I, Sharpie

it's a bad re-telling of [0] "Sharpie found a way to make pens more cheaply by manufacturing them in the U.S.", in the style of famous "I, Pencil" essay [1]. But while original text was full of interesting technical facts with a bit of politics mixed in, this imitation has no interesting technical details.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45480354

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016980

Onshoring is easier when your product has six parts.

I don't understand the appeal of Sharpies. Even if left unused, they die out in a relatively short time. The ones meant for paper are not meant to be used on whiteboards. And they don't write (flow) particularly well on either (the colored ones are particularly terrible on whiteboards).

Maybe I'm using them wrong. Happy to be corrected, and to hear your recos on better alternatives.

I'm a little confused about your reference to white boards. I didn't know that there are sharpies intended for white boards. Isn't their whole point that they're permanent?

Separately - try "super permanent" sharpies. I love them.

Yes. We should still praise it.

I use them frequently for marking non-writing-paper things like aluminum brackets, tape labels on wires, circuit boards, spray bottles of chemicals, boxes, etc.

So they automated most of the production in order to compete with cheap labor. It didn’t bring the manufacturing jobs as we think of them back: it did something better.

Earnest question (i.e. not implying that I'm arguing for the opposite) - why?

I think they are the best permanent markers out there, i've never had your problems. It's odd because all the other good stationary products are japanese, french or german.

Jobsite permanent markers are better in every way and are the same price or cheaper.

Because it is actually possible to lose manufacturing knowledge over time. Manufacturing things in your country now allows you to more easily manufacture different things in your country in the future. It's a lot harder to make things if your manufacturing talent is spread across multiple countries, especially so if you're making anything that cannot use already commoditized components.

> Even if left unused, they die out in a relatively short time.

Out of all the markers I've ever reached for, I think I've seen every kind except Sharpie go dry.

The differences in economies and cultures on the international scale is a capitalism cheat code. We are morally and logically obligated to protect our citizens in all contexts. That doesn't mean "fuck everybody else". It only means prioritizing.

Do you put the lid back on? I’ve had Sharpies decades old still write like new.

This is a nice allegory that hits on a few of the key tensions we're seeing at the moment.

The social and economic order is in constant flux, however, there has been tendency to totalize one preference over the alternatives. The abuse of the "invisible hand" metaphor is one way we see this, being used, as it is, to wave away the 50-year trend of increasing selfishness, moving away from seeing the economy as a potential welfare maximizing technology.

We're in a period in which the massive transfer of wealth to a few people is accepted as inevitable and should be pursued at any and all costs. The original post highlights that (individual and collective) human agency remains, people can make the choice to do things differently.

Brand-name Sharpie markers cost around US $1 to US $1.50 per marker.

Budget or generic alternatives cost as low as US $0.20 to US $0.50 per marker.

Thoroughly semi permanent if you use the sharpies to write a template, for example a tic-tac-toe board use the whiteboard markers play the game and the regular race shirt who is just the moves and you’re left with the sharpie. In order to get it off you write over the sharpie with a whiteboard marker and then eraser with a regular eraser and then it’ll go away.

I agree; I upvoted because the underlying content was still interesting, but trying to write it as an "i, pencil" pastiche did the author no favours. I would have rathered the article direct the reader to read "I, pencil" and then gone through why they disagreed with its thesis, along with the story of how sharpie manufacturing was brought to the US from china

and also when 5 of the six parts are oil derivatives.

I've tried the cheap ones, have not been impressed.

Wait we had the power to incentivize America’s industrial base all along, but the main driver for pushing the industrial base over to China was to extract maximum capital. This has been touted as “consumers want lower prices”. What is stopping this brave marker company from profit maximizing again?

It seems the main argument here is the pandemic and supply chain, even though the author is invoking other modern issues from an attempted bipartisan pov.

They mention tariffs but that’s not going to solve the profit maximization desires and shift the costs, it’s just going to make sharpies more expensive in America.

I mean good for American industrialization that we can make our writing utensils here. It’s just pitched in a weird “not trying to be political (but really am being political)” way.

Yes, I was hoping to see some actual insight on this Domestic Manufacturing Miracle but it seems to just be "if you build it they will come"

This flies in the face of the more than one person I know personally that tried to take stranded US based manufacturing assets and turn them into something with a future. So far, no luck

I still believe there is upside in this space over the next decade or so but I haven't met anyone who's won in a repeatable way yet.

I have a pack of Sharpies which I bought in 2011. Lightly used. Not dry. I store them horizontally.

The only complaint I have about sharpies is the crap ergonomics on the barrel, causing people to wrap tape around it just to get a nice grip, which inevitably gets super gross:

https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.aan7026/full/lanl...