Detroit.....

[milod]

The problem with a lot of the old "rust belt" is that very large manufacturing facilities with outdated equipment and overall logistics simply didn't "work" for today's world even if unions and federal regs, taxes, etc., were more practical.

 

A good point was made about whale oil - and a lot of other sorts of manufacturing that simply no longer exists because they didn't fit a changing economy and logistical system.

 

Heck, uwanna try to find gut strings for a classical guitar?

 

In ways I put a lot of blame on unions for mostly wanting money and bennies to the point that "management" and corporate boards tended to look more at ways of controlling costs than preparing for a different sort of future of business in general. At times it looks to me as if the Germans and Chinese do a better job than most of the rest of us, but I s'pose that might also be debated a bit. Still, as a culture in the US and apparently in Canada too, "we" don't really do all that well at handling economic change.

 

Also in most "western" countries we've tended to give up on the idea of national self-sufficiency. The battle over fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline are perfect examples. Another was the loss of a new power plant I watched happen because folks didn't want transmission lines added. Wind power? Sure, but let's force government fines for every bird the turbines kill.

 

There are a lot of other factors, but the bottom line is that, like it or not, the faster pace of life today also means "we" have to be a lot quicker to respond to change. That's true whether we're a "blue collar" worker or a full-time musician, a college prof or a cook. It ain't just "business" and "workers," it's also government and slow-change regulation and tax structures. If it's 20 years old, it's outa date for current realities. That's not "politics," but today's reality whether one is essentially a communist/socialist on the left or a total "free market" voter on the right.

 

Also, margins on most sales today are pretty slim. I'm told that car dealerships don't make that much from car sales - but rather from financing. Again, it's not the production of goods and services so much nowadays as the game of money-play; and that goes down even to the "ma and pa" retailer or service biz.

 

I look back at my childhood and the "big clinic" eight miles away had two docs and a nurse that handled billing and receipts. Wanna see that one again? Ain't likely.

 

How many of us are using PA systems made in our own country? Or televisions? Or the computers necessary to do business and whatever else we need, or feel we need, in our personal lives?

 

Again, look at Rome starting a bit before the "common era" around 0 a.d. They lost the ability to feed themselves, and even manufactured goods largely were imports. Real unemployment was roughly 20 percent - just as it is the U.S. today - and yet nobody either the wealthy or the poor were willing to change their paradigms enough to rebuild either agriculture or manufacturing regardless of lessened logistical costs.

 

Sad.

 

m

[stein]

I totally agree that the loss of Detroit as we know (knew?) it was more than one thing, many things.

 

However, I might sum the whole thing us like this: while we are so concerned with fighting and winning amongst each other, we failed to see that the war was taking place somewhere else, and we lost it all to them.

 

Union vs Non-Union? moot point when the factory moves to another country.

 

Environment? While we are argueing over "leading the world" and regulating ourselves, the source of the pollution has gone to an unregulated place of the world.

 

Taxes? while we are arguing over "spreading the wealth" and how much and who pays what, the whole tax base disappears because both the manufaturing AND the jobs go away.

 

I could go on and on.

 

But here's the thing: Elephants and Donkeys are SUPPOSED to fight, because that's how both sides each get what they want, and hopefully, keep each other from doing stupid things. But neither of them, or US, have come to grips with where we actually stand to gain an advantage over those that would actually win.

[Searcy]

Not all of those jobs that left Detriot made it all the way to the southern border. Yamakawa Manufacturing Corp, Unipress USA, Ford Glass, TRW, Bridgestone, GoodYear, Nison, GM, VW are just the few I can name off the top of my head. All said there are over 1,000 automotive supply companies providing over 100,000 job here each year and the numbers keep growing.

 

Detriots problem is local to Detroit and borrowing money to buy a Ford Focus ain't gonna fix it.

[Searcy]

Start by reading up on those nice deals retired state and city workers get to see just one of the issues that city faces.

[milod]

The cynic in me suggests that two factors currently are involved in much of western European politics today. Note that I'm not saying U.S. politics but rather a broader cultural "thing."

 

Those two factors are a splintering of our cultures by intent through proclaiming the assumed benefits of being "multi-cultural," and a splintering of "politics" into what amounts to creating difficulty in governance with a half dozen parties on the left that get together to elect so-called "Democrats" at all levels, and two or three parties on the right that get together to elect so-called "Republicans" on the right.

 

It appears to me that France has the majority of the multi-cultural "thing" in Europe although I think the U.K., Netherlands and Nor/Swe are working to cope with it too. The U.S. has those problems in most of its major cities. Canada seems to "luck out" more than most. A non-guitar friend in Australia, a retired Uni prof, has suggested there's more of that sort of difficulty there than would have been found 25 years ago.

 

Thing is, except what appears to be the majority of Asian national cultures, the "western" nations are losing national culture.

 

Lest one think this to be an "anti-immigrant" statement, no, not at all. It's a matter of willingness to embrace a national culture while offering some of the flavorings of one's nation of origin. Instead, I think we're increasingly seeing an encouragement within the national cultures to accept cultural splintering regardless of the difficulties of maintaining separate "national cultures" within the same "nation."

 

Detroit's problems, and we're seeing symptoms of it from Paris to New York to Los Angeles to Brisbane, is that forward-looking governance is handicapped by having to function within a splintered cultural environment. Yeah, that includes Detroit's adoption of guaranteed bankruptcy through its municipal union contracts if anything untoward at all might happen.

 

It all is part of the "big picture" I see as not dissimilar to the dissolution of Rome when it ceased being a national culture. It involves great spending by government to appease the masses rather than investment by the wealthy in production of food and manufactured goods.

 

That way, governments in Rome figured they'd keep all classes appeased. Neither rich nor poor had to do much of anything.

 

We know what happened next.

 

m

[jdgm]

It's become a very interesting discussion, mind if I......?

 

"..... a splintering of our cultures by intent...." might imply some sort of masterplan and desired outcome. Is it really intent? IMO no-one (or group of people) knows where this is going. I agree about the splintering entirely. It is happening very much in the UK as well.

IMO "multi-culturalism" - which has been going on for thousands of years really - never works like anybody thinks it might, by definition. A splendid summation Milod and I mean that.

 

As apocalyptical as the scenes in the video may look, in 10, 20 or 30 years there will be money-earning farmland/housing/industrial/business/government on those abandoned sites. Land - and water - are becoming too valuable to neglect.

 

The businesses and companies which occupied those buildings grew, flourished, declined and died. They had their day, they took and got their chance. Evolution. "The survival of the fittest"....I am not an American but it seems to me that in real bottom-line terms the USA has always lived by that?

 

The other one which the whole human race perhaps cleaves to is 'lowest common denominator'.

 

Unfortunately (and also by definition I suppose) every species eventually becomes extinct or evolves into something else......not necessarily 'better' but more able to deal with its changed environment.

 

Regards!

[stein]

The cynic in me suggests that two factors currently are involved in much of western European politics today. Note that I'm not saying U.S. politics but rather a broader cultural "thing."

 

Those two factors are a splintering of our cultures by intent through proclaiming the assumed benefits of being "multi-cultural,"

 

 

 

m

Serious question here:

 

Do you mean "splintering", or do you mean "abandoning"?

 

I get what you mean by splintering as you explain it. I read that you mean an INTENT on "splintering" and such.

 

But, question is, what about abandoning? Is it the same thing? Also, could it be that the it might be the HARMFUL aspect of splintering? That the abandoning is what will cause the actual damage?

[milod]

jdgm...

 

The U.K. is indeed a good example of the difficulties of cultural identity. A nice Roman-style culture with various nonconformists <grin> around the edges, then ended up with a largely Germanic tongue, absorbed the "Danes" and then a number of viking-descended Frenchmen that caused all sorts of difficulties for the language itself.

 

But I think "we" are unlike our Asian neighbors who frankly do not want other cultures, even more than other blood, to be added to their concept of national culture.

 

To me it's not race or origin, but rather, if you wanna be a Brit, why not act like one, teach your children to speak and dress like one, and add your blood and brain, heart and soul to a long stream of culture and government/judicial tradition and ideals. If not, why wish to stay there unless you wish, as did a certain William something or another, to conquer the place?

 

As I see it, though, throughout U.S. and U.K. history, there has indeed been an ongoing cultural battle with reference to how differing cultures might be absorbed into a whole without making a radical turn nor denying a brotherhood of man under the umbrella of universal commonality that may be described as "Tao" (See Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching) if not deity.

 

The French and Scandinavians are beginning to discover the difficulty of adding cultures that don't share national geographical and historic perspectives, values, traditions, habits - nor do they wish to. Currently it seems "we" don't seem willing even to state what it means to be an "American," or a "Brit." It seems the Welsh and Scots don't have that difficulty aside from the Brits. <grin> And the French wanna try to define it with the same success as forbidding words borrowed from Brit or American English.

 

When I say "by intent," it's due to a current apparent cultural imperative taught in American schools, at least, that one should "celebrate differences" even if those "differences" are cultures or subcultures that don't wanna join, but rather to disrupt, destroy and/or conquer.

 

In the U.S., if one suggests anything else, it's one of the few sorts of statement that can get one fired from a job or shunned on a university campus. In short, cultural suicide is being taught, and I'd suggest it ain't an unintended, but rather an intended consequence. Tear down what is there in order to rebuild according to another paradigm of governance.

 

That's what I mean by intent. In fact, "we" even have determined to modify our language - English at least, in both U.S. and U.K. forms - to make true what had not been true simply through redefining certain nouns and adjectives.

 

Many years ago Winston Churchill spoke of "The American Race," knowing full well that in the U.S. there are a number of racial and national backgrounds - but they had become "The American Race" because the cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That was true whether they originated in England as it appears my first surname carriers did some 335 years ago, from Japan, Germany, Ireland, sailing from Africa in conditions worse even than my relatives in the late third quarter of the 1600s - or walking across a land bridge or whatever from Siberia as others of my relatives.

 

The U.S., however, is losing that strength of character. The "American Race" is becoming instead a generalized European splintered culture of the weakest sort, of an emerging aristocracy of "name" replacing the more traditional aristocracy of "doing."

 

As I've said. I'm rather happy I have no offspring and that I won't be around in some few years.

 

Western culture has to decide if it wishes to hold to core values of honest learning, law developed over literally centuries, or if it wishes to dissolve as T.S. Eliot described, "Not with a bang, but a whimper" because it stands for nothing but peripherals and immediate gratification.

 

BTW, some years ago I did a piece for a Brit magazine on the differences between the U.S. and Brit versions of a civic club that boiled down to this: "The Frontier."

 

m

[milod]

Stein...

 

No, I think "splintering" is a more appropriate term. Each splinter group seems to me to hold that they alone hold forth with the essence of what national culture should be. There are a few groups that simply never made any attempt to accept that culture, so they cannot abandon what they never accepted.

 

A good example might be seen in the English Civil War, the U.S. first "civil war," that of the 1770s, and second civil war, that of the 1860s.

 

The difference today is that the population at large is not geographically separate, but rather culturally separate in near proximity.

 

For one tiny example, it's been said and I believe it, that the best determinant whether a couple will have a successful marriage is accord on politics. Not religion, money, sex, food preferences... but politics and that reflects the depth of culture and a hint of how splintering occurs.

 

m

[brundaddy]

Appropriate that these guys ride Japanese bikes & wear gear made at various factories across the Orient.

 

Ike presided over the rot of American cities ... as well as the curiously simultaneous Japanese "Economic Miracle." NAFTA is another link in a long chain of Presidential subservience to the powers that be. Smedley Butler described it, somewhat.

[milod]

Actually one factor I think seldom mentioned nowadays is that it's not so much folks on the American political scene but ... The cutting edge of manufacturing concepts and technology were taught to Japan following the war. They already had pretty good general engineering capability and a solid workforce following "proper" Confucian concepts. Add the manufacturing concepts to brand new factories while American factories didn't change ... and voila.

 

Ditto in a sense Germany which became quickly the economic powerhouse of Europe in the west and even in the east, which with the odd division after the war, made reuniting inevitable. South Korea determined to beat Japan at its own game even though it was little more than a big mud hole in 1955 or so, giving Japan a 10-year head start. North Korea basically tried to ignore anything outside a "We're a little fish in a big ocean, but we're better than everybody else regardless."

 

One might note that "national identity" isn't language or genetics, but rather by a degree of pride in national culture. Politics aside, China today is still operated more or less as it was 2,000 years ago with general policies set at the top, more specific policies at the mid level and making them work at the local level through a bureaucratic system little changed except without an emperor such as was Mao.

 

My point on national culture might well see China as an example. Essentially the culture and political system is unchanged regardless of the dynasty, although today's technology is an obvious challenge. But that challenge is no more so than the typical generation or two of upheaval between dynasties.

 

In European nations - including those in the western hemisphere - there has been far more radical change, and too often without the technocrats among the bureaucrats and politicians.

 

Still...

 

Guitar content again sort of... I become increasingly convinced that national cultures that regardless hold the guitar and its various musics in high regard are cultures that can converse among each other and even to an extent occasionally make war among themselves, but remain long-term with the same basic cultural foundation or at minimum, cultural flexibility. Those cultures that don't value the guitar and its musics not only lack similar cultural foundation, they also lack cultural flexibility. That brings an inevitable collision. And it's a collision easily predicted but almost impossible to lessen in impact if both sides continue to exalt differences as opposed to commonality.

 

So... if the U.S. and "western nations" in general don't entirely implode as they're headed to do, they'll likely have to accept some different realities given the population: Either emulate China, consider a future as a third world source of raw materials and a huge underclass or... figure both positive and negative reinforcements that make an underclass and a hereditary de facto aristocracy sufficiently unpopular as a consensus cultural value.

 

Thing is... current education and "media" make any consensus cultural values increasingly unlikely, thereby increasing probability of an implosion.

 

m

[jaxson50]

Economic Chernobyl.

[milod]

Yeah...

 

After WWII, it seems like everybody in the world really involved in that war were working hard to rebuild whatever it was they saw as damaged by it.

 

Then when the economy was looking good... the politics began some odd characteristics in the mid to late 1960s - and folks stopped trying so hard.

 

Thing is, politics can spend money, it can print money. It can't really produce that much of value compared to "business," including agriculture. It can enable people or place barriers to their dreams, too often the latter as an unintended consequence.

 

m

[Kaiser Bill]

I worked in Detroit back in the mid 70s. It was divided into areas at the time of white black and gray. It was starting to go bad. Two of us had items stolen out of our vehicles while working in upscale clubs in what we thought were decent neighborhoods. After being gone from my hometown (Erie Pa) for 22 years I was surprised that all the heavy industry had all but disappeared from the area. To wit: Bucyrus Erie, Hays Mfg, Marx Toys, Hammermill Paper, National Forge, Erie Malleable Most of the General Electric plant, Litton Industries (ship building) and several other large industrial companies. Now its all tourist based businesses and lots of hospitals and colleges. The towns population has shrunk considerably, but it still doesn't look anything at all like Detroit.

[milod]

Jax...

 

Yeah, after the green folks who moved here from wherever because land was cheap and they could live like kings, they destroyed the good job blue collar forestry and milling industries. Now the folks who didn't escape in hopes of city jobs are working at the equivalent of tourist yuppie restaurants at a third the paycheck and no bennies. Meanwhile the green folks tout it as marvelous and wonderful, and the forest is burning with pine bark beetles.

 

Then people wonder why a lotta blue collar folks don't care for what future they see?

 

m

[Markini]

Detroit? What about the elephant in the room?

[vacamartin]

"Those cultures that don't value the guitar and its musics not only lack similar cultural foundation, they also lack cultural flexibility. That brings an inevitable collision. And it's a collision easily predicted but almost impossible to lessen in impact if both sides continue to exalt differences as opposed to commonality."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Milod......

 

Holy Music Theory[huh] Guitars, lack of cultural flexibility, inevitable collision[woot] Looks like Detroit is the harbinger of bad tidings! But no....as the MC5 said, "Kick Out the Jams, M-----F------!"\:D/

 

 

 

 

[Woollymonster]

 

In ways I put a lot of blame on unions for mostly wanting money and bennies to the point that "management" and corporate boards tended to look more at ways of controlling costs than preparing for a different sort of future of business in general. At times it looks to me as if the Germans and Chinese do a better job than most of the rest of us, but I s'pose that might also be debated a bit. Still, as a culture in the US and apparently in Canada too, "we" don't really do all that well at handling economic change.

 

 

Yep. No need for those pesky unions and all their benefits. You will do just fine on a Chinaman’s wages, work rules, and benefits. Or lack there of.

[Searcy]

No no! Keep the unions. How else are we gouing to keep pushing all these job into Right To Work states?

[rct]

Step away from the philosophical/political/social structuring bullsh1t hashpipe and squint out at the Haves and the Have Nots and the fabulous gulf between them. The answer is in there somewhere, and isn't nearly so complicated as the distractors would have you thinking. Think something else, instead of what someone tells you to think, and you too will see the same reasons for the same revolution re-enacted throughout human history. The only difference has been the length of peace and trickle down satisfaction relative to industrial and technological pace and profit.

 

rct

[Searcy]

Think something else, instead of what someone tells you to think, and you too will see...

 

rct

 

Now that's funny right there. :)

[rct]

Now that's funny right there. :)

 

If you can't balance two seemingly disparate thoughts at once it usually is only funny, and sadly, usually ends right there.

 

rct

[vacamartin]

I found the solution.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4eTA8usiek

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WOW! Melinda Brown Duckette! That's a force to be reckoned with!

 

 

 

 

 

[Searcy]

If you can't balance two seemingly disparate thoughts at once it usually is only funny, and sadly, usually ends right there.

 

rct

 

No it's just funny. Try this one on.

 

"Stop listening to what people tell you! "

 

Ain't that great? :)

 

I think the real issue with Detroit is that you loose your mind there.

 

GET UP!

[milod]

Okay, with reference to unions, note I emphasized the negative. The positive seldom is found in U.S. unions, especially those of government employees because there's no way government can be outsourced.

 

In fact, I'm frankly surprised that more of a political issue hasn't arisen from the fact that most U.S. children are taught by union members who would agree that they are politically from the far left to center left. Yet the outcomes of that "education" compared internationally is outstanding only by how much is spent, not on how much kids have learned.

 

But as I did mention, in Germany at least there's a tradition of unions being involved in forward-thinking in terms of their industry. They analyze, they train, they promote the products made by their members. That's seldom seen in the U.S., especially again, among government union members.

 

Once upon a time there was a major printers' union. A union card as a linotype operator meant not that you demanded a wage or you'd strike, but rather that you were worth a higher wage due to greater ability - and it was paid. Kinda funny to me because I know of one case where a newspaper publisher married a young lady lino operator who was so skilled she could "hang the machine," which meant she was so skilled that she could outpace the machine.

 

Fast forward a couple of generations and instead printers' unions were battling against technology improvements that brought far better quality photos, more "environmentally friendly" technology overall and yet lesser costs. Unfortunately that also brought so many fewer jobs for people often unprepared for them, plus increasing federal regulations and taxation, that it led to corporate consolidations that IMHO seriously damaged all print media. The wheels still made money, but the industry suffered.

 

So to me the bottom line isn't being anti-union, it's a matter of unions doing a poor job of being forward-looking in terms of the economy and technology. There are dozens of other examples, but my first job in the biz actually was testing ink and paper for a major magazine publishing and printing firm. Even at 19 I could see the handwriting on the wall when it came to technology and unions' refusal to adapt to that change. Yeah, there's a long story there of a kid being a union-management pinball.

 

Detroit is a fine example of a changing economy weighed down by generations of corporate and government benefit packages to the point it was proven to be a variation on a ponzi scheme.

 

m