Shipping containers piling up at Chinese ports

[PandaBear]

Here is some GDP data. China is rapidly gaining on the USA, sort of like the USA gained on Britain after WWII. The second set of data was from 2017. Between 2017 and 2022, China grew 5 times faster than the USA as a percentage of GDP. Russia’s GDP went down in that same period, according to this data.

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A lot of the Chinese GDP is in the real estate boom, and it can collapse as soon as those ghost towns are not propped up by the banks. Still on the top but they are like UK with lots of "finance" and little real manufacturing / technology to sustain the mass. Heck, at least China still has manufacturing unlike UK.

 

[jhs914]

We had “experts” tells us for decades how globalization is the only way, now we have “experts” tells us how manufacturing in China is not viable.
i would not however take this as a sign of manufacturing coming back to US. So many hands are in the global manufacturing cookie jar that it is almost impossible to do that. Instead globalization will move to some other slave labor nations. There are still plenty of them around.

India, Thailand, Vietnam, not necessarily slave labor but cheap labor.

 

[PandaBear]

Might be the best thing to happen here.

Depends. Ken Lay not "disappearing" until he cough up the money he made in Enron is definitely wrong, I wouldn't mind getting some mob justice on people using blackout of a state to rob us blind.

I am cool with Tim Cook and Steve Jobs.

 

[Owen Lucas]

Do we have a workforce to sustain more U.S. manufacturing?

IIRC Tim Cook said we do not have enough engineers either. I'm pretty sure some futuristic version of 3D printing and next level robotics will be able to make almost anything. This tech is probably 50-100 years away when you can straight up print a phone or washing machine, all parts included.

 

[alarmguy]

IIRC Tim Cook said we do not have enough engineers either. I'm pretty sure some futuristic version of 3D printing and next level robotics will be able to make almost anything. This tech is probably 50-100 years away when you can straight up print a phone or washing machine, all parts included.

You know, good post. I bet closer to 50 years if that long but still most likely I wont be on this earth by then.
Not sure if anyone knows they are "printing" 3d houses right now in todays world, though plumbing, electric ect still need to be installed.
It's just the beginning (photo of printer below) roof is still timber.

Inside a new community of 3D-printed homes in Texas

Reservations for the 100 homes rising in the Texas Hill Country’s Wolf Ranch community — by ICON, Lennar and Bjarke Ingels Group — will go live shortly.

nypost.com

LENNAR ANNOUNCES VISIONARY COMMUNITY OF 3D-PRINTED HOMES WITH ICON IS NOW UNDERWAY IN GEORGETOWN, TX

Reservations Begin in 2023 for the 100-home Community Codesigned by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group GEORGETOWN, Texas, Nov. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Lennar, one of the nation's leading homebuilders, and...

newsroom.lennar.com

 

[Pew]

IIRC Tim Cook said we do not have enough engineers either. I'm pretty sure some futuristic version of 3D printing and next level robotics will be able to make almost anything. This tech is probably 50-100 years away when you can straight up print a phone or washing machine, all parts included.

This reminds me of the Warhammer 40k universe where humans, in the quest for science and space exploration, literally outgrew their own knowledge and put the sum-total of their knowledge into AI constructors called STCs that can construct anything humanity has ever invented or needed as long as it has the required materials. Basically, a giant blender where you put in the required materials and whatever you need comes out the other end, a house, a spoon, a tank, etc.

 

[PandaBear]

You know, good post. I bet closer to 50 years if that long but still most likely I wont be on this earth by then.
Not sure if anyone knows they are "printing" 3d houses right now in todays world, though plumbing, electric ect still need to be installed.
It's just the beginning (photo of printer below) roof is still timber.

Inside a new community of 3D-printed homes in Texas

Reservations for the 100 homes rising in the Texas Hill Country’s Wolf Ranch community — by ICON, Lennar and Bjarke Ingels Group — will go live shortly.

nypost.com

LENNAR ANNOUNCES VISIONARY COMMUNITY OF 3D-PRINTED HOMES WITH ICON IS NOW UNDERWAY IN GEORGETOWN, TX

Reservations Begin in 2023 for the 100-home Community Codesigned by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group GEORGETOWN, Texas, Nov. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Lennar, one of the nation's leading homebuilders, and...

newsroom.lennar.com

View attachment 141474

I don't foresee 3D printed home being a realistic future. The cost to set up those machines and the limitation of what they can build is just not going to scale bigger than a novelty item.

I see the future of prefab frames installed on-site with computer-controlled machine / robotic assistance with human control. Setting up those 3D printing is best done in a factory and they can print all they want and a lift to move them is much easier / more realistic. In the factory, they can be built with better precision and economy of scale (build 10 of the same wall at a time). What limits them can be improved with probably cheaper lift and installation techniques in the future.

 

[SammyChevelleTypeS3]

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Was going to ask this before as no one has ever given me a good explanation for what / how something happened. How did Japan , who made so much real quality products in the late 70s thru the late 80s just get pushed out by China? Is it too simple and just boils down to child / slave labor or 10cents an hour pay etc....?

 

[Pew]

Was going to ask this before as no one has ever given me a good explanation for what / how something happened. How did Japan , who made so much real quality products in the late 70s thru the late 80s just get pushed out by China? Is it too simple and just boils down to child / slave labor or 10cents an hour pay etc....?

Their huge and (at the time) uneducated population, the way they were able to design and layout their dense cities, and law labor/environmental laws allowed them to quickly play manufacturing catchup. However, history has repeatedly shown us the more educated and available tech is to the general populace, the more they will want similar labor laws as leading countries. This is probably why we're seeing manufacturing now move towards Vietnam and certain 'resource gathering' out of Africa.

EDIT: Years ago I watched a documentary on how China built up their cities in the matter of a few decades. They were lucky to start with pretty much a blank slate of land and plan the most productive layout in accordance to the factories that were to be built based. In this aspect, they were able to get past issues of expansion and updates that cities in the Western countries had with old industries out/new industries in.

 

[Highboy]

My nearby Target parking lot stores empty containers and numbers has greatly increased lately.

I am not sure what this means.

It means the stores getting a remodel. That’s what they did by our store.

 

[4WD]

That’s a reasonable indicator. Let’s keep and eye on that.

This could be the biggest ever - I spotted a CPR locomotive hooked up with KCS going east towards Houston …

 

[4WD]

I don't foresee 3D printed home being a realistic future. The cost to set up those machines and the limitation of what they can build is just not going to scale bigger than a novelty item.

I see the future of prefab frames installed on-site with computer-controlled machine / robotic assistance with human control. Setting up those 3D printing is best done in a factory and they can print all they want and a lift to move them is much easier / more realistic. In the factory, they can be built with better precision and economy of scale (build 10 of the same wall at a time). What limits them can be improved with probably cheaper lift and installation techniques in the future.

Yep - starting to see modular spreads that don’t look like trailer homes .,.

 

[Vil_Riker]

The shipping containers are probably piling up because of the demand destruction in Europe and the US.

 

[Vil_Riker]

Was going to ask this before as no one has ever given me a good explanation for what / how something happened. How did Japan , who made so much real quality products in the late 70s thru the late 80s just get pushed out by China? Is it too simple and just boils down to child / slave labor or 10cents an hour pay etc....?

Japan is not pushed out, they are just at a smaller scale than China is. In some of the technologies they have lost to Korean or Chinese competitors due to under-investment but they are still a strong competitor.

 

[PandaBear]

Japan is not pushed out, they are just at a smaller scale than China is. In some of the technologies they have lost to Korean or Chinese competitors due to under-investment but they are still a strong competitor.

Japan is at a very dangerous time right now. In S Korea engineers are still paid very well and talented young people want to be engineers. In Japan the opposite. They have a shrinking population, now everyone can afford to go to college, and they don't want to be engineers because they aren't paid well and the big money is made in "service", like finance and entertainment. They also don't have a startup culture who rewards innovators and founders, so they don't have a reward system like US to inspire new industries and companies to replace the aging ones.

China has a different set of problems but they aren't as market economy as Japan and US, they will run into problems as they get close to the leaders in technologies when the lack of innovation and rewards to the right people come back to hurt them. At the moment they are still ok but very soon they will hit a wall, and need to move to a more capitalist system with a more realistic political system to sustain them. For now they are using central planning to avoid black swan like financial collapse and protect their economic system: controlled foreign exchange, 5 year plan, dictatorship, government owned infrastructure, arresting CEOs and business owners if they default on loans and cause financial crisis despite they did not break the laws (obviously if you win at the society's expense you are "doing something wrong").

 

[GON]

At the moment they are still ok but very soon they will hit a wall, and need to move to a more capitalist system with a more realistic political system to sustain them.

Everything I read shows a very different game plan for China and how it plans to "sustain". And almost every indicator shows China is ahead of schedule on its game plane to sustain and has accomplished every one of its strategic key tasks ahead of schedule.

The wolf isn't in the hen house to protect the chicken- regardless of what the wolf says.

 

[PandaBear]

Everything I read shows a very different game plan for China and how it plans to "sustain". And almost every indicator shows China is ahead of schedule on its game plane to sustain and has accomplished every one of its strategic key tasks ahead of schedule.

The wolf isn't in the hen house to protect the chicken- regardless of what the wolf says.

I don't think they are mutually exclusive. Yes they are ahead of their "plan" like their military modernization and infrastructure project like HSR, HVDC power grid, nuke plants all over the country, modernization of the rural area with home appliances, roads, electricity, and internet.

However they are hitting the middle income trap way ahead of their supposed development target. The real estate price is not supposed to be this high when their income is still not there yet. These are problems wealthier nations have AFTER their standard of living is much more well off. Their financial system is not sustainable unless they let go of some more central planning, but they can't, otherwise they will not be able to withstand financial crisis on their own.

Most importantly their currency is still USD backed, so they will be at the mercy of USD just like Japan, S Korea, etc. RMB aren't Euro, AUD, British pound, Swiss Franc.

 

[GON]

I don't think they are mutually exclusive. Yes they are ahead of their "plan" like their military modernization and infrastructure project like HSR, HVDC power grid, nuke plants all over the country, modernization of the rural area with home appliances, roads, electricity, and internet.

However they are hitting the middle income trap way ahead of their supposed development target. The real estate price is not supposed to be this high when their income is still not there yet. These are problems wealthier nations have AFTER their standard of living is much more well off. Their financial system is not sustainable unless they let go of some more central planning, but they can't, otherwise they will not be able to withstand financial crisis on their own.

Most importantly their currency is still USD backed, so they will be at the mercy of USD just like Japan, S Korea, etc. RMB aren't Euro, AUD, British pound, Swiss Franc.

A nation essentially builds wealth by exporting more than it imports. A nation eventually goes broke by importing more than it exports.

When a nation exports more than it imports on a massive scale, it is in the driver's seat. When a nation imports much more than it exports, it ends up being driven wherever the driver wants to go.

 

[researcher]

You know, good post. I bet closer to 50 years if that long but still most likely I wont be on this earth by then.
Not sure if anyone knows they are "printing" 3d houses right now in todays world, though plumbing, electric ect still need to be installed.
It's just the beginning (photo of printer below) roof is still timber.

Inside a new community of 3D-printed homes in Texas

Reservations for the 100 homes rising in the Texas Hill Country’s Wolf Ranch community — by ICON, Lennar and Bjarke Ingels Group — will go live shortly.

nypost.com

LENNAR ANNOUNCES VISIONARY COMMUNITY OF 3D-PRINTED HOMES WITH ICON IS NOW UNDERWAY IN GEORGETOWN, TX

Reservations Begin in 2023 for the 100-home Community Codesigned by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group GEORGETOWN, Texas, Nov. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Lennar, one of the nation's leading homebuilders, and...

newsroom.lennar.com

View attachment 141474

Thanks for posting this.. wow awesome.. The level of predictability as long as that printer doesn't fail would be a huge factor in "pouring" that concrete. Plus it could be made fun of but I think that's a bad idea, might be basic but technology just gets better over time.

I remember someone (back in the day) making fun of "manufactured homes" which are not double wide trailers but homes built with modules that go together then trucked to the site of the home and put together. I think being able to manufacture a home out of the elements is perfect. plus building a house in a factory with jigs just helps with the same reproduce-ability that this home 3d printer can do. Something like this in the future might make housing mor affordable, look at what technology has done for manufacturing since the 80s! Volumes of scale is a real thing in production.

 

[Dinoburner]

Do we have a workforce to sustain more U.S. manufacturing?

Read a news article where some 240,000 students are unaccounted for since covid. Not sure this relates, however, drug users have dropped out of society which certainly cuts into available employee numbers.