I discussed this in the TG group.
In 1886 the US standardized all rail gauges, moving 11,500 miles of track in 2 days: http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html A few decades before, they raised Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago That was more track than modern Spain, 5x more than modern Ireland. Yet they can't change their gauges... Similar issues occur in the Baltics, although they're building new lines using standard gauge to link Poland to Finland. At any rate, the Spanish do build high speed rail, while California...
Self organizing was very common, with public committees of leading citizens popping up left and right to solve common ills and dissolving themselves when the task was done. (We can also contrast this with modern charities which find new goals, to maintain the bureaucracy, funding pipelines etc.) https://scholars-stage.org/lessons-from-and-limitations-of-the-19th-century-experience/ goes into the decline in self governance. During the civil war, Elizabeth Blackwell (et al.) created the 3rd biggest organization, after the army and republican party, with 7000 chapters, who believed they could do a better job than the government: https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/03/30/a-school-of-strength-and-character/
Hell, look at the canal building around 1820, far more than Africa, Latam, Central Asia or Southern Europe are doing. Look at the crane sketches: https://www.thoughtco.com/building-the-erie-canal-1773705 Also Dismal Swamp, Bellows Falls, Santee, Middlesex... They built many canals at this time. (The Dutch are at least still reclaiming land. China is also doing things, including in Africa.)
veqq
2mo ago
it was easily in the top 10
Oh, definitely. It was tied for 2 when the war started: https://i.redd.it/wyaw5ffttz871.jpg or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)#1830%E2%80%931938_(Bairoch)
Or per capita: between 10th (1929) 6th (1937) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Here's some rambling detail:
Really, everything's a comparison to the US with its cartoonish relative economic strength. My personal takeaway of their economy: Germany took out massive loans, made fake money (Mefo bills etc.), invested almost everything into the military and were forced to start the war early, lest they default.
I have seen cool figures for this, but don't want to dig now, here's a video-graph: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UrUp5Rm_Ncw?si=bgnTAdqvsmnJ6S9v&t=227 I don't quite trust those numbers, but meh. They suggest Germany'd have massive overmatch in Europe (or a lot of embezzlement), which makes sense (since they steamrolled everyone). I'm unsure to what extent it presents/exposes difficult issues like training etc. where longer investments pay off (vs. just buying a bunch of equipment today.) On the other hand, it shows the German citizens were using less of their productivity for themselves, such that life in the UK was perhaps 40-60% "richer". This can make sense in some ways, perhaps exposing the huge infrastructure projects which didn't have civilian use (road network but no cars...)
I dug into this some years, ago, and learned German industry largely rejected assembly lines, struggled to make interchangeable parts (thus making new vehicles to arm new units, instead of supplying veteran units, though weak transportation infrastructure also played a role), wouldn't share designs such that each company would build its own model and its allies would have to develop their own equipment from scratch. And yet, that was still better than most. It's really a world away from our ideas of modern industry or what the US was doing. It's hard for many to realize how close we are to the drudgery of subsistence farming most of our ancestors did in the last 1-200 years.
Czech industrial infrastructure was largely built by Germans
This is a big topic. Short summary: The main industrial centers were in Czech lands with fewer Germans (the Sudetenland was mountainous and poor.) However those Czechs had largely German speaking ancestors 100 years prior. The national revival saw the language spread in the cities etc. Czech leadership in Austria(-Hungary) drove industrialization harder than in Austria itself! Austria, for whatever reason, got stuck in the first industrial revolution (steam and water power etc.) but was behind even Hungary by 1880 in the second industrial revolution (electrification, trains, standardization). In 1918, Czechoslovakia had 3/4 of the former empire's industrial capacity. Slovakia was extremely poor, however; driving the statistics down. To accentuate the issue of identity, though German townfolk became Czech over time, rich Czechs became Germans. Škoda was born to well to do (Czech) peasants (doctor and politician), founded a huge factory, but his son identified as German! Indeed, as Germany in WWII, so Austria-Hungary in WWI. Why is Austria-Hungary, a more industrialized country than France, considered so backwards?
That's simplistic. Yes, the techo ecosystem was largely a money incinerator with even the biggest companies (e.g. Uber) burning billions a year. But they could do that because they weren't taxed on those losses. For a personal example (I disbanded a company because of this), 17 million in, 22 million out = no tax. 25 million in, 28 million out = 33.5 million out (5.5 million in taxes, some coming back along 5 or 15 years (as interest free loans to the government)) We went from (hopefully) burning 3 million to 8.5 million, almost triple projected costs (and backwards from 5.)
This came into effect in 2022 before the first interest hike in March. (The equity correction started at new years, coincidence but not related.)
The numbers in that link include factories in occupied lands. The Czech Republic in particular was very industrialized. E.g. France was making 1400 planes/month for Germany: https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft9m3nb6g1&chunk.id=d0e5350&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e5350&brand=ucpress This is obvious when you notice the Czechs continued operating the same factories, exporting thousands of BF 109s.
Wikipedia shows the same numbers in more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production Note how in 1941 the UK had almost 2x the production.
Germany couldn't mass produce a 4 engine bomber; even their larger 2 engine bombers like the He 177 had tortured developments. The UK made at least 20k. Why did Germany's 1944 aircraft production soar to 40k while the Western allies lowered production? Germany had been retooling captured factories, moving facilities around etc.
So when you talk in another thread about "Potemkin" production, you are making the mistake of equating single engine fighters with 4 engine bombers with far more advanced engines etc. Germany was never able to even replace the BF-109 (40,000 built) and couldn't retool existing factories to e.g. the FW 190, which struggled at altitude. The Ta 152, with an engine capable of bringing it up to the Western bombers was only produced 69 times. Britain continuously created new planes (e.g. the Firefly) and phased out older types (e.g. the Defiant) besides the famous Spitfires and Huricanes.
More damning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#Land_forces
Although this conflates Canada etc. with Britain, 10x "other vehicles", 1.5 million compared to 150k for Germany. 3x the artillery...
China doesn't export raw/barely processed materials (like steel) but finished goods. Chinese steel is turned into cars, ships, airplanes, buildings, tools etc.
The Chinese government is directing economic expansion in new directions, now that physical infrastructure's mostly been built out cheaply. Local steel demand is falling a bit as things rearrange themselves, leading to an increase in Chinese steel exports (to Africa etc.) but it's not even 10% of production. Indeed, exports make up less than 20% of the Chinese economy overall.
veqq
3mo ago
Brazil's the size of the continental US and Mexico combined. Consider the "impassable" areas like uninhabited Alaska.
veqq
3mo ago
Does anyone know why that account was suspended?
It happened quite recently. His wife was active a few weeks ago, it says deleted here: https://old.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/1egsd44/air_force_makes_big_changes_after_the_osprey/
every series is Ming-era drama, Ming-era xianxia,
WW2 dramas, with the occasional modern series.The most recent Chinese films I watched were a 3D animated story about Tang-era poets for a family audience
This is greater praise of China than DeepSeek. May we regain our own high culture.
Perhaps https://youtube.com/watch?v=ecDlMymLt6E is the cartoon in question. It's great. I'll start cramming Mandarin vocabulary immediately. Thankfully I already have Pollard's book.
veqq
3mo ago
I'd like to point to this post about the V-22, illustrating the very same decline in engineering culture and institutional accountability which matches what we see almost everywhere else we shift our gaze. This becomes more egregious when:
Contrasting the Official Report of this Osprey crash with the NTSB Incident Report (PDF warning) of the 1991 Los Angeles runway collision makes the emphasis placed on pilot error look even worse.
The traffic controller made mistakes that directly lead to the crash and accepted responsibility for the accident. Despite this, the actions of the traffic controller are positioned as the inevitable result of a flawed system. Compared to this, the actions of a flight crew following procedures and encountering an unknown mechanical fault should barely warrant a footnote in the accident report's conclusion.
The culture war is a war between collapse and the the truths which maintain industrial civilization.
veqq
3mo ago
You're taxed on income, the business is taxed on profit, then you're taxed again on dividends or capital gains...
veqq
3mo ago
Tradition is acknowledgement of eternal truths and their practical, moral, social and metaphysical requirements
@hydroacetylene recently wrote:
every society in history has figured out that harsh views about people who are merely unfortunate is a necessity of having a functional society. You can have the public and public institutions be unfair to people- indeed, it's impossible for them to be perfectly fair- they just need to work.
What other eternal truths build and uphold society?
veqq
3mo ago
Highways are cool! But they demolished beautiful buildings downtown instead of building highways in less dense areas.
veqq
3mo ago
blame car culture
American cities were bulldozed for cars in the 50s. American cities looked like European cities: https://i.redd.it/mn45jsmhowna1.jpg https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cities-history
Never forget what they took from you.
veqq
4mo ago
you would expect it to be mostly younger working-age people
I don't know the demographic breakdown, but many coming to New England are in their 50s.
veqq
4mo ago
security monoculture?
Tangential, but it's shocking how much small differences can impact results. In my industry, people decorrelate WTI from Brent, and then Brent from other Brent, by using4% instead of 5% stoplosses. They then make the full range 1,2,3....% on each, then bottle them up into different ensembles, and after a few days they show massive divergence.
veqq
4mo ago
La Perla at South Coast Plaza, one of the premiere malls in the US, had people constantly complain about haughty staff, informing them their goods were more expensive than it looked like they could afford etc. The store then left the mall. My uncle mallwalks there in ratty t shirts with holes, which saddens me.
veqq
4mo ago
Interviewee says he saw the guy on a roof and reported him: https://x.com/SharpFootball/status/1812265909727396107
Hey, I made some of these a few years ago. I tried to arrange manufacturing to sell them to hot areas. PM me and we can chat!
N.b. they make vests with pockets to insert ice packs. But even better, put material on large veins to cool the bloodstream. The PCMs do crazy stuff to ferrous metals btw.
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