Locklin’s Curmudgeonry on the U. S. Economy

Scott Locklin, in a rant on an article devoted to America’s top under-25 entrepeneurs:

Dear America: you can’t have an economy based on narcissism, good intentions, marketing, catering to rich bored people, really excellent webpages, and selling underpants on the internet. I’m afraid you’ll have to make something of value. If this is the best the “almost under 25″ generation is able to come up with, we are well and truly screwed.

which summarizes my views about what we need to do as well as anything. My view is somewhat more nuanced: management and design follows engineering which follows manufacturing. The idea that we’re going to have managers or designers over here while the manufacturing is somewhere else is nuts. Engineers need to work with manufacturing and you can’t do that from 12,000 miles away even with the Internet.

More from Scott Locklin on energy independence:

…the hair shirt crowd needs to grow up; you can’t power the United States on pinwheels and solar powered calculators. You can’t save an important amount of energy unless you’re willing to eat gruel and live like a serf; and not a make-believe serf that takes international plane flights to save-the-world parties either. Americans as a people are a nation of artificers, mechanics and ingenious inventors; it wouldn’t be America without jet funny cars and monster trucks; let’s make them nuclear powered, and monster truck our way into …. the human future!

His view of climate change jibes pretty well with mine: he’s skeptical of the claims of the climatologists but thinks that reducing the amount of carbon we’re releasing into the atmosphere is probably a good idea.

6 comments… add one
  • he hair shirt crowd needs to grow up; you can’t power the United States on pinwheels and solar powered calculators.

    Bull. It already costs less per unit to produce electricity through wind power. And solar’s catching up. It is feasible to be COMPLETELY off fossil fuels in 20 years. see (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030)

    You can’t save an important amount of energy unless you’re willing to eat gruel and live like a serf

    This is bull, too. I work in commercial real estate and have worked on a number of green building projects. What I have found to be the case, without exception, is that buildings especially have horrid energy efficiency. I have worked on several buildings where we were able to slash energy use in half and realize savings within 2 years. The building I work in is powered by wind and solar, heated by geothermal, and insulated with recycled materials for a result of: zero emissions at all. It works fine, and MAKES money for my company.

  • Alex, you really need to re-read that Scientific American article. I read it at your suggestion and just haven’t had time to comment on it.

    It emphatically does not demonstrate feasibility. It demonstrates possibility. I agree with that. It’s possible. To do what they want to do you absolutely, positively must get the Chinese on board and they’re not coming.

  • steve Link

    “. You can’t save an important amount of energy unless you’re willing to eat gruel and live like a serf”

    Same reaction as Alex, though I doubt we could do it in 20 years. We could have major reductions with just the low hanging fruit of conservation. Longer term issues like the energy transmission grid should be addressed anyway.

    Steve

  • Dale B Link

    “The idea that we’re going to have managers or designers over here while the manufacturing is somewhere else is nuts. Engineers need to work with manufacturing and you can’t do that from 12,000 miles away even with the Internet.”

    This is definitely NOT true. The company I work for is a large international manufacturing company and we have been doing this for twenty years (since before the internet). We continue to do more of it as time goes on. It is a major factor not just in our growth but our survival. Most of our US competition from twenty years ago is out of business and part of the reason is that they couldn’t or wouldn’t go global.

    As an engineer, I find it to be a major PITA and everything is harder but it’s not impossible. The more the government intrudes into our business, the more of the operation is going to move somewhere that’s not in the USA.

  • You’re taking too narrow a view, Dale B. China is educating its engineers now and the number of jobs in engineering here has been static or shrinking (depending on the field) for a decade.

  • Dave,

    I know people in the biz. Trust me–China’s already making moves to move off of fossil fuels. China doesn’t like being dependent on anyone and the pollution situation in Beijing and other metro areas is forcing the politics to move faster there. The bickering on the international stage is, in my opinion, a feint.

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