Hacker News Reader

Comment by rapsey | Hacker News Reader

I would like to see someone back up the data with regards to automation. Why is the burden of truth on the other side? Fact of the matter is Chinese factories that produce the world's gadgets employ millions. This is reality and not some mythical fully automated factories.

Globalism made the very poor in China/Mexico/etc. richer, created their middle class and it made the very rich in US/EU even richer at the cost of US/EU middle class.

Saying how that is irrelevant now because of automation just smells like new propaganda to replace the old one so that the rich can get richer and the rest of us arguing propaganda.

View on HN

While tangential, it should be noted that creating jobs in Mexico and Canada will probably always be a net good for the US even if it means some net loss of jobs in the near term. Being closely connected with populous neighbors whom you can enrich such that they can buy your stuff will vastly strengthen the US's position as well as the NA bloc. We want manufacturing in mexico because we're connected by literal rail lines and can ship products back and forth far more readily and in an environmentally friendly way. Further we have mutual interests in terms of policy and defense.

This may sound controversial but it's likely the only way forward for the US to compete with China long term. Trying to ostracize our neighbors and go it alone against a country 4x our size is not a geopolitically sound move.

> While tangential, it should be noted that creating jobs in Mexico and Canada will probably always be a net good for the US even if it means some net loss of jobs in the near term.

Yeah the rust belt job loss is only temporary. They will come back any day now.

> We want manufacturing in mexico because we're connected by literal rail lines and can ship products back and forth far more readily and in an environmentally friendly way.

Yeah I'm sure those Mexico factories have all the environmental regulations that US/Canada does.

> This may sound controversial but it's likely the only way forward for the US to compete with China long term.

The US has given China it's growth. It has exported jobs and exported it's middle class along with it. It has also exported much of it's high tech advantage into China. All for the short term benefit of the investor class and it's billionaires. Competing with China could start by not giving away every advantage.

> Trying to ostracize our neighbors and go it alone against a country 4x our size is not a geopolitically sound move.

The only ostracizing I do is towards the billionaires who shape economic policy to their benefit and everyone else's expense.

I think this kinda bends the meaning of the argument a bit.

To put it differently, if we have to go with outsourcing, China was a mistake and we should redirect as much of what was offshored as possible to Mexico.

Obviously the billionaire class needs to pay for what has been done. I'm absolutely not against that.

> Globalism made the very poor in China/Mexico/etc. richer, created their middle class and it made the very rich in US/EU even richer at the cost of US/EU middle class.

This point bears repeating until they finally take it into account when discussing inequality. It's honestly tiring to have to repeat this every time

Minor nitpick: I'd call it globalization, not globalism, as the latter has historically meant something else and currently means something terrible

I don't think offshoring is irrelevant now. With that said, I think there was a bigger push towards offshoring in the past than there is today. Now automation is playing a larger role. As an example, the company I work for has been offshoring positions since the 90s, while simultaneously and incrementally automating other positions. There isn't much left to offshore, but we're still automating work.

China is America's largest consumer of automation equipment. 25%. They, like America, are automating at a furious rate and have been for 2 decades.

The end-game is, of course, little need for labor at all. Like America China will have to face this and find some way to keep millions from starvation. And soon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com