>It's a little strange that you dug your heels in on the gemstones because I was trying to be gracious and steelmanning your point by conceding that portion.

It's False gracious-ism lol. You obviously believe you can win the argument without that so you gave it up. It was a deceptive gesture. Anyway. I'm not in this to win. I'm in it because I, in totality believe I'm right. So what does it matter if I use gemstones given that you already conceded that point? And like I said it was a false concession. You pretended to concede that point and I correctly responded as if you didn't concede.

>The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point.

I can't adequately illuminate my point. I concede to that. The statement "Asia is superior to the US in manufacturing and infrastructure" is a statement with so many fuzzy words I can't satisfy your pedantry. What is "manufacturing"? What is "superiority"? What is "Asia"? Am I referring to North Korea?

There is no study, no science on the face of this earth that can prove either side of this debate correct.

The most we can do is throw a bunch of random facts and tidbits at each other and never ultimately agree. Take your side foray into gemstones... Does diamonds represent all of gemstones? Also what about the proportional value of artificial diamonds vs. Mined diamonds? What about the amount of value involved in beauty vs. Manufacturing? You failed to acknowledge here that diamonds used in manufacturing are mostly manufactured themselves. How much of manufacturing does gemstones represent? We could dive deep into this useless pedantic branch of the debate and ultimately go nowhere.

But despite all of this, we both know what gemstones usually refers to a mined rock for beauty purposes. That was the industry referred to through the colloquial usage of the term gemstones. But there's an underlying strategy here where you can subtly switch definitions and use the pedantic definition without the other party realizing it. Anyway let's move off of gemstones like you originally conceded.

I value the human ability to know things and communicate vague and general concepts and things without fuzzy boundaries without the need to reference data or research. If you don't have the intellectual ability to do this then the only logical conclusion for you is to not even engage in this debate or any debate for that matter because no definitive conclusion is possible for most things of this nature.

I also concede that despite all of this fuzziness you are smart enough to know what I'm talking about and deep down you know I'm right.

Call it diatribe or whatever you want. The outcome of this conversation had a predictable end of going to a pedantic nowhere. I just took it to a different end here.

>If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy.

So? You can make this statement and the following can still be true: Asia is far superior to the US when it comes to manufacturing and infrastructure.

Additionally the following statement can still be true: the past several decades American manufacturing and infrastructure has been in decline.

And this as well: America does not have the will or the manufacturing capability to replace it's energy infrastructure with nuclear.

Do we need to get into a overly detailed debate about this or is it just self evident that these statements are true? I think it's self evident. Again it's not really matter of truth, but more about accepting the truth.