The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations. Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability—and stability—we may have taken for granted.
Manufacturing demands capital, tech, and execution, creating moats through scale and complexity. Returns could dwarf SaaS multiples if a startup nails a sector where efficiency gains translate to real massively scalable growth. The risk is higher (upfront costs, R&D, hardware flops), but it does scream classic venture asymmetry. Compared to, say, biotech's long timelines or consumer tech's saturation, this hits a sweet spot: tangible impact, massive macro tailwinds, and a shot at monopoly-like dominance.. The greatest returns of the next decade won't come from shuffling bits, but from reimagining atoms—and it will take our entire capital ecosystem working in concert to make it happen.
> make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations
As always, it comes back to the solution which pays executives and shareholders from taxpayer and consumer money. That's the system which gave America Boeing: too big to fail.
The second one is so delusional. It assumes you can build a moat for all manufactured products. This is true in extremely specific, high value cases like lithography machines or chips. But when you talk about screws, glue, plastic bits and what makes up 90% of manufacturing, there is no moat. You're not going to build a monopoly on screws.
