"The days of wine & roses are over: women must change their attitudes to dating"

The is from A Voice for Men and was written by by Mumia Ali.

I noticed this decades ago, women wanted to make as much as men (taking the male role) but still expected men to still act traditionally. They were clueless they couldn't have it both ways - and now things are blowing up, as I predicted so long ago. I once told a retired man, "Women want all the advantages of being a man and a woman and none of the responsibilities." He said, yes, that was true and the woman in the car just glared at me.

“They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.”

–Ernest Dowson

“With great power, comes great responsibility.”

–Uncle Ben Parker

The past year in particular has seen a frenzied debate in the public square, impacting on mating in the United States: street harassment, “Yes Means Yes” laws, the supposed date rape epidemic on the college campus, just to name a few; and all of this comes at a time when marital rates overall in the country are at all-time lows, out of wedlock births are at all-time highs and there are singletons of both sexes than at any other time in American history. Much has been and will continue to be said and written about all of this; but what has been missing from the cacophony are some hard evidence that the tectonic plates that undergird human mating in America have been shifting at a seismic rate. Oh, to be sure, there have been scholars and pundits like Andrew Hacker, Kay Hymowitz, Hanna Rosin and Charles Murray, who’ve all given their takes on the matter; but it wasn’t until “Date-onomics”, written by journalist Jon Birger, that we have an incontrovertible guide to the relations between the sexes in the 21st century.

Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game

“Think Freakonomics and Moneyball if you run across Date-onomics, a by-the-numbers book on dating that argues advice-givers serving up tips for women on how to a find …

I say that because Birger’s book presents the hard truth that for the first time in American history, there are more white women attending and graduating from colleges and universities than white men – something that was foreshadowed in the Black American community for decades – and that this cries out for a reshuffling of the mating dance deck. Birger does give his suggestions as to what upwardly mobile, professional single women can do to improve their lovelorn lot; I leave it to my readers to puruse his proposals and weigh their relative merits for themselves. What I wish to suggest in this article however, is something that neither Birger, nor anyone else as far as I’m aware, has presented to American women to honestly grapple with.

Please allow me to explain.

If you’re anything like me – a GenXer who knew nothing else but strong, career-minded women who were “doing it for themselves” and often reminding anyone within earshot that they didn’t “need no man”, you simply accepted the fact that said women, having the ability and means to care for themselves (and any kids in tow) and that they had as much say as any man in any domestic or relationship arrangement; gone were the days of supposed “one party” patriarchal rule, where the man ruled the roost with the proverbial iron fist. Relationships, which most certainly included marriage, were now to be seen as a true partnership, a coming together of equals, where the men were called upon (read: demanded) to take an equal share of the (indoors) housework and caring of children. At the same time, men were to check their sense of often unearned and unwarranted privilege in their approach to women, in their personal but as well in their social and working lives. And, all available evidence, sans any indeological slant that is, bears out the fact that the ladies have gotten exactly what they’ve wanted – from the highly educated and affluent to the rough hewn salt of the earth working classes, mens’ attitudes about all of these matters have indeed changed greatly, from where they were only a half a century ago.

But what hasn’t changed, are womens’ attitudes. Women, even, most especially, the highly educated and accomplished, still cling to what can only rightly be called outmoded and antiquated notions about mating (and by extension, masculinity itself); and worse, they rigidly expect men to uphold these ossified norms of gender, while at the same time continuing to sup from all the bennies a 21st century life affords them. This is clearly in evidence in my neck of the woods in Black America, for example – “strong, independent” Black women clearly expect the (Black) man to make all the approaches, pay for all the dates and do all the things (Black) men did more than five decades ago – regardless of the fact that, according to the website blackdemographics.com, some 65% of Black women work in the professions verus roughly 45% of Black men, and that while Black men work in the blue collar sector to the tune of 34%, only 8% of Black women do – and despite the fact that it is not at all unusual to find Black womenwho earn twice and sometimes even three times as much as many Black men. Yes, it’s true that there aren’t enough college educated, white collar professional Black men to go around for the Black women who want them; but it’s also true that many Black women of that cohort aren’t willing to make some needed adjustments of their own in sync with the changed world in which we live. Birger’s book chronicles this and other facets of mating in the Black community, and discusses what is now occuring in the white one.

Yet, when these kinds of discussions come up, like the one I recently participated in on the highly popular womens’ only-dating coach Evan Marc Katz’s website, all manner of flimsy and maudlin “reasons” are given for how and why the very same savvy, accomplished women should not make some changes in their own approach toward dating and mating. In another recent discussion on the popular website Hooking Up Smart on the topic of old school chivalry for example, “more reasons” were proffered that, if the reverse were uttered by any man, they’d be pilloried as misogynistic and ran out of town on a rail. Bromides about “women paying a higher cost for sex” (i.e., the naturalistic fallacy) are easily countered by the fact that due to massive and sweeping advances in medical technology, said “costs” have been substantially mitigated (Maternal deaths, a common occurrence here in the USA a mere century ago and the leading cause of death among American women, is extremely rare today; birth control and abortions are both widely available, medically safe and highly effective). There’s this irrational idea that women can and should “have it all” – strong and independent when it suits them, coy and demure (read: passive) when it suits them – in other words, flexible “Plastic Woman”, to use Hanna Rosin’s phrase in her book “The End of Men” – while men remain stiff cardboard cutouts. Women reserve the right to be “flexible” for themselves; but want men to remain frozen in the amber of the past, when it comes to good ole fashioned “courtin'”.

Not only is this view hypocritical, it is patently unfair, and, in light of Birger’s excellent work, impractical. While the assumption is that men are simply falling down on the “Manning Up” job, no one has deigned to consider that, like women for the first time in American history, men have also been considering life outside the tightly prescribed social rules and norms that have had a chokehold on them for centuries. Perhaps there are men, like myself, who appreciated working with their hands in an active and dynamic environment instead of being holed up in classrooms and being a captive audience for odd, weird, ideological academics who drone on and on about stuff few outside of the academy care about? Perhaps there are men who actually enjoy women approaching them for once, instead of having to do all the heavy lifting of old fashioned courting? And perhaps there are men who like the idea that there are women out there who like them and enjoy their company independent of anything else, and don’t see them merely as a means to a financial end? The very forces that have brought unprecented freedoms to all women in American life today have freed men up as well, to consider other ways of being. Perhaps men are not attending university and college as much as they did in the past, was because they don’t have to – or want to.

And that raises a lot of very interesting questions for us all to consider moving forward – the most fundamental of which, being the following: that American women, now clearly surpassing men in terms of formal education and incomes, simply cannot also claim demure passivity in the mating dance. The time has come for women to put some skin in the mating game.

It’s only fair.

Adapted from the aforementioned discussion at Evan Marc Katz’s website, is my proposal to the ladies moving forward in our Brave New World of dating and mating:

1. Ladies, you have to choose which path works best for you – the egalitarian route, or the traditional one – and stick to it. No “switching lanes” when it suits you to do so. After all, none of you would be OK with men doing the same; much of the discussion obtaining along these lines earlier indicated in this article are a case in point (In online dating/relationship forums, websites, blogs and the like, discussions abound on the topic of “ethics in dating”, which really means “ethics of MEN in dating”; rarely if ever is the discussion focused on the fairness/unfairness of the ladies in this regard). Indeed, the conceit lo these many years is that the only ones who had any room for improvements along these lines, are menfolk. As mentioned earlier, these concerns have been addressed, with empirical evidence to support the thesis. Now, it’s your turn.

2. If you’re a gal who’s more egalitarian in your outlook; if you like the fact that you can go as far as your talent and ambition can take you; and if you like the independence that your mom and nana could only dream of; you must now bring that egalitarianism to bear in the mating realm as well. You now have to bear equal burdens for the courtship dance – meaning that you now must make concerted efforts to make some “first contact” approaches. You must also pickup the tab for some of those first dates, too. Yes, things can and will, from time to time, not go well – that you will get turned down, or even rudely rejected, by some of the men you’ve worked up the nerve to approach. And true, some of those dates you just shelled out for, won’t work out so well.That, is the price of freedom, ladies – and freedom ain’t free. The notion on the part of some feminists, arguing that it is the responsibility of men to make women approaching them “safe” (i.e., free from rejections, etc.), isn’t empowering to women – it’s in truth, quite patronizing, infantilizing and downright insulting to women. Contrary to urban legend, quite a few men very much welcome a lady making an approach, as well as not having to ante up for every single interaction with one. And, like women, men also can reject an approach if it’s coming from the wrong gal. Such is life. Get over to it.

3. On the other hand, if you consider yourself an old-fashioned lass and like doing things the way mom and dad did it, fair enough – but not so fast. First, remember, mom and dad didn’t roll around in the hookup hay; they waited until married, right? And, since you’re of the view that the man has to approach and ante up for dates and so forth, you have to be brutally honest in answering the following question: what are you offering a man for his old-fashioned dating dollar? After all, while you may not be “that kind of girl”, there are quite a few these days who are; you’re trying to hold on to an idea of dating, relationships and marriage that has pretty much gone by the wayside. But since I for one am all for freedom of choice, I believe that you should have the right to this option. Just be clear that you have to give the fellas what they want: pretty, feminine and yes, submissive, to say nothing of what they think would make a good wife and mother. He who pays the piper calls the tune – and you can’t be mad if what the fellas want may or may not be in line with what you think is an “old fashioned girl”. If any of that bothers you, you should consider being an egalitarian – and Woman Up.

Birger rightly argues that the simple math and facts before us demand a change in how we do things. For the ladies, it means that such changes are long overdue.

Reverse Dunning-Kruger

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity" - William Butler Yeats

Dunning-Kruger is when someone is incompetent, doesn't know it, but instead thinks they're doing a bang-up job. I have only seen a few cases of it, but by God they cause a lot of trouble.

There is no name for the opposite that I know of - when someone underestimates themselves but does a good job.

I first noticed Dunning-Kruger when I was in college and working as a security guard - although it wasn't called Dunning-Kruger at that time. There was no name for it.

We had a "sergeant" who was always bragging about being in the military and had a blustery attitude. No one liked him, to the point one guard asked him what the current time was in military time.

His answer? "We didn't use it when I was in." A blatent lie and he was clearly never in the military. He was soon removed from his position and rank soon after.

I'm sure this came out of the blue, since he was convinced he was doing a great job.

The worst I ever saw was a middle-aged, scrawny, unattractive woman (who was third choice for the job) who was convinced she was doing gangbusters at her PR job.

She lasted four months before being removed. She was an utter incompetent, but was clueless about how bad she was. And she was stunned when removed.

I have found first-rate people hire first-rate people, second-rate people hire third-raters, and third-raters hire fourth-rate people. When those with Dunning-Kruger get into positions of authority, their castastrophes spread out like circles in a pond.

People with Dunning-Kruger are very confident, but they never have anything to back it up.

On the other hand, people who show humility - which means you know your limitations - are the ones who should be hired. They're the ones I'd hire.

Smart, competent people almost always underestimate themselves. In fact, I'd define a smart person who knows just how ignorant he really is.

A Lot of People, When They Meet Me, Don't Like Me

Years ago I read an article about Humphrey Bogart, who said a lot of people didn't like him. He had no explanation for it.

What he said stayed with me, because I have the same problem.

What I have noticed is that smart people with a sense of humor always like me. Not-very-smart people with no sense of humor tend to not like me, to the point they tell lies about me and try to do things to hurt me.

I always give people the benefit of the doubt. I'll change my mind. Some people, unfortunately, are so dumb they cannot change their minds. They always think they're right.

Some people have something wrong with the way they perceive things. Our perception goes though our emotional brain first, so everything we perceive is always colored by our feelings. If a person is childish - and God knows many are - what they think about someone is always affected then they'll never be able to judge people correctly.

There are not very many smart people with a sense of humor, who try to be fair. There are many dumb people with no sense of humor at all. That's a shame, of course.

Of course, I always keep the smart funny ones as friends and avoid the dumb ones.

Another thing I've noticed is that dogs are excellent judges of character, far better than humans, and they immediately perceive the dumb ones with no sense of humor, who tend to not like dogs.

I once was sitting in my van with my pug, who are the clowns of the dog world, and are funny and affectionate. Some guy walked up to my door and asked for a cigarette.

My pug hurled himself snarling across my lap and tried to attack him though my window. I told him my dog did not like him and to go away and never bother me again.

Later I mentioned this to a woman, who said her dog hated him and that she referred to him as "Grumpy." He was stupid, had no sense of humor, and harassed everyone to extent he ended up serving 20 days in jail and got thrown out of his apartment.

Her dog, on the other hand, when she saw me, wagged her tail so hard she could barely walk.

I've also found a lot of middle-aged women who marriages failed also dislike me and try to do things to me. But then, I'm not alone in that. These women are full of bitterness and anger, and they try to do things to other men.

Smart people have it harder, dealing with the stupid. God knows how Bill Gates had it growing up, since he looks like the archetyical nerd. Of course, now, with his money, he can completely avoid the retards.

I wonder how many problems in the world are caused by stupid humorless people who don't like dogs? A lot, I'd say.

Look at this way: when was the last time you met a smart bully?

"The secret of lasting love? Just answer 25 simple questions"

What's the old saying? Never discuss politics and religion? And, apparently, pornography. For many people, they're touchy subjects.

The Manosphere, as I've said before several times, gives very bad advice on what kind of man to be to attract women. Be a "Dark Triad Alpha"(which is a psychopath, all of whom have no conscience are incapable of love) and women will swoon over you? What sort of frauds and grifters came up with that nonsense? What sort of fatherless fools believe it works?

You don't even want to act like a psychopath or narcissist because there is a heavy price to pay for it. I've seen this more than once.

The women who are attracted to such men are crazy. Who wants to be involved with a crazy woman? You'll end up at the minimum with your scalp split open with a telephone or your clothes cut up - both of which I have seen.

I've had many men tell me they don't want to get married because of the poor quality of many American women. But there are many good women out there, many of whom, I'll add, are snatched up quickly.

One thing the Manosphere does get right is to stay away from feminist women, or even ones who have been infected by feminism even if they claim they aren't one. They're leftist, and leftism is always about destroying men.

This article was written by Amelia Hill and is from the Guardian. I have noticed that what she writes is true. Men and women should be compatible politically - and in other important ways, too. Unfortunately a lot of woman are ignorant as hell about politics and economics, which is why historically they've never been allowed to vote.

I once met a woman who believed in socialized medicine because her fiance - now ex-fiance - believed in it. For good or bad, women often follow men's leads. When they don't, their default position appears to be socialism/fascism, where they put a non-existent "safety" above freedom.

As for pornography I am indifferent to it but have found several women who enjoyed it. One told me she found it "very stimulating." I just rolled my eyes.

I consider it harmless. People who claimed it's harmed them are using it to blame their bad behavior on. It's the fool, not the tool.

I can't imagine someone with an IQ of 125 being compatible with someone with an IQ of 100. Their IQS and political beliefs have to be similar for them to get along. This is called "associative mating," and it's the only kind that works.

The course of true love never did run smooth and now scientists know why. Love, according to a new theory, is not a matter of lightning bolts or raw sexual desire but of pornography and politics.

Its proponents, who claim to be able to predict marital happiness, say society has the recipe for love all wrong: opposites do not attract. Instead, the only way to a life of happiness together is to share a single opinion, or more specifically, 25 of them.

‘Society today goes around the matter of finding love in the completely wrong way,’ said Dr Glenn Wilson, a psychologist at the University of London and co-author of The Science of Love

‘We tend to dismiss people who don’t fit the blueprint of perfection in our heads but our research proves that true love is doomed unless we have a number of what might appear to be mundane and obscure things in common.

‘There is obviously an area of love that involves chemistry and animal attraction,’ Wilson said. ‘But our research found 24 areas where - unless the couples felt almost identically - their relationship would be in trouble before long.’

Wilson has spent two decades applying the science of psychometric testing to the art of love, and devised the Compatibility Quotient, or CQ, test by studying the most severe causes of marital friction on test couples and whittling down the list to 25 vital areas.

He is so confident of the value of his CQ test that he and Jon Cousins, the former creative director of an advertising company, have founded Cybersuitors.com, an internet dating agency which uses the theory to match clients.

Each applicant is asked their opinion on each one of the 25 areas, and given five different answers to choose from. Each reply is compared with those of every other member on the database, and a list is produced of those with most similarities.

‘We have found that the CQ score is a virtual predictor of marital happiness,’ said Cousins, who found love himself on the site shortly after it launched six weeks ago.

‘Even though I helped devise the test, I would not necessarily have applied such a cut-and-dried approach to my own life until it happened almost by accident.’

After completing his own test, Cousins found he shared a CQ score of 134 with another member, 34 points higher than the 100 indicating average compatibility.

‘I could not resist contacting her to see if this magic formula would work for me and, although it is still early days, it is certainly a deeper relationship than any I have been in for a long time,’ he said.

Nick Auchincloss and his girlfriend, Vicky, met on the site in mid-April. ‘I have usually gone for girls because of an emotional and instant attraction,’ he said.

‘I was skeptical about this test because it asked things I would never have thought I cared about, either in myself or my partner, but which I have now realised are pretty important to a relationship if you want it to last.’

Auchincloss contacted Vicky after their responses scored 138. ‘Our relationship is already stronger than my usual experiences,’ he said. ‘Knowing we feel the same about these basic issues gives me an objective trust in her individually and in us together,’ he said.

Wilson admitted that although it was important for couples to share a range of common interests and values - including views on the type of relationship they wanted, children, sexual fidelity and leisure activities - he was surprised by some of the areas in which concordance was vital for long-term happiness.

‘Differing opinions on pornography and politics were most likely to spell disaster in any long-term relationship. Women were eight times more likely to admit their relationship was unhappy if their view on pornography differed from their partner’s,’ he said.

‘The big issue with men was if their woman was more, or less, experienced in bed than they were: that spelt long-term unhappiness for 40 per cent of men.’

Couples who like similar food were three times likelier to stay happy than those whose taste buds clashed, while those agreeing on what to watch on TV were three and a half times more likely to experience marital bliss than those who vie for control of the remote.

Also vital for conjugal harmony was agreement over the value of chivalry - ‘that’s our way of discovering what they feel about feminism,’ said Wilson - and a shared desire for pets.

There is, however, one area where it was better to disagree: alcohol. Cousins said: ‘Partnerships where one member drank heavily and the other abstained were deeply content.

‘While other differences seemed to lead inevitably to unhappiness in long-term relationships, differences in drinking habits brought couples closer together.’

Eighty Percent of Students Shouldn't Be in College

I was actually shocked my first semester in college. I was hoping for smarter kids, but I met smarter ones in high school. One of my friends told me, "I thought I'd run across kids who discussed Kant, but was I surprised."

I wouldn't go so far as Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") but I'd support Pareto's 80/20 Rule (as in "Eighty percent of students shouldn't be in college").

I attended two universities and the last one was the largest producers of education students in a very large state. I never met a smart Education major except a friend of mine - and he went on to get a M.A. in Economics. The rest of the students, who were all girls, weren't much smarter than rocks.

We don't need an Education major, and I'd close everyone of them down (my friend told me one of his instructors told him, "Public schools are as close to prison as most people will experience").

Hard science degrees are a different story. But Women's Studies? Worthless. Black Studies? The same - worthless. (All of the data in "soft sciences" is too easy to fake and most cannot be replicated. That makes it not just worthless, but dangerous.)

Only once did I see a library in a student's room. Partying is just fine - I did a lot of it - but college is supposed to be about getting an education, too.

A lot of students would be better off going to technical school or being apprentices. Why pretend they're intellectuals and scholars when they're clearly not?

It's got to the point you can get a heck of an education on the internet. Better than most schools. And that is fine with me.

The more colleges that close down, the better I like it. It'll decentralize things, which is always a good thing.

Eighty percent of colleges should be closed down - and no one should be allowed in college until their IQ is at least 120.

"The End of Chinese Manufacturing and Rebirth of U.S. Industry"

I have never been impressed by China, or scared of it, unlike the hysterical. That's one American disease - to think foreign countries are going to demolish us or take us over.

This is from Forbes and was written by Vivek Wadhwa.

There is great concern about China’s real-estate and infrastructure bubbles. But these are just short-term challenges that China may be able to spend its way out of. The real threat to China’s economy is bigger and longer term: its manufacturing bubble.

By offering subsidies, cheap labor, and lax regulations and rigging its currency, China was able to seduce American companies to relocate their manufacturing operations there. Millions of American jobs moved to China, and manufacturing became the underpinning of China’s growth and prosperity. But rising labor costs, concerns over government-sponsored I.P. theft, and production time lags are already causing companies such as Dow Chemicals, Caterpillar, GE, and Ford to start moving some manufacturing back to the U.S. from China. Google recently announced that its Nexus Q streaming media player would be made in the U.S., and this put pressure on Apple to start following suit.

But rising costs and political pressure aren’t what’s going to rapidly change the equation. The disruption will come from a set of technologies that are advancing at exponential rates and converging.

These technologies include robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing, and nanotechnology. These have been moving slowly so far, but are now beginning to advance exponentially just as computing does. Witness how computing has advanced to the point at which the smart phones we carry in our pockets have more processing power than the super computers of the ’60s—and how the Internet, which also has its origins in the ’60s, went on an exponential growth path about 15 years ago and rapidly changed the way we work, shop, and communicate. That’s what lies ahead for these new technologies. The robots of today aren’t the Androids or Cylons that we used to see in science-fiction movies, but specialized electro-mechanical devices that are controlled by software and remote controls. As computers become more powerful, so do the abilities of these devices. Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. And DIY’ers are lending a helping hand. There are dozens of startups, such as Willow Garage, iRobot, and 9th Sense, selling robot-development kits for university students and open-source communities. They are creating ever more-sophisticated robots and new applications for these. Watch this video of the autonomous flying robots that University of Pennsylvania professor Vijay Kumar created with his students, for example.

The factory assembly that the Chinese are performing is child’s play for the next generation of robots—which will soon become cheaper than human labor. Indeed, one of China’s largest manufacturers, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, announced last August that it plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers in China presently do. It found Chinese labor to be too expensive and demanding. The world’s most advanced car, the Tesla Model S, is also being manufactured in Silicon Valley, which is one of the most expensive places in the country. Tesla can afford this because it is using robots to do the assembly.

Then there is artificial intelligence (AI)—software that makes computers do things that, if humans did them, we would call intelligent. We left AI for dead after the hype it created in the ‘80s, but it is alive and kicking—and advancing rapidly. It is powering all sorts of technologies. This is the technology that IBM’s Deep Blue computer used in beating chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997and that enabled IBM’s Watson to beat TV-show Jeopardy champions in 2011. AI is making it possible to develop self-driving cars, voice-recognition systems such as Apple’s Siri, and the face-recognition software Facebook recently acquired. AI technologies are also finding their way into manufacturing and will allow us to design our own products at home with the aid of AI-powered design assistants.

How will we turn these designs into products? By “printing” them at home or at modern-day Kinko’s: shared public manufacturing facilities such as TechShop, a membership-based manufacturing workshop, using new manufacturing technologies that are now on the horizon.

A type of manufacturing called “additive manufacturing” is making it possible to cost-effectively “print” products. In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material to obtain the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. In other words, the more complex the product you want to create, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.

In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on 3D models—adding materials rather than subtracting them. The “3D printers” that produce these use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials—much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. This allows the creation of objects without any sort of tools or fixtures. The process doesn’t produce any waste material, and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, in using laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn’t cost much more than one with text, in using a 3D printer, we can print sophisticated 3D structures for about the cost of a brick.

3D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that in the next decade we start 3D-printing buildings and electronics.

In the next decade, we will see further advances. Engineers and scientists are today developing new types of materials, such as carbon nanotubes, ceramic-matrix nanocomposites, and new carbon fibers. These new materials make it possible to create products that are stronger, lighter, more energy-efficient, and more durable than existing manufactured goods. A new field—molecular manufacturing—will take this one step further and make it possible to program molecules inexpensively, with atomic precision. The materials we use for manufacturing and techniques for production will be nothing like the assembly-based processes that exist in China—and the U.S.—today.

Even if the Chinese automate their factories with AI-powered robots and manufacture 3D printers, it will no longer make sense to ship raw materials all the way to China to have them assembled into finished products and shipped back to the U.S. Manufacturing will once again become a local industry with products being manufactured near raw materials or markets.

So China has many reasons to worry, and manufacturing will undoubtedly return to the U.S.—if not in this decade then early in the next. But the same jobs that left the U.S. won’t come back: they won’t exist. What will the new jobs be? We can only guess. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says that just as we have created new, higher-paying jobs in every other industrial transition, we will create a new set of industries and professions in this one. Look at the new types of jobs and multi-billion dollar businesses that the Internet and mobile industries created—these came out of nowhere and changed our lives, Bass says.

Carl Bass is one of the leading authorities on 3D printing and digital manufacturing, and I share his optimism that we will create an era of abundance. But I worry if we will create the new jobs fast enough and distribute the prosperity. Carl and I discussed this at Singularity University a few months ago. And I also discussed China manufacturing with The Economist China bureau chief, Vijay Vaitheeswaran. You can find these videos below.

(Click on the above link to watch the videos.)

3-D Printing is Going to Destroy Manufacturing

If 3-D works the way it is supposed to, it will decentralize things - and that is always a good thing.

Cars today are designed with the help of computers and manufactured by robots - and the quality of cars today is about five times better than those made in the '60s (I can remember working on my used cars, which had points and condensers, when I was in college).

My last car, manufactured in 2000, had 488,000 miles on it before it became unrepairable unless I spent $2000 on it, which I declined to do. I once had a 1980 Datsun that gave up the ghost with a little more than 100,000 miles on it. That's a big difference in 20 years.

The time is coming - and soon - when guys are going to 3-D print a lot of the plastic parts for their cars in their garages.

What is this going to do to manufacturing? For all practical purposes, destroy it. When you can manufacture much of what you want with a $5000 3-D printer, that's the end of almost all manufacturing (I wouldn't be surprised if millions of jobs are lost - for that matter, manufacturing in the U.S. reached its employment peak in May, 1979).

There is a lot of hoopla about manufacturing jobs being outsourced, say to China. But if many things can be manufactured in garages...well, that's it for China (which I've been saying for years).

There are also a lot of upset government bureaucrats concerned about the 3-D printing of pistols. Good luck trying to stop that, although many firearms enthusiasts are still going to want name-brand high-quality pistols such as Sig Sauer and Colt. (I wonder how big their factories are and how many people they employ? I'd say very small and not many.)

About 15 years ago I encountered a man who had a complete machine shop in his back garage. That's how he made his living. I estimated the whole setup cost about $20,000. He told me, "I can manufacture just about everything - guns, car parts, you name it."

I suspect he's already bought a 3-D printer. I'd be surprised if he hasn't.

I do wonder about the stupid. What are they going to do for a living? Write software? Har. It's already got to the point where you have to have an IQ of 120 and above to get a high-paying job. If your IQ is 100 (which is "normal," which means half the people in the U.S. have IQs of 100 or less) then you're up a creek. Are these people going to be on welfare all their lives? Or work at minimum wage jobs, which is all they're capable of doing?

Those who believe people are blank slates and everyone can be educated equally are going to be in for a big surprise.

I suspect medical costs are going to collapse, too. I once picked up a prescription for a woman and I was told one prescription was $500. When they rechecked they told me, oops, we mean $2 because we forgot she had insurance. If you can 3-D print prescription drugs, what is that going to do to costs?

Will someday the combination of nanotechnology and 3-D be able to print organs? How long before we can manipulate molecules in a printer?

People may talk a lot about jobs being outsourced, but they really don't care. What they care about is buying high-quality goods as cheaply as possible.

How long before even the backward public schools buy 3-D printers and offer classes for their students? How long before the low-end printers cost $300 and and they become as common for kids as computers are now? (3-D printers, just like computers, are going to get cheaper and more powerful.)

I can remember when new computers cost $5000. Now they cost $300.

The man who came up with 3-D printing said it would mostly be used for sex toys, but people for hundreds of years have been saying new technology had no practical value. They have been wrong every time.

The government can't stop any of this. They can slow it down (which is what governments do) but they can't stop it.

Nobody can stop it. Science, which always turns into technology, can never be stopped.

The problem isn't the technology, which is always amoral - it can be used for good or bad. The problem, as always, is people.

As always, we are going to end up with science and technology rapidly advancing but human nature staying the same.

The United States is in the last stage before massive change - a far-flung empire and a financial economy, which have never lasted and never will. Other counties have gone through it and survived.

The U.S. government is now in now in crisis mode. Sooner or later I suspect it will just slowly fade away rather than just suddenly collapse. I am all for this. The country, however, will survive - and thank God for that.