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Comment by dtquad | Hacker News Reader

One thing that will make the re-industrialization of the West fail is if it turns into a rural/flyover state development program.

Chinese manufacturing is efficient because of the tight supply chain integration and centralization that has emerged in the big cities of the Pearl River Delta Area.

The decades old dream to manufacture cutting edge chips in Europe has also repeatedly failed because it keeps being turned into job development programs in Eastern Germany.

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Yup. The problem with democracies in the West is that they keep trying to make unsustainable places sustainable.

China essentially says “here’s where all the talent is and where the talent is willing to move to…let’s focus there”.

Because of policy reasons Texas, for example, has been able to kind of grow, but it would be much better if the likes of California and New York fixed their bad policies so they could grow instead, as the potential is much greater.

The ghost towns in China disagree.

Except China isn't democratic and builds with such ferocity that completely overlooks quality and standards that us "westerners" expect or regulate -- hence, projects that appear more like potemkin villages than anything else.

The delays have nothing to do with it being in Ohio, and the CHIPS Act didn’t dictate where these would be built. Intel picked the site, just like TSMC and others picked theirs. Cost of land, energy, labor, etc all taken into account. The “flyover” states are the more cost effective place to do these things.

With Ohio specifically it’s being built just outside of a city too. Yes, we have those here. It’s actually not just one big state of a bunch of rural hicks demanding handouts from the government.

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