zlacker

>>campus+(OP)
The CCP's current manufacturing policy is analogous to the modern venture capitalist approach of "subsidize the product until your competitors go broke, then reap the fruits of having a captive market by the balls", except the fruits have gone from "the power to set prices as a monopoly and extract a massive amount of profit" to "massive geopolitical leverage against countries that are dependent on your exports". It's a risky strategy because it's trivially countered by protectionist policies, but that depends on countries voluntarily refusing the free money that China is doing its best to shovel into your pockets. In other words, it's a bet that China's rivals cannot successfully resist short-term greed despite the huge and transparent long-term risks.

>>kibwen+l8
I would not say that this is trivially corrected. The latest news from Boeing is that American manufacturing has been obliterated. Rebuilding the skill and culture that has been lost is neither easy nor guaranteed.

>>klyrs+S8
Not a good example because Boeing didn’t outsource. China flies Boeing airframes made in the US and has for the last 50 years.

Boeing is an example of financiers running the company from an ivory tower on the other side of the country.

>>kortil+ga
> Not a good example because Boeing didn’t outsource.

No, that's precisely my point actually. Boeing is one of the very few companies that maintained its local manufacturing capacity. (to say that they "didn't outsource" is not remotely accurate)

Despite everything that was pointing in Boeing's favor -- culture, financials, market, reputation; it was taken over by the MBAs that put McDonnell-Douglas into a nosedive and now all of that is gone.

So now, let's assume that Boeing sees the light and wants to rebuild their manufacturing chops. Who do they hire? Who can they hire, who has the manufacturing expertise? When I worked at Boeing 25 years ago, the old-timers were invaluable. Most of those folks are dead and gone; my generation should be graduating into old-timer-hood in the next couple of decades but Boeing hasn't invested in us. Wages have been stagnant, software is easier, tiktok is more exciting, and the young generation is used to being bossed around by MBAs who don't understand the work.

If not Boeing, the once-shining-example of American manufacturing what didn't outsource, who can bootstrap our manufacturing renaissance?

>>klyrs+Rc
It does not take long to build excellence in the grand scale of things. A culture with positive feedback that encourages good engineering with leadership recognition and monetary/equity rewards can produce a great company in less than a decade.

> who can bootstrap our manufacturing renaissance?

Look at SpaceX. You don’t need a great wizard of yore to teach you how to do things if you iterate and learn. They went from a joke 10 years ago to completely dominating and transforming the launch and LEO space industry.

Or, look at Boeing 70 years ago. They didn’t have a magic culture of excellence then either and it wasn’t bestowed on them by elders. They built it then and it can definitely be built again.

>>kortil+1j3
> They didn’t have a magic culture of excellence then either and it wasn’t bestowed on them by elders.

It was, actually. The machinists at Boeing 70 years ago were taught their craft. They didn't just figure it all out from scratch; some aspects of aeronautics were novel but shipbuilders were making propellers before William Boeing was even born.

> They built it then and it can definitely be built again.

I can't see why I should trust this line of reasoning. I baked a cake yesterday, so I should definitely be able to bake a cake today, right? But I ran out of flour and stores are closed.

Not to say that it can't be done, but in today's economy, with today's culture, it just isn't a sure thing.

>>klyrs+CP4
> It was, actually. The machinists at Boeing 70 years ago were taught their craft. They didn't just figure it all out from scratch; some aspects of aeronautics were novel but shipbuilders were making propellers before William Boeing was even born.

This is absolutely incorrect. Most of the materials machining advancements to make light aircraft parts had to be done specifically for aircraft. Ship building is completely different and largely irrelevant.

> I can't see why I should trust this line of reasoning.

Because this wasn’t some long line of training from centuries of wizardry. Materials science was a joke 100 years ago. We can do what they did then to learn manufacturing but we can do it significantly faster because we have simulations and chemistry knowledge that wasn’t lost.