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non_radical_centrist  8mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   2080 thread views

Book Review: Elon Musk[Scott Alexander]

astralcodexten.com

Scott Alexander’s review of a 2015 biography of Elon Musk. Elon Musk, to me, is one of the world’s most confusing people. He’s simultaneously both one of the smartest people in the world, creating billions of dollars of value in companies like Tesla and SpaceX, and one of the dumbest, in burning billions on Twitter. Scott’s review I think is a good explanation of what’s up with Musk.

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Nothing "modern" about artillery shell production.

So, you are saying the West does not have any manufacturing capacity to produce something what doesn't even require any modern technology? This is a very sharp contradiction with everything I can observe, where the West is producing a lot of things right now. Of course, there's an obvious solution to this contradiction - the capacity of the Western economy and manufacturing power vastly exceeds the necessary one to produce any number of shells. But nobody wants to direct all that capacity to producing shells for Ukraine, because that would mean withdrawing the capacity from other products, and consequent troubles in the areas of economy that currently use that capacity. US does not want to be on WW2 war economy footing just because Ukraine needs shells. I think it is much more plausible explanation than your suggestion that there's no way to produce more than 100k shells by 2025 in the US. There is, but the US does not want to do it, because any politician that would propose it would be thrown out in the next election, or maybe recalled even before that.

Modern world industrial production and logistical capacity is at least by magnitude higher than during WW2 time, all these things can be ordered online

Wait, so you are claiming the West can't produce any sizeable amount of shells, but all the necessary components for producing any sizeable amount of shells can be easily "ordered online" and deployed in 20 days? Are you not noticing how you are contradicting yourself? I don't even need to argue with you - you are doing it for me!

This is not even slight exaggeration of things that were routinely done in the past.

This wasn't a) routine b) building from empty field c) done in 20 days. The very article you are quoting states that the preparations begun in 1940 and the production started to increase in 1942. And that was building on existing industrial base - nobody evacuated the factories into empty fields, they were evacuated to existing industrial and population centers.

So, you are saying the West does not have any manufacturing capacity to produce something what doesn't even require any modern technology? This is a very sharp contradiction with everything I can observe, where the West is producing a lot of things right now.

Yes, the West does have high tech cutting edge technology, but the lower tech WWI/WWII style mass production lines required to churn out mountains of dumb stuff are lacking, being outsourced to third world long ago, and nothing at all is being done to restore this capacity.

If you are reduced to bribing and begging Pakistan for such basic things as artillery shells, it is rather clear sign.

I think you misunderstand what happened with Pakistan. It's an opposite of bribing - instead of giving Ukrainians American weapons, Americans made Pakistanis send them theirs. Also, if US workers can be busy producing Teslas but Pakistanis can deal with weapons for Ukraine, I don't see why it's such a bad deal for Americans. If it was cheaper to produce those things in Pakistan before the war, why it's not cheaper now? I mean, sure, the Tesla factory probably can produce them too, but they'd rather produce Teslas, I think?

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