May 28, 2024

The first thing incompetents do in solving society's problems is pour concrete. They don't get past that point. So they are pouring concrete now for bringing the manufacturing back. Here's why they aren't getting any farther:

As transistor electronics took off during the 1970s, scammers saw a wide-open field for ripping people off. Designers would send request sheets to manufacturers for each component they wanted to evaluate and get free samples for two or three alternatives. When the public tried to buy electronic components, they would get half of their order after several months and never see the rest of their money. Courts demanded the frauds to cease and desist to no avail.

So early in the 1980s, two progressives set up operations as close to the Canadian border as they could get and along an interstate highway for selling electronic components, the purpose being to get as far away from the scam culture as possible. They used the most advanced methods for inventory control, sold nothing but the most reliable products and shipped with no delays or back orders.

They redesigned the electronics industry doing that. They sold to designers, manufactureres and the public in any size from one item to tens of millions with no delays or back orders. Efficiency and effectiveness replaced fraud in electronics sales.

But of course, they would eventually have to retire. When they turned the business over to others, the opposite occurred. Most significantly, fly-by-night products replaced reliable brands. National Semiconductor used to define modern electronics. They set the standards for component designs and provided data books on specifications and applications. But shortly after the turn-over, National Semiconductor was out of business. Their products were not significantly listed in the only supply chain of any relevance in the western hemisphere.

By then, Asians were producing a lot of electronic components; but unless they used the English language in their data sheets, the westerners could not use their products. Westerners can't use data sheets, when the information looks like pictures of houses.

So the electronics industry moved to Asia. That result also took western engineering out of the picture, because nothing can be manuractured now days without electronics. So if the manufacturing is going to be brought back, who is going to read data sheets for the westerners and where are the engineers going to come from?