[Uncle Miltie]

A: By producing the intellectual property that the factory minions elsewhere in the world buy or license from us.

Value comes from ideas, these days.

Microsoft. Apple. Google. Oracle.

Even among big industrial concerns, the value of the idea is paramount.

Farmers buy tractors and combines in part based on the value of the software and sensors embedded in them. Did you know that fertilizers are applied by the square yard depending on whether last year’s combine reported poor yeilds for that square yard? Or that video cameras and a computer decide for each plant they view whether to spray an herbicide on that plant because it was identified as a weed?

Why aren’t people starving in the world anymore? Because we put more land into production? No. Because we Americans engineered more effective plants, and because our computing industry effectively eliminated rotting in the supply chain.

We can make stuff: Intellectual stuff.

[BikerJoe]

We can make stuff: Intellectual stuff.

Which is promptly stolen by our competitors because they could care less about IP rights.

We need to do it ALL, ourselves. In a pinch, they'll need our ideas less than we'll need their production, so whose really dependent on whom?

[driftdiver]

Millions of people are starving.

[NetLiberty]

We can make stuff: Intellectual stuff.

I used to think this way, but as a country we also don't have a monopoly on design and creativity. China, India and other growing nations are also getting into the design and intellectual property game, and the winners will be those countries who have both design capabilities and an integrated design and manufacturing base, preferably within the same company. Not enough to just design something and throw it over to China--the most agile players of the future are designers who are also close to the manufacturing process. Outsourcing has hidden costs, and designers who are close to their manufacturing processes have substantially increased efficiencies.

Couple of good links for on this topic for background reading:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/02/we-still-make-stuff-in-san-francisco/70946/

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110215,0,442445.column

[Minus_The_Bear]

You can't eat ideas.

Most young Americans don't respect copyright or intellectual property rights.

Nations without manufacturing bases cannot thrive.

[NVDave]

Yea. Right.

The Chinese (and Indians) are known for respecting “intellectual property.”

Riiiiight.

http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/china-emerging-markets-free-trade-emerging/3/24/2011/id/33561

[TSgt]

When times get tough you can cut out all the services you want but if you can’t build a tractor you’re screwed.

Not everyone goes to college, we need manufacturing jobs for those who don’t.

Of course that would mean unions and big government need to get the hell out of the way.

[Jim Noble]

“We can make stuff: Intellectual stuff.”

Yeah, 10% of us can - max.

The other 90% need sh*t to do,

[Jonty30]

You could make stuff, if your education system was number 1 in the world instead somewhere between doltish and imbecilic.

I don’t think Americans are aware of how badly your politicians have been bought and paid for. Many of them will be all right.

You won’t.

[bigbob]

I’ll give you some support, as this is not a popular view on FR.

This is nothing new - the theory of comparative advantage goes back to the early 1800s, when David Ricardo used trade between England and Portugal as an example. It was very hard to produce wine in England but fairly easy to make cloth. Both could be produced in Portugal, but it was better for Portugal to focus on making wine, and trade it’s excess wine for English-made cloth. Likewise, the theory is that we will be better off by allowing the Chinese to make our iPads while use create software applications that run on them.

One can argue that there is a role for government to help define and focus investment and innovation on key national priorities. This was the role played by MITI in Japan in the 1950s focusing that countrys energy on miniaturization, which led to industrial growth ranging from transistor radios (semiconductors) to cameras (video and optics).

It is hard to urn-ring the bell. Outsourcing non-core functions to a country or region with a comparative advantage is what good businesses are supposed to do. It may be possible to find a middle ground that aligns corporate profits and potential with public value, but the leadership of the last 40-50 years has not risen to that challenge. The last example was Kennedy’s “putting a man on the moon and returning him safel to earth”...think of the power a unifying national vision might have today. (And I don’t mean “green jobs”).

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

We can make stuff: Intellectual stuff.

Which is promptly hijacked by overseas competitors who cheerfully violate intellectual property rights with impunity.

Regards,
GtG