Thomas Sowell: Manufacturing confusion

Townhall.com ^ | January 15, 2004 | Thomas Sowell

[kevao]

Duh....Obviously.

Well, then, if you and I agree on this, what was the point of your Post #56 to me?

[sixmil]

Not exactly true

Although there has been technological innovation applied to the practice of manufacturing overseas, it was not the cause of it.

[sixmil]

If Americans would save and invest more, instead of leading the world in consumer debt, we could own more of these companies.

Wouldn't the economy collapse if we all did that? It seems like our economy is entirely based on debt and borrowing.

[Choose Ye This Day]

Although there has been technological innovation applied to the practice of manufacturing overseas, it was not the cause of it.

What, then, was the cause of manufacturing overseas? What made it possible for dirt farmers in China to enter factories and begin producing cheap goods? Surely they didn't use their wooden plows and crude pick axes to build and run those semi-automated assembly lines.

I'm not trying to intentionally be obtuse or facetious. To me, though, it seems obvious that the same technological innovations that allowed unskilled workers here in the U.S. to mass-manufacture goods also allowed unskilled workers in other parts of the world to do the same. The manufacturers replicate the assembly line process elsewhere, and the Chinese or Malaysian or Brazilian workers do roughly the same job, for less pay.

Demand for cheap goods was the ultimate cause, I suppose, but without the technology (that the 3rd world borrowed from us), they peasnts would probably still be farming dirt, wouldn't they?

[sixmil]

Demand for cheap goods was the ultimate cause, I suppose, but without the technology (that the 3rd world borrowed from us), they peasnts would probably still be farming dirt, wouldn't they?

Sure, but why is our gov't more concerned with them than us?

[Floratina]

Your post (#18) is a really nice composition. I hope one day to be able to put my thoughts together so eloquently! I just had to tell you that :)

[flashbunny]

"It's a never-ending process, and there's little sense in railing about the injustices of life."

Amen. Although some people like to rail because it makes them feel better. But the only thing that will make their situation better is the willingness to adapt and overcome the changes that make up life in the modern world.

Unless, of course, someone wants to choose a line of work that will be completely insulated from changes brought about by innovation and technology...wonder if any of those exist anymore...

[Taliesan]

Better to be kind than eloquent. Thanks for your kindness.

[laredo44]

So, just as prairies
get strip-mined, populations
get cut up and used...

That's one way to look at it. And the great thing about capitalism, as opposed to any other type of economy, is that it provides a mechanism to redress those grievances. To wit, start your own enterprise based upon your own ideals. Good luck (I'm not being sarcastic).

[laredo44]

FWIIW, I like to equate the laws of economics with the laws of physics. You can defy the laws of physics, but only for a short while (usually seconds). The laws of economics are the same, but the amount of time you can defy the laws is longer. You can pay more for something for a while, but in a free market (even if not totally free), your competitors will eventually get the best of you and you’ll be broke. But the world I guess forever has been trying to defy these laws, and the results have always been the same. Marxism was a recent fad, Japan’s MITI could be in the same category.

FWIW, I completely agree with you. I'll also add another law, the "goodness" of Liberty. If a "solution" involves a constraint on liberty, it isn't really a solution at all, just a continuation of the problem.

[Pietro]

""Globalization" is inevitable. It cannot be stopped"

An interesting Hegelian debate; do men shape history or does history shape men?

I've come down on the latter. I think history is a force and men either ride it or get buried by it. Its easy to believe that IBM and GM and AT&T are creating history if you've never worked at one of those companies. For those of us that have there's no doubt that the Exec's are mostly reacting to market forces, or at best, trying to get in front of them.

Your concern vis-a-vis St. John is also poignant and my questions are; where does it end? does it have to end? or will it begin to unravel just like the empire he was so frightened of?

[theFIRMbss]

>And the great thing about capitalism, as opposed to any other type of economy, is that ... To wit, start your own enterprise based upon your own ideals.

Individuals
can vote libertarian
and be self-righteous

about dissenting
from the "corrupt" two parties.
But their votes don't change

anything at all.
Solving ethical problems
just doesn't address

political ones...
Corporatism inflicts
political grief.

Our founding fathers
didn't solve their "tax problems"
as ethics issues,

they chopped away at
the whole political root
choking their freedom...

[Taliesan]

Hegel's "history", if it is conceived as an external force driving men, falls victim to Ockham's Razor, i.e. let's not multiply entities unecessarily. There is no entity called "History".

It is men who drive history, not something outside us. Technology is just the storehouse of men's tools. And men make tools to, first, survive, and then, to get the life they want.

So when I say technology is driving globalization all I mean is that what men want is in the direction of globalization, and men will go through the dissolution of national borders to get what they want, no matter what.

The real interesting question is not "what entity is driving events?" but "what do men want?" This question is nothing more than Aristotle's question of the final cause, or destiny.

The first, the root assertion of the New Testament happens also to be one with which we can empirically agree or disagree, using all the data of human culture. That first assertion is about men: they want things they shouldn't want. The "heart", which is the organ which WANTS, is broken.

If you find the New Testament reliable in an area where you can look around you and either agree or disagree (is the wanting organ in man broken or not?) then you proceed to trust it in further areas where you cannot look around and test it (i.e. God sent His Son to deliver us).

So, what do men want? Answer: They want pleasure. After they have solved the problem of survival, from that moment on they start making tools to get pleasure. Money is a shorthand symbol of convenience for pleasure. A free-market economy is simply the most efficient means to allocate resources to produce maximum efficiency, and efficiency is defined by the end, the final cause, the destiny, which is itself chosen not by economics but by the heart of man: pleasure.

This motive is the force of history. (I don't mean to say that all men are like this, nor that most men seek pleasure at every waking moment, nor that all pleasure is bad. Just that it is strong enough that the general tendency of mankind is governed by it.)

How did we get from a discussion of manufacturing to this theologizing, you ask? Simply because I look around me and see "globalization" as the logical and predictable course derived from the laws of economics, facilitated by technology, which is the tool of men's wants, which cannot be thwarted by any other known force.

Those among us who want to argue about "globalization" as if it is purely a question of economic pragmatism ("is it good economics in the long run?") are amazingly shallow.

"Globalization" is a process predictable by anybody who happens to have the oddity of twin interests in economics and the New Testament.

[CIBGUY]

for factory workers: automated welders, automated spray painting etc.
for farmers: automated harvestors, computer programmed livestock management, Did you know that in the large beef processing companies every cow is monitored from the day of birth to the day of death? They feed the cows according to computerized formulas, the feed is developed using computerized formulas, and what remains of the cow is disposed of by computerized formulas.

[theFIRMbss]

Hegel's "history", if it is conceived as an external force driving men, falls victim to Ockham's Razor, i.e. let's not multiply entities unecessarily. ... "Globalization" is a process predictable by anybody who happens to have the oddity of twin interests in economics and the New Testament

So, your "razor" cuts
away Hegel's "history,"
but it doesn't cut

the concept of "God?"
Your blade is convenient, it
cuts just where you want...

[Taliesan]

Nice try, but that's a classic case of begging the question.

The razor cuts away all unecessary entities. What is the criterion of necessity? An explanation of all the data, of course. My personal opinion is that there is no alternative hypothesis which explains ALL the data. I'm sure we'll disagree, but most arguments about the existence of God are misplaced; the participants usually don't understand what they are really arguing about. The real debate is PRIOR to the razor, in the area where data is either preserved in the set or edited out of it.

The razor only cuts "god" away if he is not necessary in an explanation of all the data. Many people think he is necessary, many think he is not. That is the 5,000 year old debate.

William of Ockham was a Christian. You can agree or disagree with that conclusion, but to think that the rule he articulated automatically cuts out an unseen god is not to understand Ockham, or his logic, or the subsequent 800 years' debate.

I think the razor cuts "history" away because there is already an observed entity available to reside in the position of cause for the historical effects. I call that entity the "heart", after biblical language; you may call it "genome" or even "blip" if you like, but we don't need another entity called"history" for this specific set of effects.

[Straight Vermonter]

I like Sowell but he is being deceptive about the jobs in India when he states that "By and large, however, the average productivity of Indian workers is about 15 percent of that of American workers". I suspect this is a statement which applies to all manufacturing in India and not a statement about programmers.

Just because much of India's manufacturing is low tech labor intensive and inefficient does not mean that their programmers work at 15% of the efficiency of their American counterparts.

[sixmil]

I think you missed the point. What I am saying is that people are not losing their jobs because of technological evolution. Instead, corporations have run to the government to get a cheap source of labor from overseas. It's not a cotton gin putting field laborers out of work, it is government fulfilling the wishes of corporate lobbyists.

[ggekko]

Ford owns a controlling interest in Mazda and bought Jaguar outright. GM owns Saab and Opel and has large stakes in a number of other foreign car companies. A large number of US compnaies have large direct investments in companies domiciled in other OECD countries.

The promoters of various simple-midnded protectionist schemes voiced on FR threads and other places promote the idea of American workers losing their jobs to shoeless workers in the developing world who are willing to work for pennies a day. The reality is that when a US worker is displaced it overwhelmingly much more likely to occur in favor of a European using advanced robotics or machining technology.

Anyone promoting protectionism should be asked to put their idea in the context of investment and trade with other OECD countries. From a foreign direct investment point of view the developing is a very small part of the US FDI exposure.

[dennisw]

None the less, Toyota is 95% Japanese owned according to Forbes about 7 years ago. Tariffs should be used on all crap China wants to sell to us. It's a national security issue.