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

You either make it doable or you don't.

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