I don't think outsourcing manufacturing is destructive of human progress. You got huge companies like AMD and NVIDIA , who certainly contribute to human progress, who outsource all their manufacturing to TSMC because only a few companies worldwide can make those kinds of semiconductors.
Admittedly there's something to be said for outsourcing MFG to someplace like TSMC. But they still employ engineers to design the chips and maintain deep technical talent.
I was thinking more along the lines of companies that are little more than a layer of product managers and operations folks just managing vendors and service providers that do ALL the work.
Back then, Commodore had an advantage over the competition because they had MOS Technologies as a subsidiary and could rapidly iterate on hardware design. Same in the life sciences business. Nothing is easier than dreaming up a compound, but then you encounter reality, some compounds may be difficult to access synthetically, there are unexpected interactions, and these issues are best sorted out when synthetic chemistry, crystallographic support and the life sciences people are all in the same building. Fabless just doesn't work well outside semiconductors.
Which is why the trend with Apple is to do everything in-house (SoC, etc). Tight vertical integration facilitates difficult software-hardware technologies.
This reminds me of Standard Oil back in the 19th century. They had so much cash floating around that they could build big integrated refineries, railroad and pipeline infrastructure which contributed heavily to efficiency. The price of Kerosene dropped 80% during the history of the company.
