While we are in the US, we also have family in Europe and Latin America.
So, what's the concern? Well, there are two that I think should be obvious.
The first is how AI will alter the landscape. It is easy to see that companies might be able to develop products with somewhere between 1/5 to 1/10 the engineers in the not-too-distant future. Let's define that as the time required for a fresh high school graduate to finish a Masters degree.
How can you possibly advise and guide a young person given the huge variability of potential outcomes 6 to 10 years out?
The second is the massive deindustrialization of the West (again, this isn't US-centric as Europe, Latin America and others are deeply affected) as China solidifies into a dominant position in manufacturing just-about everything.
What do the US, Europe and Latin America become when they don't make anything (in relative terms) and AI makes 8 out of 10 people not necessary to run most businesses?
In a recent thread here on HN about what's going on with courts about tariffs the usual one-sided hatred drove the conversation. And yet, nobody seems to stop to propose any sort of a solution to the very real problem that will affect hundreds of millions of people (billions?) in the next few years. If you don't even attempt to protect your industrial means and AI leads to massive unemployment, then what?
I am hoping for an exploratory conversation as a result of this post. My point is simple: Orange man bad. Fine. Got it. AI is unstoppable, so that is a reality we will have to face over the coming years. If we don't pull out all stops to protect the industrial base in the US, Europe and Latin America, the only thing I see is absolute devastation. We cannot float entire economies on the back of AI. That's not how things work. You need to make things. You need a vibrant and varied multidisciplinary industrial base to thrive and survive.
I don't think protectionism is a good idea for the long term. However, I don't think I am equipped to understand what else one might be able to do, what levers you can pull, to mitigate further economic destruction.
I have been in manufacturing my entire life, with a front seat to what has happened over the last few decades. It isn't pretty at all. And it will get much worse. Not only is trade unbalanced, various forms of manipulation (currency, IP theft, etc.) have laid a path of destruction that is deep and wide across many regions in the world. You can't support an economy purely on people making 3D printed and laser-cut trinkets to sell on Etsy.
So, if you can put your hatred aside for a few minutes. What are your ideas on what the US, Europe and Latin America can do to survive what's in the horizon?
EDIT: Great comments so far.
I should add this before the edit window expires.
My thoughts on this have evolved over time. My current thinking is that the US and Europe should invest heavily in Latin America to industrialize various nations an create global competitive forces. I want to be able to choose to buy wire, screws, PCB's, power supplies, displays, motors, etc. from multiple sources, not just one. While it might be impossible to create these supply chains in the US and Europe, it is likely that they can be created in Latin America.
BTW, this isn't about hate on China. What they have accomplished over the last fifty years is nothing less than outstanding. I just think that this has been done at the expense of all other regions in the world and this simply isn't good for humanity.
Taken to one possible long-term negative outcome, you'll have billions of people across all regions of the world lose the knowledge and capabilities accumulated over decades participating in various industries. Once you lose these skill sets, at a minimum, it can take decades to re-acquire them or they never come back. A simply example of this is a specialized type of anti-reflection coated glass I used to buy from the sole remaining company in New York years ago. That company went out of business under pressure from predatory pricing by a Chinese company. I then switched to buying the same product from a company in German, the only remaining company in the west offering this product. A year later, they exited the market for the same reasons. This was over a decade ago. Today, this product is impossible to make in the west, the manufacturing equipment is no longer around and it is likely that the people with the knowledge and experience have retired or moved on. You can find examples of this across most industries and everywhere from Europe to the US and Latin America.
I think a fair, level global market --with respect for intellectual property-- and no undue manipulation is critical for global well-being. This isn't about making every single product in the US or Europe, that's impossible. Balance means that there's competition and you can choose who you do business with, as opposed to having absolutely no option but to buy from a single source. We are working on a consumer robotics project right now. I cannot buy anything for this product outside of China. Well, a few things here and there, maybe, but the bulk of it has to come from China. And, in fact, the manufacturing has to be done in China because that's where the supply chain exists (something most people don't understand). That's the problem.
They still woke up the next morning to figure it out. One foot in front of the other. These were just regular people, their children and grandchildren are alive and well in the world.
Do your best by others in your own life and wake up every morning. "Cataclysm" is dramatic in history but is still a thing that countless people lived through. They worked, played, ate, laughed, etc. Look at what's in front of you: that's life, you have to live it.
I think the difference is that Europe still had an industrial base that could be used to rebuild entire countries and economic bases. Not to mention the Marshall Plan, which had a significant and non-trivial hand at rebuilding Europe.
Today things are very different. Take any object in your home and go through the exercise of understanding what it will take to manufacture that locally or semi-locally (parts and services sourced from regional partners). In most cases you will discover it is impossible. And, if you can make that product, it might be at an extremely high cost.
In other words, the software engineer or graphic artist who might lose their job to AI in the future, will not have an industrial base to consider shifting into as an opportunity to pivot and move on. That barely exists today, and it will get worse over time if we don't address the problem in a sensible manner.
I don't necessarily like tariffs as a tool for rebalancing trade. At the same time, there's something I dislike even more: Developing technology, only to watch it being stolen and used to kill the very business that developed it in the first place...without any legal recourse whatsoever. These problems are very real. Most people who are not exposed to the realities of the industrial sectors don't have visibility into what has been going on for decades. Frankly, I am not sure if we can fix it. It might be too late.
We have living arrangements both in the US and Western Europe. I hope to be able to get my kids EU citizenship eventually with various visas and residency. If the US improves, they can come back. If it doesn't, they can remain in Europe as they approach adulthood. Nationalism is silly, you'll get dragged by the median electorate. We/they are not Americans, or Europeans; we are just humans looking for community with other good humans with some sense of community and collectivism.
After failing hard earlier in life, I became risk adverse, but also have had some success. I hope to have enough investments by the time I stop working that my kids can survive without working if needed. I also hope I have provided them enough resources and life skills to live a good life after I'm gone until they're gone. This is my apology to them for their existence in this macro, I hope they accept it, and failing that, at least understand it.
You can't change the winds, you can only adjust your sails. Optimize for optionality. Better to have a plan you don't need than to need a plan you don't have. No one is coming to save us.
> So, if you can put your hatred aside for a few minutes. What are your ideas on what the US, Europe and Latin America can do to survive what's in the horizon?
Build for capability and security, not profit. Build so you can build when you need to build, build and protect the machine that builds the machines. Not hopeful, but that is the advice. Everything else is people, politics, policy, and capital to make that happen. "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in."
If it were just a shrinking energy/resource base, we could muddle through and build a better political system. Same with climate change. And biodiversity loss. And chemical pollution. And global nuclear warfare. And the decay of social morality. All of these things are solvable in themselves, but in aggregate I think we're running into harsh economic realities that we might not be able to solve all of it at the same time.
Energy abundance is coming, but the transition and disruption will be messy.
https://rmi.org/insight/x-change-the-race-to-the-top/
Demographics dynamics is where the pain will come from.
https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep...
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6
https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/spring/summer-2018/demogra...
A lot of people aren't willing to admit this publicly, or even privately to themselves.
I like this.
I agree. I feel that I've done my children a disservice by bringing them into the world as it is. I just didn't know this is how things would go.
Billy Joel's 1989 song 'We didn't start the fire' addresses the idea that the past wasn't always better than the present.
I saw the handwriting on the wall 30 years ago, but couldn't say what form it would take. I knew that prices of things would go up, wages and employment would decline, and misery would increase over time.
I think there may be some very large scale (conventional, hopefully) wars and billions of people migrating as climate refugees within the next 5-25 years. Imagine Gaza but it's entirely possible Putin will not be stopped and the MAGA movement leaders will emulate Bibi and Putin in terms of war-making. It's also probable that even more brutal, repressive, and self-destructive future leaders in the spirit of Nero and Caligula will emerge.
None of this is set in stone. Fate doesn't exist. Nothing bad has to happen. We can choose to reorganize and change attitudes if we are willing to be steadfast with solidarity.
1. On the whole the world gets better over time not worse, despite what people like to believe. At some point this may cease to be true but I am unwilling and possibly unable to influence it in any meaningful way.
2. I'll be dead in 25-35 years. Perhaps 40-50 years if I am extraordinarily lucky or unlucky.
In the short-term, I do what I can to protect myself based on what I think is reasonable to do. In my case that's to live simply and save money. I might be wrong but I don't worry about it.
The secret of all is to invest in your talents (skills) which it seems you and yours have a good start.
Unless your region has an alienated working/lower class who will burn the intelligencia for bringing the world their dark craft, there is hope.
Anywhere there are markets there will be opportunities for the skillful.
If I were addressing your masses (in the hundreds of thousands) I would speak in my epic oratory voice (who has seen *it all) to invest in your own asses. Infrastructure and cooperatives you own. Trusts and communities among you who do not want to rent their lives. Do not follow blindly the intoxicating free for all of imminent western trends. These collapse when challenged as all else.
Owning your own everything is the best of any future.
This doesn't scale. Division of labor, specialization of trade.
Self-sufficiency is a delusion because you're not going to be fabricating chips or building an entire vertical supply chain for a phone by yourself anytime soon.
I suggest nothing of the sort.
I would like to point out your jump to extremes.
Owning your own ass means a steak holder.
Break the produce consume cycle with investments in personal steak. Buy in to the system. Be a link in the supply chain.
This is age old advice, it merely must be retold to ourselves generationally.
Our opportunities and risks will for ever be tethered by mutual dependencies. I think we can all see there are those who grow up into business owners, land owners, and valuable assets to their communities and those who never read “The Richest Man in Babylon.” (Sic.)
In times of uncertainty we need to hear it from somewhere. We have to be told it’s okay to see ourselves as owning a steak, not merely subscribers.
There’s a fundamental tension between human rights and affordability or efficiency. Take California’s high-speed rail project, for example—it repeatedly runs over budget. That’s partly because we hold ourselves to higher labor and environmental standards.
In the long run, I believe robotic automation is the only viable path forward. Reindustrialization without it isn't a realistic solution.
My family history is a lengthy record of sacrifice so that future generations wouldn't need to do that kind of work. Part of that sacrifice was emigrating to countries with better opportunities, including America.
Who will still be here to implement any reindustrialization scheme involving low-end labor? What's in that for a kid with a work ethic and a head on their shoulders when the burden for moving elsewhere is online paperwork and a plane ticket instead of tall ships and wagon trains?
And even talking about it gets downvoted.
I don't believe that we need to reindustrialize down to what I call baseline products. In other words, this idea of harsh condition and low wages isn't a reality here at all. Anyone who would propose this simply does not understand reality.
In other words, this isn't about making everything. It's about not getting to the point where you make nothing and you lose all knowledge and ability to produce goods. I hoped the pandemic would result in powerful lessons learned and a set of decisions and policies that would lead to rebalancing global trade. We found ourselves in a situation where we could not make the simplest products at scale, masks. Not only that, we did not even manufacture the cloth or the machines to make the cloth and masks.
From an engineering point of view, this is a system with a single point of failure: China. Anything happens in China --intentional or natural-- and billions of people around the globe pay the consequences. Looking at this from far away, one could easily conclude that this planet is not well-managed (as a concept, there is no such thing as global management, of course).
By that I mean that accepting a situation where everyone becomes dependent on a single provider is incredibly dangerous on many fronts. I am not even talking about the "national security" FUD trope. I am talking about everyday things everyone needs to live, to have access to medical care, to exist and navigate life and career.
A single-source structure is fragile and dangerous. We are often very critical of western government --right, left and center--, and rightly so. And yet, we somehow think it is OK to absolutely rely on the Chinese government for our very existence across all technical and industrial categories? How about we apply the same level of critique and skepticism to them being our overlords as we would to any one political party in the west? And, if that's the criteria, it follows that this global centralization of industrial capacity is likely bad for humanity.
The only thing that would change my mind is that if China radically shifts its culture, government and approach to commerce, which will not happen. For example, I cannot own land or a business in China. I cannot sue a company in China for stealing my intellectual property. I have no access to their courts to address grievances. Their public companies do not play by international rules, cook the books and have not transparency or accountability other than to the CCP. Etc. That's just fine if that's the way they want to live and operate.
I am simply saying that the rest of the world should understand that allowing centralization of nearly 100% of the industrial base in this manner will not lead to good outcomes at all. As AI reduces that number of people who will need to be employed to deliver services, the lack of a significant and diverse industrial base across Europe and the American continent will have catastrophic societal impact.
Firstly, it's important to recognize that challenges with IP protection in China are not exclusively an issue for foreign entities; they represent a broader systemic problem that impacts domestic companies as well.
Secondly, a crucial, though perhaps less visible, factor is the state of the legal infrastructure. There's an argument to be made that China's legal system hasn't yet reached a stage of efficiency or possess sufficient specialized resources to comprehensively manage the sheer volume and complexity of IP disputes for all parties. From this viewpoint, the situation might be framed less as 'China deliberately permits IP infringement' and more as 'China is still in the process of developing a robust and universally effective system to tackle IP protection challenges.'
Finally, China's historically export-oriented economic model naturally increases the touchpoints and potential for IP conflicts between domestic and international businesses, making such disputes more visible on the global stage. Compounding this, many first-generation Chinese entrepreneurs, often products of a different era with less emphasis on formal IP education, may not have initially possessed a strong awareness or understanding of intellectual property rights as they are conceived internationally. This isn't to excuse infringement, but to highlight a factor that likely contributed to the prevalence of such issues.
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