This is too strong of a statement. There are perfectly sensible reasons to NIMBY certain activities. For instance, burning wood is probably ok in general, but a horrible idea in heavily populated cities.

Obviously, California is not composed exclusively of heavily populated cities. But it does contain a lot of them! So it is not completely insane that the regulation is skewed in favour of this.

Of course, for things that are equally polluting no matter where you do them (like burning fossil fuels), moving production outside of the location but still buying produced materials is simply passing the buck. But it's not totally clear to me that's what's happening here.

> It makes no sense to say "oh, we need to manufacturer this stuff... just not here." That's basically NIMBYism for electronics.

This statement doesn't acknowledge why NIMBYism is odious. The reason is that we all need housing, but new housing may devalue current housing. While some may wish to protect their housing values/community feel/etc, others wish and may rightly deserve, access to housing at the same levels of access as earlier generations.

The analogy to manufacturing does not exist—to suggest it does ignores the real negative externalities to people who live next to polluting facilities, especially those where the pollutant was not recognized during use.

But is that really California's stance? Or is it more "if you do it here, do it the right way" and then everyone uses the more polluting production methods in a state that doesn't care

The outcome is the same as long as only California does it, but the ethics of it and the outcome if every state acted like that is vastly different

Similarly saying “you can’t have slavery but you can buy stuff made by enslaved people abroad” is morally inconsistent. I don’t know the obvious answer to this though.

it's just specialization, in most cases it's not efficient to do locally

Why? Manufacturing,design and engineering need highly different skill sets it's just not feasible to have both in one location because of the workforce required. It's the same in every other country some parts are industrial hubs and some design/engineering.

So you're fine with having a fab in your backyard?

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/08/28/18869003.php

I saw this being hyped on YouTube the other day. My main concern is that there is a large lithium ion battery in a machine that is designed to get things hot. You do not want thermal runaway to happen with a battery that large inside your kitchen.

Their website says

> We’re designing and manufacturing the stovetop, battery pack, and key internal components to comply with all relevant UL standards and other applicable compliance requirements.

but this device appears to be for sale, right now. Either it is designed for safety already or it isn’t. WHICH UL safety standards? Is there an emergency shutoff? A regular old fire extinguisher probably is not going to cut it.

I mean, that's pretty normal right. The product starts out as a bit niche and expensive, and then as it scales in manufactured volume, variants & competitors become available at lower price points.

If this website’s author is correct I’m supposed to believe that no paint gets applied to cars in Canada.

Existing shops get grandfathered.

To me at least this appears to be a smoking gun for the creator not being able to function in good faith. Whether that's intentional or self delusion, who knows.

From the page itself, "A modern auto paint shop emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during primer, base coat, and clear coat application. The Bay Area AQMD makes permitting a new paint shop nearly impossible. This is THE classic example of what you can't do in CA." This point is trotted out and reframed multiple times on the page but it's literally self contradictory. It's not something you can't do in California, it's something you can't do without approval in the Bay Area Air District.

It's not a good place to be doing such an activity, as the area already can't successfully keep the air healthy enough to stay within federal limits due to environmental factors that trap particulate low to the ground. If you're at all familiar with the area you know concerns about air quality are not overblown and. Go further away from people or meet strict VOC regulations if you absolutely need to be doing that kind of work in the area, seems completely reasonable to me.

There is no such thing as zero externalities in manufacturing. Unless these ‘eco conscious’ engineers ship all the waste to China these chemicals as by products will continue to harm the environment. And guess what, you are part of the environment. You all just want excuses to keep playing with these toys.

I cannot to move to California once all the billionaires move to Texas and Florida.

> With aligned talent you can make the process neutral. I’m assuming lots of ‘eco conscious’ engineers would love to implement better practices and get paid for it.

I think to be eco neutral, you would be cost prohibitive. Which would be an issue in car manufacturing and phone manufacturing.

Also, the website lumps adjacent tech together and says they're all banned, but they are not. Lumping sheet metal stamping in with gigs casting is plain wrong, and you could make the argument that that's an agenda driven aspect of this website. They're casting a wider net than exists.

Point stands, though. California's policy is "go fuck up some other states environment". This policy might not work forever, but that's their stance.

"you can" is a very different thing from "you do". To do you need to want, to plan, and to execute. To can is just that, something in the clouds. So this is not contradicting the argument it's trying to contradict.

That's true they are not new buildings. Here's one that is: https://www.appliedmaterials.com/us/en/semiconductor/epic-pl...

The Infinera one is described as a "new fab" though (https://www.nist.gov/chips/infinera-california-san-jose) and the Bosch one is adding a new type of fabrication to an existing site. If you can do all that without getting new permits then that makes California sound like a pretty lenient place to do business. I'm assuming they did have to get new permits though.

Post these “checks” that failed. Don’t hide behind some bullshit about the author being motivated

It’s not claiming: you can’t have an automotive paint shop. It’s claiming you can’t start a new paint shop. Specifically, if you don’t have one for your car manufacturing line already, you can’t set one up. Wikipedia shows 13 pages for auto plants in CA. Most of them have the verb “was” in the opening sentence. There are two current plants: Tesla Fremont and Toyota California. Both of these plants are over 50 years old, and only one of them produces actual cars instead of parts.

The website is extremely clear about this being about _new_ automotive paint shops, so nothing you said here refutes the website.

They're likely falling under some "we aren't selling car painting as a service or main part of our business, we're painting our own cars as a small ancillary part of our real business" exemption.

Well that's the whole problem isn't it?

It's not like the laws are simply "you can't make semiconductors here". The laws ban the harmful externalities of the process. The companies that want to make semiconductors don't want to find a way to make the processes less harmful: it's cheaper and easier to just go somewhere where they can pollute instead.

When an industry leaves this many superfund sites in an area, that industry can expect some regulatory blowback from that area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...

https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-y...