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"No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
201–210 of 249 posts
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'm not sure if America actually cares about those types of war and military considerations any longer. Have you looked at ship construction times lately? it's kind of funny because the US won WWII by the ability to churn out huge volumes of decent quality goods but now our military seems to be adopting the German idea that small numbers of expensive wunderwaffen will turn the tide
And Chinese military build out seems to be "perfect is the enemy of good enough" and "quantity has a quality all its own", so soon we're likely to be the ones playing catch up despite our huge military budget and outlays.
>And Chinese military build out seems to be "perfect is the enemy of good enough" and "quantity has a quality all its own",
They're moving away from that - they're becoming more similar to the US in prioritizing quality. China is racing to build a first-world economy before their demographics shut down their growth, so relying on cheap, plentiful troops makes less and less sense as the years go on.
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not taught in US schools that the IS won Vietnam in the sense that the government we backed won. Why do you think it is? Also, the Korean war was clearly a victory for the US; we intended to defend SK and prevent the spread of Communism, and that’s what happened.
>Also, the Korean war was clearly a victory for the US; we intended to defend SK and prevent the spread of Communism, and that’s what happened. Nonsense. A clear victory would be if South Korea held its frontline near the Chinese border, instead of being pushed back to the 38th parallel. The Korean war was a stalemate . It wasn't a loss, but it wasn't a win.
I think the meaning of clear victory is certainly murky, but to call it a stalemate is just incorrect; it was definitely a strategic victory.
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#204One of the ideas that seems to be missed from the study of history and economy, was the effect on the total destruction of the Japanese and German industrial base - during WWII. Britain and USA, were left with their archaic industrial systems. After WWII, the Japanese and the German steel industry had to be completely reborn. (At the cost of primarily USA financing.) Those two countries had no more relics of the past…
It is an interesting narrative but largely untrue. As the article points out, US Steel (and the US steel industry in general) was making enough profit, what they were not doing was re-investing those profits into upgrading their steel making. Instead, the "People in Charge" were giving themselves large bonuses and pay upgrades for being bosses of the "big steel." This was especially true through the 80's and 90's in…
> This was especially true through the 80's and 90's in a post "stagflation" atmosphere a lot of industry became more focused on executive pay than product production.
Really the thing that does this is market concentration. You have only three major companies in an industry and they can play "conscious parallelism" games to avoid competing with each other while pointing to the others as ostensible competition to fend off antitrust allegations.
Then because they're not actually subject to competitive pressure, they stagnate, and as soon as anyone else shows up who hasn't forgotten how to satisfy the customer, the incumbents start to crumble.
It isn't a coincidence that the article is about something similar happening to US Steel, the infamous former monopolist.
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure that narrative on “forgetting how to build quality cars” is fair. Germany and Japan introduced a lot of new technologies and processes that would naturally be a little rocky from time to time. It is the nature of immature services. Once those matured, the new stuff quickly caught up. But it needed time. What makes you think it was the increase in executive or shareholder comp that caused the degradation…
Here's an example, before WWII brake lines were made out of Monel, a corrosion proof material aside from galvanic. Nickel and copper being expensive and needed elsewhere the lines were made then made from painted steel. After the war steel lines became the standard. The cost difference is small but it's indicative of a larger issue of disposability. One of the reasons Japanese vehicles started to dominate was that th…
Japan, Toyota Production System (TPS) is a merger of culture and the work of William Edwards Deming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
The wiki has this line that sums it all up perfectly:
In 1982, Deming's book Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position was published by the MIT Center for Advanced Engineering, and was renamed Out of the Crisis in 1986. In it, he offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but also by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved products and services. "Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment."
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
See the movie "The Mouse That Roared". Having seen the results of Germany and Japan being bombed and rebuilt by the US, a small fictional country comes up with the brilliant development plan of intentionally starting and losing a war with the US. Spoiler alert: they end up having to deal with the tragedy of accidentally winning the war. As I recall, part of it was they just assumed their generals would lose, so the g…
Maybe someone can clarify this to me: wasn’t US help essentially given as a loan that would carry interest and repayments? Or was it given for free with the agreement that they would follow a US-inspired democratic system and be allies (and in exchange of trade agreements)? Were military bases in those countries given as a repayment, perhaps in addition to repaying the loans? But even then, isn’t the US paying rent f…
Loans to a bombed out country in the aftermath of losing a major war can be hard to come by, for the same reasons as they are for a third world country with an unstable government.
It's not uncommon for a country to get stuck in a situation where they have no infrastructure that could attract investment so they have no industry so they have no economic base to build infrastructure. "Get the US to loan us money" is nominally a way out of this.
The US noticed this too and makes loans to such countries de facto through the World Bank, providing them with an opening through which they can crawl up inside those countries and lay eggs.
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#207One of the ideas that seems to be missed from the study of history and economy, was the effect on the total destruction of the Japanese and German industrial base - during WWII. Britain and USA, were left with their archaic industrial systems. After WWII, the Japanese and the German steel industry had to be completely reborn. (At the cost of primarily USA financing.) Those two countries had no more relics of the past…
It is an interesting narrative but largely untrue. As the article points out, US Steel (and the US steel industry in general) was making enough profit, what they were not doing was re-investing those profits into upgrading their steel making. Instead, the "People in Charge" were giving themselves large bonuses and pay upgrades for being bosses of the "big steel." This was especially true through the 80's and 90's in…
Which is precisely the culture people in Germany and Japan don't have (or at least: had). If there are profits at least a chunk of them should be re-invested into making things better, who knows what the future brings after all.
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which they are likely sorely regretting as tensions flare higher with China and our navy is struggling to protect shipping around Israel.
They really aren't struggling. But yeah, China will soon outstrip our naval numbers by a large amount within the end out of the decade. We still have better tech but what do we do when they launch, at the same time, 200 "good enough" cruise missiles at each aircraft carrier sitting in the Taiwan Straight?
typical carrier complement has ~300-500 vertical launch tubes and sea sparrows can be quad packed into a tube, and CIWS. not sure i would bet against aegis
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the U.S. was not the aggressor. It felt like a victory, because we emerged as the dominant p…
The government of North Korea did not fall or surrender. You can argue that it was a political win if the goal was defending South Korea, but militarily, it was a stalemate. North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam after we withdrew. It was in no way a victory for the United States. Afghanistan was arguably pretty similar, although we did install a new government while we were there. Germany and Japan, on the other hand…
> You can argue that it was a political win if the goal was defending South Korea, but militarily, it was a stalemate.
Korea was a proxy war between the US and China (i.e. Communism). The US wanted a foothold on the mainland and to put a demonstration of the virtues of Capitalist Economics in the Communists' back yard, both of which it got in the form of South Korea. If the US hadn't been involved, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (i.e. North Korea) would have rolled south with China's backing and "Korea" would have been a single communist country.
Without China's involvement the opposite would have happened. China was well aware of this and did not want a capitalist economy sharing a border with it -- Berlin Wall kind of problems -- so they weren't going to stop supporting North Korea.
Which is the kind of situation that makes unconditional military victory close to impossible. China just keeps giving North Korea assistance, most of the casualties are North Koreans rather than Chinese and the North Korean leadership won't surrender as long as they have China's backing because it's not a democracy so staying in power is the only thing their leaders care about. "Unconditional victory" would effectively have to be a military victory over China.
At the time the US had nuclear weapons and China didn't, but China had half a billion in population even then, and they too were a non-democracy whose leaders cared more about staying in power than dead citizens. The US could have won militarily if they were willing to kill several hundred million people. It's probably best that they weren't.
And it was largely the same for the other proxy wars. Unconditional victory would require victory over not just the nominal enemy but the ones propping them up. Hence Cold War.
Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which war did the US win post WW2? Afaict they all ended in stalemates and eventual retreat (Korea,Iraq,Vietnam,Afghanistan,..)
This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the U.S. was not the aggressor. It felt like a victory, because we emerged as the dominant p…
> The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell
The US isn't conventionally, even in the US. viewed as the victor in Korea (war is still in progress, with a long but imperfectly observed ceasefire), Vietnam (one of the few wars the US generally acknowledges as an unambiguous defeat, thought right wingers will often say that we won “militarily” and lost “politically” or some other cope), or Afghanistan (recently added to the list alongside Vietnam).
Also, the prewar opposing in Korea, Vietnam. Iraq (1991), and Afghanistan did not fall, and in each case remained in power after the war (and in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the primary opposing government ended up in control of more territory as a result of the war, controlling undivided a country which it had controlled only a divided—formally in Vietnam’s case, de facto for the Taliban in Afghanistan—fraction of before the war.)
> With all the post-WW2 wars, we've gone in as a dominant power, as the aggressor
No, we haven't. Not even in a loose sense of “aggressor” in several of them.