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Comment by kunai | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of publications I disagree with politically but still find value in them so long as they argue in good faith. Strong Towns and the work of Charles Marohn is one good example of this, he leans conservative but a lot of his work is apolitical and focused on city design and solving the housing crisis, which has value regardless of what affiliation you have.

This article is similar. Free trade is a good thing, but right now we're seeing an influx of foreign firms and capture of key industries and supply chain stops by foreign authorities. Rebuilding a strong American private and public sector and re-diversifying our economy by not having it based solely on the service part is a fairly noble goal, and I do agree with the author that OWS is a massive success story that offers some elucidating details that could help rebuild our infrastructure and lead to more effective public-private partnerships.

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I concur that it’s absolutely fine to read articles in magazines outside of one’s own narrow political spectrum. For folks on HN encountering this publication for the first time, it’s also useful to know some context.

> right now we're seeing an influx of foreign firms and capture of key industries and supply chain stops by foreign authorities

Who is capturing what? What data is there supporting it? People have been raising such alarms for generations (and usually the 'key industries' alarm is from a vested old guard trying to prevent economic change, and the industries were 'key' in the past).

Part of that is foreign ownership of capital. I believe around 30 to 40% of American capital is now foreign-owned.

However, there are several industries which have been decimated domestically. Off the top of my head, the US has lost its competitveness in the following industries:

- Shipbuilding

- Photovoltaic manufacturing

- Wind turbine manufacturing

- Cell phone manufacturing

- Pharma manufacturing

- Book binding

What has changed? Is there more foreign capital or loss of industry?

Lots of industries has moved since the dawn of time. Generally, lower-paying, lower-margin, lower-skill business moves to places where that can be done more cheaply, and new high-skill, higher-margin businesses form here.

'Creative destruction' is essential to capitalism (and the economy); it reallocates resources from less efficient to more efficient uses. Otherwise, you get stuck in stagnent, less efficient uses.

Foreign capital seems like a great thing to me: It's a larger pool of finance to support Americans. Would it be better of someone needing investment to start a business or build a house had less financing available?

Honestly, it all seems xenophobic: Why are people on the other side of political borders somehow bad to do business with?

The problem in both foreign investment and offshoring is loss of capabilities critical to national defense. For the former, foreign ownership of capital enables foreign sabotage of critical sectors. Should the US be in conflict with a major investor nation (Who are we kidding? The most concerning such nation is China), capital can either be pulled out of the country or ownership can be leveraged to reduce key production.

For the later, well, Chinese shipyards can now build aircraft carriers at at comparable rates and at lower price than the US. Loss of US Navy power has not happened yet, but if China keeps innovating the writing is on the wall. Loss of US Naval monopoly would imply that the Pax Americana and the petrodollar itself are in jeopardy. Maybe that's a good thing if 'creative destruction' is the goal, but I would personally not be better off under a Chinese-led global order than under an American one.

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