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Comment by plastic-enjoyer | Hacker News Reader

> But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?

Every First World country seems to be following the path from industrialisation, through deindustrialisation (which, when I was at school, was still called ‘structural change’), to a service-based society. It seems to be the price we pay for economic prosperity and cheap goods - and it is not the first time in Germany this happens.

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People don't like factory work. Given options, they will choose to do some less physically wearing work that pays more, and pay somebody else to do it.

Robots are the answer to reindustrialize the developed world, but that necessarily keeps industry smaller than services.

I don't think you have set foot in a factory recently.

Factory work isn't generally physically demanding, more tedious & repetitive than anything.

It's air conditioned, generally pays a lot more than minimum wage and has benefits.

modern factory work is really not much different from fast-food chains.

You have a job description, the standard operations manual, and you operate the machine that does most of the work.

All complicated work is either outsourced to machines, enterprise systems, or architects/chief engineers that setup the whole system on day 1.

all day 2 operations are mundane blue collar work, just like warehouse work or fast-food work with no viable path for career growth

Producing nothing only works as long as there's someone else to produce things for you who wants to produce things for you. It's been China, but only by accident. China is not far away from deindustrializing and then we all suffer.

It's a political choice by our own politicians.

> China is not far away from deindustrializing and then we all suffer.

How? China is actively moving up the value chain, into EVs, batteries, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, etc. China is not abandoning industry.

> It's a political choice by our own politicians.

No, it's mostly how our economic system, how capitalism works. Production goes where production is cheap. You’ll never be able to produce goods in Germany at such low costs as in China or other third-world countries without eroding workers’ rights and thereby creating a new lower class.

Economic system choice is a political choice...

Or you know, you could demand that the goods being imported are made to the same quality, environmental, health & safety standards as your home country.

But that would turn off the spigot of cheap goods.....

> Every First World country seems to be following the path from industrialisation, through deindustrialisation

Are you sure? Jobs are no longer in industrial companies, and that isn't where the growth is. However when I look at the numbers I see heavy industry output is still growing.

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