The problem imo is the slow deterioration of institutional knowledge that offloading the mental task of wisdom gathering to AI is causing.
One interesting comparison is to the history of manufacturing. West/America decided one day that manufacturing would be cheaper to outsource and better (short term) profit was to be made by outsourcing it all to China. The institutional expertise started to deteriorate, to the point that America simply didn't even have the capacity, or expertise anymore to produce stuff (such as grill brush [1])
I feel like you could take all the handwavy comment that are made today to dismiss this caution, and find equal dismissal back then when companies were actively outsourcing the manufacturing.
"I'm coding 10x faster"
"look at the output velocity per employee"
"we are producing much more (in China)"
"look at profit / number of (manufacturing) employers"
Seems ok if you're American / Chinese but I'm struggling to understand how the rest can be OK with allowing institutional knowledge to deteriorate while having an active dependency to the former two. We already see this with the tech dependency towards USA and manufacturing competition from China.
> I feel like you could take all the handwavy comment that are made today to dismiss this caution, and find equal dismissal back then when companies were actively outsourcing the manufacturing.
Absolutely people were extremely dismissive to anyone saying that we're losing the ability to make things in this country!
There were all these theories like Comparative Advantage that people would trot out to point out that, if you don't like outsourcing, not only are you ignorant and backwards you're also probably racist.
And they were right. American manufacturing is $3 trillion/year, second only to China, and 1/5th of the entire world. American built airliners and American built engines fly all over the world. Millions of American cars come out of factories every year. American rockets put more into orbit than everyone else combined.
The idea that the US lost its manufacturing is not based in reality. One reason people think that is because people think cheap plastic crap and consumer electronics when they think “manufacturing.” Another reason is that US manufacturing has become highly efficient and automated, so a fairly small portion of the population works in it.
Yeah, your iPhone wasn’t built in the US. But the plane that got it here probably was.
>“we don’t make anything anymore” narrative I see so much."
This conflating US financializing manufacturing vs actual industrial capacity, i.e. the entire manufacturing by value / MVA "cope". US objectively doesn't make much relative to past and a lot of shit US makes, US doesn't actually make, others does the actual making while US financializes and capture via spreadsheet maxxing, hedonic adjustments etc, and do insert "I made this meme" on things US fundamentally did not "make"
Like US does make some legitimate frontier stuff in house - the reality is is in aggregate industrial base terms, US MAKES / FABRICATES very little vs pre industrial chain hollow out, US does import a lot of subcomponents that others make, integrates, or outsource actual MAKING abroad while capturing intangibles like IP/patent fees that get bundled up into value add stats, but when people talk about making they're talking about extraction to factory gate pipeline. Not US can sell a bunch of foreign made goods with some CONUS final assembly or IP accounting because muh smile curve that attributes disproportionate "value" to US "makers". Consider a US widget co imports $10 of components assembles and sells for $40, the statistically manufacturing value add is $30 even though US did very little making. Now add tariffs, regulatory capture etc and widget sells for $50 and that's $40 of MVA for basically doing minimal M. Said US widget factory makes 10 widgets and adds $400 to MVA. Meanwhile a PRC widget company makes 100 identical widgets at $2 each... but their MVA is only $200, but they did literally all the making. These two industrial bases are not the same. Then a few years later, US BLS/BEA applies a statistical adjustment because widget X is slightly more performant... (prevalent in tech), so that widget is now listed as $100 equivalent utility, so hey manufacturing expanded (it didn't).
SpaceX... doesn't make that much... they make a few thing that are reusable and due to techstack can lift a lot, i.e. operational improvement (not discounting how game changing resuable is). But compare to PRC, who made like 2x-3x more first stages, i.e. their output is significantly higher, which is to say SpaceX is "making" at about American scale. For reference Boeing like ~30% domestic content, US auto ~50%. Reality is the ONLY thing US is REALLY good at making is refined fossil, agri, wood products etc. Almost everything else US very good at making money, but not the stuff.
TLDR US got much better at MAKING money from other people MAKING things. The other caveat is regulatory capture = US grossly overpay for mediocre shit, a lot of stuff that makes in US are just... not good, i.e. vehicles, but people trapped paying domestic premium which inflates value add but not actual relevant when people discuss US making things. US broadly makes a lot of mediocre overpriced things while population stuck shopping in company store for large items, that looks good on value add / productivity stats... but it's not reflection of industrial capacity which is what people think about in terms of real manufacturing.
NalNezumi · · focus · HN ↗
One interesting comparison is to the history of manufacturing. West/America decided one day that manufacturing would be cheaper to outsource and better (short term) profit was to be made by outsourcing it all to China. The institutional expertise started to deteriorate, to the point that America simply didn't even have the capacity, or expertise anymore to produce stuff (such as grill brush [1])
I feel like you could take all the handwavy comment that are made today to dismiss this caution, and find equal dismissal back then when companies were actively outsourcing the manufacturing.
"I'm coding 10x faster" "look at the output velocity per employee"
"we are producing much more (in China)" "look at profit / number of (manufacturing) employers"
Seems ok if you're American / Chinese but I'm struggling to understand how the rest can be OK with allowing institutional knowledge to deteriorate while having an active dependency to the former two. We already see this with the tech dependency towards USA and manufacturing competition from China.
[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY
jordanb · · focus · HN ↗
Absolutely people were extremely dismissive to anyone saying that we're losing the ability to make things in this country!
There were all these theories like Comparative Advantage that people would trot out to point out that, if you don't like outsourcing, not only are you ignorant and backwards you're also probably racist.
wat10000 · · focus · HN ↗
The idea that the US lost its manufacturing is not based in reality. One reason people think that is because people think cheap plastic crap and consumer electronics when they think “manufacturing.” Another reason is that US manufacturing has become highly efficient and automated, so a fairly small portion of the population works in it.
Yeah, your iPhone wasn’t built in the US. But the plane that got it here probably was.
maxglute · · focus · HN ↗
This conflating US financializing manufacturing vs actual industrial capacity, i.e. the entire manufacturing by value / MVA "cope". US objectively doesn't make much relative to past and a lot of shit US makes, US doesn't actually make, others does the actual making while US financializes and capture via spreadsheet maxxing, hedonic adjustments etc, and do insert "I made this meme" on things US fundamentally did not "make"
Like US does make some legitimate frontier stuff in house - the reality is is in aggregate industrial base terms, US MAKES / FABRICATES very little vs pre industrial chain hollow out, US does import a lot of subcomponents that others make, integrates, or outsource actual MAKING abroad while capturing intangibles like IP/patent fees that get bundled up into value add stats, but when people talk about making they're talking about extraction to factory gate pipeline. Not US can sell a bunch of foreign made goods with some CONUS final assembly or IP accounting because muh smile curve that attributes disproportionate "value" to US "makers". Consider a US widget co imports $10 of components assembles and sells for $40, the statistically manufacturing value add is $30 even though US did very little making. Now add tariffs, regulatory capture etc and widget sells for $50 and that's $40 of MVA for basically doing minimal M. Said US widget factory makes 10 widgets and adds $400 to MVA. Meanwhile a PRC widget company makes 100 identical widgets at $2 each... but their MVA is only $200, but they did literally all the making. These two industrial bases are not the same. Then a few years later, US BLS/BEA applies a statistical adjustment because widget X is slightly more performant... (prevalent in tech), so that widget is now listed as $100 equivalent utility, so hey manufacturing expanded (it didn't).
SpaceX... doesn't make that much... they make a few thing that are reusable and due to techstack can lift a lot, i.e. operational improvement (not discounting how game changing resuable is). But compare to PRC, who made like 2x-3x more first stages, i.e. their output is significantly higher, which is to say SpaceX is "making" at about American scale. For reference Boeing like ~30% domestic content, US auto ~50%. Reality is the ONLY thing US is REALLY good at making is refined fossil, agri, wood products etc. Almost everything else US very good at making money, but not the stuff.
TLDR US got much better at MAKING money from other people MAKING things. The other caveat is regulatory capture = US grossly overpay for mediocre shit, a lot of stuff that makes in US are just... not good, i.e. vehicles, but people trapped paying domestic premium which inflates value add but not actual relevant when people discuss US making things. US broadly makes a lot of mediocre overpriced things while population stuck shopping in company store for large items, that looks good on value add / productivity stats... but it's not reflection of industrial capacity which is what people think about in terms of real manufacturing.