• misk@piefed.socialOP
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      21 hours ago

      It’s not viable without upsetting those who benefit from status quo, that’s for sure. Many people don’t seem to be happy with that status quo though. They picked wrong answer to the correct question but they weren’t that far off.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        No, it’s not remotely viable because something always has to come from somewhere. The US, or any particular place on Earth, does not have every necessary resource available. Or might only have poor quality/purity resources available.

        So even if you were to somehow move every manufacturing pipeline into a single country, that country still relies on getting lithium from other countries where it’s abundant, or magnesium, or titanium, or sulphur, or cobalt, or gold, or platinum, or perhaps even just decent steal.

        And since you’re getting those resources from other countries, it’s far more logistically viable to process those resources in the countries where they’re mined.

        And since those country are already processing the resources, it’ll also be logistically way better if they can process them into basic components too.

        • misk@piefed.socialOP
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          13 hours ago

          What are the resources required to build electronics that are unavailable in the US? There’s no infrastructure, yeah, but saying a country the size of US is limited in what’s available resource-wise sounds silly.

          • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            “Big” does mean “everything is available”. But you are starting to ask the right questions:

            What resources are needed to build electronics?

            Where does one find these resources in abundance?

            If you’re actually interested in learning the answers to these questions, you can find out the average rare earth minerals needed for a CPU or a GPU. You can also find the resource distribution of minerals on Earth, and their expected purities.

            You’ll probably also figure out why certain countries make the diplomatic decisions that they do. Take, for example, the mineral deal between Ukraine and the US…

            • misk@piefed.socialOP
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              4 hours ago

              It’s not that rare earth minerals are this rare, it’s that their extraction is extremely bad for the environment so most western countries are happy to make it a brown people problem.

      • missingno@fedia.io
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        18 hours ago

        It’s actually just not viable, period. I don’t think you understand just how complicated the logistics are, or how long the process would take even if they were to start relocating right now.

        • misk@piefed.socialOP
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          16 hours ago

          Why? Do you mean the only viable model is to outsource cheap labour to Asia forever? People over there will move on eventually.

          • missingno@fedia.io
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            15 hours ago

            It’s not just about labor. It’s about entire supply chains. It’s not exactly trivial to pack up and move everything. And it’s ultimately good for a global economy to have regions that specialize in specific kinds of manufacturing, it’s not necessary for the US to try and make everything domestic just for the sake of being domestic.

            I’m also not sure what you mean by “move on”, do you think manfuacturing is somehow ephemeral?

            • misk@piefed.socialOP
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              15 hours ago

              All you’re saying it’s complex and that it will take time. Americans put a man on the moon, they’re a resourceful bunch. Some got pretty lazy though.

              I don’t think people in Asia are different from others and will likely be interested in pivoting their economies to be less dependent on a single thing. China already started so things moved to Vietnam, Indonesia etc. which for now are cheaper. Eventually „the west” is going to run out of places to outsource dirty work to. Colonialism is visibly losing steam, hence the rise of fascism which is just colonialism pointed inwards.