Economics, Technology & Payback

[butlersrangers]

Why I don't own a smart phone.

[Dick Hosmer]

Truth - when you consider that today's ubiquitous little phone has almost infinitely more capability/power than the first room-sized (and air-conditioned) punchcard-actuated clunkers.

[butlersrangers]

Vietnam, India, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan are important manufacturing sources for 'smartphones', but Communist China continues to produce 67% of the devices, plus China is the major supplier of components.

My 'technology inept' brain cannot help but wonder about the potential for hidden booby traps and Trojan Horses being hidden in smartphone components.

I hope we have our 'best techwennies' analyzing and investigating these devices. We are in a WAR!

[Dick Hosmer]

I assume you are correct, but, realistically, what is to be done about it - at least short term?

Our labor rates and regulations have chased such work offshore. Can we find someone who hates us less, at an equal cost?

The Chinese - in their wisdom - have always played the long game, while we in the West cannot see beyond our noses, and worse yet, idolize "influencers" in the sports and entertainment fields who do not know their ass from a hole in ground, much less care. Our nation is like a snowball pushed off the top of the hill in the 1960s, and now approaching terminal velocity. I'm truly bummed, and if 2024 doesn't begin to apply the brakes, we are SCREWED!!!!!!!

[King carp]

I would not be getting rid of any reloading manuals or important reference papers and relying on a chinese "smart" phone to give you answers. If they have a way of pulling the plug on a smart phone most people around here would not know how to crack an egg to make breakfast. File cabinets are coming back.

[waterman]

I assume you are correct, but, realistically, what is to be done about it - at least short term?

Our labor rates and regulations have chased such work offshore. Can we find someone who hates us less, at an equal cost?

The Chinese - in their wisdom - have always played the long game, while we in the West cannot see beyond our noses, and worse yet, idolize "influencers" in the sports and entertainment fields who do not know their ass from a hole in ground, much less care. Our nation is like a snowball pushed off the top of the hill in the 1960s, and now approaching terminal velocity. I'm truly bummed, and if 2024 doesn't begin to apply the brakes, we are SCREWED!!!!!!!

I had not encountered the term "influencers" until Mr. Hosmer wrote it here. That's indicative of the self-imposed vacuum I live in. Since then, I've heard it thrice, all 3 times concerning individuals who make clear their position in the category described in the above post. It's comforting to point the finger at Obama, Biden and the Woke folk, but the problems appear to have started with JFK, doing away with silver certificates & silver coins, putting our the stability of our currency on a par with Italy or Greece. We went from there to LBJ & the Great Society, with handouts for some deserving and a huge number of dubious recipients. Things were made much worse by Nixon, greasing the skids to do away with most of America's manufacturing jobs and his Secy of Ag Earl Butz by making family farms unprofitable.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Unless we live within our means, recognize & reward individual effort and stable families, have a gov't with a balanced budget, realize that we are not going to solve all the world's problems and realize that we cannot take in every person who shows up at our borders uninvited, our country will disintegrate internally.

Did we go to Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden or did we go there because the Taliban cut off America's opium supply? Does anybody care? Obama killed health care in most of rural America, particularly in the west. Does anybody care? 8 billion+ people in the world, with high birth rates. We cannot feed them, but domestically we're twisting our knickers about abortions. More babies forced upon demonstrably unfit mothers, every baby supported by the taxpayer from the maternity ward to the grave.

It's bedtime and I'm giving offhand instruction tomorrow, else I'd rant more.