> this is what happens when you shift everything in heavy industry or production in general off to India and China without keeping at least some production domestic
I disagree, or at least think it's a lot harder than that.
1. It's not like we closed down Metal Cutting Inc. and just bought everything from China. There's no single company to have saved; there was Icebreakers and co. and Reactor Vessels Ltd. and ValvegearForgingCo. Any one of them might have been able to adapt but none of them were save-able and a lot of them were obviously obsolete.
2. Even when there is a Metal Cutting Inc., that's almost as bad. The supply chain was more efficient when it was integrated, not when its contracted out to a third party... or we would just buy from the places that still make things.
3. In this specific instance, but also in many others, market forces are not really the real problem. Look at Alcoa- hugely successful because small mills were cheaper to operate than large mills, but now we don't have huge mills everywhere. Can't fix that- even we had seen it coming and kept large mills alive, what would they make? What about harder problems,where you need a varied set of things to make to keep knowledge from dying out?
4. How do you do this without picking specific winners, and lobbying for who will live and who will die? If industries can survive the decline without losing their experts, how do you decide how much money to give them? How do you incentivize them to actually keep that knowledge, instead of getting into a more profitable industry?
5. In the end, the problem isn't about the companies or documentation or people. If you continued to employ all the people who operated the great presses, they'd just be mostly dead by now. It's not like people need much more than a wage, but I do think that an industry that depends on government subsidies, cannot possibly grow, does not build truly useful things, and could disappear because a new appointee dislikes it is not a line of work most people would be drawn towards.
My take is: Academia is the right place for some fraction of the people who are made redundant by outsourcing or technological change. They don't have to be lecturers, but they are already teachers. They pass on their knowledge to new employees. Document, research, experiment, and prove manufacturing and industrial techniques. Preserve that knowledge for when it is needed. Humanity doesn't invest nearly enough into education, much less the preservation of knowledge.
I disagree, or at least think it's a lot harder than that.
1. It's not like we closed down Metal Cutting Inc. and just bought everything from China. There's no single company to have saved; there was Icebreakers and co. and Reactor Vessels Ltd. and ValvegearForgingCo. Any one of them might have been able to adapt but none of them were save-able and a lot of them were obviously obsolete.
2. Even when there is a Metal Cutting Inc., that's almost as bad. The supply chain was more efficient when it was integrated, not when its contracted out to a third party... or we would just buy from the places that still make things.
3. In this specific instance, but also in many others, market forces are not really the real problem. Look at Alcoa- hugely successful because small mills were cheaper to operate than large mills, but now we don't have huge mills everywhere. Can't fix that- even we had seen it coming and kept large mills alive, what would they make? What about harder problems,where you need a varied set of things to make to keep knowledge from dying out?
4. How do you do this without picking specific winners, and lobbying for who will live and who will die? If industries can survive the decline without losing their experts, how do you decide how much money to give them? How do you incentivize them to actually keep that knowledge, instead of getting into a more profitable industry?
5. In the end, the problem isn't about the companies or documentation or people. If you continued to employ all the people who operated the great presses, they'd just be mostly dead by now. It's not like people need much more than a wage, but I do think that an industry that depends on government subsidies, cannot possibly grow, does not build truly useful things, and could disappear because a new appointee dislikes it is not a line of work most people would be drawn towards.
My take is: Academia is the right place for some fraction of the people who are made redundant by outsourcing or technological change. They don't have to be lecturers, but they are already teachers. They pass on their knowledge to new employees. Document, research, experiment, and prove manufacturing and industrial techniques. Preserve that knowledge for when it is needed. Humanity doesn't invest nearly enough into education, much less the preservation of knowledge.