dijit 3 days ago

The idea of the majority of manufacturing being external to a country is a little under 100 years old, yet people talk as if it is unthinkable.

  • ineedasername 3 days ago

    Unthinkable, or at least not feasible, in the sense of supporting the current level of technological advancement and average quality of life in many countries.

  • stainablesteel 3 days ago

    lebanon has an economy that's currently in shambles, and its never been known for its productive capacity. even if they wanted to start making simple comms devices it might rely on infrastructure that they can't invest in, and take tech/capital they have not accumulated

    it would be more realistic for them to receive it from the iran but there might be political hurdles to this and it would end up costing the iranians as hezbollah can't be expected to pay much for it

  • grumple 3 days ago

    100 years ago Lebanon didn’t have running water and still had slavery. The Middle East hasn’t been a producer of goods, even domestically, since antiquity.

    • clwg 3 days ago

      Except for oil, the Middle East produces allot of oil and has for quite some time.

      • grumple 3 days ago

        I wouldn’t count it as a good produced though. It’s just a commodity pulled out of the ground and processed elsewhere (largely in the US). It requires no ingenuity or hard work, just the luck of being on top of oil fields due to geographic peculiarity.

        • caf 3 days ago

          Australia: <puppet looking sideways meme>

  • Xenoamorphous 2 days ago

    100 years ago there were no pagers or mobile phones I guess, or any other kind of modern advanced tech.

    • dijit 2 days ago

      No, there were engines that were capable of flight, guns capable of rapid fire, television technology and radios.

      That was "advanced modern technology" then, and as the passage of time has marched forward, what we consider modern changes - so what's your point?

      • Xenoamorphous 21 hours ago

        How many of TVs were there back then? I can tell you that very few in my country, now everybody has a smartphone.

        Also I can tell you, no airplanes or TVs were built in my country either. They never were, 100 years ago, 50, 20 or nowadays.

        So when you said “The idea of the majority of manufacturing being external to a country” you must have meant the US.

        • dijit 5 hours ago

          I meant the UK.

          Domestic production of goods such as televisions, radios and even extremely high technology such as tractors has been declining since the 70's.

          If you go far enough back (100y or so) then "imported" usually referred to raw materials, spices or very exotic equipment such as furniture - the supply chain and tooling was mostly domestic.

bowmessage 3 days ago

Undoubtedly, this attack has proven that it certainly is, at whatever cost.

dredmorbius 3 days ago

[flagged]

  • bushbaba 3 days ago

    You assume the muslim-aligned countries wouldn't be compromised. There's the potential for supply chain attacks from a domestic manufacturing partner.

    • dredmorbius 3 days ago

      The initial objection was the lack of sufficient size or institutional robustness for indigenous manufacturing capacity. I addressed that.

      The question of the integrity and trustworthiness of a collective bloc structure had occurred. It's another factor, and of course poses its own challenges. Then again, the Western bloc, most capable of the set, seems to have persistent issues along those lines already. Several of Israeli origin, as it happens. (Though of course not solely.)