alt Hacker NewsStuff has to be made somewhere. This argument is essentially predicated on the idea that it's okay for some places to be polluted and for some people to have to deal with it but not for other places and people. What you're really saying is "When people talk about how they want manufacturing back, they conveniently forget the pollution impacts people who live here instead of China and India, where it's totally okay."
Domestic manufacturing has a lot of advantages from the standpoint of total pollution. I guarantee you that even with lax American environmental rules, the pollution caused by a factory in Georgia is still lower and less hazardous to workers and the surrounding community than if the same factory were in India. Furthermore, our government is at least theoretically capable of adding better protections for workers and communities, while our government is going to have a hard time enforcing pollution rules overseas.
I don't think you are racist or xenophobic. I just think that when people make this argument they don't think about the fact that this stuff is still getting manufactured somewhere if it's not made here, and basically the complaint is that Americans are having to deal with the consequences rather than people in other countries.
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Stuff is made in response to demand. That can feel like an inevitability especially if you look at the failure of interdiction of drug trafficking. But that's no excuse to give up on harm reduction and demand shaping. Cigarette smoking hasn't disappeared, but the costs it imposes on healthcare has been reduced successfully. The same can be done to reduce the freeriding on ecological damage.
It is supposed to get better over time though. I mean at least that's the sales pitch. Globalization was supposed to lift all boats. If you remember the air quality in Beijing used to be the absolute worst but it has allegedly improved a lot recently.
I don't know where the flaw in the logic was but I think the idea was first you have to become wealthier and with more money comes a better quality of life.
When people extol the virtues of manufacturing, I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing. This isn’t an American thing btw - I’ve had arguments with brits and others who argue passionately that the country has been destroyed by the relative decline in manufacturing but when I ask “so you’d prefer to work in a factory?” it provokes fairly confused responses like “no but other people would”….
https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/americans-want-factory-jobs-r...