One of the theme's of this blog is that the cause of general economic decline in the US has been driven by the decline in American manufacturing.
I came across an interview in the Sept/Oct 2012 issue of Harvard Magazine, with Harvard Business School's Willy Shih, whose perspective resonates with mine. Shih recounts his experiences working with Kodak, a once successful US camera manufacturer and film developer that outsourced its camera manufacturing business to East Asia in the 1970's, and as a result was unable to take advantage of surging demand for digital cameras later on. Shih likens manufacturing to an eco-system, or a commons, that features a workforce and an ecology of innovative know-how that must be replenished, and can be lost -- irretrievably -- if business leaders only think in terms of short term profitability (which over the last few decades has meant outsourcing much of the innovative intense manufacturing).
Shih is pessimistic that outsourced industries such as electronics can come back to the United States. Is his pessimism warranted? I don't think so. In theory, the policies of Japan, Korea, China and others that drove this and other industries out of the United States could be replicated by the United States, and one would expect, would have similar results.
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