties in place to encourage that. US cost of living (housing, real estate taxes, health care costs, college costs, etc) is way higher than many countries, especially those where jobs are being offshored to, especially India, so salaries have to be higher here.

So, do we let US companies invest US consumer derived revenue in the Indian economy, just to boost profits a bit, or do we protect good jobs at home instead, and have a virtuous circle where US profits get plowed back into the US economy?

[disgruntledphd2]

Most other countries have much stronger unions and labour laws.

[SiempreViernes]

> Then [...] all the software jobs will head to cheaper locales

Dude, how have you completed missed the ongoing push for AI to replace developers?

[Vinnl]

I work for a US org that also hires internationally, including Europeans like me. It does location-based pay, so we're much cheaper than especially my Silicon Valley colleagues, yet somehow, we keep hiring there more than we are in Europe.

[rayiner]

A lot of our “value chain” is bullshit. If and when China becomes twice as big an economy as the US, much of our “edge” in marketing, finance, and services isn’t going to mean squat. E.g. how much “GDP” will evaporate overnight when American universities no longer have the cachet that comes along with being the best universities in America?

[seanmcdirmid]

> A lot of our “value chain” is bullshit.

No it isn't, productivity has to increase, that's why we constantly get rid of jobs that do not provide much value. People want more money, and the only way we get there is with more productivity (doing jobs that make more money).

> If and when China becomes twice as big an economy as the US, much of our “edge” in marketing, finance, and services isn’t going to mean squat.

China gets to 2X our GDP by doing what we basically did in the 90s, so you are definitely right! They will have their own marketing, financing and services. The only difference is that they won't need to outsource manufacturing to China (well, they are outsourcing it a bit now, but also investing tons in automation).

> E.g. how much “GDP” will evaporate overnight when American universities no longer have the cachet that comes along with being the best universities in America?

I don't know what you are ranting about, but I get the feeling that if I did know what you were saying here I would probably agree with you.

[rayiner]

> No it isn't, productivity has to increase, that's why we constantly get rid of jobs that do not provide much value.

Our measures of “value” are wrong.

> I don't know what you are ranting about

My point is that a lot of what we think of as “higher value” activities are actually derivative of and downstream of our industrial supremacy. As China takes up that mantle, the higher value activities will go along with it. E.g., how long do we expect the US to do the cutting edge nuclear power and weapons research when China is the one building all the nuclear power plants?

I mean look at the path dependency that led to Silicon Valley. Why did the software revolution happen in the same place we were building the microchips?

[seanmcdirmid]

We basically agree then: as China takes up higher value activities, they won't need those activities from the US anymore. Also, France is the cutting edge designer of nuclear power plants these days.

> Why did the software revolution happen in the same place we were building the microchips?

Hardware people becoming software people was extremely common back then, and still is today (EEs can make more coding than using their degree directly). Now we have the opposite problem (we don't have enough hardware people because software sucked all the oxygen out of the room) and China has less of it (although increasingly...they are repeating history as well). If anything, this just backs up my point in how higher value activities de-emphasize manufacturing (even super high end manufacturing as in semiconductors).

You can replace perceived value with actual value if you don't agree with the value judgement calls that were made, which is entirely reasonable.

[varjag]

Productivity since 2000 had only increased by some 30%, which can not account for structural changes in job market.

[lmpdev]

That’s the biggest thing I took away from the whole Boeing corporate disaster

You need to maintain at least a minimum amount of internal competency in almost all areas

If you completely give away a capability to other countries (in this case, fishing knowledge and labour) it is much harder to bring back than just coughing up the money

Those sectors you let die might not matter right now, but they might matter later. And you might have to scale up fast.

[2Gkashmiri]

We buy local brands of shoes that are in inr 300-2000 range and that solves like 70% of the shoes market in India. From shoes to skippers to formal shoes to ladies heels and such. Then you gave INr 3000-8000 that are considered really really expensive.

Convert that to usd and you will see how much premium is being charged.

[pjc50]

Perhaps. But does a subsidized industry retain competence, or retain incompetence? After all, if you're making a profit no matter what, what incentive is there to do well?

Many of the EU farming and fishing subsidies are to NOT produce anything.

[mapt]

That often depends on the structure of the subsidy.

"We will pay you 5 euros per kg of fish sold in supermarkets to consumers" is different from "We will pay you 500,000 euros a year to keep fishing".

There is a very reasonable argument in fisheries starting at least a century ago (and locally long before that), that we're looking at a partially renewable good - that it would be easy to cause an unsustainable population collapse with unrestricted harvesting, and so you should try and intervene in the market to sustain fish populations and stabilize harvests. Subsidies intended to do this are distinct from subsidies intended to keep fishermen employed fishing.

[cratermoon]

> You need to maintain at least a minimum amount of internal competency in almost all areas

This is exactly what Dr. L. J. Hart-Smith wrote in "Out-Sourced Profits – The Cornerstone of Successful Subcontracting", a paper from 2001 https://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2014130646...

See also How Tech Loses Out over at Companies, Countries and Continents https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/, where the author asks, "In any organization, in any company, in any group, any country and even any continent, what level of technical capability, do we need to retain?"

Once you've outsourced everything except the management work, the organization forgets how to do the thing they're supposed to be managing.

[mapt]

> If you completely give away a capability to other countries (in this case, fishing knowledge and labour) it is much harder to bring back than just coughing up the money

I feel like money is overwhelmingly how we denominate value, effort, and agency in our society. Almost every time somebody says "You can't just throw money at the problem", they are arguing that we shouldn't even try that, contrary to all established reasoning about how society works.

There are diminishing returns to funding, but the people who use this expression are typically at a tiny fraction of where we would expect to hit them.

If you want to have a fishing industry because fish are your idealized heritage, then choose to subsidize it heavily either to continue to exist, and/or to expand it into waters and economies of scale where you can still fish profitably. Like the Japanese and the Chinese do, respectively.

[immibis]

You need to pay money to people who will put in effort and agency. You can't just throw money at random people and expect something useful to happen. Sometimes, the people who will make things happen if you throw money to them don't exist. Sometimes, you have to turn people into those people (which also costs money).

Money is something you give people so they can eat and stay warm while they do the thing you want. They still have to be doing the thing you want. Sometimes there's enough reputation and legal threats on the line that you can assume the person will do the thing just based on the fact they're taking money from you and not freaking out. Companies do things this way a lot - individuals not as much.

The abstraction is not the territory, and the idea that money denominates value is an abstraction... often we define "value" as "that for which money is exchanged", making the abstraction tautological, at no gain. This is often done by people who want to think the thing they're spending a lot of money on is very valuable, or want to make you think the thing you're spending a lot of money on is very valuable.

[flir]

While not disagreeing with you, I don't think we've done a great job of maintaining fisheries.

[wongarsu]

Also, continuing overfishing is a terrible long-term strategy. Sure, we will have the boats, fishermen and infrastructure around fishing, but that's of no help if the fish are gone.

[immibis]

Politics isn't about good long-term planning - it's about accountability sinks.

This decade: "We're not the ones trying to steal your fishing jobs!"

Next decade: "It's not our fault there aren't fish!"

[potato3732842]

You missed the "you can fix it with money though, and our friends are just the people to give the money to" step that comes after each problem statement.

[eyko]

Agreed, and the same goes for most strategic sectors: energy, agriculture, animal husbandry, semiconductors, communications, space, the infrastructure to support all these, education, etc.

[alibarber]

Whilst I appreciate that there are national and security interests to consider, I'd still say fish aren't one of them.

I think a lack of seafood would have less of an impact to the general population than say, lack of satellite navigation or communication technology.

[swiftcoder]

It's only ~100 years since seafood was the primary protein source of most coastal regions. The rampant mismanagement of fish/shellfish stocks that put an end to that has had knock-on effects across our entire food supply, that continue to influence agricultural policy to this day

[pjmlp]

Which amid everything, maybe it is time to focus again on our own programming languages and OSes like in the cold war and export regulation days, it will suck for a while, but apparently it is how everything is going.

[butlike]

So wait, you have high environmental standards, so you import instead of producing locally. Wouldn't that implicitly give you lower standards at home?