How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries.

We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but four times bigger. Is that a world where “Designed by Apple in California, Made in China” still makes sense? What will be America’s competitive edge in that scenario?

What seems most likely to me in the future is that the US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now. Dominating finance and services won’t mean anything when both the IP and the physical products are being produced somewhere else.

I actually think this kind of supports the point you're responding to. HN used to have a battle cry about startups where "the idea doesn't matter, it's all in the execution" (mostly because we're tech-ies, and not those business folks coming up with the silly ideas).

Well, to some extent that's the case with manufacturing. You're bemoaning the loss of IP, which is catastrophic when that's all you have and your wealth is built on a gentleman's game of words and paper.

China, meanwhile, has built out factories, a knowledgeable workforce, and an extensive supply network. Back to startup terminology, there's a "network effect" in manufacturing of all the little parts that make up bigger things. You can drive around town and try out different parts, and make an invention here or there and improve things incrementally. There used to be a thriving ecosystem around the big U.S. domestic car manufacturers, not just for the cars themselves, but all the thousands of parts that go into them.

In other words, like many older hackers who grew up in the "information just wants to be free, man" world that spawned open source, the dig that China is "stealing IP" doesn't really hit me that hard. I'm impressed that they've gone to the next step of actually using it to make physical stuff, and I wish we did that more.