I would say that it's impossible for reindustrialization efforts to save the West for several reasons.
Foremost among those reasons is the shifting of innovation from the West to Asia, particularly China. Any effort at industrializing the West will necessarily involve copying Chinese infrastructural and manufacturing innovations and this will become more and more true as China dominates high tech research globally. The areas where the US has an innovation advantage are not collectively large enough to solve the economic problem.
Second is the lack of industrial knowledge and skill in the West. It's been multiple generations since workers, engineers, and architects in the West were committed en masse to productive industry. When we look at the demographics of industries even as essential as construction we see that there are entire realms of expertise where 70% of that workforce is retiring within 10 years. This is literally an unsolvable problem and may be one of the reasons why the Western oligarchs are so invested in AI - they know they can't solve this problem demographically so they are trying to solve it technologically.
Third is that there will be severe reaction to creating industry anywhere in the USA due to pollution of all kinds. Putting it where settlers live will create massive political repercussions and politicians will protect their personal interests. Putting it where the indigenous live will require massive amounts of infrastructure to be built and will cause greater resistance from the indigenous and create reaction among the more radical elements of the settlers that will ally with the indigenous. All of this will require violence to turn inward more substantially and create greater reaction domestically. The only way to solve this in the short term is a return to violent nationalism, which is what the USA is currently doing.
Fourth, even if the USA creates industry, it will be competing against global prices where it will struggle to compete while it ramps up its production. It will need higher quality to compete against prices elsewhere, or it will need a compelling sanctions regime. Sanctions are becoming less and less an option since they so publicly failed against Russia and China. And quality will be difficult if not impossible to handle as China's headstart likely puts it in a position to increase quality and retain a lower price than the USA could develop in the next 25 years.
I think the only solution available to the US is to destroy the productive capacity of other states.
Exactly, all these factors preclude the US from actually being able to reindustrialize in a meaningful way. The observation that the US is doubling down on AI to address the trained worker shortage is interesting. I haven't really thought of that, but now that you mention it that makes perfect sense. It is a misguided tactic as I don't actually see AI becoming advanced enough to handle such tasks in the near term. However, even if that was possible then it wouldn't give the US an edge over China where this tech is being developed just as rapidly. In fact, I'd argue China is in a much better position here because of its large population which provides larger data sets to work with. China also has the advantage of already existing advanced automation that can be coupled with AI systems the likes of which have no equivalent in the west.
We can already see the US destroying the productive capacity of Europe, and I'm sure that will extend to other vassals as well. However, the US won't be able to do that to China or Russia short of starting a nuclear holocaust. So, a likely scenario might be that the US retreats from being a global hegemon, and retrenches around parts of the globe where it still has strong influence. This is in line with Trump's quips regarding Canada, Greenland, and Panama Canal incidentally. He's basically drawing a line around the sphere of influence that the US sees as its core interest.
Yeah, I keep looking for the strategic nuclear angle in Greenland, but the shipping angle and the natural resources angle might be the stronger ones.
Panama is obviously a naked attempt to control trade in their sphere of influence.
Canada is just another Europe that the US won't let fall into the Chinese sphere of influence. And if that's the best it can do, then that's all the proof we need that the USA is cooked
I would say that it's impossible for reindustrialization efforts to save the West for several reasons.
Foremost among those reasons is the shifting of innovation from the West to Asia, particularly China. Any effort at industrializing the West will necessarily involve copying Chinese infrastructural and manufacturing innovations and this will become more and more true as China dominates high tech research globally. The areas where the US has an innovation advantage are not collectively large enough to solve the economic problem.
Second is the lack of industrial knowledge and skill in the West. It's been multiple generations since workers, engineers, and architects in the West were committed en masse to productive industry. When we look at the demographics of industries even as essential as construction we see that there are entire realms of expertise where 70% of that workforce is retiring within 10 years. This is literally an unsolvable problem and may be one of the reasons why the Western oligarchs are so invested in AI - they know they can't solve this problem demographically so they are trying to solve it technologically.
Third is that there will be severe reaction to creating industry anywhere in the USA due to pollution of all kinds. Putting it where settlers live will create massive political repercussions and politicians will protect their personal interests. Putting it where the indigenous live will require massive amounts of infrastructure to be built and will cause greater resistance from the indigenous and create reaction among the more radical elements of the settlers that will ally with the indigenous. All of this will require violence to turn inward more substantially and create greater reaction domestically. The only way to solve this in the short term is a return to violent nationalism, which is what the USA is currently doing.
Fourth, even if the USA creates industry, it will be competing against global prices where it will struggle to compete while it ramps up its production. It will need higher quality to compete against prices elsewhere, or it will need a compelling sanctions regime. Sanctions are becoming less and less an option since they so publicly failed against Russia and China. And quality will be difficult if not impossible to handle as China's headstart likely puts it in a position to increase quality and retain a lower price than the USA could develop in the next 25 years.
I think the only solution available to the US is to destroy the productive capacity of other states.
Exactly, all these factors preclude the US from actually being able to reindustrialize in a meaningful way. The observation that the US is doubling down on AI to address the trained worker shortage is interesting. I haven't really thought of that, but now that you mention it that makes perfect sense. It is a misguided tactic as I don't actually see AI becoming advanced enough to handle such tasks in the near term. However, even if that was possible then it wouldn't give the US an edge over China where this tech is being developed just as rapidly. In fact, I'd argue China is in a much better position here because of its large population which provides larger data sets to work with. China also has the advantage of already existing advanced automation that can be coupled with AI systems the likes of which have no equivalent in the west.
We can already see the US destroying the productive capacity of Europe, and I'm sure that will extend to other vassals as well. However, the US won't be able to do that to China or Russia short of starting a nuclear holocaust. So, a likely scenario might be that the US retreats from being a global hegemon, and retrenches around parts of the globe where it still has strong influence. This is in line with Trump's quips regarding Canada, Greenland, and Panama Canal incidentally. He's basically drawing a line around the sphere of influence that the US sees as its core interest.
Yeah, I keep looking for the strategic nuclear angle in Greenland, but the shipping angle and the natural resources angle might be the stronger ones.
Panama is obviously a naked attempt to control trade in their sphere of influence.
Canada is just another Europe that the US won't let fall into the Chinese sphere of influence. And if that's the best it can do, then that's all the proof we need that the USA is cooked
That's my line of thinking as well.