Comment by TheOtherHobbes
11 hours ago
Core R&D, training, public education at all levels, health care, small businesses of all kinds, arts and entertainment, and many more.
Basically IP generation at all levels, and high-touch face-to-face service businesses.
The US already had the foundations for a post-industrial economy, but the cancer of extractive financialisation ate it alive. Instead of expanding into diversity it contracted into a startup culture that's always been a thin front for Wall St.
So the result is that it's very hard to start a mid-rank IP or service business. You have small-scale cottage-level producers like authors, musicians, video creators, and indie app developers relying on huge monopolies like Amazon, Spotify, Google, and Apple, and you have bigger projects playing the startup game and scrambling for funding rounds, where anyone who doesn't become a unicorn is a loser.
There's plenty of space for businesses between those extremes, but the economy isn't set up to support them. The space isn't dead yet, but it could be much, much bigger.
Universities and corporate R&D have similar issues. Metrics support conformist publishing and resume-development, not risky original talent and exploration.
Tariffs and brain drains are absolutely toxic and are going to nuke all of these spaces.
You can’t have any of this, literally, without manufacturing at home. You can’t do R&D of any sort if you don’t have the capability to produce things, to send an email or walk over to the company making it, speak with someone and have a consultation around what it is you hope to achieve because it’s the people who machine, who fabricate, who apply chemical treatments and layers of paint, who bend who etch and understand tool clearance requirements and so on that know this stuff. Manufacturing is a broad term.
I’m reminded of recent-grad architects whose proposed ideas are bereft of consideration of material properties and pitfalls.
I’m also reminded of Air Force aircraft engineers needed to be told their parts have to be adjusted because they can’t be machined. And the person who knows what needs to be done is Bob whose hands are covered in grease and oil because there’s not enough orange Zep on this planet to clean that guy.
To use China as an example: their entire pipeline from conception of idea to the end-customer is in China. They don’t even need to sell it externally (and frequently they don’t).
The West is fucked because they think pushing things around is being productive. GDP is a reflection of this failure because it’s a flawed, abused metric that’s devoid of where money actually ends up (most often it’s Chinese firms doing the work), so your GDP is looking great meanwhile you are incredibly unproductive over all. It’s a meme tool used for nonsensical political posturing.
Simply put: you can’t start R&D in the middle and not take into consideration a pipeline. It doesn’t work that way. People don’t have the experience or knowledge.