National needs vs control by business profit market

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/08/22/159759164/in-ad-battle-obama-banking-on-wind-power-message-in-key-swing-states wind power in politics: the view of national needs vs control by business profit market.

Are there politicians who function in responsibility to the nation as a whole, instead of for special select interests? Democrats seem a lot better at functioning for the best for America as a whole nation, but are handicapped by the GOP by their prevention of gathering of taxes to take care of national needs, such as adequate energy from renewable resources.

Energy is critical for the economy, and especially ought to take priority for tax money over doing "righteous-wars" in other countries who have their own lives to lead; our vast weapons-makers ought to be able to take on side jobs making renewable energy stuff for the protection of the economy; after all, does making war-machines produce anything constructively useful?

Sure, the "fallout" of advanced technology development such as from NASA and Darpa is very helpful to the nation's technology development foundation, but why can't we do the same taxpayer-paid development for peaceful constructive purposes? Expecting corporations to do that R&D is expecting some behavior not typical of corporate principles of market-controlled quickly-profitable goals.

I suspect the reason is that GOP proclaims that all development must be done by business maximum-profit-goaled purposes; that is, except for military war preparations and actions, which are exempt from that limitation, and thus (under GOP control) war efforts are the only way to have the nation develop technology that is later widely useful to corporate business and thus not patent-locked-down by some particular company.

The many forms of solar-sourced energy ought to be a national protection priority, as generously funded as are war preparations already being done. Perhaps priority ought to go to converting war machine makers into energy machine makers. Like the proverbial swords into plowshares. And sure, keeping the war-making machine tooling mothballed and ready to go into production if America experiences some big monkey jumping on us in the future.

(People-stuff is complicated.)

Again on the internet-linked home-sited education-manufacturing system concept

Am writing another blog post on this subject, as it seems to me to have immense potential to help mankind right now, and the means to do it exists.

I also wish this could get into the hands of Steve Jobs, as he has the expertise for blending the hardware and software combo to get it going quickly. Plus, he has the money to make it happen; and I think it is in line with his life purpose.

The concept is named the "internet-linked home manufacturing-education workstation concept" or variations of that, in my posts and other writings of recent years, such as on Scribd.

It is a complete system concept, more than I want to again write about in totality in this post; but its essences are:

Its primary purposes are to enable America's large unemployed or under-employed middle class and poverty class to economically and quickly get back into contributing to America's GDP, and to provide a continuing means for increasing their skills at the same time. Conceivably it could expand worldwide to developing countries, eventually.

It would bypass the current bottleneck inhibiting America's manufacturing capacity that now is blocked by the requirement that manufacturing all be done by conventional corporate facility on-site employed work. By eliminating the need to commute to some on-site manufacturing job, the time, energy and money involved in daily commute would be eliminated. It would also expand the conventionally-employable skills in the population, too; increasing with time until conventional manufacturing in America catches up, decades from now.

The key technology development needed is to create the devices that connect via USB to one's home computer, that provide a small scale manufacturing capability for performing sub-assembly work. Such devices could encompass a wide range of manufacturing processes, from drill press work to injection molding to chemical processing to QC work. The software and internet linking would also focus on helping the person at home learn how to use each such workstation device, thus increasing their skill set.

The workstation devices would operate in a feedback loop through the internet, assisted by built-in telemetry in each workstation, to provide both instruction to the user re needed precision refinements, and to provide quantity of resulting product done at each workstation.

An example of how this would work, utilizes a drill press operation workstation computer peripheral.

In operation, a box is delivered to one's door at home by commercial carrier or by local neighborhood truck.

In the box are a bunch of smaller boxes, each much like the kanban technique developed in the Japanese just-in-time system. Each kanban contains raw material or partially processed material, along with a magnetic card or memory stick that is associated with the kanban. The memory card is input to one's workstation which then goes through the computer and internet to a management location for that product, which might be either another home-workstation or at a corporate site. The input also appears on screen, defining the processing to be done to the sub-assembly by the home-sited employee.

In this example, the home-sited employee would place the component on the drill press table and match up the specified coordinates; the user would also install the specified drill size into the drill press, for that hole and similar sized holes on that sub-assembly. Sensors on the drill press would monitor the chuck expansion to provide feedback to the user and to the internet-linked management system site, as to the size of the drill bit that is actually installed. Each downward drill process done on that board, and the coordinates where drilled, and for all similar sized holes on that particular component, would be recorded both locally and by distant management.

Different sized holes needing to be drilled into that component would be similarly handled by the home-sited worker, eventually finishing that type of operation on that component.

That could be the only type device at that home location, or there could be other type operation devices that could be on the same workbench at home, such as for threading some holes or for assisting in using hardware for attaching together several pieces of the larger sub-assembly.

When all the processes have been applied to the contents of that kanban, and all the carton's similar kanbans or related kanbans, the employee puts the sub-assembly back into the kanban box along with its memory card, and prints the label for where to have the delivery system to next take the box of kanbans, when they are all done by that particular home manufacturing workstation.

The benefits of such a manufacturing concept include the resumption of large scale manufacturing in America, made economical by largely eliminating the expenses of commute by employees, and expenses of the huge buildings that on-site manufacturing require, thus adding to the nation's GDP in this time when conventional businesses system are not doing the job. Most of all it would maintain the skill level of America's potential workforce, and gradually improve the skill levels by the built-in education aspects of the home-sited manufacturing-education system, reversing the current trend of deteriorating capabilities of the unemployed or under-employed work force. It could also bring into the workforce, people who are otherwise not positioned to do full-time conventionally employed manufacturing work, such as retired people, family-tending housewives, partially handicapped people. And the self-esteem of the workforce could once again increase, a healthy thing for a can-do America.

In the extreme, conceivably the system could expand to where even a homeless person could step up to a steetside version of the manufacturing system, crank out some product, and receive payment on the spot for whatever work the person got done.

It could change the whole trend in America about manufacturing in a worldwide economy. It could restore a significant amount of self-sufficiency to the nation too. And we are at a technological level where we could immediately get to doing technology development on the system right now. Especially if someone of Steve Jobs caliber takes on the task.

Jim Cline
jedcline@gmail.com
http://www.kestsgeo.com
2011-09-08

Again thinking of how to revive American manufacturing

Re "Can manufacturing fuel a U. S. Recovery?" http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/04/can-manufacturing-fuel-a-us-recovery/manufacturing-is-part-of-the-recovery-plan

America is now very much part of the larger world, including economically, and items we had manufactured in the past are now oftentimes built elsewhere and bought here, as part of that worldwide interchange. And yet I find myself thinking of how to revive American manufacturing, providing a measure of self-sufficiency there, just as we need to seek more self-sufficiency in our energy supplies.

Maybe I am biased toward manufacturing, because most of my career was spent in one aspect or another of electronics manufacturing, although mostly in the engineering connections to manufacturing. We got things designed, built, sold and used.

Sometimes I believed that there could be some much better ways of doing it, particularly related to the relationship between owner-management and the working staff; but we got things done anyway, probably not the best, but something real and useful got produced as a result.

And much of those decades I existed in difficult struggles in life, often just existing day by day. And more importantly, my viewpoint is probably is of a kind that few other people see from, since my psychological type (INFP) is more to be a teacher and writer, than the hands-on builder and tester that was what people would pay me to do, so that is what I did for them.

Yet the building of things, the craftsmanship, the seeing things built by one's own hands and sometimes even by one's own creative design, is an important part of being human, I believe. And keyboards and computer screens do not provide that feedback about one's effectiveness in this material world that provides us with the stuff of life and opportunities.

So, I have been supporting the search for ways to get America back into the manufacturing mode again, and using a wider range of America than just by the giant auto manufacturing corporations and similar corporate behemoths can do. Their massive inertia is just too heavy to respond to the needs of a rapidly advancing world; as so recently indicated again by the recent "bailouts" provided to them to get them back on their feet, provided they wake up and pay attention to the needs of American transportation, instead of thinking the manufacturer controls the choices of the customers for ever bigger faster more gas-guzzling than their neighbor's vehicles, through advertising's dazzle.

This is just not the way to rescue our nation, in my opinion; there needs to be lots more reality feedback and foresight planning involved.

Anyway, I searched in my creative ways for years to find possible ways to improve life in America and in manufacturing as a focus, and what I came up with, which seemed a close match for the present time and situation of vast unemployment or underemployment and low productivity of America, with steadily degrading unused skills and education along with self-esteem, was the internet linked home manufacturing-education workstation concept.

I have written of that "internet linked home manufacturing-education workstation" concept often in this blog and wherever else I thought someone would pay attention.

It seems to have been quite ignored. As to why, of course I have puzzled a lot. It is a complicated world of people, to me. Sure, there is a lot of the bully-mind "we are boss here and you are a nobody who could not have a good idea, since we are the only great folks here" kind of stuff that seems to explain some of it. But I also realize that probably my unusual type of viewpoint - mentioned somewhat above - may mean that few people can resonate with it, or even understand what I am saying. And with that "you can't get there from here" place, it is time for me to wrap up this blog post. Eventually I will sift out something more to say, most likely; I always have done so in the past.