Human beings need certain material things that engineering can provide: food, water, shelter, energy, transportation, protection from infectious disease, age-related disease, and toxic exposure. Real prosperity means making these better and for more people.
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The manufacturing industry is where most R&D comes from. If we want to get better at meeting human survival needs, we need innovation in "hard tech" and a thriving manufacturing industry to put it into practice. (Note that pharma is technically a manufacturing industry.)
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(though agriculture isn't classified as manufacturing, I'd include agriculture as a field where engineering can improve our ability to meet human survival needs. See Norman Borlaug.)
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There need to be more local polities with governance optimized for encouraging novel, hard-tech, atoms-not-bits, industry. Not corporate welfare for particular incumbent companies, but environments that encourage new firm creation.
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The biggest creator of special economic zones (SEZs) today is China; some of these (like Shenzhen) became industrial powerhouses, but from what I'm told, the typical cases (e.g. in Zambia) are mining towns or other natural-resource-extraction operations, with little innovation.
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As an American, I'd like it if the US had an industrial-innovation SEZ, but this is not at all a US-specific need.
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AFAIK, the three essentials for an SEZ are a.) buy-in from the host country; b.) sponsorship from a Great Power country if the host country is not one, as in China's SEZs around the world; c.) an "anchor tenant" business around which an ecosystem of startups can flourish.
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For this to work specifically for high-tech industrial innovation, we'd probably also need to shape the founding culture in a way that promotes technical ingenuity. We'd want to catalyze a ferment of innovation like the early Silicon Valley.
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(IMO one problem with SV today, for instance, is that blue-collar mechanical geniuses and hard-science intellectuals don't mix socially or professionally enough. Classism is bad for innovation. One of many trends I'm trying to buck at Daphnia!)
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or one makerspace with a lathe! shared LARGE hardware tools are scarce.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
The problem is anything like that is a) insanely dangerous and b) very expensive, and c) usually pretty easy to damage through error. This means you either need to sharply limit who can come into your space, or pay someone to watch it at all times, and have insurance.
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Replying to @drethelin @s_r_constantin
Noisebridge has already almost died due to insurance costs!
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