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Comment by magduf | Hacker News Reader

It's not just skills, it's the supply chain surrounding the manufacturing. There's several articles you can find with a quick Google search about how Apple had so much trouble finding a source for small screws for the Mac in the USA, whereas in China it was trivial to find a supplier that could provide the massive quantities needed. So building the thing in the USA will probably end up costing a lot more, not just because of US labor rates at the final assembly factory (which probably isn't that much of a factor really), but because all the logistics leading up to that point in the manufacture are now so much less efficient.

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But, it only takes one big company like Apple to move some production and companies will start to pop up again.

Smaller companies are also bringing manufacturing back to the US. I've listened to podcasts where the https://originmaine.com owner discusses the local supply chain of leather and other material in order make clothing like jeans and boots.

Leather has the advantage that one animal produces multiple things -- US beef and milk production produces leather as a byproduct. If people want local beef and milk, there's also going to be local leather. Leather keeps better than meat, so as long as the demand for beef (measured in cows) exceeds the demand for bovine leather (also measured in cows), stocks go up and prices go down until someone decides a local supply chain is worthwhile (or until someone decides it's not worth it to pay for the warehouse for unsold leather).

FYI: animals don’t “produce” leather, it’s their skin.

It always surprises me how humans collectively “mechanize” nature, so it’s easier to rationalize exploiting it.

How would you have phrased his "US beef and milk production produces leather as a byproduct"?

We similarly mechanize the growing of organisims in their own biodegraded guts and eat them afterward. Everything sounds grusome when you frame it that way. Being an apex predator comes with advantages as well as responsibilities to best utilize ourselves as we nessarily consume other organisms and not dirt.

Animals are raised to be harvested for what they are, there is no moral component, provided we make some effort to limit the suffering.

If cattle benefitted from domesticating humans and could pull it off, they would do so with pride.

"Slaves are raised to work the fields, there is no moral component, provided we make some effort to limit the suffering."

Is this equally true to you?

Slaves are people, and like other people, at least in general tend to be capable of moral consideration. Your house cat will eat your dead body without considering the moral implications.

That's total BS.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/23/cats-bo...

The cat might eat your dead body because it's trying to avoid starvation (after all, your ghost presumably isn't continuing to feed it, and it's stuck inside with your corpse and doesn't know how to use your cellphone to call for help), just like humans did in the Andes mountains, as seen in the movie "Alive". There's nothing immoral about eating a dead animal to survive.

You missed the "without considering the moral implications" bit. Your house cat isn't even aware of the concept of morality, or any recognized expression of it, and will avoid eating your body mainly because it's gross.

“Produce: bring forth, yield; to bring into existence; give rise to; to make something“

So “FYI” yes they do.

What kind of lame attempt at policing and changing language is this? Yes, animals absolutely do produce leather. Go read a dictionary!

Similarly, my stomach produces stomach acid, my sweat glands produce sweat, etc., and none of that is "mechanized" or used for any kind of industry, it's just how my (and your) body works.

And this is in Austin, which used to be the ideal place to make PCs only 15 years ago because of DELL and its famous “just in time” suppliers.

Yeah, it's almost like trade deals completely decimated domestic manufacturing the last 3 decades and it's impossible to build things here because everything already moved overseas. All the 'little screw' suppliers went overseas or went out of business because their customers went overseas.

Apple announcing they will continue to build mac pros in the USA is their signal to suppliers that they should follow them back to the USA. If the incentive to small-parts suppliers is good and the reverberating feedback are strong enough (small-suppliers bringing large suppliers, large suppliers bringing more small suppliers, rinse repeat), it'll lead other manufacturers to come back. If automation is going to take over labor, then location and labor-wages will matter less than supply-chain and the regulatory environment. If USA can get back the supply-chain, the USA rule-of-law environment, is probably preferable to China's rule-by-law environment.

I don't disagree. My comment was related to the notion of 'oh you can't just build things here' premise that I responded to.

US manufacturing output has doubled in the last 3 decades:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outp...

It's also important to measure the amount of stuff made; US factories not only produce more expensive products but they produce more of them. This is particularly true of durable goods. From parents article:

"""The production of electronics, aerospace goods, motor vehicles and machinery are at or close to all-time highs.""'

I don't buy it. Those stats must be including things assembled or repackaged in the US. Almost everything I own is made overseas. Computers, appliances, furniture, clothing.

It's also not clear if these statistics are subject to the same types of laws as claiming something is 'made in America'. If I buy a box of parts from offshore and assemble and end product out of those parts, is that made in the US according to those stats?

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