Just wait till UPS finishes its cutting edge stealth fighter/delivery drones (CODENAME: STOLEN) then we will see who rules the skies. There's also the Fed-Ex experimental air-to-air "Logistical Orbital Spearhead Targeter", (LOST) . USPS is gonna have to back to the drawing board though, looks like the surface-to-air "Malicious Operator Radio Equipped Ballista System" (MOREBS) is going to need a redesign.
So far though, its the underdog, 7/11, who rules the skies with their own system, the "Neighborhood Orbiting Grip and Ship" (NOGAS) The hot Coffee payload and secondary microwaved burrito launcher seem deterrent enough....... for now.
This is awesome. Hey Trump, you've talked a pretty big game, here is a chance to walk the walk. Accept this dudes contract on behalf of Capgemini and be the champ you promised to be.
"Plebs are already sharing all of this personal information with various online services anyway, why cant we just have the data they are already giving away?"
I personally enjoy my dangerous privacy/freedom over some illusion of safety at the expense of my keeping personal papers and effects to myself. To that effect, I don't use cloud services, I handle my own communications and pay a premium for privacy when its to much of a hassle to handle something on my own hardware/software.
On the other hand, my countrymen choose to trade their personal details away, and willingly track their own every move, in exchange for free email and instant communications. That is not enough of a reason to take from my choice to not willingly hand over a log of my daily activities and shopping habits, nor is it justification for my government to collect all of this data "just in case"
You want MY data? Pay for it. It is not on the barter table.
I'm afraid that at least some Americans have internalized the NRA's message, "Guns are the answer. Now, what's the question?"
Guns should never be used to protect property. Only to protect lives when it's the last resort, after you've tried everything else humanly possible.
Its just about numbers. If one person used a gun to protect property, 9 other people don't have to, and its a decision our society has already made. Right now, we pay civil servants to do it for us. Unfortunately, they've become pretty scary good at figuring out "who" shot you while taking your wallet, "where" it happened, and "why" it happened, but remain pretty bad at using their guns to stop it from happening in the first place.
On the other hand, they are great at using those guns to protect corporate property.....
Everybody is "a thief"... I'm one, you are one. The law is made to protect us from barbarity (that can be made with weapons, for example...) - "guns" are not the answer for nothing "civilized"...
An armed society is a polite society. I bet if we go back to everybody carrying a sidearm, a lot of people will suddenly get a lot more "pleasant" to be around. Not only do weapons change the risk reward calculation in a big way, but they have an uncanny ability to remove the worst decision-makers from society... permanently.
The real world aint exactly civilized. Any of-age, responsible adult who says otherwise lives in a bubble of money and culture that is "protected", as you say, from the rest of us "barbarians" here in the real world.
Protect yourself (and your packages?) Learn to shoot, and stop fearing firearms. The life you save may be your own.
We have the same system here in Auburn, WA. Packages to big for the little box AND the big box still go on the doorstep. It's a pretty shitty neighborhood, and I order online A LOT. Sometimes, the delivery guy will walk up onto my porch, open the screen door and sort of hide the package between the wood and the screen. Other times, the package is left on the outside corner of my deck. There is a lot of real shitty foot traffic on my street, and more than one larger package has been stolen. So far, the carrier has replaced each one, after they send a driver to "check the package" by leaving another slip of paper saying so on my door.
Other-times, using Amazon prime, a haggard looking driver will show up in a private car, late in the evening, and hand me a package without speaking a word. I'm guessing he speaks no English, and has been on the road all day making amazon prime free(not really) next day deliveries. Works good, he gets paid and does it right.
There are also Amazon lockers I can use in town if I was to order something really stupid off the internet. I keep saying I'm going to setup a spring loaded dog-shit-glitter name-brand-computer-box every-time something goes missing.
The Uber software upgrade to your personal conveyance aint cheap, and is licenced annually, on a per vehicle basis. Once properly installed (by a licenced Uber re-seller, naturally) the upgrade allows the use your own car for your own needs, but when your in the grocery store shopping for your family, taking in the theater, or even sleeping for the night, your car has made a few local pickups and generated a little extra dough for you (and Uber) Win-Win, everybody gets something, and the car is the only one doing any work. Of course its on the owner for liability and maintenance, but that's the game they are already playing.
This is the way of the future. Owning a large piece of machinery should be an income generator, not an income sink. This goes double if it can perform its job autonomously.
I've got a few questions I ask myself when envisioning the future of society at large.
1. Can a computer do this task better than a human? 2. Can it be fully automated?
If the answer to both of these questions is yes, you can expect some "disruptive new technology" to deliver both 1 and 2 in the not to distant future. Driving around town right now ALMOST meets 1, and every tech company out there is working away at cracking 2.
The very first things you are going to print when you finally come around is upgraded hardware for your printer. When you're discussing 3d printers, a large portion of hardware IS software.
I can't tell if you're parroting Ken Olson on purpose or not. "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."
3d printing is changing the world right now. The maker revolution is on right now. You're not going to notice while you're busy buying more and more useless shit at the mall, but when your crap breaks, its the 3d printer guys that will salvage the components before it gets to the landfill you're filling.
I've used my 3d printer to print structural parts for a home made CNC mill, which mills out the parts I need in soft metals if that's what my design calls for.
I print neatos for my friends, or when I'm calibrating a new material, so I have a pretty large collection of plastic toys. I give them away on the regular, for holidays and bdays and crap, so some people are under the impression that those are all it makes.
One look at my workshop will show you, 3d printing and electronics are a perfect fit. Seeing as how robotics is ALSO changing the world at a pretty fast pace, I'd say you're life will very soon be made better with 3d printing, directly, or indirectly.
Sure, but past innovations displaced specific sets of workers, from specific fields. (pun intended) I think what he is worrying over is the potential to displace many different workers very quickly, from many different industries.
Automation is all awesome, and displacing specific sets of workers in steps is progress.
Displacing MANY different workers from MANY different fields, as automation looks to be about to do, is very painful progress, and will force many tough decisions. At least, that's what I took from the read. S.H. is a pretty smart dude, and the writing is on the wall. This time is IS different, the potential applications of good AI in automating the things will grow very quickly as business owners innovate. This will have consequences that I don't think we can really accurately predict.
I've always understood that a "drone" is an autonomous something. Jamming its C&C signal means at best you cut the visual link to home-base and the ability to assume control. It can still carry out its mission, because to qualify as a "drone" you are an autonomous thing carrying out a pre-programmed mission, or responding in real time to external conditions.
It's not about overpopulation. There is plenty of land for us, it's about the resources we use. It's the things we use once and throw away. If we all start walking instead of driving, growing our own food, washing our cloths and dishes by hand, and abandon awesome things like rubber, Styrofoam, and plastics.... maybe we can slow the train a little bit. Problem is, these are the things we western nations reject out of hand.
2 children use twice an many resources as you. Their children will use twice as many as them. That's the exponential growth that scares me. It's not the space they use.
Eventually, we will travel the stars. The only question is will it be before or after some global emergency. NASA is supposed to be studying aeronautics and pushing the ball forward on space exploration. Enable that mission. Stop distracting our rocket scientists with side quests that are supposed to fall in the EPAs lap.
While climate change is terrifying, the fuse is already burning. Let the EPA do what the EPA does, and let NASA do what NASA does. Make all the data public. I would argue that the NASA budget and EPA budget should split the defense budget between them and really focus on their specific missions...... but I am not a politician or an accountant, so that's none of my business.
Let the other countries handle the easy stuff. I hope all of the climate money goes to space exploration instead. Unpopular point of view for sure. Do it anyway.
I'm so tired of the SUV driving, Yacht sailing, power guzzling yuppy assholes making everything harder for the rest of us so they can have some point to bring up when somebody brings up climate change during their wine tasting.
Look to the stars! There is no stopping this train. The best we can do is slow it a bit.
THERE. ARE. TO. MANY. PEOPLE. Reality check- EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. This train aint gonna slow.
You call this damnation. I call it forward thinking. There are solutions at home, but we reject them out of hand. The only realistic answer is the stars. Dont be discouraged by man-kinds reach today, be optimistic for what we may achieve next year.
This is the best news to come out of T yet.
Explorers change your world. Stellar explorers change your Galaxy.
Polling: If the voter had said T had his/her vote, he/she was forced to defend him/her-self against the legions of Americans who had been trained by our media to label voter a RACIST, WOMAN HATING, LOW EDUCATION, UN-AMERICAN NAZI MF.
I'n reality=
Voter had just lost his/her job to the foreigner he/she had been forced to train, and just spent the last few months scraping by, while at the same time, listening to his/her peers say "that's fucked up", and "WOW, how is that legal?"
-OR-
Voter had been working the same job for decades, and lost it due to off-shoring on account of developing countries doing what developing countries do.
Voter knew the loss of his/her company health insurance was going to cost him/her(it?) another $700 bucks come tax season.
Voter saw the big-round-orange face saying things that would make his/her life suck less. Voter made an informed decision, based on what the "T" said; VS what the the "H" said.
Voter was angry. Voter was tired of defending himself, and sure as hell not about to face off against a journalist with a mic outside of the voting booth, or on the phone, or in front of his/her school, gym, etc.
Voter also happened to live in a state less populated than CA and NY.
It's a complicated situation. HRC will be listening to her faithful ape this kind of thinking for the rest of her life. Changes nothing.
Voter still knows better than to talk about the choice he/she made.
We are building a better one. Without Your bullshit walled gardens. Without your ads. Without your monitoring. Without your grand regulations. Without your clumsy meddling. Without your consistent need to monetize every damn thing see. Without your little carrier fiefdoms and exclusive hardware monopolies. Without the insanely low barrier of entry that allowed all the dopey phone-addict people who cant think for themselves to flood in and cause exactly this.
You can eavesdrop on your army of buffoons while they try to puzzle out why "just reset the router" is not working anymore. Spy on them while they pay for the privilege of being watched by their allies and overlords while being incessantly attacked by everybody else.
The old guard looks cross about your new hotness bullshit. You've found a way to ass up a simple communications and data moving tool. While you argue over how best to fuck us all over, we may just take our ball and go home. Youtube can kiss my ass. Netflix can fuck itself, and all the ZOMG4KULTRASTREAM24/71000DOLLARTV zombies can have the lot of it.
When I am forced to take my car for service, I take it to my mechanic friend. If he is busy, he will make time to come with me to the shop/dealer while dropping off and picking up. This keeps them a little bit honest, as he can call bullshit in a language I don't speak.
When my mechanic friend needs PC help he brings his computer to me, if I am to busy, I make time to go with him to the repair guys. I can call bullshit in a language he don't speak..
I live in a Seattle suburb. I actually saw this story on the local news a few days ago, we all got a big laugh out of it. My 11 year old boy laughed the loudest, he's been repairing neighborhood computers for the elderly for about a year. I'ts crazy that computer repair houses are still a thing. Your local teen can likely perform basic PC repair service in exchange for a couple of bucks, or a day off of chores. If not, he knows a guy that can.
these unthinking people will put themselves on lists for the rest of their lives
It's fortunate that he was outed before he could act. It's sad and scary that there are government lists that he can be put on for the rest of his life.
tl:dr = American manufacturing never left, it just leveled up. Allocate your skill-points accordingly.
I am a nerd, not an economist. I'm gonna get modded into the dark-side for this but I gotta speak-up. I have no idea WTF I'm talking about in terms of arcane economics.... BUT..... I do a *lot* of business in *GASP* American manufacturing plants (The mythical American places that just about everybody in this thread claims not to exist anymore) I build and maintain *GASP* Automated manufacturing and robotic tools! Shit the bed, automation and manufacturing took my job and gave me better one! Hows that for way oil in your eye!?
From where I stand, the price of those $250.00 jeans and $1000 handbags looks like it has very little to do with where or how they are manufactured, and very much to do with WHAT WE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR THEM. Look no further than your local second hand store for the REAL VALUE of products VS corporate PERCEIVED VALUE at the mall. High priced consumer goods has not brought us to our knees yet. In fact, we don't even take the stickers off our baseball caps anymore, presumably so everybody KNOWS we paid way to much for em. IKNOWRIGHT?
To put it another way-
If Nike needs to pay a little extra tariff money to move those products back into the US from China, I don't see all the Nike fans suddenly switching to made-in-the-USA workboots over another 20%-50% increase in cost, and if they do, Nike can certainly afford to take the price down in order to compete. Or maybe, just maybe, avoid the fees all together and have the American workforce build and maintain an automated factory for it. (which I think is the point)
I bet Facebook could employ the entire city of Detroit for years retrofitting and automating some of those sprawling factories to produce their rift gizmo, and still come out of it with crazy profit. Maybe not record bonuses for the suits, but well into the black. See where I'm going with this?
American manufacturing today means CNC machines, automation, and highly staffed quality departments. More skilled labor for sure, I see grey-hairs working those machines every day. Those guys can't operate a windows box to save their lives, but they can make those robots dance to any tune they please. Plenty of blue-collar labor available as well. Jobs still need raw stock to be cut, Floors need sweeping, product needs to be packaged, shipped and received. Sales positions need to be filled, the list goes on and on. Today is the future, if you want to be employed, you will have to learn SOMETHING. If all you can do is stand on the line and mindlessly assemble things, McDonalds is always hiring. Manufacturing is alive and well in the US, we just don't make the shiny plastic neatoes and bullshit our politicians and upper class keep buying their kids at the mall.
When my robot replaces your manufacturing job, or service job, or tech job, leverage your skills in another department, specialize, or go to trade school and learn to repair robots. There is PLENTY OF WORK, but only if your not smoking weed all day, or spending it bitching about social injustice on the net, but instead choose to take your job seriously, and actually show up.
I know, I sound like my father, and yes, he's an asshole. He is also an employed metal worker in the manufacturing sector who hates computers, and has been for 30+ years.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows box in the shop ran my large format 3d printer.
3 day long print, dead 2.5 days into it because MS knows best when to update, running tasks be damned.
To hell with windows. Its run on a Raspi now. This means my time must be invested training users. This is a business cost. Thanks MS.
Just wait till UPS finishes its cutting edge stealth fighter/delivery drones (CODENAME: STOLEN) then we will see who rules the skies. There's also the Fed-Ex experimental air-to-air "Logistical Orbital Spearhead Targeter", (LOST) . USPS is gonna have to back to the drawing board though, looks like the surface-to-air "Malicious Operator Radio Equipped Ballista System" (MOREBS) is going to need a redesign.
So far though, its the underdog, 7/11, who rules the skies with their own system, the "Neighborhood Orbiting Grip and Ship" (NOGAS) The hot Coffee payload and secondary microwaved burrito launcher seem deterrent enough....... for now.
China set out its plans to become the first country to admit to landing a probe on the far side of the moon
This is awesome. Hey Trump, you've talked a pretty big game, here is a chance to walk the walk. Accept this dudes contract on behalf of Capgemini and be the champ you promised to be.
"Plebs are already sharing all of this personal information with various online services anyway, why cant we just have the data they are already giving away?"
I personally enjoy my dangerous privacy/freedom over some illusion of safety at the expense of my keeping personal papers and effects to myself. To that effect, I don't use cloud services, I handle my own communications and pay a premium for privacy when its to much of a hassle to handle something on my own hardware/software.
On the other hand, my countrymen choose to trade their personal details away, and willingly track their own every move, in exchange for free email and instant communications. That is not enough of a reason to take from my choice to not willingly hand over a log of my daily activities and shopping habits, nor is it justification for my government to collect all of this data "just in case"
You want MY data? Pay for it. It is not on the barter table.
I'm afraid that at least some Americans have internalized the NRA's message, "Guns are the answer. Now, what's the question?"
Guns should never be used to protect property. Only to protect lives when it's the last resort, after you've tried everything else humanly possible.
Its just about numbers. If one person used a gun to protect property, 9 other people don't have to, and its a decision our society has already made. Right now, we pay civil servants to do it for us.
Unfortunately, they've become pretty scary good at figuring out "who" shot you while taking your wallet, "where" it happened, and "why" it happened, but remain pretty bad at using their guns to stop it from happening in the first place.
On the other hand, they are great at using those guns to protect corporate property.....
Everybody is "a thief"... I'm one, you are one. The law is made to protect us from barbarity (that can be made with weapons, for example...) - "guns" are not the answer for nothing "civilized"...
An armed society is a polite society. I bet if we go back to everybody carrying a sidearm, a lot of people will suddenly get a lot more "pleasant" to be around. Not only do weapons change the risk reward calculation in a big way, but they have an uncanny ability to remove the worst decision-makers from society... permanently.
The real world aint exactly civilized. Any of-age, responsible adult who says otherwise lives in a bubble of money and culture that is "protected", as you say, from the rest of us "barbarians" here in the real world.
Protect yourself (and your packages?) Learn to shoot, and stop fearing firearms. The life you save may be your own.
We have the same system here in Auburn, WA. Packages to big for the little box AND the big box still go on the doorstep. It's a pretty shitty neighborhood,
and I order online A LOT. Sometimes, the delivery guy will walk up onto my porch, open the screen door and sort of hide the package between the wood and the screen. Other times, the package is left on the outside corner of my deck. There is a lot of real shitty foot traffic on my street, and more than one larger package has been stolen. So far, the carrier has replaced each one, after they send a driver to "check the package" by leaving another slip of paper saying so on my door.
Other-times, using Amazon prime, a haggard looking driver will show up in a private car, late in the evening, and hand me a package without speaking a word. I'm guessing he speaks no English, and has been on the road all day making amazon prime free(not really) next day deliveries. Works good, he gets paid and does it right.
There are also Amazon lockers I can use in town if I was to order something really stupid off the internet. I keep saying I'm going to setup a spring loaded dog-shit-glitter name-brand-computer-box every-time something goes missing.
Perfect business model:
The Uber software upgrade to your personal conveyance aint cheap, and is licenced annually, on a per vehicle basis. Once properly installed (by a licenced Uber re-seller, naturally) the upgrade allows the use your own car for your own needs, but when your in the grocery store shopping for your family, taking in the theater, or even sleeping for the night, your car has made a few local pickups and generated a little extra dough for you (and Uber) Win-Win, everybody gets something, and the car is the only one doing any work. Of course its on the owner for liability and maintenance, but that's the game they are already playing.
This is the way of the future. Owning a large piece of machinery should be an income generator, not an income sink. This goes double if it can perform its job autonomously.
I've got a few questions I ask myself when envisioning the future of society at large.
1. Can a computer do this task better than a human?
2. Can it be fully automated?
If the answer to both of these questions is yes, you can expect some "disruptive new technology" to deliver both 1 and 2 in the not to distant future.
Driving around town right now ALMOST meets 1, and every tech company out there is working away at cracking 2.
And everything to do with people being a little HARDER than your default little bitch tech worker.
Subtract the family, I would sleep in a tent until I could afford the van for decent pay. Double if I was unemployed before I was hired on.
Businesses hiring temp workers for low wage would do well to offer campgrounds.
The very first things you are going to print when you finally come around is upgraded hardware for your printer. When you're discussing 3d printers, a large portion of hardware IS software.
I can't tell if you're parroting Ken Olson on purpose or not.
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."
3d printing is changing the world right now. The maker revolution is on right now. You're not going to notice while you're busy buying more and more useless shit at the mall, but when your crap breaks, its the 3d printer guys that will salvage the components before it gets to the landfill you're filling.
I've used my 3d printer to print structural parts for a home made CNC mill, which mills out the parts I need in soft metals if that's what my design calls for.
I print neatos for my friends, or when I'm calibrating a new material, so I have a pretty large collection of plastic toys. I give them away on the regular, for holidays and bdays and crap, so some people are under the impression that those are all it makes.
One look at my workshop will show you, 3d printing and electronics are a perfect fit. Seeing as how robotics is ALSO changing the world at a pretty fast pace, I'd say you're life will very soon be made better with 3d printing, directly, or indirectly.
Sure, but past innovations displaced specific sets of workers, from specific fields. (pun intended) I think what he is worrying over is the potential to displace many different workers very quickly, from many different industries.
Automation is all awesome, and displacing specific sets of workers in steps is progress.
Displacing MANY different workers from MANY different fields, as automation looks to be about to do, is very painful progress, and will force many tough decisions. At least, that's what I took from the read. S.H. is a pretty smart dude, and the writing is on the wall. This time is IS different, the potential applications of good AI in automating the things will grow very quickly as business owners innovate. This will have consequences that I don't think we can really accurately predict.
Stay employed.
Splitting hairs but.....
I've always understood that a "drone" is an autonomous something. Jamming its C&C signal means at best you cut the visual link to home-base and the ability to assume control. It can still carry out its mission, because to qualify as a "drone" you are an autonomous thing carrying out a pre-programmed mission, or responding in real time to external conditions.
Has this changed over the past few years?
Do exactly what their rank can handle.
It's not about overpopulation. There is plenty of land for us, it's about the resources we use. It's the things we use once and throw away. If we all start walking instead of driving, growing our own food, washing our cloths and dishes by hand, and abandon awesome things like rubber, Styrofoam, and plastics.... maybe we can slow the train a little bit. Problem is, these are the things we western nations reject out of hand.
2 children use twice an many resources as you. Their children will use twice as many as them. That's the exponential growth that scares me. It's not the space they use.
Eventually, we will travel the stars. The only question is will it be before or after some global emergency. NASA is supposed to be studying aeronautics and pushing the ball forward on space exploration. Enable that mission. Stop distracting our rocket scientists with side quests that are supposed to fall in the EPAs lap.
While climate change is terrifying, the fuse is already burning. Let the EPA do what the EPA does, and let NASA do what NASA does. Make all the data public. I would argue that the NASA budget and EPA budget should split the defense budget between them and really focus on their specific missions...... but I am not a politician or an accountant, so that's none of my business.
Let the other countries handle the easy stuff. I hope all of the climate money goes to space exploration instead. Unpopular point of view for sure. Do it anyway.
I'm so tired of the SUV driving, Yacht sailing, power guzzling yuppy assholes making everything harder for the rest of us so they can have some point to bring up when somebody brings up climate change during their wine tasting.
Look to the stars! There is no stopping this train. The best we can do is slow it a bit.
THERE. ARE. TO. MANY. PEOPLE. Reality check- EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. This train aint gonna slow.
You call this damnation. I call it forward thinking. There are solutions at home, but we reject them out of hand. The only realistic answer is the stars. Dont be discouraged by man-kinds reach today, be optimistic for what we may achieve next year.
This is the best news to come out of T yet.
Explorers change your world.
Stellar explorers change your Galaxy.
Polling: If the voter had said T had his/her vote, he/she was forced to defend him/her-self against the legions of Americans who had been trained by our media to label voter a RACIST, WOMAN HATING, LOW EDUCATION, UN-AMERICAN NAZI MF.
I'n reality=
Voter had just lost his/her job to the foreigner he/she had been forced to train, and just spent the last few months scraping by, while at the same time, listening to his/her peers say "that's fucked up", and "WOW, how is that legal?"
-OR-
Voter had been working the same job for decades, and lost it due to off-shoring on account of developing countries doing what developing countries do.
Voter knew the loss of his/her company health insurance was going to cost him/her(it?) another $700 bucks come tax season.
Voter saw the big-round-orange face saying things that would make his/her life suck less. Voter made an informed decision, based on what the "T" said; VS what the the "H" said.
Voter was angry. Voter was tired of defending himself, and sure as hell not about to face off against a journalist with a mic outside of the voting booth, or on the phone, or in front of his/her school, gym, etc.
Voter also happened to live in a state less populated than CA and NY.
It's a complicated situation. HRC will be listening to her faithful ape this kind of thinking for the rest of her life. Changes nothing.
Voter still knows better than to talk about the choice he/she made.
We are building a better one. Without Your bullshit walled gardens. Without your ads. Without your monitoring. Without your grand regulations. Without your clumsy meddling. Without your consistent need to monetize every damn thing see. Without your little carrier fiefdoms and exclusive hardware monopolies. Without the insanely low barrier of entry that allowed all the dopey phone-addict people who cant think for themselves to flood in and cause exactly this.
You can eavesdrop on your army of buffoons while they try to puzzle out why "just reset the router" is not working anymore. Spy on them while they pay for the privilege of being watched by their allies and overlords while being incessantly attacked by everybody else.
The old guard looks cross about your new hotness bullshit. You've found a way to ass up a simple communications and data moving tool. While you argue over how best to fuck us all over, we may just take our ball and go home. Youtube can kiss my ass. Netflix can fuck itself, and all the ZOMG4KULTRASTREAM24/71000DOLLARTV zombies can have the lot of it.
I'll meet you in the "Unlicensed spectrum".
How can you be sure we are not ALL full of shit? Simply BUY MORE papers. Become an informed citizen!
More lies, different names, same goals.
For the elderly? Sure. You? Probably not a good idea. Better stick to 18 year olds, dingleberry.
When I am forced to take my car for service, I take it to my mechanic friend. If he is busy, he will make time to come with me to the shop/dealer while dropping off and picking up. This keeps them a little bit honest, as he can call bullshit in a language I don't speak.
When my mechanic friend needs PC help he brings his computer to me, if I am to busy, I make time to go with him to the repair guys. I can call bullshit in a language he don't speak..
I live in a Seattle suburb. I actually saw this story on the local news a few days ago, we all got a big laugh out of it. My 11 year old boy laughed the loudest, he's been repairing neighborhood computers for the elderly for about a year. I'ts crazy that computer repair houses are still a thing. Your local teen can likely perform basic PC repair service in exchange for a couple of bucks, or a day off of chores. If not, he knows a guy that can.
these unthinking people will put themselves on lists for the rest of their lives
It's fortunate that he was outed before he could act. It's sad and scary that there are government lists that he can be put on for the rest of his life.
How about just Freddy Mercury?
tl:dr = American manufacturing never left, it just leveled up. Allocate your skill-points accordingly.
I am a nerd, not an economist. I'm gonna get modded into the dark-side for this but I gotta speak-up. I have no idea WTF I'm talking about in terms of arcane economics.... BUT..... I do a *lot* of business in *GASP* American manufacturing plants (The mythical American places that just about everybody in this thread claims not to exist anymore) I build and maintain *GASP* Automated manufacturing and robotic tools! Shit the bed, automation and manufacturing took my job and gave me better one! Hows that for way oil in your eye!?
From where I stand, the price of those $250.00 jeans and $1000 handbags looks like it has very little to do with where or how they are manufactured, and very much to do with WHAT WE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR THEM. Look no further than your local second hand store for the REAL VALUE of products VS corporate PERCEIVED VALUE at the mall. High priced consumer goods has not brought us to our knees yet. In fact, we don't even take the stickers off our baseball caps anymore, presumably so everybody KNOWS we paid way to much for em. IKNOWRIGHT?
To put it another way-
If Nike needs to pay a little extra tariff money to move those products back into the US from China, I don't see all the Nike fans suddenly switching to made-in-the-USA workboots over another 20%-50% increase in cost, and if they do, Nike can certainly afford to take the price down in order to compete. Or maybe, just maybe, avoid the fees all together and have the American workforce build and maintain an automated factory for it. (which I think is the point)
I bet Facebook could employ the entire city of Detroit for years retrofitting and automating some of those sprawling factories to produce their rift gizmo, and still come out of it with crazy profit. Maybe not record bonuses for the suits, but well into the black. See where I'm going with this?
American manufacturing today means CNC machines, automation, and highly staffed quality departments. More skilled labor for sure, I see grey-hairs working those machines every day. Those guys can't operate a windows box to save their lives, but they can make those robots dance to any tune they please. Plenty of blue-collar labor available as well. Jobs still need raw stock to be cut, Floors need sweeping, product needs to be packaged, shipped and received. Sales positions need to be filled, the list goes on and on. Today is the future, if you want to be employed, you will have to learn SOMETHING. If all you can do is stand on the line and mindlessly assemble things, McDonalds is always hiring. Manufacturing is alive and well in the US, we just don't make the shiny plastic neatoes and bullshit our politicians and upper class keep buying their kids at the mall.
When my robot replaces your manufacturing job, or service job, or tech job, leverage your skills in another department, specialize, or go to trade school and learn to repair robots. There is PLENTY OF WORK, but only if your not smoking weed all day, or spending it bitching about social injustice on the net, but instead choose to take your job seriously, and actually show up.
I know, I sound like my father, and yes, he's an asshole. He is also an employed metal worker in the manufacturing sector who hates computers, and has been for 30+ years.