The Network Effect Is More Pronounced When There's a Wider Base of Skills
i think a lot of that came from the fact that americans historically were living in very small towns and either, you know, in colonies or in frontier colonies. And so there was a lot of demand for people to not re invent the wheel, but reproduce the wheel. And they had to t to be very self reliant. The stead is the canonical example of someone who is capable in a multitude of tasks as opposed to a specialist in a big city. There's a little bit less of dynamism, i would argue, because having a broader base of skills allows for a lot more flexible combinations to occur in the network.
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The modern world is an integrated system of almost unfathomable complexity, built upon sub systems, technologies, people and practices that if partially removed or neglected sufficiently, result in disastrous supply chain break downs as witnessed in wartime or as the world seized up in response to an over-hyped flu virus in 2020. One of the industries at the heart of the manufacturing economy is the machine tool industry, responsible for “building the machines that build the machines” – mills, lathes, planers, presses, etc. that produce the metal products such as cars, airplanes and household appliances. Without these industrial tools, production would be relegated to hand tools or worse, and for national security reasons is arguably a strategic industry to be protected. As with most things in modern America, however, what is sensible and what is reality is at odds, with the machine tool industry witnessing a global market share decline of number one in the world at around 20% in 1981 to less than 5% today.
