See my comments here about vending machines and printers. This is nothing new and we could hardly live without it - certainly not at our current level. Do you have a printer at home? What is his name? Does he live on your manor with his shop of California job cases?

World War II was won by our "resource-based industrial capacity" but that was 70 years ago. We are in a new era.

Also, humans are rational by definition, if you understand what "rational" means in the technical sense. That other people do make the same choices you would is a different issue entirely.

As a professional researcher, I get paid to look stuff up and make it into an entertaining story. I am often pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to put my browser to work finding facts from the 19th century. That said, however, I also know that much is not online. Very much is still archived in books, bound in old volumes of periodicals and newspapers, personal journals, and ephemera.

Libraries are not paid for by "government." The federal government has the Library of Congress (to serve Congress first and us afterward). Your state may also have a similar institution. However, most of the 16,000 local libraries are paid for with local property tax money, and there, your vote counts. You can stop a library bond proposal pretty easily. However, realize that you pay about $30-$40 per year for your local library, about 10 cents per day. If you do not use it, that is your choice. 68% of Americans do have a library card.

stats above from 2008 from
http://www.librariesforreallife.org/f...

More library facts
http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheet...

Database by state
https://www.imls.gov/research-evaluat...

Settlements became towns became cities. Is it just a matter of size?
The old definition of city was a town with a cathedral.
Growth of settlements can be from many causes- entrepot, location for transport and military, a market center in a rich agricultural hinterland, a major employer of labor, this last would depend on potential for resources and transport, and so
on.
Now the point about the factory town attracting workers from agriculture as better pay was available, a valid argument.
But at that time the new factory worker has little choice. In Europe and especially the UK, manufacturing took off in the same era as the enclosure of land, and widespread eviction by the feudal land owners of people whose ancestors lived on the land for generations but without legal title.
Manufacturing via the industrial revolution enabled survival of many who would otherwise have starved due to the 'Enclosure Act'. You could say that capitalism stepped in to fix the problems of feudalism, once again.
There is food for thought here- what is a property right? Who had the title paper, who worked the land, yes conditions in those factories were horrible, but so was agricultural work in those days, surely better than starvation. Neither the land owners nor the factory owners cared, but the factory owners provided a life line.

I dispute that. See here:
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes51...

If there were a shortage, wages would rise to attract more people to the work.

(More to follow.)

Don't know why I missed this when I was logged on earlier today, but your statement: "Expecting "the education system to produce these skills" is to reduce human beings to factory outputs. I am sure that you did not intend that kind of a Soviet view of the problem." is condescending and ridiculous. When I was in the 9th grade high school back in the '60s we went through what was referred to as "exploratory shops" as a regular part of our HS education. Each shop only took 1 or 2 periods in the morning or afternoon and we took one shop for roughly 3 or 4 weeks each throughout the school year totaling 8 or 9 shops by the time the year ended. There were shops for a wide range of skills and we got to pick which ones we wanted to attend. There were exploratory shops for textiles, welding, machine, electrical, sheet metal, automotive, wood, and a bunch more. By the time I got out of 9th grade I had a good idea of how to run a sewing machine, lathe, milling machine, band saw, wire a house, tear apart and reassemble a gasoline engine, build a mold and pour parts made of molten aluminum, and a whole lot more. Along with all that was a rudimentary understanding of the theory behind each skill. Grades 10-12 you could pick what you wanted (I chose electronic theory), but those little exploratory shops gave me skills and understanding I'd use for the rest of my life. All of that is gone now and the high schools offer none of it as far as I can tell. What a loss!!!! It seems today the HS kids can recite the latest PC bromides and paraphrase Karl Marx but don't know the difference between a wrench and a screwdriver (or how to use either) and can barely balance a checkbook. And that is called "education"... BS.

Library and books are being replaced by kindle, Wikipedia, and YouTube, and google. The government should no longer waste money on libraries I think

Manufacturing is kind of a service that used to be performed by humans but is increasingly being performed by robots now

Maybe other things we commonly call services will be performed by robots in the future too, like cashiers, order takers, waitresses, etc. truly creative things may eventually be taken over more and more by robots that learn on their own. In the meantime we humans have to compete with each other and robot science to remain visble

Your argument assumes that all human beings are rational. I think you know otherwise. And I put it to you that military security demands that any country preserve a core of resource-based industrial capacity that will help it withstand siege.

Being an American process controls programmer (retired now) your first line is quite complimentary, thanks. However, the manufacturing base in America went a long ways in offering the environment to grow that programming prowess. Problems were being solved on the manufacturing floor before the universities even knew what they were. The rest of the world is catching up as the manufacturing floor moves to their venue. I see the Chinese becoming much better at programming because they now have the base to make it possible. It isn't an academic exercise for them anymore, they have real world experience to back them up, just like we did.

The common mantra is "jobs were stolen", but that is false. Jobs migrated to more fertile economic ground. Using your example, if the Massachusetts manufacturing "ground" is poisoned by over taxation, regulation, and union pressure, but the Texas ground is still "sweet" the jobs will move to Texas - or wherever else in the world. Nothing was stolen.

Edit add: Here in NY, the State is starting to offer HUGE tax and other incentives (in certain areas) to entice manufacturing and other businesses to move here. This isn't stealing, it's sweetening the ground that was poisoned for so long.

Ford wanted his employees to be able to afford a car they were building. He didn't expect them to buy ALL the cars they were building. Your "thermodynamics" reference here is irrelevant. Let's not be idiotic about this, OK?

As for pirates, while the combined navies of the United Kingdom (mostly) and other nations did put down piracy, what killed it was free trade. Most of piracy was paid for with smuggling. Smuggling depends on laws against imports. If piracy had paid, they would have been the first with ironclads, rifled long range guns, and petroleum powered steam engines. Instead, piracy as a lucrative way of life died out in the early 19th century with laissez faire -- except for the usual fringe of criminals who plague all society.

The truth you are missing is that the exchange of values is asymmetrical, never equal. You know that, I am sure, but your post here seems to be an attempt to deny that. The Valley was a literary construct. No society can survive without outside contact. In point of fact, the societies that thrive are those that are most open to traffic. Illegal immigrant should be a contradiction because immigration should not be regulated by law. In fact, City Air Makes You Free. Google the phrase for hundreds of positive posts about it. My own is here: http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...

"In the Middle Ages, if you could evade your manor lord for a year within the city walls, you were free. On the other hand, everyone was expected to contribute to the defense of the city. Men who work for a living have no time for training, so the city depended on firearms for protection: easy to use and devastating against an attacker." (In other words, America is one big medieval city, a place full of strangers with guns.)

I think that you are missing the point of capitalism. First, all manufacturing is a service. See my comments below. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

When you buy a service you buy the most precious thing on Earth: your own time. See my comment in this thread https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

I agree with you that most government regulations - what you call "paper pushing" - represent a deadweight loss to the economy. That said, keeping track of medical records via automated information processing is not just a sop thrown to the insurance lobby. Medical records are the foundation for primary care. Everyone of us is unique. Your medical record is your life record, literally and truly.

You can blame "the educational system" or you can blame parents. Here in Texas, the Mexican-American Engineering Society works hard to bring the news to bright kids (boys and girls) that they do not have to do what their parents did. Too often, we see that carpenters, electricians, and mechanics do not encourage and actively discourage their kids when it comes to pursuing college in general and engineering in particular.

Some of that is "Spanish culture" because until America was invented in the 19th century, what else would anyone do, except what their parents did? Read the biographies of European savants whose fathers saw no use whatever it was the young genius was pursuing.

Expecting "the education system to produce these skills" is to reduce human beings to factory outputs. I am sure that you did not intend that kind of a Soviet view of the problem.

Henry Ford paid $5 a day, when unskilled workers made $1 a day so that he could pick whom he wanted and treat them as he wanted. And they put up with it for the pay. There is no way that the total number of all people employed in automobile manufacturing could buy enough cars to keep the lines moving. That would violate the second law of thermodynamics. It is why communism fails and it why "Gulching" is a failure mode: you need imports and you need to exports. Trade is life.

I have worked for Japanese and German multinational corporations. Their software sucks. No one writes code like Americans.

The DaVinci robot is made in Silicon Valley in the USA -- and it has competitiors. In fact, when I worked for Kawasaki Robotics back in the 1990s, they touted their PUMA for surgery, but it was an AMERiCAN machine from Unimation. In fact, for "firsts" Kawasaki had the first human worker killed by a robot... Just sayin'

You are complaining about the half empty glass. And I agree: we need to fill it up -- with high tech high concept value production, not 19th century hobbies and crafts.

And I support those Chinese. It is the largest human migration in history, the movement of girls from the farms to the factories. That was 20 years ago... They're just about ready to become venture entrepreneurs... A

Finally, as wonderful as We Americans are, as nice as my neighbors are, what is special about us or lacking in others that we say that the Chinese are stealing our jobs, but people in Texas are not stealing them from Massachusetts... or are they? Do we need to protect Massachusetts workers from Texas competitiion?

Manufacturing actually generates more than "tangible items". It is a repository of the wealth of skills and knowledge and provides an environment for invention and creativity. America losing its manufacturing facilities may prove as bad as if America lost its universities. Are there many Americans left who know how empirically to mass produce textiles?

I believe the notion of workers being able to buy what they produced was pioneered by Henry Ford as he paid his workers high wages at the time so they could buy a car produced at the plant where they worked. Storo above is far more right than he is wrong. Just because a worker at Boeing is highly unlikely to buy a 747 on his wages doesn't negate the gist of what Storo is trying to convey.

I've used an ATM maybe 4 or 5 times since they were invented. I prefer a live teller at the bank.

So, as the vending machines, printers, and phones (not to mention things like clothing and shoes) are manufactured in foreign countries they get the benefits of skills and knowledge and our people get unemployment, welfare, and food stamps. When I worked as a contractor in China we were told to not "over automate" the factories because it was more important to provide meaningful employment for the people than to let them languish on the street corners. Therefore, as their people get exposure to chemical making and manufacturing facilities, our people get exposure to filling out government forms to begin a career of professional recipient. Just sayin'.

How many of us go into the bank to cash a check so that we can talk to a person instead of use the teller machine?

None of that is factual. You are wrong on every point. It was never the case that "workers worked at jobs in industries that payed enough for the workers to be able to buy the goods they produced." Yes, that was true for many common inexpensive items such as cigars and newspapers, but no one could afford a jet aircraft. And no one in the paper mill that supplied the newspapers could afford to buy one of those monster rolls of paper -- or have a need for it. They could buy a notebook, however, as could the worker in a notebook making factory, who used machine tools worth far more than the wages of a toolmaker, who had no need for the things he made. I worked for a robotics firm for two years: great wages for me; but I could not afford a $100,000 workcell, or have reason to...

And the claim that wages should be enough to let workers buy the goods they make was one of original Cliches of Socialism from FEE in the 1950s, addressing an idea from the generation previous to that. So, it goes back long before the 70s and 80s.

As for the other points about food stamps, etc., that is a different problem. I understand and appreciate your intention on the point, but you might as well start out by claiming that we are all so poor that we have to use public streets and roads because we cannot afford personal air vehicles -- and you would be right. Socialism causes poverty and absent socialism, we'd be living the Jetsons Future right now.

But a call for a return to American manufacturing is really like calling for a return to the individual tradesman, the tailor, the tinker, the cook, the baker. Those trades all exist - as does manufacturing - but not as it was done in 1500.

Well, how about vending machines? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vending...) We think nothing of printers connected to computers, but what happened to the actual guys with ink and little lead letters? Could you imagine a society with millions of such printers? Or street corner arithmeticians in the absence of the calculators that are now built into our phones -- phones which replaced messengers... When I set up my telescope in the back yard, I use my phone for its compass and level features, displacing a licensed surveyor from a job...

The public library is a service. It replaces a market in buying and reselling books, re-wholesaling and re-retailing repeatedly. And my wife prefers to borrow ebooks, which are wholly immaterial, but a valuable service nonetheless. And the unemployed book reader person who comes to your home never had a chance...

When you read a book, or watch an informative video on YouTube, you are gaining the service of the knowledge discovered by others so that you do not need to literally reinvent the wheel and everything else in your life.

I understand the sentiment, and I shared it with a colleague today, or he shared it with me. He is a multi-millionaire (which I surely am not) and he is almost 60. But he still hides from his parents the fact that he has a gardner. "The way I was raised, if you spent money with this hand, you had something to show for it in the other hand." His parents expect him to mow his own lawn -- and he does that sometimes because he likes it, but it is not an effective use of his time, and he knows that. That's why he has a gardner.

When you buy a service, you are buying back the most precious thing on Earth: your own time. It is like pushing the grave a little bit farther back.

Also, I know what you intended in the vernacular sense of "intrinsic value." But there is no such thing. All values are relative and set by the buyer. The most exquisite vase has no value if no one wants it.