[hudon]

the gist is: When you can manufacture ships, you can also manufacture warships. When you can manufacture warships, you can protect your economy.

or: If all you sell are financial services, and a pandemic hits and you need to protect your people, where will you find masks?

We don't need to build literally everything ourselves, that's a reductionist argument, we just need to become a lot more productive than we are now.

[snowwrestler]

The U.S. already manufactures warships, though, and we’re already by far the best at it. Not only do we already protect our economy, we protect pretty much all shipping on the high seas by all economies on the globe.

The John F Kennedy—built in the U.S.!—is in sea trials this year to become the 12th nuclear aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet. No other nation has more than two carriers. The U.S. has more aircraft carriers operating as museums than other nations have in military service.

What about subs? Again, the U.S. has more than anyone else and Australia just cancelled a deal with France in order to buy subs built in the U.S. We build the best in the world.

I belabor this to make a point: a lot of what people think we need to do… we already have. Our nation and our economy is already the most secure on Earth. We are already the best in the world at making weapons. That never got outsourced, so we don’t need to dramatically reconfigure our economy to bring it back.

[klooney]

> The U.S. already manufactures warships, though, and we’re already by far the best at it.

We very slowly build a small number of incredibly expensive ships. For any other value of "manufacturers warships", Korea or Italy are better and more reliable.

Also, it's not clear if aircraft carriers are survivable in a vaguely peer context. Missiles and drones have come a long way.

> Australia just cancelled a deal with France in order to buy subs built in the U.S. We build the best in the world

We won't be sending them because we can't build them because our defense shipbuilding industry is moribund, and there is no civilian shipbuilding industry to do double duty.

[michaelt]

Practically speaking, I agree.

But theoretically speaking, the time when a strong manufacturing industry is needed is if you get into a lengthy WW2 style conflict, where both sides burn through their stockpiles of tanks/shells/missiles/whatever.

Then whoever can deliver tanks to the battlefield fastest has the numerical advantage. In 1942 the allies had retooled their car/locomotive/tractor manufacturing plants to make tanks and they were literally producing 9x as many tanks as the axis powers. Which is obviously a very good thing, militarily.

So there is historical precedent for the idea that a strong domestic car/locomotive/tractor industry being very helpful in wartime.

Of course, the question you've got to ask is: Will we ever see another WW2 style conflict? Because in a nuclear conflict there's no time to retool and manufacturing plants, and in lower-intensity conflicts like Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan there was no desire to.

[kashunstva]

> we already protect our economy…aircraft carriers…subs…weapons

Except when the threat to your economy and security isn’t something against which those weapons will ever be effective. Even the USS John F. Kennedy, as wonderful as I’m sure it is, won’t fix the giant foot gun that is presently threatening your economy and security.

[mmooss]

> we just need to become a lot more productive than we are now.

To nitpick about terminology:

  productivity = output / input

The US would (and maybe will) become less productive; the US is not as efficient at producing many things as non-U.S. competitors, including ship-building. The US is more productive at other things, such as software. (And in 2025, you certainly would trade ship-building productivity for software productivity. Including in warfare.)

If we insist on building ships in the US, we spend more money on the same ships, and - unavoidably - we must shift more productive resources to these less productive tasks. If your neighbor is a great carpenter and you are a great farmer, wouldn't it be smart to trade your vegetables for carpentry, instead of you trying to do carpentry and the carpenter trying to grow vegetables? If you are a Linux maintainer end and the business down the hall back end, do you try to do back end and they try to design OSes? Why?

(Of course, you probably trade your skills indirectly through the wonderful fungibility of money.)

[hudon]

If the carpenter owns weapons, a lot of my farmland, a lot of shares in my farming business, and my debt… I will learn to build my own crossbow

[trhway]

>the gist is: When you can manufacture ships, you can also manufacture warships.

Not really. Most of the complexity and value and technology lies in the difference between a civilian ship and a warship. Guns, radars, missiles, gas turbines - all that much more complex and involved tech than just a metal bathtub with a diesel that a regular civilian ship is. Nuclear aircraft carrier has even less common with a civilian ship. Submarine - pretty much nothing in common.

>or: If all you sell are financial services, and a pandemic hits and you need to protect your people, where will you find masks?

Well, we know that emergency stockpile wasn't maintained as a money saving measure. When you sell finservices you actually have more money to maintain stockpile than when you're manufacturing masks. Yet if you're choosing to not maintain the stockpile ...

[slg]

>the gist is: When you can manufacture ships, you can also manufacture warships. When you can manufacture warships, you can protect your economy.

The counter to this thinking is that if you intertwine your economic wellbeing with your "enemy" to the point that neither side wants to sever the relationship, you won't need to build many warships. Reversing course back towards isolation in order to give yourself the option to build warships increases the odds that you will end up having to build those warships because you have now made it easier for both countries to go to war.

[blululu]

In 2020 during the largest public health crisis in a century, non-woven respiratory masks were found to be an effective intervention. The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so, but you can avoid this scenario repeating itself in the future.

[knubie]

> The counter to this thinking is that if you intertwine your economic wellbeing with your "enemy" to the point that neither side wants to sever the relationship

You mean like how Europe has made themselves completely dependent on Russia for energy? How's that working out?

[gedy]

But China is and has been producing warships at a rapid pace for some time.

[Spooky23]

We had a little event a few years ago that answered your question. You give people money and they make crap. I helped procure like 30M masks. Nature finds a way.

As a society, we’re more productive than we ever have been. We’re not breaking society to create a nation of workshops. This is a cynical power play.

[mmooss]

> We’re not breaking society to create a nation of workshops.

That's what Mao tried in the Great Leap Forward: They tried to shift steel production to a cottage industry in back yards. You can imagine the results.

And also relevant: Everyone learned to say whatever Mao wanted to hear, so they all reported high and increasing production. It turns out that disinformation isn't economically productive, even if it feels that way - you can't make cars out of it.

[squigz]

Was mask manufacturing capacity during the pandemic an issue?

[throwup238]

Yes, and the American N95+ mask manufacturers didn't want to risk another boom-bust cycle so when the government wouldn't guarantee them a long term purchase deal, they couldn't ramp up. They had gone through this same scenario during the first SARS scare and almost went bankrupt when everyone went back to buying cheaper imported masks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-d...

[hudon]

Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_related_to_the_COVID...

[mitthrowaway2]

Yes, it was a severe and acute issue.

[olyjohn]

I think so, isn't that why they brought in all the KN95 masks? The K meaning "Korean."

[Tiktaalik]

The USA is already a lot more productive than everyone else. This is because the USA generates an enormous amount of wealth through very few people thanks to its technology and finance industry. Irony is that there's no end to handwringing editorials in Canada about our "productivity gap" between us and the USA and the USA under Trump is wanting to move itself backward and become less productive. Everyone else in the G7 wishes they were as productive as the USA.

The solution to the problem posed here is for the USA to use its incredible wealth deriving from its incredible productivity to buy the warships from Poland etc.

[klooney]

> thanks to its technology and finance industry

There's been a great sucking sound from all the electrical and mechanical engineers switching to writing CRUD apps because the pay is double.

[Loughla]

Isn't it better just to own the debt of other countries?

[anarticle]

Only if you can enforce it when there is a default. The odds against which was assumed to be zero is becoming nonzero.