Losing America's Livelihood

The New American ^ | 1/26/04 | William Jasper

[Protagoras]

Actually we need to understand that this will accelerate. economics and freedom.

[RightWhale]

What I did was go to amazon.com and search on robotics. There is a lot of stuff, I picked out a couple of the cheaper books. Actually, I'm not entirely new to this field, did some work years ago in LISP and Prolog. Check out Lego, they have a starter robotics kit with most of the types of devices in the box that one should learn how to program. Legos in space!

[RightWhale]

I see the same thing. If we continue to see life as something that appears on our TV screens and in our malls, it is just a matter of time.

[GingisK]

In a free market, the job goes to the lowest bidder. Unless you're a union thug.

Or an American engineer, generally not a member of a union.

The basic problem you are overlooking is that the outsourcing bypasses labor laws that are tightly coupled to the standard of living that is commonplace in the US. It is simply impossible to be price competitive when the employment rate in India is below what someone makes at the minimum wage here in the US. Do you honestly expect college-trained engineers with thirty years of experience to work below the minimum wage? Perhaps you expect us to reach the ripe age of 54, then retrain in what? Making picture frames?

Under these circumstances, people in this country are out of their minds if they attend engineering school now. This will place the US in the position of obtaining all high tech artifacts from third world suppliers, including the weapon systems that are supposed to make this Nation independent. Do you honestly think India and China are going to supply this Nation with first-line systems, or will they keep those for their own military? It won't take long before this Nation is a third world consumer.

BTW, establishing global independence of this nature is exactly how global governance can and will come to fruition.

Finally, I expect there is nothing about your job that makes you immune to outsourcing, unless you are a plumber or something. We all can't be plumbers. Others on this thread have pointed out that if you don't get upset when your fellow citizens' jobs are outsourced, there is nothing to stop yours from becoming history either. It boils down to what the Jews said following WWII: They came for the gypsies, but I wasn't a gypsy, so I didn't care. They came for the infirm, but I didn't care because I wasn't infirm. They came for the outspoken, but I didn't care because I was not outspoken. They came for the intellectuals, but I didn't care because I wasn't an intellectual. When they came for me, there was nobody left to care.

[GingisK]

. So what now?

The future is the way they live in Mexico, or Peru, or Pakistan. Get used to the idea of living in a third world country. The decision has been made to place you there. You seem to accept the idea, because you sure do accept the implementation.

The solution: Say "To hell with the rest of the world". Keep our manufacturing and the jobs in this country, and let the others build their Nations they same way we built ours: By building our own Nation.

When a company places a factory in a third world country, let the products be sold in that country at price appropriate for that country. Prohibit those products from being imported for use here until that local standard of living matches our own. The world's economy really can be built up without destroying own own.

[jpsb]

Please tell me I don't have to write LISP code, I like C and java. But I'll do Cobol, fortran or even Basic if I have to, (Ada and pascal with a gun to my head) but LISP. I don't know jack about LISP and have heard it sucks.

[RightWhale]

The solution: Say "To hell with the rest of the world". Keep our manufacturing and the jobs in this country

Don't expect a repeat or a continuation of the American Industrial Revolution. That was a one time event and it isn't coming back. Vigorous space development could be the replacement, but it's not being set up correctly.

[RightWhale]

JAVA is good at this time. Aside from that it probably doesn't matter which language is used. Use libraries or create your own device drivers. Who knows, maybe some fast machine language drivers would be marketable.

[Vision]

Last night I was troubleshooting AOL software on my uncle's computer. The tech was in India.

[jpsb]

Just picked up Robot Building for Beginners
by David Cook. Thanks for the encouragement, been wantng to do something like this for a long time. I am a working programmer and hopefully my job is safe but knowing enbedded programming and Robotics would be a big plus. Also I own a bar so my customers can have a good time "testing" my robats. It will be fun.

[RightWhale]

Aha! Excellent opportunity for a young 'bot to learn to mix and serve drinks and also keep the dish of salted nuts replenished. Not to mention keeping the bar wiped up.

[jpsb]

My thinking exactly.

[GingisK]

Vigorous space development could be the replacement...

Space engineering is engineering. The application is space vehicles. The design principles and the operations are unchanged from any other device that uses mechanical equipment under the control of electronics. Engineering for space can also be outsourced. Knowledge of robotics won't make you special.

I've been in software for over thirty years. I do not program web pages or windows. I write code for embedded devices ... everything from remote telemetry, servo-driven motion control (robotics), process control, and so on. Some of this experience was on the Skylab project.

Robotics envolves writing algorithms that takes into account the length of moment arms, joint geometry, inertial ballistics, and coordinating the timing of multiple movements. The software for this is mature and is "shrink-wrapped", as the marketeers say. Applying that software to a new machine is a "drag and drop" process with dialog boxes to supply the length of momemt arms, mass distribution, gear reduction ratios, and so on.

This leaves the mechanical design of the remotely-operated gizmo. Reading a few books from amazon is a good start, but the number of jobs in such desciplines is very small. Expect them to screen for these positions using multiple Phds and years of experience.

NASA generally hires Phds from brand-name schools, usually following miltary/areospace employment. Actual space hardware is contracted to established companies like Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics, etc. Nationwide there are currently about 150 such jobs open, including non-areospace. Those jobs will be divided among those currently looking for such jobs and new graduates. Increased activity in the space industry will not increase the available job list to encompass the number of damn good people who are already out of work in those very engineering disciplines. There is no reason to expect those jobs to be reserved for American engineers.

Why do you think robotics is some special form of engineering for which there is a shortage of experts? That just is not the case.

[GingisK]

Please tell me I don't have to write LISP code...

LISP has no place in robotics.

[GingisK]

Shall I assume you can deduce for yourself what these sort of articles are all about?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1056800/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1057093/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1064882/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/929563/posts

There are many of these just on FreeRepublic.

[DannyTN]

"Actually we need to understand ... economics and freedom."

Agreed we do!!! We need to understand the implications of both. We need to understand history as well. We need to understand....

• How England's free trade policies resulted in the devastation of their manufacturing ability at the beginning of the 20th century.
• How America's and Germany's protectionist policies built our industries up.
• How collapse of world trade resulted in the great depression.
• The difference between comparative advantage and the one way transfer of production capability.
• The danger to freedom of transfering your manufacturing capacity to your known enemy (China).
• The incentives that drive corporate managers and individual firms in a free society and the role that government should play when those incentives are at odds with the best interest of the country as a whole.
• The role that government's play in establishing and maintaining competitive advantage at the national level.

[RightWhale]

Fortunately I am not looking for jobs. This means I have my own business plan. I am also not looking at space business as it is. From its new mission statement, NASA has convinced me that space development will be primarily through robotics. Previously I had assumed that men would be working in space. The robots I would need to do the work I envision are not available, so there it is: I need to learn robotics so I can build my own robots. Some business considerations: no doubt not many programmers would be needed, and I can do like the rest and ignore the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty. The path is clear.

[GOP_1900AD]

US out of the UN / WTO / NAFTA / etc. Two lists, true allies and all others, do business only with true allies. Reduce immigration of unskilled and undereducated individuals to a trickle. Slash social spending and lower taxes. Abolish the EPA, and nullify all opressive hiring and firing laws. Start up a national militia and require them in all 50 states; all able bodied men, ages 18 - 54 must join if not already in the military. Rescope the ABM system upward to be able to successfully blunt a worst case combined Russian and Chinese nuclear attack. Open the ANWR to exploration and extraction. Start programs to increase ICBM subs by 400 %, increase land based ICBMs by 500% (including addition of mobility for existing types of large ICBMs and the addition of a Midgetman, this time deployed on a proper TEL not some stupid sled) and put strategic bombers back on alert. Ban abortion, homosexual marriage and selected other behaviors that were illegal prior to 1950. Vastly increase the tax exemption amounts for children. Ban the Dept of Education and gut the gutless liberal swill from our schools. Ban union membership for all government employees including teachers. Reclaim the Panama Canal. Restart SEATO and negotiate to get the bases back in the Philippines and Thailand. Destroy the Cuban Communists. Enforce existing treason laws.

[Middle Man]

"...enterprises which compete directly with the US taxpayer."

Yes, enterprises just like these. How long do you think we unincarcerted citizens can compete with domestic workers who get 35 cents an hour and whose bosses don't have to worry about workmen's comp, employment taxes, FICA and all the other "bennies" that private companies have to deal with?

[GOP_1900AD]

Ping.