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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

Spy drone or not, why can’t US companies design and manufacture better products to compete with DJI?

Skydio seems to be doing just fine, though their customers are more companies that want security rather than consumers.

I think what killed it is the FCC rules, which make it illegal to fly in a large number of places where it really shouldn't have to be. This severely limits the size of the market for a $1,000 gadget.

FAA rules (not FCC) did have a huge impact on the hobby right as it started to really take off.

DJI is a vertically-integrated beast with CCP ties; it won the monopolist position in 2015 against venture-backed 3D Robotics. Skydio, the largest US entity, really only exists as a protectionist hedge.

Consumer products mean low prices, the opposite of what America does well.

> Consumer products mean low prices, the opposite of what America does well.

This is actually sad. Ford could drive down the cost of automobile down to $4000 while its workers could earn $5 an hour. America used to be the industrial behemoth what could manufacture and innovate better, faster, and cheaper. What's interesting is that there was a powerful country that would mock the US for producing things cheap but not necessarily crafty in late 19th century and early 20th century. Yeah, that was Britain. We all know how history went.

we gutted most of our manufacturing and outsourced it to china decades ago. we Let our entire non military manufacturing industry die on the vine so there isn't much of a culture of supply chain left.

blame harvard business school. The cumulative damage of their Alum to the american economy is astronomical

Meh, there's been fears of imports damaging the home country's manufacturing/economy for hundreds of years. It's why tariffs have existed for ages. If the government valued manufacturing at home, they've had the tools for years to make it happen.

Of course, are citizens ready to pay more than double in some cases? Not sure.

> If the government valued manufacturing at home, they've had the tools for years to make it happen.

agreed and thats why I emphasized non military manufacturing.

> If the government valued manufacturing at home, they've had the tools for years to make it happen

Well as long as we are “green washing” everything manufacturing will never return to the US.

Americans would rather offshore and pollute in other countries instead of attempting to manufacture in the US while be suffocated by regulations.

Can we stop with this nonsense myth? The US is the second largest manufacturer in the world. Does manufacturing make up as large a share of our economy as it did in the past? No, of course not, that's a normal progression to a service economy, which is why the US is so wealthy.

> The US is the second largest manufacturer in the world

The US used to the largest. I was wondering if we should stay the largest, and most importantly the best. Case in point, the average age of workers in our shipyard was more than 55. The number of shipyards in the US has been decreasing over the years. I can see how that will help us innovate on and build better and cheaper ships, for military or not. Another data point, Intel can't compete with TSMC when it comes to manufacturing chips. Plus, if the so-called "low-end" manufacturing is gone, how could we possibly train the next generation of engineers? My assumption is engineering will be like writing software, a person who can only draw boxes will not be a good software engineer, and the person could not even learn draw boxes well without years of programming experience.

> non military manufacturing industry die

Without a booming civil manufacturing industry, how could our military industry stay competitive? There was a reason that a toilet for Airforce would cost north of $20K.

There's a whole synergistic Shenzen ecosystem of companies, and the US is a very expensive place. Most of the people with the skills to do this are already working for either FAANG or the long tail of other US tech companies, not on something as comparatively low value as drones. The US is simply higher up the value curve for manufacturing.

Arguably Prox Dynamics (now Flir) is able to compete in certain segments?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano

https://www.flir.eu/news-center/military/qa-flir-acquires-wo...

It's much more expensive to manufacture lots of stuff in the US, but clothing and electronics probably top the list. Most people aren't willing to pay 3x the cost of an equivalent item just for the warm-n-fuzzy "Made in USA" sticker on it. A few are, but most aren't.

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