As manufacturing in the US continues to be exported overseas, industrial processes will be slowly forgotten as workers retire or die off. The documentation of defunct companies is eventually destroyed. There is no way we could re-industrialize quickly if countries like China decided to stop selling to us.
There is no way we could re-industrialize quickly if countries like China decided to stop selling to us.
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And there is no way we could return to old-fashioned subsistence and live as our great grandparents did either. I still remember some of what I learned growing up but my parents generation (born 1913 and 1916) were some of the last who knew how to take a few simple tools and seeds and survive the old way. There are books that preserve most of it but a family would starve long before they figured out how to put it into practice. For better or worse we are dependent on industry and industrialized agriculture.