[jppittma]

Not sure where I fall on that one. In business, it is said that one ought to focus on core competencies and let other companies handle the rest. Why shouldn’t a country do the same? Should low level manufacturing be a core competency of the US? Why? Turning steel into screws is certainly lower margin than turning screws and engines into airplanes.

[snickerbockers]

Because there's no higher power that can prosecute China for antitrust violations if they ever leverage our dependence on them against us. America is making the same mistake Europe made a few decades ago, which is constantly downsizing itself into irrelevancy because "helpful" countries are more than willing to take on the burden of economic domination. When we reach the point that all we make is fiat currency and software then we have nothing to offer the rest of the world and we become decadent and impotent.

Also our airplanes suck, you could not possibly have picked a worse example of American heavy industry than the Boeing corporation.

[vlachen]

Perhaps Neal Stephenson was correct in Snow Crash:

There's only four things [Americans] do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery

[FirmwareBurner]

Except American movies(and entertainment in general) haven't been good for about 10 years now, it's all slop based on established IP from 20-30 years ago.

When I was a kid growing up in the post communist 90-00s, we were going nearly weekly to the cinema to watch the latest American movies: Blade, Shrek, Toy Story, The Matrix trilogy, LotR trilogy, American Pie, Batman trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Fast & Furious, X-Men, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Scary Movie, Rush Hour, etc

We couldn't get enough of US entertainment, while now everyone here avoids the new US releases like the plague since it's only cash grabs injected with $CURRENT_DAY identity politics, diversity box ticking based on focus group testing, resulting in sterile, predictable, zero-humor, zero-edge, zero-creativity slop that's not even worth pirating.

Americans have no idea how much soft power they lost worldwide by forcing their identity politics and ideologies in entertainment. Japanese anime and Koran movies and TV shows now run rings around the US entertainment industry.

[JambalayaJimbo]

You just listed a set of blockbuster movies mostly aimed at children and teens. You’re not going to relate to that category as much anymore because you’re not a child.

The superhero movies that have filled that niche are by any measures wildly popular.

[FirmwareBurner]

The recent box office bombs disagree with you. See Iron Heart if you want a good laugh.

[ZeroGravitas]

As is traditional with these weird complaints about diversity in modern movies, most of your good old days classics examples are in fact "slop based on established IP".

I know kids in the target demographic have a place in their heart for them but Star Wars prequels given as a positive example while complaining about 30 year old IP slop?

You may also have missed the subtle subtext in Star Wars about fascism.

[FirmwareBurner]

> these weird complaints about diversity in modern movies

You're twisting my words to move the narrative goalposts. Nobody complained about diversity in movies (otherwise I wouldn't have praised Rush Hour and Blade). The complaint was about US movies today being solely built around a toxic form of diversity checkbox ticking, masquerading as entertainment, which is not interesting to anyone outside the US crowds of movie goers who care more about seeing $CURRENT_DAY political issues in their movies instead of recognizing entertainment as being fantasy escapism, which causes the US to loose soft power abroad, and judging by how they flop at the box office, US viewers aren't interested in paying for this slop either.

>most of your good old days classics examples are in fact "slop based on established IP".

Source that they're slop?

>but Star Wars prequels given as a positive example while complaining about 30 year old IP slop?

The prequels were considered shit at the time because they were compared to the original masterpieces, but compared to the modern Star Wars that Disney shits out today, they're basically gold. They ended up ageing like wine due to how bad we have it today.

>You may also have missed the subtle subtext in Star Wars about fascism.

What's your point here?

[anonymars]

In the pandemic there was a lesson I read somewhere that I will always keep with me and repeat: "efficiency" and "resiliency" are opposing points on a spectrum. Once you hear it I think you'll see it everywhere. What you describe is efficient but it isn't resilient.

[killjoywashere]

This. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about national security problems, it's hard to convey how badly the 1980s MBA education failed us as a country. "Greed is good." Sure, Gordon. For who? Who's greed is good for who? How about the people of the country labor for the long term wealth of the nation? How about we all work for the long term wealth of the planet?

[bsder]

> In business, it is said that one ought to focus on core competencies and let other companies handle the rest.

In contrast, "Maximally efficient is minimally robust."

Something that business intelligentsia propagates should be given extra scrutiny. Why should you assume that statement about core competencies is correct, a priori? We have lots of evidence that statement isn't true in general. And we have mountains of evidence that such statements tend to be more incorrect the longer a time horizon you account for.

Vertically integrated businesses aren't rare. Everybody loves being a fabless chip company--until an earthquake or a pandemic hits. Designing chips was not a core competency for Apple--until it was and suddenly you have the M1. GE outsourced water heater manufacturing and lost their core competency to design them. etc.

[johnnyanmac]

>it is said that one ought to focus on core competencies and let other companies handle the rest. Why shouldn’t a country do the same?

Because a country isn't a business. If a companies falls out, they move on to another company based on the market.

If a country falls out, we go to war and sanction everything. If you can't survive those sanctions, the war is lost before any blood is spilt. Or at least any blood spilt by foreign invaders; the citizens will burn down the country for you instead.

[hollerith]

Actually, low-value manufacturing is a US competency because it is highly dependent on energy costs, which are lower in the US than in most countries.