[markovs_gun]

Stuff has to be made somewhere. This argument is essentially predicated on the idea that it's okay for some places to be polluted and for some people to have to deal with it but not for other places and people. What you're really saying is "When people talk about how they want manufacturing back, they conveniently forget the pollution impacts people who live here instead of China and India, where it's totally okay."

Domestic manufacturing has a lot of advantages from the standpoint of total pollution. I guarantee you that even with lax American environmental rules, the pollution caused by a factory in Georgia is still lower and less hazardous to workers and the surrounding community than if the same factory were in India. Furthermore, our government is at least theoretically capable of adding better protections for workers and communities, while our government is going to have a hard time enforcing pollution rules overseas.

I don't think you are racist or xenophobic. I just think that when people make this argument they don't think about the fact that this stuff is still getting manufactured somewhere if it's not made here, and basically the complaint is that Americans are having to deal with the consequences rather than people in other countries.

[derriz]

When people extol the virtues of manufacturing, I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing. This isn’t an American thing btw - I’ve had arguments with brits and others who argue passionately that the country has been destroyed by the relative decline in manufacturing but when I ask “so you’d prefer to work in a factory?” it provokes fairly confused responses like “no but other people would”….

https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/americans-want-factory-jobs-r...

[JKCalhoun]

I don't see a contradiction.

Whether I intend to work a factory job or not I can still decide that unemployment in the U.S., especially unemployment of blue-collar workers, would be better served by local industry than allowing for homelessness or a dependency on welfare. Never mind that there might also be national security issues addressed by local manufacture.

The opposite, expecting everyone in the country to aspire to white-collar professions, is to me much more clearly an elitist (or at least irrational) position to have.

[joe_mamba]

>The opposite, expecting everyone in the country to aspire to white-collar professions, is to me much more clearly an elitist (or at least irrational) position to have.

This, when you have everyone go to college and then they'll be shocked to be unemployed or work for peanuts since there's an oversupply of college grads and not much demand.

Here in Austria people working in construction cam earn way better than SW engineers because the former have an oversupply and the latter a shortage.

If you need a mobile app or a Java app, the're dime a dozen developers but if you need a plumber, lock smith, facade, roof specialist, well good luck.

The days when a college degree were an instant ticket to a well paid job for life are over.

[JKCalhoun]

It's not even an issue of job scarcity.

I have worked enough blue-collar jobs to know that there exist people for whom technical work is a non-starter. Not that they are somehow dim and incapable of learning engineering, but "work" that is not done through labor, that does not show in a tangible way a day's effort… is anathema to them.

[joe_mamba]

>It's not even an issue of job scarcity.

Still it's supply and demand issue. The west has had 20-30 years of grooming the youth that going to college is the right path to middle class lifestyle and blue collar jobs are for losers who are too stupid to study. You can't be shocked when the supply demand reverses. South Park even had an episode mocking this, with plumbers being the new tech bros, and tech bros being unemployed.

> but "work" that is not done through labor, that does not show in a tangible way a day's effort… is anathema to them

Same applies within white collar jobs too. Some engineers want to work in hardware, firmware, mechanical jobs, because the output is tangible, instead of pushing JSONs to the cloud, even if that's not more complicated than the other.

[JKCalhoun]

"Some engineers want to work in hardware, firmware, mechanical jobs, because the output is tangible…"

Ha ha, the giddy feeling a software engineer feels when they write a few lines of assembly on a Motorola 68HC11 and get an LED to turn on…

[echelon]

Dalton has been the worldwide leader in carpet manufacturing since before I was born. Multiple generations of people have worked in those factories. They earn good money and can afford big houses and savings.

You should talk to the people of Dalton. They're really proud of it. The first thing they tell you is they're from the "carpet capital of the world". Without fail they will mention that to you. It's so ingrained that it's part of their identity.

I don't think they'd be happy to lose their jobs for knowledge work or anything else.

[expedition32]

Yeah that's all well and good but eventually these people retire and figure out their bodies are too broken to enjoy retirement.

[joe_mamba]

>“no but other people would”

I see no issue with that statement. Without blue collar work what are the job prospect for those who can't become an AI engineer or a quant in London other than live on the dole or become homeless crack addict?

[pessimizer]

> I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing.

This is a silly statistic that manipulative people drag out to imply the answer that they want. If you asked people who work in factories right at this second, 75% of them would say that they didn't want to work in a factory. If you ask people who work any job, and ask if they would rather not be working, 75% would say yes.

It kind of goes with the weird idea that illegal immigrants actually love to clean toilets and work in fields for slave wages.

> when I ask “so you’d prefer to work in a factory?”

...to your upper-middle class friends who make six figures.

[derriz]

You know nothing of my friends.

Have you ever worked in a factory? I find the people most enthusiastic about manufacturing are the ones least likely to have stood at a station in a factory performing manufacturing "work" - the vast majority of which is mind-numbingly boring and repetitive yet with minimal opportunities for passing the time with idle social interaction or chit-chat. Of all the non-professional work I've done, it was easily the least enjoyable. Even if it paid a bit less and demanded more physically, unskilled construction work was enjoyable in comparison. Even kitchen portering provided more stimulation - at least there was plenty of social interaction. This romanticization of factory work is weird.

[themaninthedark]

I find it funny how you are describing it and acting like it is bad. In most of the topics dealing with WFH and return to office, a large number of the comment were along this vain:

"I really hate going into the office because I don't want to have to socialize with my coworkers, I just want to be able to do my work and be done with my day."

[derriz]

What acting have I been doing? Feels like a weasely way of accusing me of lying when I said I hated my experience of factory work. If you have had a different experience of factory work, let’s hear it. And preferably without the presumption - particularly the weird idea that being antisocial or asocial is the norm for human existence.

[seanmcdirmid]

If you have more factory jobs the workforce has to come from either immigrants or the cushy white collar or service jobs that Americans mostly work today right? Because our unemployment rate isn’t low enough that we can just take people who aren’t working and get them working in factories.

Japan has had to heavily import workers to keep its factories and service jobs staffed, and the Japanese hate immigration more than MAGA does. The other solution is automation, which is how China plans to deal with its demographic cliff, I guess we could import factory robots from China.

[Zigurd]

America is pretty good at creating an underclass they can force into less desirable jobs using the prison industrial complex.

[mystraline]

The word for that is "slavery".

The Civil war never banned slavery. It only banned private citizens from owning people. The government (state and federal) kept sole right to still own people.

The only gate is found guilty of a crime. Technically, that can even be for a speeding ticket. And when they can keep prosecuting for a laundry list, they effectively guarantee a win against whomever they want.

[Zigurd]

Stuff is made in response to demand. That can feel like an inevitability especially if you look at the failure of interdiction of drug trafficking. But that's no excuse to give up on harm reduction and demand shaping. Cigarette smoking hasn't disappeared, but the costs it imposes on healthcare has been reduced successfully. The same can be done to reduce the freeriding on ecological damage.

[collabs]

It is supposed to get better over time though. I mean at least that's the sales pitch. Globalization was supposed to lift all boats. If you remember the air quality in Beijing used to be the absolute worst but it has allegedly improved a lot recently.

I don't know where the flaw in the logic was but I think the idea was first you have to become wealthier and with more money comes a better quality of life.

[pocksuppet]

Globalization does lift all boats. We get cheap stuff without having to make it, and they get jobs and pollution.

[breezybottom]

It got better in Beijing because they moved factories to more rural areas, not because manufacturing is any less dirty.