[kardianos]

Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean.

I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference.

So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.

But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

[SoftTalker]

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer

We cannot. We are richer because we don't do it. We export it to areas so poor they view the environmental impact as a fair trade-off for being able to eat.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

You're both likely correct.

We can afford to do it right. It will cost more and we'll have to make more prudent, effective, efficient, etc... decisions about producing and allocating goods and services and would need to give up many of the net negative/zero economic activities we like.

We've also likely enriched ourselves by externalizing the negative externalities of some of our goods and services to other countries. That's our choice, and I don't think it's a great one.

[morganw]

>> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer

> We cannot.

Apple can afford to do test fabrication while abiding by the rules, but chooses not to. https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-fine-over-bay-area...

[harvey9]

Glad you said areas rather than countries. It is quite common to degrade the environment within rich countries as long as it isn't near where powerful people live.

[bloomingeek]

Correct. We are also richer because we won't do it. The EPA has saved countless lives, at least did, it's been basically dismantled.

[temp8830]

USA is already effectively priced out of manufacturing due to high labor costs. Doing things with the "correct choices" simply makes the impossible even more so.

[rini17]

Central/Eastern European here. Our labor costs are comparable or even lower than China today. And the manufacturing is still struggling. So it's not only that.

[kardianos]

That, and you have to ensure your energy costs (power) are low and you have a secure source of raw materials. I'm not an expert, but from what I've heard, the economic region over there has been doing a poor job on both those fronts. Furthermore, you have to talk about regulation vs safety. The EU has regulation. Maybe too much.

There are also network effects. Your plant that is energy intensive is closing? Now other manufactures must increase their cost as transportation is increased and local contracts harder to get. Your chemical plant, which has operated within good bounds for a decade can't get a permit to expand, or is protested? Your intake products now either go up in price or become unable to attain them at all.

[temp8830]

There's also that large scale effort ongoing to make those energy costs higher and take those raw materials away.

And even still - there's a lot of manufacturing in Easter Europe. Go to IKEA or an appliance or auto store. You might be surprised to find where things are made these days. Often they'll say "made in EU" instead of the actual country name though.

[kspacewalk2]

In Central/Eastern Europe, the problem is increasingly one of demographics. You can sometimes find somewhat cheap labour due to shitty (geo)politics, stagnant economies and poorly trained workers, but big-picture-like, the age of labour abundance is over. These economies have nowhere to go but down, down, down, starved of talent due to the twin cancers of bad demographics and emigration. Some countries are better, some worse, but the overall trend is the same all over the region. Going gentle into that good night.

(China's predicament is not much better, with the added wrinkle that there's absolutely nothing whatsoever they can do about bad demographics due to their size, whereas Central/Eastern Europe can import people once we collectively get over ourselves and let go of uppity xenophobia).

[joe_mamba]

>the age of labour abundance is over.

There IS labour over abundance. Unemployment in most EU countries is at record highs. And it shows no sign of slowing down.

The problem is it's mostly white collar labor overabundance. And those college educated people aren't gonna want to make sneakers in sweatshops.

[kspacewalk2]

The number of kids born in 2025 in Uzbekistan (population 38 million) is about the same as the number of kids born in 2025 in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland, *combined* (total population 131 million). The age of labour abundance IS OVER, we're witnessing its very last days in EE. Unemployment may remain due to terrible politics and economic mismanagement.

There's not going to be any point even having sweatshops or factories in this region soon. Why bother? If it's anything low or medium-skill and low or medium-capital intense, just open up shop in... Well, why not Uzbekistan? And if double-landlocked isn't your thing, there's dozens of other options.

[vablings]

This is false, patently incorrect. With a good manufacturing line workers are not priced out by "cheap labor" they are priced out by almost zero cost labor, Robots are basically a rounding error compared to human's wages.

[psychoslave]

Robots bring very different tradeoffs on the table. But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale.

Plus scaling industrial production is one thing, but if proletarians are unable to afford them because wealth distribution is exponentially concentrated, what is the point?

[vablings]

>But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale.

No but they are significantly cheaper than an employee, A robot can pick up something and move it from A to B for upwards of 10 years. The programming and setup are a fraction of the time a robot can operate reliably

I cannot stress to you how reliable and little maintenance is required for a $60,000 fanuc robot.

[inigyou]

A factory isn't made of workers who pick up something and move it from A to B all day.

[BobaFloutist]

Frankly, that doesn't need a robot, it needs a concert belt, maybe a hopper.

[parineum]

It's actually not labor costs at all.

The difference between the USA and, for example, China, in manufacturing is the difficulty of getting a new factory built.

If you have a product designed and ready for production, it will take you years to build a factory in the USA. All the while you'll be losing money managing the build, paying your employees and, most importantly, letting your competitors get a head start.

Likewise, if you build that factory in China, it'll be up and running in less than a year and you can start making your R&D money back, get to market before your competitors and not bleed money keeping your companies doors open.

The labor costs are easily offset by removing the logistics of moving the product.

Tesla Gigafactories are a pretty good example of this. The first two took ~3 years to build in Nevada and New York. The third, in Shanghai, took 10 months.

[_DeadFred_]

'Company learns from mistakes, third time it does something it does it better, quicker'

[parineum]

The 4th one, in Germany, took 2 years.

[_DeadFred_]

Gigafactory Nevada notably became the second-largest building in the world (by volume) and was a joint partnership with Panasonic, locating two major manufacturing facilities within the same structure. Seems like a big project with additional joint partner complexities. Making the second largest building in the world as your first try is going to maybe run into some things.

Gigafactory Berlin is a different beast and produces a different product mix.

Gigafactory New York produces photovoltaic cells and Tesla Supercharger assemblies but does not produce batteries or vehicles yet another product mix.

Giga Shanghai just does final vehicle assembly (basically the easiest kind of factory and most minimally regulated) and is a million square feet smaller than the other factories and with no joint partnership/co buildout.

[inigyou]

Famously regulated to hell Germany. There is no way that Nevada and NY have more regulations than Germany. It really is all about having experience.

[kardianos]

I live in Texas, which is still part of the USA, and we manufacture a great deal.

I have a friend who works as an environmental engineer at a chem plant. They work hard to keep things safe and clean, and rigorously monitor their output.

I'm sure we could do even more if we weren't competing in meany areas against legal jurisdictions which DON'T care about such things. We aren't "priced out". We are regulated out and out competed by jurisdiction which have many fewer labor laws and much more lax environmental monitoring. If we are out-competed on product, then we deserve to loose, which is where libertarians and free-trade have a point. But if we are out-competed on keeping people and the environment reasonably safe? That's when we enact trade barriers.

That is how you actually keep the environment and people safe.

[Fischgericht]

I am not saying that you should tear down anything that works for you.

Trade barriers however are bullshit and don't work. And they are a lie. You are not building IPhones in the US because building an IPhone in the US would cost three times as much as it would doing in Shenzhen. And people would not be willing to pay that. And that's why they get an exception from the trade barriers. And that list of exceptions basically goes on and on and on...

Anyway, what works, works. This is especially true if that industry had been in the area for long, and therefore has access to a lot of skilled and experienced workers.

But it does not make sense to cry and complain that building such a thing from scratch is "banned". No, it is not banned. It's just a stupid idea, and there are laws against stupid ideas using limited natural resources.

[bilbo0s]

This is what I don't understand?

We do manufacture things. Just not in California.

So why does it even matter if California bans manufacturing dangerous things? Who cares? Just manufacture it in some other state. As a bonus, you don't have to pay those high California taxes.

In what world is this a problem?

[CharlesW]

> We do manufacture things. Just not in California.

Texas beats California in total value of manufacturing shipments only because because of its petroleum and coal products manufacturing. And California beats Texas in manufacturing employment.

[bilbo0s]

None of which answers the question of why we can't manufacture things in other states? Things that California clearly doesn't want to manufacture.

Again, what is the reason New Mexico, or Utah, or Nebraska, or Tennessee cannot manufacture these things? And why is it a problem if they do so instead of California?

[yndoendo]

Big companies already handle manufacturing in other states. Often in states that have the worst education systems and quality of living. It is frequently done to reduce the cost of labor.

Manufacturing jobs are also some of the most unstable because big companies will shop around for tax breaks. Once they find a political sucker ... they build a new plant and close the old one which wrecks havoc on the local economy. PR teams are designed to mitigate negative feedback when this happens.

Smart politicians know this and will not concede to tax breaks for big companies, like Amazon.

[dragonwriter]

> We do manufacture things. Just not in California.

California has the highest manufacturing employment and most manufacturing companies of any state, the second highest (behind only Texas) dollar value of manufacturing output.

It is just below the national average in manufacturing as a share of GDP, but its also the fifth highest state in GDP/capita; leaving it still above average in manufacturing GDP/capita.

[carefulfungi]

California produces ~$350B in manufacturing GDP. It is the #1 state in manufacturing jobs in the US.

[SoftTalker]

By its sheer size and population it is probably #1 in almost anything you care to rank.

[bloomingeek]

Damn, don't tell the guy from Texas.

[guywithahat]

I don't think we're priced out, there's still a lot of competitive manufacturing in the US. I think it stems from a regulatory side, primarily in unions and logistics, which is unfortunate because these provide very little or no benefit to citizens but make it sometimes impossible to invest heavily in manufacturing here. People can't create dense factories cities like Detroit if a union may come in and destroy it, and we can't move fast enough if it's going to take years to get regulatory approval to develop a large factory (the Micron factory in Syracuse comes to mind, although there are many like it).

[deepsun]

Shipbuilding in particular has negligible labour costs, even for rich countries. Cost to build a ship is about 80% materials costs.

[rerdavies]

Which leaves plenty of room for a non-negligible 15% discount.

[HardCodedBias]

You sure it is about labor prices? These are highly capital intensive businesses.

You may want to ask your LLM to do very detailed research.

[bloomingeek]

Ouch!

[shimman]

The USA is priced out of manufacturing due to greedy capitalists and business owners. Acting like labor is an insurmountable expense is just hilariously out of touch.

Maybe those that own the wealth should pony up more in taxes or give away their factories to the workers so they can run it themselves (something tells me they'll do a better job than greedy owners that just care about money rather than building a community).

[Fischgericht]

For most industries: No, you aren't. The limiting factor mostly is natural resources. Which is what the articles author is complaining about. "I am not allowed to use up the last drops of drinking water California still has! SOCIALISM!".

And the other limiting factor is knowledge/education. Your region has been known for 100 years to be highly skilled at building $THING? That knowledge is still there and has not fully retired? That's also a resource.

"High labor cost" is a smoke screen. We are not talking about acquiring from a pool of lazy dancing monkeys. The labor you need are for tasks that machines can not yet do. Those jobs are either really shitty, or need a lot of qualification.

Due to this: If you want to build a factory in an area where there aren't already similar factories, you first need to build a University and come back 25 years later.

The articles author should next try to build a business based on offering camel riding in Greenland. Camel riding? Banned in Greenland!!!1

[kspacewalk2]

The trade-off to safety and caring about people and the environment is very often cost. Caring about the environment is not a binary concept, it is a matter of where your break-even point is between caring about the environment and absorbing higher costs.

[PaulHoule]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

[Empact]

You can also use pigouvian taxation to make polluting expensive. Cost savings is generally the motivation for allowing negative externalities like pollution, so a natural way to reverse it in many cases while allowing flexibility when there is no practical alternative.

[bombcar]

The problem is you can't enforce your taxation outside your borders without things like tariffs or subsidies.

[toss1]

>>without things like tariffs

Right, and if the US congress[0] properly cared about the environment, the regulation would require both A) requirements to keep the manufacturing clean if done here, and B) tariffs for goods produced with polluting processes over there, scaled so the costs are somewhat higher if produced dirty.

They can produce cleanly here or there without extra tariffs and without losing market share because some other competitor externalizes the pollution costs.

[0] Tariffs are proper the domain of Congress, not any other branch. OFC, because of this, it isn't really an option for California, since states cannot levy tariffs externally or vs other states.

[Empact]

This website is about what is banned in California, ostensibly for environmental reasons. So pigouvian taxes would enable them to unban those practices while mitigating their harms.

If you’re worried about people evading the tax, you can make a border adjustment for imports across national borders. Note California is simply forcing things to be done elsewhere.

[Fischgericht]

"So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment?"

- I don't need a car, I'll use public transport. - I will only buy and eat the amount of calories I actually burn. - This 10 year old phone actually works pretty well. I don't need a new one.

etc

You need new factories because you want more stuff. If you stop wanting more stuff, you don't need more factories, and therefore nobody needs to cry about his industry being "banned".

I have visited the US a hell lot of times. I swear, I never ever in all these visits in any part of the US had the following thought in my head: "Boy, these people really need more car factories!".

[nitwit005]

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

The idea that people setting pollution rules secretly don't care is silly.

California can't fix the whole world's problems.

[danesparza]

The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts.

Also: I suggest rethinking your opening line. It's not very endearing.

[palmotea]

> The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts.

The meat of their comment wasn't the personal anecdote, it was actually on government policy:

>>> You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

>>> This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing.

This is 100% about globalization: if some countries let their rivers catch on fire, the externality lets them out-compete anyone who tries to do the process cleanly. So if you let their externality-fueled products into your country, you just can't build similar things, because they wouldn't be price-competitive.

If labor and environmental standards were strong and global, or countries with high standards refused to trade with countries with low standards, we wouldn't have this situation. There would be an economic motivation to develop and implement cleaner processes.

[Fischgericht]

Of course it would be great if a level field would be created by making sure other competing regions follow the same environmental standards.

But what will be the result? The product now has equal cost to be produced, but the market is gone.

People consume cheap stuff because it is cheap. If it is no longer cheap, they will not consume.

US americans just need to make up their minds. Do they want keep getting more and more and more cheap stuff? Fine. Then go on exploiting other regions of the planet. Or do you have enough cheap stuff now? Ok, then nobody needs another factory.

Many on HN are living in a society where it is normal to use a TELEPHONE for only two years before throwing it away.

What would happen if you instead used it for 5 years? No more factories needed. Problem solved. You don't have to compete, as there is no competition.

The result of charging the true cost of T-Shirt to the consumer is not that everybody now has 100 Fair-Traded-Ecofriendly T-Shirts at home that they don't wear. They will notice that 10 T-Shirts are more than enough if you wash your clothes once per week.

What I am trying to say is: The demand is only there due to the option of exploitation. Take away the part of ruining other peoples lives to get cheap stuff, then it's no longer interesting and will just stop.

So of course you can take the detour, try to re-industrialize, and then find out that your people do not actually like this kind of work, and that they for sure also aren't willing to buy your stuff at the price you are asking.

There is a reason nobody would be so stupid to produce "Make America Great Again" merch in America. Your target audience would not buy it if it was made in America.

It is pragmatic to simply skip this step and end up with the same result: You'll just consume less.

[kelvinjps10]

Another thing is that the us and European countries build their wealth where they had los standards now other countries want to do the same but would be limited by us and European countries. It's very tricky

[palmotea]

> Another thing is that the us and European countries build their wealth where they had los standards now other countries want to do the same but would be limited by us and European countries. It's very tricky

No, why would you say that? When America and Europe built their wealth, they were mainly (though not exclusively) producing and selling manufactured goods for themselves. This whole idea of a poor country developing by building polluting factories to make items for rich countries is a more recent and different thing.

Europe and America insisting on certain labor and environmental standards as a condition of trade wouldn't mean poor countries can't build factories for themselves. At worst, you just split the current one big market into two smaller markets: an expensive and clean one, and a dirty and cheap one.

[IcyWindows]

Is it actually tricky?

Do we let other countries wage war, pillage, etc. because others gathered wealth that way previously?

[grosswait]

One persons experience with a river 30 years ago doesn’t invalidate a theory about how things could be done differently.

[lazide]

In my experience, it’s the conflict of the ‘in theory’ vs ‘In practice’.

Practically, ‘in theory’ might actually be doable - if there was a single, overarching regulatory environment. That was enforced.

Chances are, that would defacto make a bunch of people starve in poorer countries, and blow a lot of stuff up, so would also likely be worse than ‘the disease’. At least right now.

But maybe I’m just being a cynical bastard.

[Aardwolf]

> But people don't actually care about the environment.

They probably do if it's near their backyard

[datsci_est_2015]

Also I have significantly more influence in my local elections than elections on the other side of the world.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Corporations don't have a backyard, based on their historical behavior. The resource extraction and manufacturing sectors simply move on after they screw up or deplete one area.

[overfeed]

> I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing

America barely cares about the domestic poor[1] - do you think its captains of industry will care about the poor abroad? Charity begins at home.

1. See locations of Superfund sites. Or for a modern example, where they are choosing to build AI datacenters powered by on-site diesel generators or gas turbines.

[mrguyorama]

A note about Superfund sites: It used to be funded by a small tax on chemical production companies. 70% of cleanup was paid for by the companies who caused it.

Then in 1995, congress "chose not to renew" that provision.

Now you and I literally and directly pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste. Companies don't really. Yet somehow they "Can't make factories" here

[lokar]

FWIW, California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. CA can't tell other states to ban various manufacturing techniques.

[5upplied_demand]

> California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe.

I'm not sure about that, maybe it is based on the definition of "safe". There are tortilla chips made in Chicago that explicitly say they cannot be sold in California on the packaging. This is due to chemicals banned in Prop 65.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1220zn9/...

[lokar]

Right, because the "bad" chemical will be in CA, harming CA residents.

CA can't say "the factory that made these chips emitted chemical X into the air during manufacturing, but none of it is in the final product", so you can't import it.

The Federal Government can, but not an individual state.

[5upplied_demand]

Thanks for clarifying. I believe I misunderstood your initial comment.

[verteu]

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products

No, California can't do that. States cannot impose tariffs per the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1...

They could push for more regulations at the federal level (and indeed, Californians do this quite often!)

[culi]

> You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean.

Yes exactly. And most of the complaints in this post is not stuff that's outright banned but stuff that's "hard to do".

These companies are complaining about how much more it costs to do this AND keep the environment clean. In an ideal world we would just have environmental protections all over the world so these companies don't simply find some small town with a local gov't they can buy off and do whatever they want

[Teever]

I’m sure it’s possible to do both in theory but I find it hard to believe that it’s possible in practice.

If it was California wouldn’t be covered in superfund sites that originated from industrial activities that took place decades ago.

[expedition32]

A lot of people are poor. The cheap Chinese shit keeps them alive and relatively happy.

In your proposal you'd also cede the global market to China- because nobody in Angola cares about how those solar panels were made.

[deaux]

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

This is about as true as saying "But people don't care about child sexual abuse". Sure, those partying with Epstein don't.

Plenty of people do care and indeed are today making sacrifices that align with this. Including lowering living standards. If you don't then that's on you, but speak for yourself.

[markemer]

Also Environmental regulations are like vaccines. They're victims of their own success. In the late 1960s early 1970s, before the EPA, the air and water in the US was a disaster. The EPA documented it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-b...

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493

[jayd16]

You keep saying reduce regulation and then bring up things like adding permitting and taxing certain processes which is regulation.

The other thing you're not understanding is how the state can enforce regulations and how the federal government has to. States cannot levy tariffs.

[dragonwriter]

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process.

If you don't have regulation, for profit industry won't do it right “through process”, because that would be throwig away money. Regulation is how you do it right through process.

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.

Standardization and final safety measurements are literally regulations (and permitting is just a means of enforcing standardization.) So, basically, you “cut regulations” plan is actually to pair regulations doing exactly what the regulations you claim to cut do, call them a different thing, and add tariffs on top.

Which, is a long winded way of just saying “add tariffs”, which of course, a US state can’t do.