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

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

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 suspect there is no steel going into a sharpie; tariffs on steel make it harder to build lots of things in the US.