If the information is (a) personal and (b) on a computer, then it falls foul of the Data Protection Act. (b) may or may not still be required, there was talk of the DPA applying to all personal information regardless of the medium but I never followed up on the story.
In this day and age, where information is so pervasive and connectedness is so absolute, maybe there should be no such thing as a non-sequestered jury any more.
Easy solution - ban all idiots. Not from juries, from planet Earth. Solves the jury problem and the world overpopulation problem in one go. The Soylent Green could help with the terraforming of Mars.
Depends. If this means Congress will divert a trillion dollars of military spending for NASA to check the claims out, I really wouldn't be crying too hard. After all, there might be turrorists up thar.
We know genes interact and that results:genes are an N:M relationship, not a 1:1 one as had been thought even up to the turn of the millenium. In consequence, testing independently won't tell you what happens when they're combined. They may cancel out rather than work together. Other strange things can happen.
I agree that the containment is inadequate, but we need to know how these things work.
Rats have been exonerated. Archaeologists are 100% convinced that there is zero - absolutely zero - link between them and the spread of the plague. That's an example of how research eliminates the illusion of certainty and replaces it with evidence.
It arose before without any obvious pressure, and yes there is "pressure" in that between antibiotic resistance in other bacteria and a suicidal agriculture industry, not being a soil-specific bacteria suddenly becomes highly desirable.
If we know what makes the virus deadly, we can look for the precursor forms. Let's say there are N single nucleotide polymorphisms that are required to make Flu deadly and we observe N-2 of them in a specific strain. We then take that strain, make the 4 forms that are of significance and develop a vaccine for each, adding that to the shots for that year. Nature takes a slightly different course, with one of those mutations plus one we didn't anticipate. The vaccine should be partially effective, slowing the spread down, and we can now develop 2 more tightly tuned forms from the new strain. One of those ends up evolving, but since everyone is already vaccinated against it it dies out. World saved.
Remember, bubonic plague was just a common soil bacterium that had some strange mutations. The current form is much less deadly, in part because some of those mutations no longer exist. We could do almost nothing against the return of the black death, though, if those deadly mutations re-arose because we don't know what they were. An extra-resistant form of the bacterium could be as deadly today as it was back then. It must eventually arise, so our best hope of stopping it from doing any harm is to understand why/how specific mutations allow pathogens to do harm at all.
I doubt Congress or the Republican candidates would consider that a reasonable excuse, although arguably we SHOULD be conducting dangerous research of this kind off-planet since we're technically capable of it. However, given what Congress allows researchers access to, this is as careful as it gets.
(You can't do better without spending more money and right now spending billions - if not trillions - on ultra-secure biotech is simply not politically viable. Too many people want their taxes to go down, no matter what the consequences. To do this right, to do this well, you're looking at a cross-the-board tax hike of 10-15%. Perhaps more for the rich, who can afford a good deal more. Given the choice of higher taxes or near-certain global death from science mishaps, the current mood is that death is the preferred option.)
Ludd did not argue against technology, he argued only that increased use of technology should not harm humans. It is industrialists who had no concern for consequence who muddied the waters. This is relevant because in this issue we have a very definite question of whether technology has the potential to harm humans and what the consequences could be.
(As noted elsewhere, I side with the researchers that the potential for harm is negligible in comparison to the potential benefits of understanding why some flu strains are deadly and others aren't.)
Given a large enough number of viral mutations and a large enough timeframe, all events with non-zero statistical probability should be considered essentially certain to occur.
Regardless, though, of whether this specific pathogen would arise, we have the question of whether the development of it tells us anything new about how viruses work (specifically the flu virus) and what makes a virus deadly versus not deadly. The evidence so far is that it does tell us something about both. I consider that to be a very high reward, particularly as we now know there are a series of mutations required to make flu deadly, that none of the modern flu strains have the capacity to pull a Spanish Flu within the next year. By understanding more about what critical mutations are needed, we can get early warning. We will be able to see a deadly strain prior to it becoming deadly, allowing us many months - perhaps even a year or two - to develop suitable vaccines before the critical mutation ever arises.
We know from the Mexican Swine Flu case that our current pandemic controls just don't work. The disease was less lethal than feared, but that was luck not skill. Had it been deadly, none of the controls that existed were capable of identifying the disease in time, restricting its spread or handling the panic amongst health workers. The last of these was the worst problem as it was the Mexican paramedics and hospitals who were largely responsible for it becoming a pandemic. They were criminally negligent to the point where had it been another Spanish Flu, they would be guilty of planetary genocide. For that alone, I consider them no better than the criminal gangs there.
If we are to prevent a deadly pandemic, then, we have to bypass governments AND almost the entire healthcare industry. They aren't competent and they can't be trusted. Advance notice, predictive bio-engineering and vaccinations based on forecasts of likely deadly strains would seem to be the best hope for preventing a deadly pandemic at this time. We don't have anything else. Nothing.
Since we now know that there are a plural number of infinities, it only stands to reason that "uncountable" should be extended to also have a plural form.
Further, although Latin is officially a "dead" language (ie: no longer evolving), there is no reason why it can't be undead and therefore still have new words added to the dictionary.
That is because there isn't any diversity. Overcrowding in the professions devalues them. My suggestion isn't to have 100x as many people in each profession, but to have 100x as many professions and a REDUCTION of the number of people in each. People with MBAs do not create wealth, nor do they create diversity. They manage, but do so badly. Frankly, abolishing the MBA entirely (and de-accrediting all previous awards of it) would be a vital step in raising standards across the board.
The class pyramid can be raised in its entirety, with the base people (who currently greet at Walmarts or flip burgers) being in innovative, advanced, demanding jobs. It is the only way to resolve the paradox discovered by Ludd -- how to take care of the ENTIRE workforce whilst still being cheap and cost-effective. The only solution, the only workable solution, is to create just as many skilled jobs as you eliminate unskilled jobs.
In other words, no, my suggestion isn't "for the rich". You can't destroy (as is currently happening) the base of the pyramid without it collapsing completely. It has to remain completely intact. Existing companies want greater profits, though often because they're MBAed into oblivion, they forget the difference between gross and net. (MBA is not a qualification, it's an excuse.) However, they're almost immaterial because my suggestion is to have many more companies, many more trades and greater diversity. This is the inevitable consequence of raising the pyramid, rather than destroying chunks of it.
My proposal is simple. 100% of all students complete high school and complete EITHER a university degree OR a trade school course of equal educational standing. (Not "equivalent", which is usually the marketing way of saying "inferior, cheaper and we can con you into getting them", but genuinely of equal standing.) Make that the new baseline of the pyramid, with nobody at all below it. THAT will give you the muscle to succeed - threats and military might are paper tigers (and other nations know this), the brain is the true key to success.
And where's the money going to come from? Government hasn't got any, consumers buy the best (and to hell with who makes it), so that leaves you with two choices -- be the best or rely on pixie dust.
Why? Companies can't make money if they hire people who don't want to learn, who don't want an education and who don't want to adapt. The lifespan of a company in the S&P 500 is about 15 years because stagnation and rot kill them. The longest-living companies, both in Japan, are over 1,500 years old and have re-invented themselves every few years for the entirety of that.
Hiring the least-qualified and least-flexible will never make a long-term profit.
You cannot train people to correct for such deficiencies if (a) the universities aren't there and (b) the workers aren't interested. The original article states both problems exist, ergo training is not possible.
I have no contempt towards US citizens, or citizens of any nation. We are all equal, even if some nations like to think of themselves as more equal than others. I have contempt for attitudes, inflexibility and the popular desire to remain ignorant.
I have no desire to see any nation bow before any other. If I have a desire, it is that ALL nations of the world play to their strengths, develop themselves as fully as possible, and mutually form a mesh in trade of goods and knowledge that is impervious to the boom/bust cycles we see too often. That is my desire. It's wholly unrealistic - no, not impossible, it's perfectly achievable and requires no utopian dream to do, but it is unrealistic. Nationalism, greed and xenophobia are not subject to logic and no amount of rational explanation of why a heterogeneous world might be a good thing will ever reduce these.
A more practical goal is to see at the very least the US, or SOME nation in the world, adopt the philosophy of doing best by their citizenry and have the citizenry respond by becoming as highly educated, as mentally flexible and as dextrous in work environments as possible. This would still be incredibly hard to achieve. Your own post shows why - you're not interested in being at the top of the heap by being the best. "you underestimate the power of the US Government and its ability to make an overseas move unprofitably painful" is another way of saying you're only interested in being at the top of the heap by impairing others.
No. A competent athlete does not need to shoot his or her opponent in the foot in order to be competitive or to win. They compete by being the best they possibly can be against competitors who are also being the best they possibly can be. They win by virtue of merit, not by virtue of destruction.
I want the US to be the best it can be on merit and merit alone. No harassment, no abuse, no government shenanigans, no strong-arm diplomacy, no gunboat diplomacy either. Merit. Your post makes it clear you do not believe that the US can compete on merit. If you did, you would not talk about the government needing to threaten people, or nations bowing to others. There are no threats in a system of merit and there is no power domain in a system of achievement.
I, therefore, am not the one in contempt of US citizens. You are. You are the one who is holding that it is only at knife-point that the US can achieve a damn thing, that it cannot succeed by competency alone. I am the one who is saying that it CAN achieve everything through competency alone. That isn't contempt for Americans, that's admiration for their sheer potential intelligence, their potential guts and their potential determination. The only contempt is for why it's potential and not realized, and therefore contempt for your notion of superiority by force.
If there are N genes required for intelligence out of a set of M, unless N==M you cannot identify all of N by looking at what is common to everyone. That's a common but problematic flaw in genetic studies. It's also why markers that indicate a propensity for disease can't tell you if you will get that disease. If the studies so far don't map which sets of genetic markers are significant (and what epigenetic states are required to make them significant), this positive indication approach has limited value - at least on its own.
The "ideal" solution (which would be horribly difficult and expensive, most ideal solutions are) would be to get a very large number of people (smart and otherwise), do a complete decode on the X chromosome (we know that's linked to the brain) and to any regions outside of the X that this and other studies have indicated may be significant. What you want to do is find permutations that exclusively appear in those who are smart (not all smart people would have those permutations but absolutely no person who isn't smart will have them at all - ever). The sheer number of nucleotides you'd need to map would be vast and in order to be able to guarantee that the sets of SNPs and STRs identified were useful, you'd need to study an incredible number of people. Let's say you've a paltry 1,000 SNPs that could be of significance - to get a decent random sample to show up the clusters of SNPs that are important, you'd need 1,000,000 people from as large a genetic sample as possible. You also have to have a totally cross-cultural method of measuring smarts, which is no small task in itself.
Agreed, though there were a good few European nations in the 50s and 60s that weren't quite so distant -- at least, in very specialized fields. Britain's luxury goods and highly customized products were, at that time, still a force to be reckoned with. Germany had lost a lot of infrastructure, but was doing some very reasonable work in mechanical engineering, as were the Swedes. France had a wine industry that was a class (and glass) or three above anyone else.
These specialized niches have been worn down for much the same reason - hyper-specialization is also extremely hard relative to other stuff and produces very low returns.
People want quick, easy solutions that produce quick, easy profits. The good is often the enemy of the fast.
If your own citizens are inept, uneducated and incapable of doing the work required, companies have to fill the skilled positions somehow. When I last posted anything on education on Slashdot, I was greeted to calls of "you can quit school at 15 and do anything". Well, apparently "anything" doesn't include anything that actually makes money, makes new products or makes new industries, and if there's a strong feeling amongst even the geeks in the US that being uneducated is cool and acceptable, then I can't say I can blame manufacturers for going to the geeks that think being educated is cool instead.
We are also in a global economy now. A global village. There is no enemy but ourselves. If we, as individuals, elect not to be educated then that is our choice. The US should not be made to suffer for the choices the citizenry make for themselves. There are also a LOT of Americans, as I noted on the thread about the gifted amongst the homeless, who might want to go to university and be capable of high-class honours but can't because it is seen as socialistic and welfare to let them have that chance. Again, that's the choice the citizenry have made, the citizenry is entitled to make that choice, but you can't then blame Asia for choosing differently and supplanting America in consequence.
We have the right to make our choices, even bad ones, but we have a responsibility to face the consequences of those choices. The consequence here is that global business cannot run on nationalism or pride, it needs talent. And it ain't finding that talent here. Blaming Asia for having better universities is idiotic and blaming businesses for preferring the results of the better-trained is futile.
Having a "made in the US" label on every employee might sound cool to America in times of high unemployment but it would kill businesses or force them overseas. And that means losing even more jobs, not to mention both corporate and income revenue for the government.
No, if you want Americans to dominate American industry, there is only one way to do it -- fix the problem at source. Abolish the entire existing educational system, rebuild it from the ground up to be maximally functional and produce agile minds capable of keeping pace with change over their entire working lives, and swallow your pride utterly when it comes to paying to do all this, when it comes to sacrificing sacred cows (American units should die, sporting scholarships should die, school games with high incidence of brain damage should die, student loans should die, standardized testing should die, GPA should die, education should be mandatory to age 21 with no exceptions for any group, etc) and when it comes to totally violating any political doctrine (and sacrificing the sacred cows will violate doctrine from all the major political philosophies out there).
It will then take 20+ years to recover, but given that it took 40+ years to deteriorate to this point I'd call that a bargain.
Slashdot Mirror
If the information is (a) personal and (b) on a computer, then it falls foul of the Data Protection Act. (b) may or may not still be required, there was talk of the DPA applying to all personal information regardless of the medium but I never followed up on the story.
In this day and age, where information is so pervasive and connectedness is so absolute, maybe there should be no such thing as a non-sequestered jury any more.
Easy solution - ban all idiots. Not from juries, from planet Earth. Solves the jury problem and the world overpopulation problem in one go. The Soylent Green could help with the terraforming of Mars.
Original search that sparked off the research described in the two links below:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/204499
The followup:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/17/black-death-rats-off-hook
http://www.history.com/news/2011/08/18/can-we-stop-blaming-rats-for-the-black-death/
Related:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/12/black-death-genome-sequenced-dna?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Depends. If this means Congress will divert a trillion dollars of military spending for NASA to check the claims out, I really wouldn't be crying too hard. After all, there might be turrorists up thar.
We know genes interact and that results:genes are an N:M relationship, not a 1:1 one as had been thought even up to the turn of the millenium. In consequence, testing independently won't tell you what happens when they're combined. They may cancel out rather than work together. Other strange things can happen.
I agree that the containment is inadequate, but we need to know how these things work.
Rats have been exonerated. Archaeologists are 100% convinced that there is zero - absolutely zero - link between them and the spread of the plague. That's an example of how research eliminates the illusion of certainty and replaces it with evidence.
It arose before without any obvious pressure, and yes there is "pressure" in that between antibiotic resistance in other bacteria and a suicidal agriculture industry, not being a soil-specific bacteria suddenly becomes highly desirable.
We need more levels. Two bits aren't enough.
If we know what makes the virus deadly, we can look for the precursor forms. Let's say there are N single nucleotide polymorphisms that are required to make Flu deadly and we observe N-2 of them in a specific strain. We then take that strain, make the 4 forms that are of significance and develop a vaccine for each, adding that to the shots for that year. Nature takes a slightly different course, with one of those mutations plus one we didn't anticipate. The vaccine should be partially effective, slowing the spread down, and we can now develop 2 more tightly tuned forms from the new strain. One of those ends up evolving, but since everyone is already vaccinated against it it dies out. World saved.
Remember, bubonic plague was just a common soil bacterium that had some strange mutations. The current form is much less deadly, in part because some of those mutations no longer exist. We could do almost nothing against the return of the black death, though, if those deadly mutations re-arose because we don't know what they were. An extra-resistant form of the bacterium could be as deadly today as it was back then. It must eventually arise, so our best hope of stopping it from doing any harm is to understand why/how specific mutations allow pathogens to do harm at all.
I doubt Congress or the Republican candidates would consider that a reasonable excuse, although arguably we SHOULD be conducting dangerous research of this kind off-planet since we're technically capable of it. However, given what Congress allows researchers access to, this is as careful as it gets.
(You can't do better without spending more money and right now spending billions - if not trillions - on ultra-secure biotech is simply not politically viable. Too many people want their taxes to go down, no matter what the consequences. To do this right, to do this well, you're looking at a cross-the-board tax hike of 10-15%. Perhaps more for the rich, who can afford a good deal more. Given the choice of higher taxes or near-certain global death from science mishaps, the current mood is that death is the preferred option.)
Ludd did not argue against technology, he argued only that increased use of technology should not harm humans. It is industrialists who had no concern for consequence who muddied the waters. This is relevant because in this issue we have a very definite question of whether technology has the potential to harm humans and what the consequences could be.
(As noted elsewhere, I side with the researchers that the potential for harm is negligible in comparison to the potential benefits of understanding why some flu strains are deadly and others aren't.)
Given a large enough number of viral mutations and a large enough timeframe, all events with non-zero statistical probability should be considered essentially certain to occur.
Regardless, though, of whether this specific pathogen would arise, we have the question of whether the development of it tells us anything new about how viruses work (specifically the flu virus) and what makes a virus deadly versus not deadly. The evidence so far is that it does tell us something about both. I consider that to be a very high reward, particularly as we now know there are a series of mutations required to make flu deadly, that none of the modern flu strains have the capacity to pull a Spanish Flu within the next year. By understanding more about what critical mutations are needed, we can get early warning. We will be able to see a deadly strain prior to it becoming deadly, allowing us many months - perhaps even a year or two - to develop suitable vaccines before the critical mutation ever arises.
We know from the Mexican Swine Flu case that our current pandemic controls just don't work. The disease was less lethal than feared, but that was luck not skill. Had it been deadly, none of the controls that existed were capable of identifying the disease in time, restricting its spread or handling the panic amongst health workers. The last of these was the worst problem as it was the Mexican paramedics and hospitals who were largely responsible for it becoming a pandemic. They were criminally negligent to the point where had it been another Spanish Flu, they would be guilty of planetary genocide. For that alone, I consider them no better than the criminal gangs there.
If we are to prevent a deadly pandemic, then, we have to bypass governments AND almost the entire healthcare industry. They aren't competent and they can't be trusted. Advance notice, predictive bio-engineering and vaccinations based on forecasts of likely deadly strains would seem to be the best hope for preventing a deadly pandemic at this time. We don't have anything else. Nothing.
Since we now know that there are a plural number of infinities, it only stands to reason that "uncountable" should be extended to also have a plural form.
Further, although Latin is officially a "dead" language (ie: no longer evolving), there is no reason why it can't be undead and therefore still have new words added to the dictionary.
Hmmm. You've not talked to customer service from Dell recently, I take it.
Depends on the mutant, surely. I mean, there are plenty of other things you could do with Storm besides arrest her.
That is because there isn't any diversity. Overcrowding in the professions devalues them. My suggestion isn't to have 100x as many people in each profession, but to have 100x as many professions and a REDUCTION of the number of people in each. People with MBAs do not create wealth, nor do they create diversity. They manage, but do so badly. Frankly, abolishing the MBA entirely (and de-accrediting all previous awards of it) would be a vital step in raising standards across the board.
The class pyramid can be raised in its entirety, with the base people (who currently greet at Walmarts or flip burgers) being in innovative, advanced, demanding jobs. It is the only way to resolve the paradox discovered by Ludd -- how to take care of the ENTIRE workforce whilst still being cheap and cost-effective. The only solution, the only workable solution, is to create just as many skilled jobs as you eliminate unskilled jobs.
In other words, no, my suggestion isn't "for the rich". You can't destroy (as is currently happening) the base of the pyramid without it collapsing completely. It has to remain completely intact. Existing companies want greater profits, though often because they're MBAed into oblivion, they forget the difference between gross and net. (MBA is not a qualification, it's an excuse.) However, they're almost immaterial because my suggestion is to have many more companies, many more trades and greater diversity. This is the inevitable consequence of raising the pyramid, rather than destroying chunks of it.
My proposal is simple. 100% of all students complete high school and complete EITHER a university degree OR a trade school course of equal educational standing. (Not "equivalent", which is usually the marketing way of saying "inferior, cheaper and we can con you into getting them", but genuinely of equal standing.) Make that the new baseline of the pyramid, with nobody at all below it. THAT will give you the muscle to succeed - threats and military might are paper tigers (and other nations know this), the brain is the true key to success.
And where's the money going to come from? Government hasn't got any, consumers buy the best (and to hell with who makes it), so that leaves you with two choices -- be the best or rely on pixie dust.
Why? Companies can't make money if they hire people who don't want to learn, who don't want an education and who don't want to adapt. The lifespan of a company in the S&P 500 is about 15 years because stagnation and rot kill them. The longest-living companies, both in Japan, are over 1,500 years old and have re-invented themselves every few years for the entirety of that.
Hiring the least-qualified and least-flexible will never make a long-term profit.
You cannot train people to correct for such deficiencies if (a) the universities aren't there and (b) the workers aren't interested. The original article states both problems exist, ergo training is not possible.
I have no contempt towards US citizens, or citizens of any nation. We are all equal, even if some nations like to think of themselves as more equal than others. I have contempt for attitudes, inflexibility and the popular desire to remain ignorant.
I have no desire to see any nation bow before any other. If I have a desire, it is that ALL nations of the world play to their strengths, develop themselves as fully as possible, and mutually form a mesh in trade of goods and knowledge that is impervious to the boom/bust cycles we see too often. That is my desire. It's wholly unrealistic - no, not impossible, it's perfectly achievable and requires no utopian dream to do, but it is unrealistic. Nationalism, greed and xenophobia are not subject to logic and no amount of rational explanation of why a heterogeneous world might be a good thing will ever reduce these.
A more practical goal is to see at the very least the US, or SOME nation in the world, adopt the philosophy of doing best by their citizenry and have the citizenry respond by becoming as highly educated, as mentally flexible and as dextrous in work environments as possible. This would still be incredibly hard to achieve. Your own post shows why - you're not interested in being at the top of the heap by being the best. "you underestimate the power of the US Government and its ability to make an overseas move unprofitably painful" is another way of saying you're only interested in being at the top of the heap by impairing others.
No. A competent athlete does not need to shoot his or her opponent in the foot in order to be competitive or to win. They compete by being the best they possibly can be against competitors who are also being the best they possibly can be. They win by virtue of merit, not by virtue of destruction.
I want the US to be the best it can be on merit and merit alone. No harassment, no abuse, no government shenanigans, no strong-arm diplomacy, no gunboat diplomacy either. Merit. Your post makes it clear you do not believe that the US can compete on merit. If you did, you would not talk about the government needing to threaten people, or nations bowing to others. There are no threats in a system of merit and there is no power domain in a system of achievement.
I, therefore, am not the one in contempt of US citizens. You are. You are the one who is holding that it is only at knife-point that the US can achieve a damn thing, that it cannot succeed by competency alone. I am the one who is saying that it CAN achieve everything through competency alone. That isn't contempt for Americans, that's admiration for their sheer potential intelligence, their potential guts and their potential determination. The only contempt is for why it's potential and not realized, and therefore contempt for your notion of superiority by force.
If there are N genes required for intelligence out of a set of M, unless N==M you cannot identify all of N by looking at what is common to everyone. That's a common but problematic flaw in genetic studies. It's also why markers that indicate a propensity for disease can't tell you if you will get that disease. If the studies so far don't map which sets of genetic markers are significant (and what epigenetic states are required to make them significant), this positive indication approach has limited value - at least on its own.
The "ideal" solution (which would be horribly difficult and expensive, most ideal solutions are) would be to get a very large number of people (smart and otherwise), do a complete decode on the X chromosome (we know that's linked to the brain) and to any regions outside of the X that this and other studies have indicated may be significant. What you want to do is find permutations that exclusively appear in those who are smart (not all smart people would have those permutations but absolutely no person who isn't smart will have them at all - ever). The sheer number of nucleotides you'd need to map would be vast and in order to be able to guarantee that the sets of SNPs and STRs identified were useful, you'd need to study an incredible number of people. Let's say you've a paltry 1,000 SNPs that could be of significance - to get a decent random sample to show up the clusters of SNPs that are important, you'd need 1,000,000 people from as large a genetic sample as possible. You also have to have a totally cross-cultural method of measuring smarts, which is no small task in itself.
Oh, I completely agree with that. And frankly there's a hell of a lot that I think should change.
Definitely. Grabbity-stealing... *shakes head and heads off to the brake rume for cake, then realized he's on the wrong site for that*
Agreed, though there were a good few European nations in the 50s and 60s that weren't quite so distant -- at least, in very specialized fields. Britain's luxury goods and highly customized products were, at that time, still a force to be reckoned with. Germany had lost a lot of infrastructure, but was doing some very reasonable work in mechanical engineering, as were the Swedes. France had a wine industry that was a class (and glass) or three above anyone else.
These specialized niches have been worn down for much the same reason - hyper-specialization is also extremely hard relative to other stuff and produces very low returns.
People want quick, easy solutions that produce quick, easy profits. The good is often the enemy of the fast.
If your own citizens are inept, uneducated and incapable of doing the work required, companies have to fill the skilled positions somehow. When I last posted anything on education on Slashdot, I was greeted to calls of "you can quit school at 15 and do anything". Well, apparently "anything" doesn't include anything that actually makes money, makes new products or makes new industries, and if there's a strong feeling amongst even the geeks in the US that being uneducated is cool and acceptable, then I can't say I can blame manufacturers for going to the geeks that think being educated is cool instead.
We are also in a global economy now. A global village. There is no enemy but ourselves. If we, as individuals, elect not to be educated then that is our choice. The US should not be made to suffer for the choices the citizenry make for themselves. There are also a LOT of Americans, as I noted on the thread about the gifted amongst the homeless, who might want to go to university and be capable of high-class honours but can't because it is seen as socialistic and welfare to let them have that chance. Again, that's the choice the citizenry have made, the citizenry is entitled to make that choice, but you can't then blame Asia for choosing differently and supplanting America in consequence.
We have the right to make our choices, even bad ones, but we have a responsibility to face the consequences of those choices. The consequence here is that global business cannot run on nationalism or pride, it needs talent. And it ain't finding that talent here. Blaming Asia for having better universities is idiotic and blaming businesses for preferring the results of the better-trained is futile.
Having a "made in the US" label on every employee might sound cool to America in times of high unemployment but it would kill businesses or force them overseas. And that means losing even more jobs, not to mention both corporate and income revenue for the government.
No, if you want Americans to dominate American industry, there is only one way to do it -- fix the problem at source. Abolish the entire existing educational system, rebuild it from the ground up to be maximally functional and produce agile minds capable of keeping pace with change over their entire working lives, and swallow your pride utterly when it comes to paying to do all this, when it comes to sacrificing sacred cows (American units should die, sporting scholarships should die, school games with high incidence of brain damage should die, student loans should die, standardized testing should die, GPA should die, education should be mandatory to age 21 with no exceptions for any group, etc) and when it comes to totally violating any political doctrine (and sacrificing the sacred cows will violate doctrine from all the major political philosophies out there).
It will then take 20+ years to recover, but given that it took 40+ years to deteriorate to this point I'd call that a bargain.