Outsourcing manufacturing

A reader writes:

Liquidmetal Technologies is a Caltech spinoff founded by Caltech profs who developed their products under NASA contract. Brilliant products: amorphous metals. Maybe the next generation of manufacturing materials. Metals that can be injection molded like plastic yet are stronger than steel.

They have their administrative offices in Southern California, but they chose South Korea as the place for their manufacturing. The profs are all white guys, all American-born except one, maybe. So why South Korea and not California? Why not develop the skilled machining, molding and material processing jobs in the USA and not in the Far East?

What kind of magical engineer-free manufacturing-free society do these high IQ knuckleheads think they can create? And why do we keep funding their research and their businesses and their universities?

Where would your father be if this was the attitude in California 50 years ago?

Where would my father be today if when he went went to work for Lockheed 66 years ago as an engineer on the P-38 fighter plane, if Kelly Johnson and the other executives had decided to outsource manufacturing to East Asia? Well, he would probably be living in a refugee camp for displaced Californians in the desert across from Yuma, Arizona in the Japanese-occupied West Bank of the Colorado River.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer