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The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#331

Post by wqaatwt »

dcrazy wrote: post #318
Izkata wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before WWI there was a similar belief in Europe, that the growing economic interdependence would prevent wars from breaking out. Instead once there was a spark, those relationships kept pulling more and more countries into the conflict and turned it into the "Great War".

Were they economic interdependencies or high-level political alliances? The E.U. is clearly an example of the economic interdependency theory. It evolved in post-WW2 Europe from the European Coal and Steel Community. Mineral richness is why the Saarland was given to France after WW2. The idea is that economic integration will lead to political integration from the ground up. My understanding of the pre-WW1 alliances…

The Habsburg dynasty technically became extinct in 1780. After that they were the house of Habsburg-Lorraine and they didn’t have much direct influence outside of Austria-Hungary.

Dynastic politics were by and large dead in the 1800s with few exceptions (but generally kings/queens were just pawns in the hand of the politicians unlike in the preceding centuries).

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#332

Post by WalterBright »

shrubble wrote: post #320
WalterBright wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold isn't really wealth any more than paper money is. Consider Spain, which looted S America of gold and silver. How did that work out for Spain? Spain had lots of inflation as a result, and didn't get any wealthier. The same thing happened with both the California and Yukon gold rushes. The same thing happens when the government prints lots of money. What creates wealth? People creating goods and services that peop…

Spain had a literal Golden Age (not referencing current politics)

Indeed they did literally have a lot of gold. But their economy remained unproductive and poor.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#333

Post by rat87 »

consumer451 wrote: post #259
toomuchtodo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fair take, but also consider that Germany attempted to use purchasing fossil gas from Russia to prevent aggression, and it did not.

That's an extremely good point, which hits really close to home. I wonder if Putin would have still invaded Ukraine, knowing the extent of sanctions that would hit them. He might have been lulled into thinking that the EU would not care, given the existence of people like Gerhard Schröder and his ilk. edit: I am not sure that the reason for the Russian-German energy alliance was an attempt at pacification. It seems m…

German Ostpolitik (eastern politics) goes back before independent Russia back to the 1960s attempt to cooperate and have peace with Eastern Germany and the Soviet Union. And peace with Russia (maybe even its transformation into a regular democraric state) was the primary stated motivator in recent years. Economics and even bribes helpwd grease the wheels but peace is what formed the national strategy in the first place and what entrenched it

kraut made some intresting videos on this topic recently. both the start of ostpolitik and their failure in recent hears compared with Polish politics towards Russia

https://youtu.be/XjvrbnEMNVk?feature=shared https://youtu.be/bWJeNVzqBZI?feature=shared

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#334

Post by aaron695 »

jmward01 wrote: post #142

I keep seeing people advocating that the idea that we should build everything, and every piece or everything, here is a good one. Why? Is this just an isolationist dream? The reductive, absurd, extreme of this is why don't individual people go out and build all their own stuff like cars and houses. Let's all go out and learn how to mine and refine metal ore so we can get started on building the family sedan! There is…

[dead]

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#335

Post by rat87 »

dcrazy wrote: post #318
Izkata wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before WWI there was a similar belief in Europe, that the growing economic interdependence would prevent wars from breaking out. Instead once there was a spark, those relationships kept pulling more and more countries into the conflict and turned it into the "Great War".

Were they economic interdependencies or high-level political alliances? The E.U. is clearly an example of the economic interdependency theory. It evolved in post-WW2 Europe from the European Coal and Steel Community. Mineral richness is why the Saarland was given to France after WW2. The idea is that economic integration will lead to political integration from the ground up. My understanding of the pre-WW1 alliances…

I disagree the EU is peaceful because of democratic peace theory and because of the political union not because of trade. If it was just economic and some of those countries were authoritarian I could easily border conflicts turning into wars

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#336

Post by BoiledCabbage »

WalterBright wrote: post #316
runako wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not true in the immediate postwar period. The turning point was roughly the 1980s. Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. This is, to a large degree, separate from the stability of our currency or military protection. It's the stated intent and logical result of relaxing taxes on the rich while enacting policies designed to hurt the working classes (e.g. reducing union pow…

> Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. Wealth is not concentrated in a market society. It is created. Some people creating more wealth than others is not "concentrating" wealth in their hands. Another way to put it is it is not a fixed pie, where if one gets more another necessarily gets less. If I buy some art supplies for $20, and paint a masterpiece I sell for $100,000, wealth…

> Wealth is not concentrated in a market society.

Respectfully, you should do some reading of basic economics. Absent of external forces to correct for it, wealth absolutely concentrates in unregulated markets.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#337

Post by jocaal »

WalterBright wrote: post #322
mmooss wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so Yes you can. People have a moral obligation to help others, including when they have to sacrifice, and they do it all the time. People make sacrifices all the time for the greater good. In fact, many of the extreme self-interest capitalist…

Everybody is selfish, including you and I, including the people you believe are selfless. A functioning society cannot be built around people being selfless. But a functioning society can be built around selfishness - free markets - and irony of ironies, free markets also do a great job of helping the less fortunate, a much better job than the selfless attempts. (In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO chari…

"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." - Milton Friedman

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#338

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

manwe150 wrote: post #200
hudon wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_related_to_the_COVID...

Both yes and no. It was a brief lack of available local stock from suddenly unexpected demand, followed by a lack of factories willing to stop doing well paid work to switch to making cheap masks, while we waited for even cheaper masks to get made and imported from countries with cheap labor, followed by a surplus of masks (source: a brief chat with a factory manager in my social network who was considering whether h…

Even then, there weren't enough melt spinning machines in North America to make the necessary raw materials, and the lead time on new machines was too long to address the shortage in time to respond to the needs of a pandemic.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/n95-mask-shortage-melt-blown-fi...

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#339

Post by jopsen »

klooney wrote: post #310
snowwrestler wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. already manufactures warships, though, and we’re already by far the best at it. Not only do we already protect our economy, we protect pretty much all shipping on the high seas by all economies on the globe. The John F Kennedy—built in the U.S.!—is in sea trials this year to become the 12th nuclear aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet. No other nation has more than two carriers. The U.S. has more aircraft carr…

> The U.S. already manufactures warships, though, and we’re already by far the best at it. We very slowly build a small number of incredibly expensive ships. For any other value of "manufacturers warships", Korea or Italy are better and more reliable. Also, it's not clear if aircraft carriers are survivable in a vaguely peer context. Missiles and drones have come a long way. > Australia just cancelled a deal with Fra…

Wouldn't you be better off buying ships from allies?

Nobody does everything.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#340

Post by mmooss »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #309
mmooss wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so Yes you can. People have a moral obligation to help others, including when they have to sacrifice, and they do it all the time. People make sacrifices all the time for the greater good. In fact, many of the extreme self-interest capitalist…

No country has any moral obligation to help any other country. It is anarchy between nations. Every government does have an obligation to its own people. If China didn't take care of their own needs before other nation's they wouldn't be a very successful government. The only logical way forward is to ensure that your own nation is taking care of its own needs before helping others. I have always found it interesting…

> No country has any moral obligation to help any other country. It is anarchy between nations.

You just made that up. First, what defines morality? Second, by what morality are you not obligated to help others? That is amorality, greed, evil. And empirically, countries have long felt, talked explicitly about, and acted on, sometimes at great cost, the moral need to help other countries. Leaders have long made that argument to their fellow citizens (or subjects).

The parent claim is a transparent fiction of nationalists. You can do better!

> I have always found it interesting that if everybody focused on improving their own conditions first then helped others locally the world would be objectively better for everybody.

An even more obvious fabrication with not even an attempt basis. As is often the case with this stuff, the only 'basis' is saying it like it's a fact.

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