The Netherlands for example got their last reset by completely losing the Dutch empire.

Also, some societies have flatter curves than others. That really maps 1:1 to your style and culture of living and where the priorities are.

If your priorities are to be the best as fast as possible (Germany) you will have less time between resets. If your priorities are "let's chill and wait until the coconut falls from the tree into my hand", your society might be able to have a far longer time between resets.

But in the end: It's an iterative process. Which means: There must be iterations.

You are not at all working with "data" or "samples". You are just making arguments and supporting them with examples. That's not science, that's philosophy or persuasive essay writing.

You are generalizing those arguments in insane ways. Just like the worst philosophy. You are drawing conclusions from extremely weak claims that don't even map to reality in the first place.

You can't say "Math works to describe the head of broccoli so I can just think hard enough and understand geopolitics". That's emphatically not science.

Germany has to be forced to accept that, although it was advanced, it could not have the European empire it thought it deserved. Japan had to learn a similar lesson. The speed and horror of the reset was in direct proportion to the potential for advancement and high society in these nations.

Ghana, where I come form, for example, has not has to experience any massive upheaval even from its pre-colonial and colonial days up till now. Our society is laid-back, and moves slowly. Even many other African countries have had to have their national reckoning in the form of civil wars and other huge upheavals in order to settle into a viable way of existing and advancing.

And, like you said, this is iterative. Given the nature of people in a nation and its fundamental geopolitical position, the same question will need to be answered after every N generations. Germany is central to Europe, and already a generation that is far removed from the world wars are starting to rethink why it shouldn't assert itself more strongly. Same in Japan.

THe way to analyze the iterations of the US is to understand that the primary threats are from within. It may not implode complete, but civil war and the civil rights era show that the potential is there for massive unrest and violence.

And yes, it is interesting to see that on Polymarket people are betting involving a lot of emotions. No, you will not bet on getting killed by masked militia. Nobody is going to say "Hey, I'll bet $1000 that I will get cancer soon!".

But if you leave aside all the emotions, and just look at the data: No, there is no realistic scenario the US could magically recover from all checks and balances and rules and laws and regulations and decency having been destroyed. Competence, leadership and shared knowledge had been erased in all areas of society - Science, Development, Capitalism, Arts. How are you going to rebuild all of this, especially if the best case is that 60% of the people will agree to rebuild, while 40% insist they need to keep destroying stuff?

This is not a scenario looking at historical data any prior "high culture" (or whatever to call this) had been able to recover from.

Elsewhere in this thread is was mentioned that Germany still had all the Nazis in place everywhere because else the country would not have worked. But that is not the point. The reset was:

a) All is destroyed and MUST be rebuild because else we will freeze and starve to death.

b) Your Nazi neighbor is still there, but it has been made VERY clear who is the new sheriff in town: First the allies, but then pretty much the USA. Germany is still paying for having US solders in the country, providing valuable expensive land for free, and paying for most of the supply chain that is not staffed with US soldiers. And that is the accepted normal.

c) What was left on industry was physically taken as reoperations. Especially the soviets, but also the French did dismantle hole factories and machinery, moving that to their own countries (rightfully so.)

From what I know from school, reading and talking to grandparents: Germany before WW2 doesn't have much relation to pre-WW2 Germany. Suddenly it was normal that women can to "men's jobs" (due to those being more on the dead side). McDonalds. Hollywood. etc

It really makes sense to have a look at a couple of pictures of what was left of Germany after WW2. It's just someone slapping an existing brand name onto a new product. And in this case, personally I would have regarded the brand as damaged and would have picked a different name.

I didn't say we needed to follow their example to the letter; it was just one counterexample to the "woe and ruin for 100 years" comment.

Societies are not operating like a sinus curve like say summer/winter cycles. They are upside-down "U"s. After the peak comes decline, but after the decline there is NOT recovery/growth again before you have a reset.

Germany was the huge winner of WW2 in the sense that after having had a high society they directly were allowed to get another such run. But as nobody wants to bomb us ) anymore, Germany is also in decline now waiting for a reset to come one day...

Sadly the USA will also need a reset before things can begin getting better again.

) I was born in Germany and lived there for 40 years.

After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water.

As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively.

I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forbidden to swim in it, and if you did, you had weird oily chemicals on your skin that felt unhealthy (burn, itching etc).

Back then we had huge production industries upstream, employing thousands of people.

Today you can swim in the river without any problem at all. But the industry and the jobs have shrunken a lot, because not polluting the air and water simply is expensive.

You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing.

So, if the US wants production industry again, and want it to be competitive, than have a look on how the environment in the countries you will be competing with looks like, and then to an informed decision if you really want that.

I'd pick the clean air and water, and have people poisoned far away that I don't know and can ignore.

What would be your choice?

I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference.

So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.

But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

We cannot. We are richer because we don't do it. We export it to areas so poor they view the environmental impact as a fair trade-off for being able to eat.

We can afford to do it right. It will cost more and we'll have to make more prudent, effective, efficient, etc... decisions about producing and allocating goods and services and would need to give up many of the net negative/zero economic activities we like.

We've also likely enriched ourselves by externalizing the negative externalities of some of our goods and services to other countries. That's our choice, and I don't think it's a great one.

> We cannot.

Apple can afford to do test fabrication while abiding by the rules, but chooses not to. https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-fine-over-bay-area...

There are also network effects. Your plant that is energy intensive is closing? Now other manufactures must increase their cost as transportation is increased and local contracts harder to get. Your chemical plant, which has operated within good bounds for a decade can't get a permit to expand, or is protested? Your intake products now either go up in price or become unable to attain them at all.

And even still - there's a lot of manufacturing in Easter Europe. Go to IKEA or an appliance or auto store. You might be surprised to find where things are made these days. Often they'll say "made in EU" instead of the actual country name though.

(China's predicament is not much better, with the added wrinkle that there's absolutely nothing whatsoever they can do about bad demographics due to their size, whereas Central/Eastern Europe can import people once we collectively get over ourselves and let go of uppity xenophobia).

There's not going to be any point even having sweatshops or factories in this region soon. Why bother? If it's anything low or medium-skill and low or medium-capital intense, just open up shop in... Well, why not Uzbekistan? And if double-landlocked isn't your thing, there's dozens of other options.

Plus scaling industrial production is one thing, but if proletarians are unable to afford them because wealth distribution is exponentially concentrated, what is the point?

No but they are significantly cheaper than an employee, A robot can pick up something and move it from A to B for upwards of 10 years. The programming and setup are a fraction of the time a robot can operate reliably

I cannot stress to you how reliable and little maintenance is required for a $60,000 fanuc robot.

The difference between the USA and, for example, China, in manufacturing is the difficulty of getting a new factory built.

If you have a product designed and ready for production, it will take you years to build a factory in the USA. All the while you'll be losing money managing the build, paying your employees and, most importantly, letting your competitors get a head start.

Likewise, if you build that factory in China, it'll be up and running in less than a year and you can start making your R&D money back, get to market before your competitors and not bleed money keeping your companies doors open.

The labor costs are easily offset by removing the logistics of moving the product.

Tesla Gigafactories are a pretty good example of this. The first two took ~3 years to build in Nevada and New York. The third, in Shanghai, took 10 months.

Gigafactory Berlin is a different beast and produces a different product mix.

Gigafactory New York produces photovoltaic cells and Tesla Supercharger assemblies but does not produce batteries or vehicles yet another product mix.

Giga Shanghai just does final vehicle assembly (basically the easiest kind of factory and most minimally regulated) and is a million square feet smaller than the other factories and with no joint partnership/co buildout.

I have a friend who works as an environmental engineer at a chem plant. They work hard to keep things safe and clean, and rigorously monitor their output.

I'm sure we could do even more if we weren't competing in meany areas against legal jurisdictions which DON'T care about such things. We aren't "priced out". We are regulated out and out competed by jurisdiction which have many fewer labor laws and much more lax environmental monitoring. If we are out-competed on product, then we deserve to loose, which is where libertarians and free-trade have a point. But if we are out-competed on keeping people and the environment reasonably safe? That's when we enact trade barriers.

That is how you actually keep the environment and people safe.

Trade barriers however are bullshit and don't work. And they are a lie. You are not building IPhones in the US because building an IPhone in the US would cost three times as much as it would doing in Shenzhen. And people would not be willing to pay that. And that's why they get an exception from the trade barriers. And that list of exceptions basically goes on and on and on...

Anyway, what works, works. This is especially true if that industry had been in the area for long, and therefore has access to a lot of skilled and experienced workers.

But it does not make sense to cry and complain that building such a thing from scratch is "banned". No, it is not banned. It's just a stupid idea, and there are laws against stupid ideas using limited natural resources.

We do manufacture things. Just not in California.

So why does it even matter if California bans manufacturing dangerous things? Who cares? Just manufacture it in some other state. As a bonus, you don't have to pay those high California taxes.

In what world is this a problem?

Texas beats California in total value of manufacturing shipments only because because of its petroleum and coal products manufacturing. And California beats Texas in manufacturing employment.

Again, what is the reason New Mexico, or Utah, or Nebraska, or Tennessee cannot manufacture these things? And why is it a problem if they do so instead of California?

Manufacturing jobs are also some of the most unstable because big companies will shop around for tax breaks. Once they find a political sucker ... they build a new plant and close the old one which wrecks havoc on the local economy. PR teams are designed to mitigate negative feedback when this happens.

Smart politicians know this and will not concede to tax breaks for big companies, like Amazon.

I mean if these jobs are so bad, isn't it good that California is trying to not have them in its own municipalities? The way you laid it out, shouldn't everyone be trying not to have those jobs?

Manufacturing jobs are not bad. The environment and de-regulation makes them bad.

To me a job must have a living wage tied to it and it must be in an environment that doesn't poison the employee, community, and nature.

Others have low standards like calling USA McDonald's a job when they don't even pay enough to live off of. EU McDonald's is forced to pay a living wage because of proper regulations.

California has the highest manufacturing employment and most manufacturing companies of any state, the second highest (behind only Texas) dollar value of manufacturing output.

It is just below the national average in manufacturing as a share of GDP, but its also the fifth highest state in GDP/capita; leaving it still above average in manufacturing GDP/capita.

You may want to ask your LLM to do very detailed research.

Maybe those that own the wealth should pony up more in taxes or give away their factories to the workers so they can run it themselves (something tells me they'll do a better job than greedy owners that just care about money rather than building a community).

And the other limiting factor is knowledge/education. Your region has been known for 100 years to be highly skilled at building $THING? That knowledge is still there and has not fully retired? That's also a resource.

"High labor cost" is a smoke screen. We are not talking about acquiring from a pool of lazy dancing monkeys. The labor you need are for tasks that machines can not yet do. Those jobs are either really shitty, or need a lot of qualification.

Due to this: If you want to build a factory in an area where there aren't already similar factories, you first need to build a University and come back 25 years later.

The articles author should next try to build a business based on offering camel riding in Greenland. Camel riding? Banned in Greenland!!!1

Right, and if the US congress[0] properly cared about the environment, the regulation would require both A) requirements to keep the manufacturing clean if done here, and B) tariffs for goods produced with polluting processes over there, scaled so the costs are somewhat higher if produced dirty.

They can produce cleanly here or there without extra tariffs and without losing market share because some other competitor externalizes the pollution costs.

[0] Tariffs are proper the domain of Congress, not any other branch. OFC, because of this, it isn't really an option for California, since states cannot levy tariffs externally or vs other states.

If you’re worried about people evading the tax, you can make a border adjustment for imports across national borders. Note California is simply forcing things to be done elsewhere.

- I don't need a car, I'll use public transport. - I will only buy and eat the amount of calories I actually burn. - This 10 year old phone actually works pretty well. I don't need a new one.

etc

You need new factories because you want more stuff. If you stop wanting more stuff, you don't need more factories, and therefore nobody needs to cry about his industry being "banned".

I have visited the US a hell lot of times. I swear, I never ever in all these visits in any part of the US had the following thought in my head: "Boy, these people really need more car factories!".

The idea that people setting pollution rules secretly don't care is silly.

California can't fix the whole world's problems.

Also: I suggest rethinking your opening line. It's not very endearing.

The meat of their comment wasn't the personal anecdote, it was actually on government policy:

>>> You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

>>> This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing.

This is 100% about globalization: if some countries let their rivers catch on fire, the externality lets them out-compete anyone who tries to do the process cleanly. So if you let their externality-fueled products into your country, you just can't build similar things, because they wouldn't be price-competitive.

If labor and environmental standards were strong and global, or countries with high standards refused to trade with countries with low standards, we wouldn't have this situation. There would be an economic motivation to develop and implement cleaner processes.

But what will be the result? The product now has equal cost to be produced, but the market is gone.

People consume cheap stuff because it is cheap. If it is no longer cheap, they will not consume.

US americans just need to make up their minds. Do they want keep getting more and more and more cheap stuff? Fine. Then go on exploiting other regions of the planet. Or do you have enough cheap stuff now? Ok, then nobody needs another factory.

Many on HN are living in a society where it is normal to use a TELEPHONE for only two years before throwing it away.

What would happen if you instead used it for 5 years? No more factories needed. Problem solved. You don't have to compete, as there is no competition.

The result of charging the true cost of T-Shirt to the consumer is not that everybody now has 100 Fair-Traded-Ecofriendly T-Shirts at home that they don't wear. They will notice that 10 T-Shirts are more than enough if you wash your clothes once per week.

What I am trying to say is: The demand is only there due to the option of exploitation. Take away the part of ruining other peoples lives to get cheap stuff, then it's no longer interesting and will just stop.

So of course you can take the detour, try to re-industrialize, and then find out that your people do not actually like this kind of work, and that they for sure also aren't willing to buy your stuff at the price you are asking.

There is a reason nobody would be so stupid to produce "Make America Great Again" merch in America. Your target audience would not buy it if it was made in America.

It is pragmatic to simply skip this step and end up with the same result: You'll just consume less.

No, why would you say that? When America and Europe built their wealth, they were mainly (though not exclusively) producing and selling manufactured goods for themselves. This whole idea of a poor country developing by building polluting factories to make items for rich countries is a more recent and different thing.

Europe and America insisting on certain labor and environmental standards as a condition of trade wouldn't mean poor countries can't build factories for themselves. At worst, you just split the current one big market into two smaller markets: an expensive and clean one, and a dirty and cheap one.

Do we let other countries wage war, pillage, etc. because others gathered wealth that way previously?

Practically, ‘in theory’ might actually be doable - if there was a single, overarching regulatory environment. That was enforced.

Chances are, that would defacto make a bunch of people starve in poorer countries, and blow a lot of stuff up, so would also likely be worse than ‘the disease’. At least right now.

But maybe I’m just being a cynical bastard.

They probably do if it's near their backyard

America barely cares about the domestic poor[1] - do you think its captains of industry will care about the poor abroad? Charity begins at home.

1. See locations of Superfund sites. Or for a modern example, where they are choosing to build AI datacenters powered by on-site diesel generators or gas turbines.

Then in 1995, congress "chose not to renew" that provision.

Now you and I literally and directly pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste. Companies don't really. Yet somehow they "Can't make factories" here

I'm not sure about that, maybe it is based on the definition of "safe". There are tortilla chips made in Chicago that explicitly say they cannot be sold in California on the packaging. This is due to chemicals banned in Prop 65.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1220zn9/...

CA can't say "the factory that made these chips emitted chemical X into the air during manufacturing, but none of it is in the final product", so you can't import it.

The Federal Government can, but not an individual state.

No, California can't do that. States cannot impose tariffs per the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1...

They could push for more regulations at the federal level (and indeed, Californians do this quite often!)

Yes exactly. And most of the complaints in this post is not stuff that's outright banned but stuff that's "hard to do".

These companies are complaining about how much more it costs to do this AND keep the environment clean. In an ideal world we would just have environmental protections all over the world so these companies don't simply find some small town with a local gov't they can buy off and do whatever they want

If it was California wouldn’t be covered in superfund sites that originated from industrial activities that took place decades ago.

In your proposal you'd also cede the global market to China- because nobody in Angola cares about how those solar panels were made.

This is about as true as saying "But people don't care about child sexual abuse". Sure, those partying with Epstein don't.

Plenty of people do care and indeed are today making sacrifices that align with this. Including lowering living standards. If you don't then that's on you, but speak for yourself.

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-b...

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493

The other thing you're not understanding is how the state can enforce regulations and how the federal government has to. States cannot levy tariffs.

That's almost exactly how my dad and many of his siblings got permanently disabling muscular dystonia. The old times were fucking bad and we don't want them back.

> So, if the US wants production industry again

It should be noted that the VALUE of US industrial output is many times higher than it was 20 years ago, even if the VOLUME is lower.

The good old coal? Have a look at the life expectancy of a coal worker, and maybe a ct scan of a coal workers lung.

Good old nuclear? Will you accept the nuclear waste getting store in your neighborhood? No? What about your neighbors neighbor? No? Keep asking until you get a yes. See you again after having asked 341.8 Million people.

There are reasons we moved on from this and de-industrialized. Because the industries we got rid of simply weren't actually that great. Go visit a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen/China. I have done it a couple of times. The part of electronics production that is not done by machines is painful and exhausting work. Your back will hurt. Your eyes will hurt.

I really wonder what people are thinking how these jobs look like. Nobody would want them. The only ones in the US who would accept those jobs would be immigrants who have seen far worse and therefore view these jobs as an upgrade. But the US doesn't want those immigrants. So why try to build industries creating jobs only the kind of people would accept that you do not want in the country?

It's mostly a question of when, not if.

Food is slightly different, judging by the rates of obesity people can afford more than they need.

https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2024-Democr...

This is the current DNC platform. There are zero mentions of a universal / single payer / socialized healthcare system.

There are four mentions of "healthcare" it refers to maintaining the ACA (which is a bad law), making a more integrated health care system in the US territories (Guam, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc.), climate law which will improve health care nebulously, and a vague statement about the supreme court hurting healthcare decisions (which is just a statement about them supporting the murder of babies).

What do you want? If there were more Democrats in office in 2010 we would have already had socialized healthcare.

People keep getting pissed that the party without power can't do things. If you want a politician to change something, you have to vote for them first

Even the people who vote for Trump understand that, but so many people who think they are smart can't understand that about voting for democrats. They continue to get pissed that the democrats secure the presidency and nothing else and can get nothing done as is intentionally the design of the american system

FDR's New Deal was possible because the Democrat party held about 80% control of both houses of congress and the presidency. Their threat to pack the supreme court to bypass them worked because it was trivially doable for them. You want a New New Deal? You have to vote for more Democrats.

Current democratic party is currently a pro-corporate pro-deregulation party, basically Reaganites from 80s.

Less stuff and less pollution everywhere.

Something to bear in mind when you are being told environmental damage is being caused by the poor or some foreign country.

https://iere.org/how-tourists-affect-the-environment/

And that choice is basically the exact opposite of what western civilization is heading for, and thanks to the AI boom, it has never been worse at any time in human history, I guess. Which means you are likely surrounded by people who want the opposite of what you want. That will be problematic.

However, this really only would be the proper answer if given by a majority as a community. In a crowd of people who want more, more, more more MORE, you will just drown and die.

But in principle you are right:

No, you do not really need to re-industrialize your country. Instead think about how endless growth in a reality of finite resources is going to play out. California is just fine as it is. Let's think about where Californians will get drinking water from in the near future, instead of thinking about building water-consuming factories.

- a factory is built relatively far away from populated areas

- workers were moving closer to the factory, building houses (when factory workers could still afford them and were allowed to build them) closer and closer to the factory

- workers retire, die, their now adult children live in, or inherit, the houses

- adult children complain about factory being too close to the city, complain about trucks, noise, pollution, dust, demand this and that

In some cases, there is the next step too:

- factory eventually closes down, people complain about having to drive to work far away, usually to the capital city where factories and many other businesses still operate. Centralization bad! Same people protest when someone else wants to start a new factory, industrial zone, anything in their city.

In some more extreme cases:

- since everyone is driving to the capital city, they also shop there, send post there, visit doctors there, do bank stuff there... this means that the store, post office, the bank, etc. close down in their smaller city. Again, people protest. Sometimes literally: https://siol-net.translate.goog/novice/slovenija/krajani-gri... & https://www-nadlani-si.translate.goog/novice/zapirajo-kar-dv... & https://www-kostel-si.translate.goog/objava/1129317?_x_tr_sl...

Another facet is that not only we got to enjoy clean air and outsourced pollution, we also paid our strategic enemies enough for them to transcend us.

One thing is to regulate the industrial sector to be cleaner if waaaay more expensive and another is to just forbid stuff that can be reasonably be done cleanly (but again, waaaay more expensive than in asia, for example)

Then author just wanted to be over dramatic about how it’s not cost competitive to build in the Bay Area vs places like Reno where the land is cheaper and labor is less. Their scape goat or whipping boy is regulations but that’s highly myopic at best.

A hell lot of industries, including most the original author is mentioning, simply would not work in California. California is running out of drinking water for humans. You can de-regulate all that you want, even cancel all environmental laws, but that will not change the reality: You don't have water. Want to build a water-consuming factory? Great, but please go to somewhere where water is available.

Yes, bureaucracy can be annoying, and of course California has a hell lot of "let's not fix the actual problem, but make it mandatory to put up a sign about it" regulations that for someone from the outside (like me) look silly. If the state of California knows this substance REALLY is harmful, why... is it here?! Either it's not really harmful, but if it is... what? A sign is the solution?! ;)

So I understand people complaining about environmental regulations in California. We had the same in Europe for decades. Everybody was complaining and making fun about all the EU regulations. Then the UK left via Brexit. And learned a lesson. And today nobody is joking about EU regulations anymore.

Anyway: One may call it "banned", or "expensive" or whatever. But it really is "does it really make sense to put this here?".

Green manufacturing tech is much closer in viability, now is the best time to re-industrialize. 1/5 of people having no work is a crisis, how can they support their family?

You are absolutely relying on some very outdated tropes, especially because I know China is in your mind. China remains a production powerhouse and has radically overhaul the country environmentally in the last 15 years. It's pulling away fast and hard in green energy. It's a country that had to go from mass poverty to modern era in 50 years compared to the hundreds of years. They aren't perfect yet, not California level of drinking water from sewers, but I fully believe they'll get there and still be a production power house by not having delusions and anti-engineering drive decisions.

I really meant what I wrote: Compare the environment. Pretty much everybody in Shenzhen hates Shenzhen. People live in tiny apartments. And not because they are poor: Even if you have money, you live in such a tiny box. Because everybody understands that Shenzhen is a Machine, and you are a part of that machine. Your goal is to one day be able to have made enough money to be able to exit that system, and unlike the USA, that actually really works.

Want to build electronics manufacturing and be able to compete with Shenzhen? Start by first building 50,000 box apartments of 200 square feet in size. Next step: Find 50,000 US Americans who want to work in that machine.

So yes, when it comes to electronics, it's not so much about getting poisoned by a poisoned nature, but by suffering in another way.

For clothes it's a different matter, for example. There you still have the oldschool stuff - want the US to be able to compete? Let's give the kids some cancer!

Let me try to re-phrase: Go to the place where stuff is successfully made that you want to in-source into the USA. Then make an informed decision if you really want the baggage that comes with it at home.

I am massively benefitting from something like Shenzhen existing on this planet. It is so effective and productive because it was designed for that from the ground up. Would I want anything like Shenzhen anywhere near me? Hell no!

Most US Americans asking for re-industrialization have neither worked in those industries nor even have a clue what it feels like working in those industries. The people who are asking for these industrial jobs to be re-created are those who do not have any intention to take one of those jobs.

Chinese cities had terrible air quality 20 years ago. Now they don't.

The Chinese and Indian governments have climate change plans that they're actively working on, sometimes ahead of schedule. The current US government has banned the words "climate change" in official documents.

Americans seem to love to count their past successes and then declare the game is over and they won.

History doesn't end though.

The same is true re: data center water use. Evaporative cooling is cheaper. You can build a DC that uses little or no water but it costs more.

And those people left jobless still have the right to vote. So you'll have to bribe them with welfare or invest in their upskilling, otherwise they'll turn to crime to survive and vote the most extremist parties to power that will undo all your environmentalism.

It also leaves you economically and militarily vulnerable to the countries you outsourced all your manufacturing too, as you can't fight back an invading army of mass produced consumer drones with just your remaining HR and software departments.

>I'd pick the clean air and water, and have people poisoned far away that I don't know and can ignore.

Until they mass migrate as refugees out of their polluted hlleholes you helped create, and move into your clean country straining your resources, making it your problem once again. Or, they tool up and economically or militarily crush you, turning your country into one of their colonies.

You(the West in thsi case) reap what you sow. There's no free lunch where you can have your cake and eat it too. In a highly globalized, highly mobile world, things tend to come back at you pretty quickly and the only ones safe from this are the ones who profited the most form this, the billionaires with private islands and doomsday bunkers.

In the real world, decided to move to a part of the planet where this question doesn't even come up, due to society having different priorities and a different base definition of "quality of life".

I know, that's why I wasn't judging it as being your own perspective but the general business perspective of the west that lead to the current situation.

> due to society having different priorities and a different base definition of "quality of life".

What is their definition of quality of life?

Of course a world where everyone has an equal quality of life is almost a dream but I’d say humanity has been very slowly, very slowly getting there.

What we do now is that “1st world countries” focus on high value manufacturing and growing countries unfortunately take up the dangerous and polluting manufacturing — but bear in mind, the US and other industrial countries also had the same phase.

What fucks up this is when trust breaks down between countries. Now suddenly you need to bring lower value manufacturing in house for national security even if it doesn’t make economic sense. It’s inefficient, puts the world back at square one, causes everyone to fight for survival instead of progress, and frankly leads us away from that “Star Trek” future.

This is also why we’re having to worry about asking these questions now when we didn’t so much have to 20 years ago. We’re living in a mildly cooked part of humanity’s timeline where trust seems to be fleeting.

This statement makes me smile. Although I see where this comes from...

In part that's simply because while looking different, the general environment is fostering respecting nature, giving room for arts and creative and having an open mind.

(This example of course is coming from a past world where you could safely travel to/from the US, say, 10 years ago:)

Travelling from say Portugal to Miami ) would give you a massive culture shock. Portugal to San Diego? Not so much.

) Yes, Portugal to Key West would have worked.

I mean, the true reason here seems to be that producing stuff without polluting is impossible if you have to compete with stuff produced with lesser pollution standards.

In theory, this could be an argument for heavy import tariffs from countries with lesser pollution standards. The downside, of course, is that at the end of the day this would still mean "stuff is more expensive, maybe a lot more", which is obviously unpopular as it means fewer people can get the stuff. (And of course, a US state's ability to restrict trade with other US states is extremely limited)

The working class citizens of China have paid the price for all the industrial factories. Don't believe it, look up the cancer studies China has published. (Oh right, communist countries always tell the truth, right?)

Famous Trust Buster Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive republican who openly stated he had no desire to harm or kill industry in the USA but was instead working to ensure there continued to be competitive pressure to make that industry work better.

Employment has never effectively redistributed wealth. Possibly it improved things a little bit after the black plague reduced the labor pool by about 25%.

The only peaceful and low death form of fixing obscene wealth inequality has always been government, through taxes.

Inheriting money from your parents is taxed lower than earning your own money through work. Making more money due to already having money is taxed lower than earning your own money.

US Americans by a large majority over decades got trained to believe changing that would have something to do with "socialism", which was made a bad word.

But this isn't about re-distribution, making people equal or anything.

It's just that it is not logical, does not make sense, and in the end will destroy your society if already having money, which provides no benefit to society whatsoever, is rewarded over producing something, which does provide a benefit.

Why does a teacher who provides REAL benefit to society in the US has less yearly net income than someone who does not work at all but has once inherited 200k from his parents?

You have been trained to find all of this normal, and to believe it's your fault. Just work harder! No, it's not your fault. Working harder won't change anything.

So imagine you have one of the richest countries on this planet. But you don't really have enough work for every human to work full-time. Why is this a problem instead of an ideal? What strange goal is "everyone should work hard" when it comes to enjoying life? If you have an insanely rich country, there are far better solutions than trying to artificially create jobs that make no sense.

You can not compare this to a POOR country with high unemployment. There unemployment is a problem. In the US? Who cares if there is no factory to work in? Instead go help your neighbor. Study something. Become an artist. Do a public gardening project.

Again, the problem is that "having money already" that is of no use to society whatsoever is valued and awarded higher than any of those useful things above.

So, Step 1 for the US would be: You don't have to take away anything from anyone. But stop rewarding people for already having money.

As the CEO and owner of a German limited company I can choose between paying me a salary, getting taxed 45% ) for that, or paying myself a dividend, getting taxed 25% ). The first time I learned that 20 years ago I found it totally crazy and could not believe it. I still find it crazy today. Even in my own f'ing company my OWN work is valued less by society than me owning my company!

*) Oversimplification, but the ratios are correct

Frankly, any deindustrialized country is quite simply irrelevant. You need industry to have a middle class. You need middle class for capitalist consumption. There's a reason why american corporations kowtow to China now. The USA thought it could deindustrialize and act as the world's boss. China is proving them wrong via relentless industrialization. I only wish my own country had the balls to do the same.

I used to think this way, but I've come to realize that it's very short-sighted. It's not sustainable, and we're already seeing how unchecked industrialization over the last couple centuries is leading to unintended/undesirable effects on our health, and indeed the suitability of the environment we need to live in. Sure, those problems can be pushed onto future generations, and so far (maybe) we've been able to solve them. But if we care at all about humanity's ability to thrive, we need to be more careful.

In developed countries, nobody has to struggle anymore just to stay alive, which is a far cry from the way it was 200 years ago. Advancements now are along the lines of increasing entertainment, or quality of life. But enjoying a good life doesn't have to be a zero-sum proposition, and I think society should put a higher cost on the ability of wealthy people to use up irreplaceable natural resources for their own benefit.

You know what's not sustainable? Exponential growth fueled by credit.

Banks loaning money at nearly zero percent interest. Money that gets loaned out, spent, deposited back into the bank and loaned out again, and again, exponentially, until a ludicrously huge financial callstack is created.

This financial callstack wants to unwind. It can only do so safely by the payment of debts. At some point, someone will actually have to go out there and extract value out of this planet in order to pay back those debts. Since debt grows exponentially, so does the harvesting of the resources of this planet.

If you want to solve the problem, you need to go to the source. You need to get rid of credit. Without this, environmentalism is nothing but national suicide. You're opting out of exponential growth and promptly outcompeted by the countries that didn't opt out.

> In developed countries, nobody has to struggle anymore just to stay alive, which is a far cry from the way it was 200 years ago.

Yeah... Because they industrialized and got filthy rich. Now they can afford to give so called "rights" to their citizens.

Rights cost money. They don't appear out of thin air. Somebody's gotta work to provide them. Even the right to not get killed in broad daylight only exists because extremely violent men with guns are protecting the rest. Those men gotta be paid.

Money is not infinite. It runs out. The music can't stop. Gotta keep making money in order to keep providing all those nifty rights. The simple reality is if you don't have real industries you're probably not making that much money. My country is essentially the world's soy farm, nvidia stock alone probably moves more money in a day than my entire country put together.

Look at the national debts of countries the world over. That's money they don't have. Money future generations will be paying interest on for a long time. You want to get reelected but you're broke, so you borrow money you don't have and spend it all giving "benefits" to a population that is dumb enough to think it comes for free. Then there's so much money circulating the value of the currency is inflated away, and people's children grow up and get radicalized when they realize most of their taxes are spent on interest payments on loans made by the previous generation.

Not a single atom on the planet has to be moved to extinguish all debts. Money and debt are (very useful and powerful!) bookkeeping constructs only.

> Look at the national debts of countries the world over. That's money they don't have.

Then who has it? Modern money is based on debt, and where there's a debt, there must be a creditor.

> Banks loaning money at nearly zero percent interest. Money that gets loaned out, spent, deposited back into the bank and loaned out again [...] Money is not infinite.

You seem to be basing your argument on some seriously outdated and thoroughly refuted models of money.

You should elaborate more on this bold claim.

> Then who has it?

Plenty of people. Treasury bonds holders. Pension funds. Insurance companies. Other countries. The government owes all of those people and regularly pays them interest.

> You seem to be basing your argument on some seriously outdated and thoroughly refuted models of money.

Fractional reserve banking is outdated and refuted?

Which is precisely why it's so short-sighted to try to solve your problem by "wiping out the entire Amazon jungle and replacing it with a world class high technology industry." If you're going to have a magic button to solve problems, then why not use it wisely, instead of propagating the spiral towards destruction?

> The simple reality is....

True -- there are no magic buttons. The reality is that people with wealth and power use them to take finite global resources and leverage them to ensure they they stay wealthy and powerful. That is implicitly not sustainable, as well as being questionably moral. It's not possible to avoid being part of the system, but you don't have to actively make it worse. You can advocate for fairer alternatives, or at least not wish for the destruction of entire major global ecosystems.

Wow. Why, because the Amazon is just a bunch of trees or something boring? If "high technology industry" is so much more valuable without even thinking twice about it, you probably don't understand very much of the world.

Where do you find clean water to fill the pool with?

> You need industry to have a middle class.

Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves.

It is very much possible to keep your air and environment clean, and still reasonably grow and remain relevant - look at France.

> You need middle class for capitalist consumption.

Again, industry workers were not middle class, and if you pay them enough to be middle class, your product's price stops being competitive.

To have middle class for capitalist consumption, you need to stop funneling literally _all the money_ to single-digit amount of people and companies, leaving everyone else poor, regardless of what they do for work.

The Earth is literally surrounded by water. I'm sure people will find a way. Treat the water if needed.

> if you pay them enough to be middle class, your product's price stops being competitive

Tell that to China's growing middle class, not me. We have western corporations shitting all over western values and culture and kowtowing before China and their censorship because they can't afford to lose the chinese market. That's where money is flowing now. It's one of the reasons why Trump wants to weaken the US dollar.

How does this work without water?

This creates an insane political environment where the rich as fuck agribusiness which owns that final water right is incentivized to get that tiny municipal water usage reduced as much as possible to squeeze out a tiny bit more water for their own business, rather than reform the dumb water rights system which would ensure that they only shoulder a tiny tiny portion of drought scarcity but probably force them to pay a little bit for irrigation improvements or stop growing almonds as cheaply.

The only reason the rest of the country even knows about the California water situation is because those bottom rung agribusinesses are still wealthy as all fuck and have actively paid for national political campaigns

The definitive book on the subject is "Cadillac Desert"

IMO, the (existing) towns should get more state support to have affordable safe domestic water. The shortage is not raw untreated water, but just transporting it and treating it.

The farmers? I sympathize, but they are trying to grow crops in an extremely fertile but arid valley. It's going to be constrained by the natural environment.

Stop promoting overpopulation. The USA adds ~1.8 million of people every year. That's one more Phoenix city, every year.

Within my peer group of people on the spectrum (which very often comes with a depression, which is logical) we've discussed Vitamin D studies for years. And multiple of us decided to give it a try for a couple of months. And neither those who tried it INSTEAD of an SSRI, nor those that took both (SSRI + D) could report any measurable difference.

I have a theory on why is that: It is known that low levels of Vitamin D is one likely cause for depression - in Northern Europe, where during winter time people do not get enough sunlight, that correlates very clearly with the suffering of depression.

But potentially it simply does not work the other way round: I moved to near the equator, and I therefore basically have sunlight shining out of my butt, but still am depressed. It makes sense that in this case Vitamin D makes no difference at all.

In summary my theory would be: Vitamin D only has an effect on a depression that was caused by a lack of Vitamin D.

1.) It's killing my libido 2.) It's too strong

For 1.) - yes, this is a very very common side effect. And it's logical - you simply get "triggered" less. Applies for me, too.

And 2.) is the same that a lot of people fail to understand: Then try a lower dosage!

Unlike most anti-depressants, where you have to constantly increase the dose because your brain just generates more receptors to fight back, SSRIs hardly wear off.

Also, relax about the "become accustomed" part. Should your Serotonin levels be too low, then they are too low. Just think about it like you think about table salt. It would be just as unhealthy to try to "get off" salt.

All of this being said: There are tons of different kinds of root causes for depression. A good rule of thumb is: Are you depressed because bad things happened to you? Then seek psychological therapy, and potentially combine this with medication in case it would be too painful to uncover the dark things. Are you depressed on a regular basis, but can not name any valid logical reason? Then your brain has a chemical problem, so stop treating it like this is an illness, but do what you would do if your car would turn on the "oil warning" lamp. You can not replace oil with therapy or willpower.

And this is about industrial robots, which is much easier to handle than what household robots supposed to be about. Will we ever see a robot that will be able to take grandma to the tub and clean here, to then carry her up the stairs to bed, without killing her? I doubt it.

And finally: Boston Dynamics has actual working products for ages now. They don't need to cheat by using RC toy remote controllers to control their robots. And they are doing serious expectation management. This is completely different league than what Musk is doing.

Also, I don't think it's desirable to have robots taking away human work without first solving the question "and what are we going to do with all the unemployed?".

It absolutely makes no sense to convert a car manufacturer into an AI company. Or a robotics company after you have build CAR FACTORIES around the planet.

If you as a CEO don't like the business you are running for your shareholders, it is time to get a new CEO that does. There still are managers that really like running car companies.

I don't get the feeling that BYD management is bored about the EV business...

I think you could wake up one day, read the WSJ with the headline "All Tesla cars ever sold have just exploded at the same time, killing hundred thousands of people" - and the stock price would surge 10%.

I really would like to know what the stock price would do if Tesla had good news. But I guess we'll never find out about that one... ;)

Most people in the western world have no clue HOW bad the crisis in our electronics industry caused by AI BS, tariff wars etc is.

When you wanted to get anything done in China as a western company, last year you might have issues to have China allow EXPORT. For example due to the pissing contest about Nexperia, a lot of really basic chips like USB controllers suddenly were forbidden for export.

And since January 1st 2026, things got far worse: Now some standard connectors (that are, amongst others, used in cars) that are made in the USA can no longer be IMPORTED into China. Which means that you now can typically will have parts missing on PCBAs that you then have to re-solder with the missing US components somewhere else. And many don't have the competence for this anymore.

This is all just wild speculation.

And I am pretty sure that right now it will be next to impossible to source parts for such a complex product like a robot. I need grey market brokers locally in Shenzhen to get even the most basic stuff at insane prices. And a lot of stuff simply is no longer available at all, due to things like "Intel has replaced anyone with a brain with an AI, and now no longer is able to produce and chip embedded N150 CPUs from the US to China, because... how?".

Tesla is now putting in 4680 battery cells back into the Model Y. Years after they had discontinued the 4680 program. What does that mean? They are using up whatever parts they still have, like everybody else in the electronics industry is now doing.

Good luck buying a computer, phone, fridge, car or toaster in the second half of 2026.

It's a pity our American friends haven't noticed that while yes, indeed, the worst of the worst scum got sent to the US. It is just that you had set your brain UI theme to dark mode, and did not notice that the threat isn't that kid with brown skin getting sent to concentration camp by your Gestapo, but those "we want immigrants that look like they are from Norway" folks. 1)

In the distant past, you US Americans still had libraries. You could have used them to find out what there is a reason we over here in Europe and Africa did not want the Trunps and Thiels and Musks and Karps. 2)

For those who are reading this from inside the US: At what point if EVER are you going to get out of your chair, use your second amendment rights, and get rid of your crazy fascist brainworm Nazi scum that you had been praying to?

I know. It is too much to ask for. OK OK. Outside of your comfort zone to fight back. Then go watch MELANIA, a documentation on how about rape and abuse and illegal immigration is totally fine as long as your skin has the right color and the boob job was done well.

1) I myself am German, male, straight, blonde hair. I am allowed to say that our type is the cancer of the human race. After all these hundreds of years, you STILL haven't understood you can not trust us?

2) I know Karp is not from Germany. But he wrote his doctoral thesis in Germany, and it can be summarized as "I am a totally crazy asshole and want to cause as much pain and suffering as possible onto humanity, can I please do that kthxbye?"