Why innovate and create when I can live like a king just playing our economic, governmental, and social systems like a fiddle? We're not quite that bad yet but we're already headed down the path in that direction.
> Why innovate and create when I can live like a king just playing our economic, governmental, and social systems like a fiddle?
Because the entire country is going to implode.
2008: financial crisis
2016: political crisis
2016: political crisis
2020: deadly pandemic, inducing a financial crisis, while also collapsing the real economy, on top of four years of political crisis
Considering how many drugs are basically miracles of statistics rather than science: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/7950612/Five-out-of-...
Lots of chemical industry here, etc.
Many of the "industries" beloved by this site are showing they are only viable on top of a backbone of "real" jobs like industry and manufacturing.
No N95 mask manufacturers, but we can write how sad we are about this on facebook. And the media won't tell us the root cause, so nothing is learned.
Compare production capacity of N95s in the US with FFP2/3 in the EU, or KN95 in China. Then we'll really see how US production capacity stacks up.
To be clear, I have no idea how these production capacities stack up. But if we want to evaluate medical mask production, this is the comparison that needs to be made.
https://www.wired.com/story/decades-offshoring-led-mask-shor...
That's de-risking, de-skilling and outsourcing. Back then, in the last century, the US and Europe had a functioning chemical industry. Unfortunately, information technology took off, and investment banking discovered that returns are better with Facebook than in Pharma, consequently that's where the jobs are now. Also, mergers & acquisitions took off in the same time. Why invest in research when you can buy up someone else's research? Industry research does not exist any longer in the sciences. The sciences are not a good proposition any longer if you want to make a living.