{"id":33072,"date":"2025-04-23T13:03:29","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T13:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/?p=33072"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:03:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T13:03:49","slug":"fixing-late-stage-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/fixing-late-stage-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing Late Stage Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More Engineering Majors<\/div>\n
Less Decadence<\/div>\n
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thespectator.com\/topic\/imported\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Look carefully, and you’ll see the ~10x advantage in STEM human capital. This time, it’s 350k vs 45k mechanical engineering graduates per year.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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NYT: Car factories in the United States also use automation, but much of the equipment comes from China. Most of the world\u2019s car assembly plants built in the past 20 years were in China, and an automation industry grew up around them.<\/div>\n
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Chinese companies also bought overseas suppliers of advanced robotics, like Kuka of Germany, and moved much of their operations to China. When Volkswagen opened an electric car factory a year ago in Hefei, it had only one robot from Germany and 1,074 robots made in Shanghai.<\/div>\n
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China\u2019s rapid advance in factory robotics has been propelled from the top down. Beijing\u2019s \u201cMade in China 2025\u201d initiative, which began a decade ago, set out 10 industries in which China sought to be globally competitive. Robotics was one of them.<\/div>\n
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… Last month, Premier Li Qiang, China\u2019s second-highest official, said in his annual report to the legislature that the country\u2019s plans this year would include an effort to \u201cvigorously develop\u201d intelligent robots. The country\u2019s top economic planning agency announced a $137 billion national venture capital fund for robotics, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies.<\/div>\n
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China\u2019s government-controlled banks have increased lending to industrial borrowers over the past four years by a staggering $1.9 trillion. That has paid for the construction of factories as well as the replacement of equipment at existing ones.<\/div>\n
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China\u2019s universities produce about 350,000 mechanical engineering graduates per year, as well as electricians, welders and other trained technicians.<\/div>\n
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By comparison, American universities graduate about 45,000 mechanical engineers each year.<\/div>\n
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Jonathan Hurst, the chief robot officer and a co-founder of Agility Robotics, a leading American robot manufacturer, said finding skilled employees had been one of his biggest challenges. As a graduate student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Mr. Hurst said, he was one of two mechanical engineers<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2066\u202a@MrGlass2025\u202c\u2069<\/a> Eventually you get past the BS and posturing and your engineers and scientists tell the grifters and “leaders” what’s actually easy and what’s actually hard to build.<\/p>\n

Reality is the thing that doesn’t go away even if you don’t like it.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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The Fate of Empires, JB Glubb<\/p>\n

Historical study suggests empires last only ~10 generations or 250y.<\/p>\n

Six stages: the Ages of Pioneers, Conquest, Commerce, Affluence, Intellect and Decadence<\/p>\n

US is in the last phase.<\/p>\n

infoproc.blogspot.com\/2013\/10\/the-fa\u2026<\/a>pic.x.com\/aXcO3YlcUN<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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\u2066\u202a@1ArmedEconomist\u202c\u2069<\/a> We can too! <\/p>\n

But it will take a lot of effort to fix things at home, instead of blaming others.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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More Engineering Majors Less Decadence   steve hsu \u2066\u202a@hsu_steve\u202c\u2069 thespectator.com\/topic\/imported\u2026 Look carefully, and you’ll see the ~10x advantage in STEM human capital. This time, it’s 350k vs 45k mechanical engineering graduates per year.   4\/23\/25, 5:39\u202fAM     NYT: Car factories in the United States also use automation, but much of the equipment comes from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}