People in general just don’t understand the importance of human labour. I think it’s a product of people implicitly dismissing the labour theory of value. Feels like people just don’t want to acknowledge that they depend on other people for being able to live.
In terms of manufacturing, I think people view humans assisting machine as the process rather then the other way round. Because of this, they think that you could place anyone in front of the machine and with rudimentary training they will be able to operate machine as required.
This is not the case though. I read a book called “India is Broken” by a liberal American-Indian. He said something that struck with me. China invested in their foundational education system while India did not. The result was that the floor of literacy in China was much higher than it was in India. Even today, if one can afford it, an Indian parent will send their child to a private school because public schools are shameful and regrettable. Chinese factories work while Indian factories don’t. At least for this case of sophisticated technologies but there are many more examples out there. If you ask an idealogue here why this is the case they always blame it on individual moral failings of corrupt politicians or incompetent managers or lazy workers. Meanwhile, Mao set up Deng for success and the world does not have the capability to comprehend how it worked out for China.
India just had our budget announced and things are only gonna get worse.
Very much agree, and we see similar mentality with the proxy war in Ukraine. The west is having a really hard time grappling with the fact that they can’t just create a military industry to produce things like artillery shells out of whole cloth. It’s exact same problem of underestimating the challenge of creating a system that is able to produce skilled labor. You can’t just throw money at the problem and magically solve it.
There was also a good discussion on Indian economy on Ben Norton’s channel, basically saying a lot of what you mention regarding trying to skip the industrialization step and jumping straight into a financialized economy instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zt1ZYzWP7k
People in general just don’t understand the importance of human labour. I think it’s a product of people implicitly dismissing the labour theory of value. Feels like people just don’t want to acknowledge that they depend on other people for being able to live.
In terms of manufacturing, I think people view humans assisting machine as the process rather then the other way round. Because of this, they think that you could place anyone in front of the machine and with rudimentary training they will be able to operate machine as required.
This is not the case though. I read a book called “India is Broken” by a liberal American-Indian. He said something that struck with me. China invested in their foundational education system while India did not. The result was that the floor of literacy in China was much higher than it was in India. Even today, if one can afford it, an Indian parent will send their child to a private school because public schools are shameful and regrettable. Chinese factories work while Indian factories don’t. At least for this case of sophisticated technologies but there are many more examples out there. If you ask an idealogue here why this is the case they always blame it on individual moral failings of corrupt politicians or incompetent managers or lazy workers. Meanwhile, Mao set up Deng for success and the world does not have the capability to comprehend how it worked out for China.
India just had our budget announced and things are only gonna get worse.
Very much agree, and we see similar mentality with the proxy war in Ukraine. The west is having a really hard time grappling with the fact that they can’t just create a military industry to produce things like artillery shells out of whole cloth. It’s exact same problem of underestimating the challenge of creating a system that is able to produce skilled labor. You can’t just throw money at the problem and magically solve it.
There was also a good discussion on Indian economy on Ben Norton’s channel, basically saying a lot of what you mention regarding trying to skip the industrialization step and jumping straight into a financialized economy instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zt1ZYzWP7k
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: