Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Processing: The Greatest Threat to US Economic Security || Peter Zeihan" video.

  1. It's good to hear Peter talking again about an American-centric plan for strategy and logistics. Global "advantageous labor-cost profile" thinking is great short-term, but it's a hothouse flower (dependent on a global security and diplomatic position that is far more fragile than economists take into account), and a transient one at that. Countries will climb the value-add mountain, and any general tightening of capital hampers spending on non-recurring engineering essential for research and development. Once NRE is spent, technology transfers (through political force, guile, reverse-engineering, or familiarity) will erode that value-add mountain until it's mostly flat. Tech transfer is about 10x cheaper than tech development, so staying ahead in a world of near-instant global communication is a long-term challenge that may ultimately be impossible to maintain. There's a huge amount to be said for a country investing in processes and procedures that transfer technology internally. Passing down expertise from one generation to the next, is something Peter has criticized the Russians for failing at, but I'm not sure Americans are even half as good as we should be -- high tech companies did VERY little to transfer knowledge from the Apollo generation to the Late Cold War generation. The Late Cold War generation is now passing from the scene, and the transfer to the Post Cold War generation could not even be considered ad hoc in most cases. So we aren't just seeing a case of technology transfer leveling the value-add playing field (and thus any potential for "advantageous labor-cost profiles") we're seeing generational expertise loss leveling that as well. This isn't just a Russian problem.
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