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I'll attach my related post on this. I think that's my most popular post on this website: https://www.themotte.org/post/238/what-if-your-entire-worldview-was/43892?context=8#context
Is there any evidence that manufacturing is increasing in the West? According to the Fed, US Industrial Output has been basically stagnant since the GFC and has barely grown since 2000. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO/
I believe the problem is that there are excessive regulations on building things in the real world. There are endless permits and permissions and approvals that you need to build a house, pipeline, factory, power plant. But in finance and services, you can just get going. It's a totally free market in crypto, you just set up the project, do your airdrops and trade on a decentralized exchange and nobody can or will do anything about you. Maybe Gensler's goon squad will come for them some day soon. It's slightly less laissez faire in ads or Spotify or Uber but it's still a pretty free market, all things considered. If you want to build a gas project in Australia, you run the risk of having to pay 1.5 billion AUD in regulatory/legal fees, wait six years and not even be sure it'll be approved (this is according to Santos, the company involved so the figures might be blown up a bit): https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/santos-ceo-frustrated-as-narrabri-process-drags-on-20210830-p58n2f
Australia is not the US but I think the same principle applies. The US is not welcoming to development. There are many expensive environmental approvals and more coming soon with the Green New Deal, I believe. Money and talent is thus being funnelled out of industrial production and pumped into finance, tech or services. Agriculture is similarly suppressed. If anyone's seen Clarkson's Farm Season 2, it shows the great lengths that local councils will go to prevent development or people starting businesses. Or in the Netherlands, farmers were very angry about environmental regulations that prohibit them from producing due to nitrogen emissions. In San Francisco restaurants have to pay about $22,000 USD in legal fees to start: https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-shows-how-san-francisco-stifles-entrepreneurship-with-expensive-time-consuming-rules-and-regulations/
And just look at California's experience with High Speed Rail! They're less functional than dodgy North African countries like Morocco, according to a French rail company: https://www.businessinsider.com/french-california-high-speed-rail-north-africa-biden-trump-2022-10
On the other hand, China does well at manufacturing because they like efficiency and development, they mechanize their ports, encourage development, support industry, keep energy prices low and build HSR (as opposed to spending money and not building it). I predict that higher interest rates will constrain the frothy tech and finance sector in the West somewhat but that they'll remain the leading sector of the economy simply by being sabotaged the least.
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