
Advanced Economies Must Still Make Things - craigjb
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/advanced-economies-must-still-make-things
======
quanticle
Advanced economies must still make things, but there's no rule that says that
those things have to be made by _people_. In inflation-adjusted dollar value
terms, the value of US manufacturing has never been higher. In employment
terms, it's never been lower. While there are those who blame outsourcing for
that, the vast majority of manufacturing job losses have been due to
automation, rather than competition from abroad.

For example, look at this video of a MillTurn M60:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UjjSH2iFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UjjSH2iFw).
This one machine replaces an entire shop floor of lathes and mills... and all
their operators, too.

~~~
danmaz74
> the vast majority of manufacturing job losses have been due to automation,
> rather than competition from abroad

Source?

~~~
crdoconnor
>the vast majority of manufacturing job losses have been due to automation,
rather than competition from abroad

The reason why this lie is so commonly repeated is that technology makes a
better scapegoat than the American elites for declining standards of living.

You can't jab a pitchfork into technology.

You _can_ jab a pitchfork into the American elites who formulate trade policy
that ships jobs overseas.

This misdirection and the anger it fomented is largely responsible for the
sudden rise of Donald Trump.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
...Who plans to get rich by selling pitchforks, but has no intention of
allowing them to be used - except possibly to remove his competitors.

I'd guess that only around 10% of the US population - 20% at best - has any
practical understanding of how the US economy and political system actually
works.

It's the easiest thing in the world to move blame towards immigrants, high
rents, automation, Google, and just about any other target far removed from
the actual architects of declining general living standards.

~~~
crdoconnor
We'll see. Trump has said that he will prevent TTIP/TPP and put a 40% tax on
Chinese imports, but who knows if he will follow through.

I certainly don't think that he'd be at all bothered by the economic fallout
of those things.

~~~
logfromblammo
If Trump really wanted to make America great again, he'd drop all import
tariffs, put a 40% tax on American _exports_ , and throw some chum in the
water.

When the acquisition-merger frenzy dies down, the last corporations standing
would not be ones that you would want to encounter in a dark alley. And,
apparently, they would all be software development houses, agribusinesses, LEO
launches, and pizza delivery chains. Americans would no longer do _anything_
that they are not objectively best at doing in the global marketplace. They
could not afford to even _try_ anything else.

But whatever. Let's just try the Hawley-Smoot tactic all over again, and see
if it turns out differently this time.

~~~
marcosdumay
Why would you want to tax exports? It is as damaging as taxing imports, as it
stands into exactly the same kind of barrier.

It's way better to base taxation choices on the need to collect money, plus a
rare, exceptional sin tax. Taxation choices based on commercial strategies are
almost universally poor.

~~~
logfromblammo
Sorry. That was intended to project as facetious. This US presidential
elections cycle has made me more cynical and pessimistic than ever. I was just
making a modest proposal for an _all-new_ horribly bad idea rather than
repeating the same old horribly bad idea once more.

The best trade policy for everyone is to have no artificial barriers to trade
at all. But such a policy cannot be as easily exploited for votes.

~~~
marcosdumay
You simply won't get an argument about foreign commerce that sounds too stupid
to be taken seriously.

This export tax, for example, it was not only proposed but even implemented
several times around the world - Russia has once gone to the extent of
forbidding agricultural exports.

------
js8
Amen to that. In general, I think successful economies should strive to be
pretty balanced sector-wise, for two reasons:

1\. Like with outsourcing, if you have enough people to be experts in a given
thing, it will probably cost you more to outsource than to keep local
expertise, due to additional transaction cost (transport, culture barrier,
outsourcer profits, corruption..). And nations typically have more than enough
people to be experts in some basic economic production infrastructure.

IMHO, it only pays off to outsource high-end stuff, like microprocessors, to
other nations. It is also good for a nation to be expert/leader in some area
like that. Switzerland is a good example of this.

2\. There are network effects when you have mixed economy. How can you produce
any good, say, agricultural machinery without agriculture? You may be the best
machinist in the world, but without trying it out you don't know what problems
you're solving. IMHO, this adds up very quickly. Similar with computing - you
cannot solve manufacturing problems without having manufacturing industry in
the same place you have the people who know computers.

It may seem that in today's connected world it wouldn't matter, but I doubt
it. You need to get people from different fields to know each other, to talk
over lunch or beer about problems they have. I think (in the U.S. at least)
there is also social stratification issue, which is partly resulting at people
poking at startups (sometimes rightfully so) for stupidly catering to middle
classes instead of solving real problems.

~~~
clarkmoody
_> successful economies should strive to be pretty balanced_

The economy is not a thing that can "strive" for anything. Rather, the economy
is simply the collection of actions taken by people in the market.

Let's ask, why are those economies successful in the first place?

 _> stupidly catering to middle classes instead of solving real problems_

That's a bit condescending, don't you think?

~~~
js8
> The economy is not a thing that can "strive" for anything.

Of course it can, it's a component of human society, and societies can
"strive".

> Rather, the economy is simply the collection of actions taken by people in
> the market.

Just like actions of individual humans is "simply" result of actions taken by
individual neurons.

> Let's ask, why are those economies successful in the first place?

Sure - Ha-Joon Chang was already mentioned, and I wholeheartedly recommend his
books. From his perspective, "free trade" is just one possible economic
strategy, that is useful on a certain level of economic development.

> That's a bit condescending, don't you think?

Sometimes deservedly so. If I believed in the rationality of the free market,
I would be confused by huge valuations of advertising IT companies.

Anyway, I am not really judging those people, I was just making remark that
they are criticized. In fact, I am (almost) one of them, I work for large SW
company that does IT support software for big corporations like banks. I would
probably prefer to improve software for manufacturing, but the truth is, it
just doesn't pay that well as this.

------
jnordwick
Why do we have to make things? Or why tangible things?

Take for instance the financial sector. They make allocation decisions in
essence and sell service around management, consulting, and financial
engineering. A large chunk of our economy is based around resource allocation,
not actually turning resources into products more efficiently than the last
guy.

As an economy progresses, it moves further and further away from things and
towards ideas. We went from hunters and gatherers of food and clothing, to
agriculture, to machining things, to primitive banking, all the way up to
modern financing.

At each step we became further and further removed from actually putting iron-
to-iron and producing this. We become more involved in how to efficiently
allocate resources for those that did produce.

And that population of those that do produce continues to fall as automation
comes along and we become better at making more with less. Finance has really
put productive resources to amazing efficient use though capitalism.

We will get to a point where almost nobody does machines or sits on an
assembly line anymore, and their jobs will give way to a larger and larger
pool of people who work in the meta-market, the mental-based market that
really drive the physical-based market.

~~~
chishaku
There's a well-trodden argument that much of financial innovation has little
positive effect or even negative effect on the larger economy.

Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group:

"The job of finance is to provide capital to companies. We do it to the tune
of $250 billion a year in IPOs and secondary offerings. What else do we do? We
encourage investors to trade about $32 trillion a year. So the way I calculate
it, 99% of what we do in this industry is people trading with one another,
with a gain only to the middleman. It’s a waste of resources."

[http://time.com/money/3956351/jack-bogle-index-
fund/](http://time.com/money/3956351/jack-bogle-index-fund/)

Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve:

"Echoing FSA chairman Lord Turner's comments that banks are 'socially
useless', Mr Volcker told delegates who had been discussing how to rebuild the
financial system to 'wake up'. He said credit default swaps and collateralised
debt obligations had taken the economy 'right to the brink of disaster' and
added that the economy had grown at 'greater rates of speed' during the 1960s
without such products."

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6764177/Ex-
Fed-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6764177/Ex-Fed-chief-
Paul-Volckers-telling-words-on-derivatives-industry.html)

IMF:

"...the effect of financial development on economic growth is bell-shaped: it
weakens at higher levels of financial development."

[http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1508.pdf](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1508.pdf)

OECD:

“...above a certain point, further financial expansion is associated with
slower growth.”

[http://www.oecd.org/eco/How-to-restore-a-healthy-
financial-s...](http://www.oecd.org/eco/How-to-restore-a-healthy-financial-
sector-that-supports-long-lasting-inclusive-growth.pdf)

~~~
aianus
> "The job of finance is to provide capital to companies. We do it to the tune
> of $250 billion a year in IPOs and secondary offerings. What else do we do?
> We encourage investors to trade about $32 trillion a year. So the way I
> calculate it, 99% of what we do in this industry is people trading with one
> another, with a gain only to the middleman. It’s a waste of resources."

Very few people would invest in IPOs or secondary offerings without a
secondary market for the shares.

------
dkopi
I find the whole discussion of what "economies must" and what "economies
should" baffling. Economies don't have wills of their own. Economies describe
the voluntary economic activity of millions to billions of people. Economies
end up doing what is profitable, and possible (given skills, capital
investment, infrastructure). When someone says "Economies should" what they're
actually saying is: "I wish the government would spend a lot of money or pass
a lot of laws to force the economy in the direction I want".

~~~
icebraining
If you understand what people mean, why do you find it baffling?

But in any case, it's not necessarily a prescription, it can be simply an
observation, as in, "advances economies must make things [if they are to
remain advanced]", no different than a biologist might say "species A must
increase their reproduction rate [or go extinct]".

~~~
lr4444lr
I think what he's saying (and your example doesn't contradict) is that there
exists a common fallacy of confusing individual firms' complex behaviors, like
planning and executing a new manufacturing plant, with emergent behavior.

Similarly a species doesn't increase its reproduction rate: it grows in
numbers or it shrinks (to the point of extinction) based on individual
specimens' reproductive behavior. The equivalent in economics here, I think,
would be net exports. Though there is correlative power between the firm and
the economy, the specimen and the species, the incentives and long-term/short-
term outcomes might not be aligned, which has implications for policy.

------
netcan
_" manufacturing is still important for the health of a country’s economy,
because no other sector can generate nearly as many well-paying jobs"_

This is a tricky starting point. Economies have all sorts of side effects that
are important. But ultimately, economies are supposed to produce stuff that
people consume. We have plenty of pots and pans, furniture, cars, etc. The
price of manufactured goods has been dropping for centuries and the quantity
has been rising. As the article states, manufacturing is still growing.
Wanting manufacturing to keep pace and maintain a proportion of the economy
well... We don't need that much manufactured goods.

~~~
superbaconman
> We don't need that much manufactured goods.

And I think we're needing less of them too. Everyone who opts to rent vs own
is one less mower to sold, one less shed to be built, one less piece of
"infrastructure" to maintain. We're all begging for shared public transport
which will result in less vehicle production. The way we live fundamentally
shapes our economy; I feel like we forget this sometimes.

------
haddr
This has been known for some time (and proven with some good examples) but
still is a shock to people who believed somewhere in '90 that the next stage
in the economy is the shift to services instead of industry.

I recommend this book from Ha-Joon Chang that has a nice chapter on that (a
very pleasant read with references): [http://www.amazon.com/Things-They-Dont-
About-Capitalism/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Things-They-Dont-About-
Capitalism/dp/1501266306)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
> still is a shock to people who believed somewhere in '90 that the next stage
> in the economy is the shift to services

You should tell the UK's political class. Moving away from manufacturing to
services has been been official dogma here since the very late 1970s.

As a result we have an economy founded almost entirely on tax havens,
speculation, sporadic renovation projects for rich people, and asset price
bubbles, with a bit of marketing and corporate communications around the
edges.

------
bsder
Unfortunately, making _things_ reduces your profit margin. You can't be a
unicorn if you actually have to live on a profit margin.

~~~
DiabloD3
Although bsder was snarky as fuck when he wrote the above comment, I don't
think he should be downvoted for it. I mean, frankly, I agree with the
sentiment.

A lot of unicorn fillies seriously try to base their model around doing as
little as possible, as flashy as possible, with as little expense as possible.

On paper, that is a great idea, everyone should do it, viva la venture
capital, etc. In reality, it isn't shareholder value you need to provide: it
is _customer_ value. If you are not a valuable product or service to your
customers, _you have no shareholder value_.

A lot of silicon valley venture capitalists forget that very important
distinction, and we are well on our way to Dot Bomb 2.0, repeating the late
90s clusterfuck that made a few billion dollars vanish overnight.

To tie this into the "advanced economy" theme, an advanced economy doesn't
inflate bubbles. America still inflates bubbles: we aren't as advanced as we
think we are, but we _are_ improving.

~~~
marincounty
I am horrid at predicting the future, but I'm seeing too many of these cute
companies' commercials like Birchbox, Lollipop, cute.com,
cute30employedfemale.com, cutesinglebadgirl.com, boredhubbyathome.com,
buymycutechinesegabage.com, hayourvansarecutebuyyme.com,
dinkswhobuythings.com,(this will perk up marketing majors.), etc.

I see a big crash. So big, rents will drop in the Bay Area--big time!

I guess homeless shelters/programs won't be controversial? I really cringe
when I think about the future.

(I'm kinda just kidding, but some of these companies just look like they are
trying to spend what's left of the funding on advertising? Don't get me wrong
EBay needs competition, and dating services need competition, but don't do it
in a cute way? Just offer a good product. Low fees, and honesty. Get rid of
the MBA's. Get rid of the Designers, at least the one's who are just copying a
TED presentation?)

------
marco_salvatori
I didn't feel this article was clearly thought out. If just manufacturing
things, whatever things are, were important then possibly replacing
(magically) the industrial sectors in the US with those from China would be a
good thing. If that came about then of course the US would be much poorer,
possibly as poor as China. Its also not sufficient to say manufacturing is a
source of good paying jobs. Highly skilled manufacturing sectors provides good
wages and benefits (say, semiconductor manufacturing), piece work in say the
garment industry provides sub subsistence level wages. A better title would be
- "it matters what an advanced economy produces". I used to work in
manufacturing (all over the world) and here a few impressions based on my
experience. In the factories, today, where people in advanced economies would
want their children to work, there are more robots than people. The ratio of
automation will increase over the next 10 years as the machines become
smarter. In advanced countries it is more and more common for manufacturing
facilities to require the skills of people with PhD's, Masters degrees and
highly trained vocational workers to function. There are going to be very few
jobs in 10 years for people who can just contribute muscle power. Even in the
far east, manufacturing is going to be a sector of falling employment (like
agriculture in the past) and at the same time of rising output (like
agriculture). And lastly, here is a thought, based on my experience running a
business. There is lots of competition out there in the world. One cant make a
good living producing any "Thing". One has to find a product that is
differentiated, valuable to others, and not easily reproduced by thousands of
other businesses all over the world. And then one has to sell it. That's turns
out to be a difficult job -- much more complicated than a slogan like
"manufacturing".

------
fauigerzigerk
There is not much if anything in this article to support the headline claim.
I'm not saying it isn't true, but the article doesn't provide any evidence of
that.

Yes Toyota employs more people than Facebook. What does that tell us exactly?
The film industry employs more people in the U.S than the auto industry.

If the numbers in this article show anything, it is that the most advanced
economies vary hugely when it comes to the size of the manufacturing sector.

I think the case for a manufacturing sector that isn't 0% of the economy can
absolutely be made, but this article doesn't even start making it.

------
adrianN
With the same argument, agriculture is important for advanced economies,
because no other sector can generate as many jobs. Remember, not too long ago
a large majority of the people were farmers.

Eventually we'll have to move away from the notion that everybody needs a job
that contributes to GDP.

~~~
ekianjo
> Eventually we'll have to move away from the notion that everybody needs a
> job that contributes to GDP.

The goal is not maximum employment, The goal is maximum production. Whether
that involves more employees is a totally different topic.

~~~
Scarblac
The goal should be maximum happiness.

~~~
mryan
Employment and production are easy to measure. Happiness, less so.

~~~
Scarblac
That's a bit of an odd reason to change the whole goal, isn't it?

So we track the kinds of things that we can measure and that we hope correlate
with happiness, but we carefully check that they keep doing so. We shouldn't
let one of them (like "maximize production") become the end goal itself!

~~~
mryan
> That's a bit of an odd reason to change the whole goal, isn't it?

Having a goal of 'maximising production' is the status quo - I am not
proposing any changes.

I agree with you that the world would be a better place if our economy was
focussed on achieving maximum global happiness, I just wanted to point out why
it is easier to focus on an objective, numeric value like production than a
subjective feeling like happiness (Gross National Happiness notwithstanding).

------
DrNuke
Oversupply and stagnation were solved in the past by wars or new worlds'
colonisation. Considering that Planet Earth is full and that we do not want a
nuclear war, the best opportunity for mankind is Moon or Mars colonisation.
Exploration has always been the distinctive trait of humans and still will be.

~~~
Amezarak
> the best opportunity for mankind is Moon or Mars colonisation.

Mars and the Moon are not suitable for long-term colonization. Maybe research
bases, like Antarctica. But it's hard to see why anyone would want to live in
a near vaccuum (average pressure on Mars is 0.6% of Earth's average) in a low-
gravity environment (38% of Earth and 16% of Earth, respectively) for their
whole life.

We may be able to engineer successful Moon and Martian bases in the near
future. But live there? You'd always either be underground or in a heavily
shielded dome, never able to go outside, and the compromise of which would
mean almost certain death. Further, low gravities have negative long-term
health effects, and even if we ignore those, if you spend your whole life on
Mars, going to Earth is going to be hellish torture.

I'm all for space colonization, but I think if we're going to look at
_colonizing_ an extraterrestial body, which should at least be looking for
something that has approximately Earth gravity and a real atmosphere. In our
solar system, that just leaves Venus, which obviously comes with huge problems
of its own, but perhaps they can be resolved with some kind of terraforming
technology and a lot of time. (Bacteria to convert CO2 to oxygen to cool the
atmosphere and make it breathable?) Probably we'd be better off looking for
extrasolar planets that fit our criteria and developing the necessary engine
technology and maybe cryogenics - keep relativistic effects in mind.

Or we could just invent artificial gravity. That solves a lot of problems. :)

I think we're best off looking after the Earth, for which we are tailor made.

~~~
novalis78
Maybe not large scale colonization - but once the Martians start having kids
(if possible) and produce them in large numbers, imports from Mars
(specialized, high tech manufacturing equipment) will increase. The Martians
born there will not care living under harsh circumstances - they won't know
any better. They will just keep working to make their lives a bit more
comfortable, one generation at a time.

~~~
evgen
What product do you imagine can be created on Mars that cannot be created and
delivered to a customer on Earth from some other place on the planet or from
orbit? Mars has nothing we need or want and is too far away to make shipment
worthwhile.

~~~
Grishnakh
>Mars has nothing we need or want and is too far away to make shipment
worthwhile.

They might have some rock there which would make for some really unique
countertops or jewelry. Considering how much money people spend on diamonds,
which are really quite worthless because they're so commonplace, I could see
people spending tons of money on jewelry made with Martian rocks.

------
bryanrasmussen
the statement " no other sector can generate nearly as many well-paying jobs"
would mean more if they showed loss of jobs due to automation and projected
how future automation would effect the ability of manufacturing to produce so
many well-paying jobs.

Because maybe the argument is Advanced Economies must still make things for
the next 15 years after which it's not really worthwhile.

------
EGreg
I have predicted this for a long time (not just me, but a lot of people).

The demand for human labor is going down on average, so wages are going down -
and have been on a decline since the 70s. Capitalism relies on employers to
value their employees for the money to trickle down and the system to work.
Our grandfathers used to work for the same employer for decades and got a
pension. Today, that loyalty is unheard of from either side. We have the rise
of temps and the contractor economy and unemployed living with parents.

Yes, the cost of mass produced consumer goods is going down. So the wage
repression is mitigated. With the explosion of consumer credit in the 80s and
90s, the unsustainability of consumer spending was also masked. Now it has
come to the fore, in exactly the areas where costs are not going down: rent
and real estate. In every major city including NYC and SF, the costs of rent
are sky high relative to wages. Wonder why? Look at the rest of the country
and it's true too -- the rents are slightly lower but the wages are lower too.

So the predictions are borne out... automation has reduced demand for human
labor, reduced wages for the average worker (or they got laid off / became
temps), reduced the prices of mass produced goods, but the cost of real estate
keeps rising.

~~~
wycx
Capitalism relies on employers to value their employees for the money to
trickle down and the system to work.

It is not capitalism but rather neoliberalism/monetarism that propels the
trickle-down theory. The time period where grandfathers worked for the same
employer and then got a pension coincided with the post-depression/WW2 period
of Keyensianism when many western governments pursed full employment economies
via fiscal policy.

In the period from the early 1970s onwards when neoliberalism/monetarism has
been dominant, we have seen falling real wages, the financialisation of the
economy (including the consumer credit explosion you describe), governments
restricting themselves to managing the economy only through the very blunt
tool of monetary policy (i.e. interest rates via a central bank).

I would argue that the symptoms we both identify are the result of
neoliberal/monetarist policy rather than decreased demand for human labour. If
governments still pursued full employment via fiscal policy things would be
very different.

~~~
tanker
How do you encourage full employment with fiscal policy?

Does the concept of full employment imply large corporations hire most of the
people or do the fiscal policies also encourage small business and self
employment?

~~~
wycx
It can be all of the above, plus government employees.

An example would be government funding of large infrastructure projects that
employ lots of people during construction.

------
JDDunn9
A few notes about the shift from manufacturing to a service based economy:

\- Services take a larger share of GDP by staying flat while prices of goods
fall. You pay less for most manufactured goods than you did 20 years ago,
while your haircut cost about the same.

\- Services are generally harder to export. You can ship a physical product,
it's hard to export a haircut.

\- Goods can be stockpiled/scaled if needed, services cannot.

------
dmichulke
It's kind of obvious that no one can live if we only have services and money
printing.

Someone must produce something (and preferably something with a high price /
cost ratio), this applies to manufacturing as well as agriculture.

The biggest news (and very sad at that) is that "making things" is so far away
from the mainstream economic models that formerly common sense rules are worth
a headline.

------
FussyZeus
> And yet manufacturing is still important for the health of a country’s
> economy, because no other sector can generate nearly as many well-paying
> jobs. Take Facebook, which at the end of last year had 12,691 employees,
> versus the 344,109 that Toyota had at the end of its fiscal year, in March
> 2015. Making things still matters.

There are so many assumptions in this article but especially here. Author
assumes people are required to make things, they are not. Author assumes
factory jobs will pay well, they often don't, and there's no reason they will.
And the employment disparity between IT companies and Manufacturing is showing
that you can create a ton more wealth with a small number of IT people than a
huge number of manufacturing people, which is why Wall Street values those
companies higher these days.

------
tim333
>Take away manufacturing and you’re left with...selfies

It's not true. Take for example Jersey, Luxembourg and the like. In those
places there is insignificant manufacturing and the main business is banking.
That's the whole thing about trade - one place can do one thing and one can do
another.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Yes, let's even look at London. Stupidly reliant on banking, billions
defrauded via Libor fixing etc.

What happens when there's a "credit crunch"[1]? Quantitative Easing! [2]

The 50-60% of the economy not in banking, and not needing a loan at the
moment, is _talked_ into a recession by the twits in the media.

The SaaS business in Manchester, Leeds or Newcastle didn't change, lose
customers, or become more risky, but the banks won't lend because the whole
banking sector became suspect, so they just lost their cashflow.

Perhaps the problem is that the entire country wasn't working for the
dishonest banks[3]? Presumably watching Wall Street and Liar's Poker every
morning with the cornflakes?

Yet the first thing retrenched in a recession is optional services - like
loans, insurance. It's no longer possible to trade our way out of recessions
like the UK, and much of the world, did postwar ("export or die"). We solved a
postwar recession of far higher percentage of GDP via creation and trade.

George Osborne has reduced the rate of increase of the debt a bit.

We're left with the ineffectiveness, and downright fraudulence, of
quantitative easing and austerity.

If you're old enough to remember the 80s, you'll remember that was no better.
With the added fun of 15% mortgage rates.

No thanks. More metal bashing please. More encouragement of _every_ sector
that isn't in the square mile. A diverse, resilient, economy.

[1] I love this euphemism (/s). The biggest fraud in human history and the
media calls it the credit crunch.

[2] Print money to give to the banks, to encourage them to lend, that they use
to pad their bottom line. Repeat numerous times, _as though it is effective._
Toughen up capital requirements to further encourage use on the bank rather
than advertised purpose. Sending cheques to each voter GW Bush style would be
more effective getting money into the business economy.

[3] Unlike retail, pharmaceutical, industrial and a dozen other sectors
banking regulation was abolished wholesale.

~~~
cturner
Clearly you're angry, but the post you're replying to has a point. There is a
tendency for countries to shed manufacturing and move into other sectors, and
it's often a sign of success rather than decline.

When there's a major economic event, all of the other competing philosophies
zoom out of the desert seeking followers like Small Gods. The risk is that if
you get driven by your anger rather than your mind, you'll find yourself in
the arms of a new bizareness, rather than something better.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Not angry in the least. Just very cynical of suggestions banking is better
than more industrial sectors. Besides it's not like Detroit or Sheffield could
reinvent themselves as a banking centre without extreme subsidies to encourage
mass relocations. Money neither has.

Even for ROI you'd have to go back a very long way to do worse than RBS, and
will probably be sitting on that loss for another decade or more.

Banking does have several advantages - get big enough and the taxpayer will
bail you out. So the downside becomes an externality. That is not good for
encouraging ethics. Also through the miracle of fiat money and fractional
reserve banking you get to print your own!

You have to wonder therefore how they manage to make such a bloody mess of it
so often. Oh of course - greed and total lack of adequate regulation.

------
dscpls
This inference of "making implies jobs therefore make things" is just short
sighted. Is making things really the _only_ option of making providing jobs?!
It's not realistic when there's nothing more we need to make and consume!

------
jjar
Great article, terrible site design. Seriously, who limits their content to a
single 300px wide column when there are 3 other columns with only links to
other parts of the site?

------
Dowwie
noteworthy that the author is Vaclav Smil:
[http://www.wired.com/2013/11/vaclav-smil-
wired/](http://www.wired.com/2013/11/vaclav-smil-wired/)

------
leaveyou
but, but how about intellectual property ?!? I thought patenting the round
corners is the future ..

