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Comment by sct202 | Hacker News Reader

South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are combined 50%+ of semiconductor production and have wages similar to Western Europe, their factories are already heavily automated and well run. These are not sweatshops with people running around hammering transistors with chisels.

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So if they can so can we. Bring back high tech manufacturing.

Do we have the workforce? Working reliable supply chains, and the willingness to make it all work?

We can automate things even further. We are far from automation at its full potential. But we lack the will.

Based on the difficulty that Tesla had with setting up model 3 production, no. What they did it in house is because they had to, there were no supply chains.

Is it worth it? Globalization means that everybody tries to be a leader in their markets. If you focus on one market, you have to neglect another.

Becoming a leader in high tech manufacturing means giving up other leading positions.

I dont think it works that way. Being good at one thing as a country you dont need to neglect others. A country is not a person. The EU, US and allies can simultaneously be good at high tech agriculture, high tech manufacturing, fin tech, space tech, and services. We just need to approach things differently.

In which way should things be approached differently? A country it not one person, but it's still many persons. How do you remain the best in all areas if you don't have the manpower to keep up with the development of knowledge in all areas?

Two things cross my mind. One is that there are millions lacking access to education thus missing all the knowledge needed to grow. If those millions were a country what would that country need to do ensure their growth? Second is that since we lack manpower we either need to look into why is it such an issue having children, despite economic development, or we need to look into even more automation in manufacturing. We need government funded research of the kind that made the atomic bomb or the internet. We also need to look at the economics of it so we dont end up putting more people into poverty because we replaced them with bots.

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