Collapse of Heavy Industry in the West

Because unions weren't willing to accept lower wages and the Western public weren't willing to pay higher prices. So companies deiced fuck it.

They're not too lazy to work in agriculture, they're unwilling to work in agriculture for shit pay. There comes a point where the pay outstrips the reluctance to do hard labour.

It got too expensive in the west.

This, make agricultural labor follow the same standards that EVERY other employment sector has to follow, including minimum wage laws and all other laws, benefits, etc. and you will see Americans of all races joining the agricultural labor force in the orchards and fields.

I find it ironic that modern leftists are the biggest proponents of keeping a perpetual slave force on America's commercial farms.

Yeah, its baffling that they advocate for the loosening of immigration laws when a direct consequence of that is that poor people already living here are screwed out of a job.

>What went wrong?
Nothing, read Hume.

>Why was this allowed to happen?
Plants reached the ends of their effective lives while new productive techniques were available. Simultaneously, capital discovered that workers outside the first world were amenable to labour discipline (Korea, Malaya, Japan, ROC), that transnational capital offered stable returns, and that first world and second world labour could be directly disciplined by withdrawing significant portions of work while paying off yellow dog union leaders.

It was called "the 1970s."

Western politicians don't defend the interests of their constituents you stupid fuck.

Pic related of American blacks picking apples in New York orchards proves you wrong.

>So? Why didn't Western politicians defend the interests of their constituents working in the steel industry by preventing the destruction of their employment?
HAHAHAHAH

Hah

hohohohoho

HUEHUEHUEHUE

If you think politicians care about the little people... you're fucking retard.

Explain this please.

Well Hume discovered that based on what exists we can't make moral statements, which means that nothing is ever wrong. It is called "is/ought". Pretty famous.

>What went wrong? Why was this allowed to happen?
Private ownership of means of production, i.e. Capitalism.

Okay, so there was a major wave of steel plant construction in the US, UK, Germany around 1880 when the techniques of production stabilised. And again in the 1940s for some reason. By 1970 most of the 1880 plants had reached the end of their technological lives, in that they demanded so much labour that they couldn't supply a return no matter how hard you screwed the workers (cf: capital 1 for details).

At the same time semi-refined briquettes, arc furnaces, oxygen blows, etc were available.

In the 1960s ROK, ROC and Japan demonstrated that they would murder trade unionists in any quantity to maintain profits, and would accept capital transfers of profit back to imperialist countries. This allowed transnational capital confidence in investing in non-colonial areas, with access to a disciplined proletariat.

At the same time, a revolutionary wave occurred in the 1st and 2nd world (France '68, Czechoslovakia '68). The idea of disciplining the advanced working class was clear. Places like France or Italy, which were underdeveloped, didn't have the disciplined working class of Japan.

So instead the state allowed steel workers to get fucked.

Oh yeah, and from a military stand point ROC ROK Japan were firmly in the Western imperialist camp.

Taiwan has a steel industry?

Also, any good secondary works covering the history of the steel industry in the twentieth century? Thanks.

dormanlongtechnology.com/en/projects/CSC_blast_furnace.htm

Fucked if I know. I just come from a steel town that got raped in the 70s and 80s. The best histories would probably be local and focused on "steel towns" as the industry was geographically concentrated near coal.

Haven't heard of a transnational history of steel capital in the C20, but I don't do heavy industry history.

[spoiler]God you sound juvenile.[/spoiler]

China subsidies the shit out of their steel plants, giving them a competitive edge. Environmental regulations, especially CO2 taxes in some Western countries don't help either.

yes I remember being 16 and cynical too user.

Why didn't Big Steel lobby the US government harder to keep their corporations competitive vs. foreign steel?

You're acting as if Big Steel is particularly US nationalist in nature, rather than capital in nature. As the ROK, ROC, Japanese repression of workers showed, as did their liberal capital movement laws, they weren't "foreign" but colonies.

>what went wrong

Nothing? Heavy industry isnt something you want in your back yard. The further way, the better.
Let third worlders deal with that, and then send the finished goods over.

Fuck me I could use a cheeseburger right now.
>those thicc pickle slices
mmm, perfect.

Because that's retarded.

*workforce*

Steel mills in the West will be all computerized / automated these days.

>Why spend tax dollars propping up unprofitable industry? I thought americans liked the free market

Only since the 70s though. America for most of it's history was a protectionist economy.

The free market being an American ideal is literally a 40 year old meme.

Post Industrialism.
Free market

Don't complain you'd be like the 16th century guy who complains England or Holland had to import polish grain.

They took the jobs we don't want user! Even the people without jobs, somehow.

So there's nothing wrong with rape according to this guy? Genocide's not such a bad thing? Hitler didn't necessarily do anything wrong? This is why people hate philosophy.

>"free" trade
>expected to compete with companies that are actively backed up by a communist dictatorship
I've never understood this meme.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with automation and healthy competition.

>Why was this allowed to happen?
Why stop it?

Nothing is right either.

Feel free to solve is/ought. Kant failed.

This is the nature of technological advance in our days. It has superceded human beings in relevance.
Now we reached a stage where people say stuff like "fire people to let technology advance".
This is a strictly new phenomena and its a sacrficice of individuals and their stability for the good of technological progress.

>This is a strictly new phenomena
Time to read about enclosure mate.

Globalization.

Companies moved their factories to China.

I dont know what you mean.

>Taiwan has a steel industry?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Steel
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Automotive_industry_in_Taiwan
All the strong East Asian and Southeast Asian economies have decent steel and automobile industries, except maybe Singapore that was already specialized in petroleum and relied on overseas investments earlier than most.
They all developed their economies by industrializing for exports.

...

Why is it a bad thing? It's not like unemployment has radically increades since de-industrialization, the major change is that the average joe now works in an office and not a factory.

But in the past life was stable. You did what you did, your life was predictable, you could rely and calculate what was gonna happen...
This was the old way of life.
Life as stable unchanging with rare occasions when it did change. Now its the opposite, a trend change that started with the industrial revolution.
What is wrong? Your peace of mind.

I'm gonna blow your mind with this but: things change. I know, it took me ages to comprehend it too, but I'm sure you'll get it!

I too couldn't believe that not everything stayed exactly the same, stagnant and static. But you know millions of years of history proved me wrong in the end.

>wake up
>eat
>work in a factory
>come back home tired as shit
>eat
>sleep
>repeat ad nauseam
is this your dream life senpai?

he's never had to experience it and he finds being able to control himself too hard so he romanticises a shittier time in history.

t. Upper middle class

Are you retarded? Its obvious i meant pre industrial times, and no, It does not seem great to me cause I live in another time and am immersed in its ideals.
If there was nothing problematic with firing people they would not protest that they were being fired.

the lower class had it even worse in the industrial period senpai, living and working conditions were insulting

You people are literally morons. You think that just because I expressed anoppinion it means its mine..
Go back to your containment boards.

>using the naturalistic fallacy for being fired from your job

Comparative advantage.

>2016
>not being in the upper middle class.
Pretty baka senpai.

Jokes aside, will life has stagnated for some lower class westerners, it's improved a damn lot due to free trade forthe average Mexican/Asian. Africa could benefit too if they sorted out corruption, infrastructure, education etc, the government has failed in these places meaning that competitive markets can't work either.

>expresses an opinion
>gets shat on
>"you i-i-idiots! I don't actually believe that!"

>thinks that just because he ascribes to a certain conception of ethics we all must do the same.

>holds a delusional standpoint which runs on circular logic

Ah, yes, go back to /v/

Its simple being fired from your job is not fun so people protest. This is the disadvantage of having a society that is constantly becoming.
If you are the one being fired of course.
Now since you obviously misinterpreted what I wrote cause you wanted to stroke your ego, I am correcting you and we can move on.

How does it feel knowing you are acting your age? You are obviously in your teens or early 20's.

Nothing went wrong. It's called technology and optimization.

People have revolted and protested over things throughout the entire history of mankind. What makes your narrow conception of history special? As if any of these grievances have only occurred in the past 50 years? Sure, the context can be slightly different, but the method of how people react to change has not.

Face it, you got bruised over your silly and generalised comments and you're trying to cover your tracks.

How does it feel to samefag? Or to be anally flustered user?

Oh I forgot that hundreds of thousands of years of adaptation to a hunter gatherer lifestyle followed by only a few thousand years of farming, and now the even more dissimilar modern lifestyle had no discernible differences, thanks for clearing that up.

>what went right?
Private ownership of the means of production I.e Capitalism.

These are not my ideas but the ideas of several influential philosophers.
Its not about reacting differently to technological change but the rate at whcih technological change happens and its impact on society and the life of the individual.
In the past you could live your life almost exactly the same from the day you were born till the day you died.
Today, change is constant and stability is rare.
the ones suffering are the minorities that have their balance and stability shaken for the benefit of everyone.
I am not against it, at least not till I am the one hurt and in any case I am so immersed in modernity that I find rapid technological progression very appealing.
I am not judging, i am simply analying.

It's amazing how Conservacucks sounds so much like how you'd imagine Confucian Chinese scholars sounded like when they argued that society shouldn't become more efficient because we have such an excess amount of workers.

Nothing. This is the 21st century. Coal and steel production are not relevant industrial indicators anymore.

That doesn't explain at all the collapse of the US steel industry in the 1980s considering the steel mills in Asia were often even less advanced than those in America.

What is this graph supposed to show?

Are you illiterate?

EPA regulations.
Cheap shipping costs.
Cheap foreign labor.

>not acting your age

I think the only way to be financially stable till you die is to start an online business or many small businesses using techinques of sale we have today that we didnt before (e-commerce) and put someone else in charge when you're like 55, that's the only pension kind of thing i can see actually sorting me out till i die

Why would they?

Are you some kind of socialist?

Environmentalism.

Making steel is nasty business.

Even China is moving steel production to Africa. So they can cut local emissions and move production closer to the ore.

>I am not against it, at least not till I am the one hurt and in any case I am so immersed in modernity that I find rapid technological progression very appealing.

Ah, right here is the crux of the problem: I don't care unless it affects me directly, and it's kind of a rush! Weee!!!!

How can we advance as a species when we are each individually encouraged to behave and think in such a hypocritically mindless fashion?

Hell, the goddamned Nazi's proved the effectiveness and worth of an industrialized economy (they took on the entire world) AND proved the effectiveness of keeping the population divided (so they could exterminate at will because "at least they ain't killing me").

We gotta open our eyes and use our minds, folks. Don't turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, because they're suffering is your suffering. Does it please you that the device you are using right now was made with what amounts to slave labor? Is that right? (Get lost, Hume!!) Should we enslave a part of our population so that some of us can have cool stuff? I mean, so long as I'm not the slave, why not......

Yeah, of course it's because today's poor people are just lazy and entitled. It's not like the vast majority of agricultural laborers in human history had to be coerced into non-sustenance agriculture though slavery or serfdom/s

G L O B A L I S M

Welcome to Caesarism. We are hurtling toward an age of global oligarchy. Nations are replaced by "Economic Zones"; race-belonging is replaced by "Global Citizenship". There are a handful of people in this world that are fast moving to assume indirect control of the entire planet. Like Crassus and Caesar, the ultra-elites have enough money to essentially "buy out" political leaders. We already have the global dollar, international finance, "harmonization" (shudders) of law, free movement of people. Conservation, and preservation of our home has been abstracted into "Environmentalism". Terms like "home" are replaced by "biosphere" and "ecosystem". If a conservationist doesn't want a solar farm in their village they're guilty of "Not in my back yard" protesting. Preserving our home is the core of conservationism and all environmental movements. The word "home" or "dwelling" is alien to most people these days. TPP, TTIP, EU, BRIC, USA, IMF is our future.

The underlings had very little care for the private feuds of their Imperial masters. It will be much the same in our lifetime. People will acquiesce to Globalists, or delude themselves into securing their own chains. The MO is "tackling global issues" such as Global Warming(tm), International Terrorism(tm), Refugee Crisis(tm), Global Poverty(tm) etc. The Global Economy will collapse due to the tangled debt webs across Economic Zones (see: Roman debt-deflationary crisis 91-86 BC) which will pave the way for the transition to Empire. It's like pottery.

Look at the United States and you see the future of the whole world. An economic zone with no common race, culture, or even language (the only language is money). Anyone can be an American, and so no one is an American. The EU was set up by the CIA in order to create a second United States, and then to "harmonize" it with the USA.

I can't see anything wrong with the future you are painting besides the dubious statement that everything can be bought with money when it's plainly untrue since we can't just give middle east money for them to shut the fuck up for example and the fact that sometimes money will just be a useless piece of paper.

10/10 post my fellow spenglerian

...

>Roman debt-deflationary crisis 91-86 BC
I didnt even ever read about this

Holy shit, the analogy keeps getting stronger and stronger.
Welp, by this rate I'll be indeed seeing the first Caesar by the time I hit my 60 somethings

People will always naturally create their own little cultural rules to live by. Money can't buy human nature.

Maybe an economical global system will continue to live but multiculturalism will fail eventually. It's already failing.

Because Chinese steel could be produced for far less for similar quality, which would allow for more steel in the market, driving the price down and allowing governments and companies to build more. The greater efficiency costs is a net boost to the economy that would offset losing factory jobs. This is a simple fact that Western socialists don't seem to understand.

because capitalism

Working in a field is better than being in fast food or retail hell.

Well, you know what? We don't need moralizing to know that living in a country where the vast majority of people are unemployed is a bad thing. All we need to do is look at history and what tends to happen when there's large numbers of poor people with little prospects and nothing much to do other then sit and simmer in their own resentment over this fact.

multiculturalism=/=global culture

And your "little cultural rules" are honestly nothing more than modes of comsuption that build around artificial identities.
Culture is not a personal statement. Culture is not created out of thing air. Its borne along generations of a community, in a given piece of land, with deep rooted traditions and defining myths. A culture defines a fundamental world view.
within this, globalization only allows a single world cultural phenomenom: exactly the extreme liberalization, to the point of dissolution, of any and all cultural expression towards a single sterile culture mainly defined by late western principles

No it's not, this post screams Millenial ignorance

Getting up at 4am to work with your hands until dusk, often doing mind numbing tasks and developing back problems by 30 is not something that is fun or desirable for the vast majority of people.

...

I don't get it

>a net boost to the economy
So what? It wasn't worth laying off the people who worked at those steel mills.

You seem to think that more money is always the most important thing and this just isn't true. Social stability is also important and the massive amounts of unemployment we're heading towards are inherently destabilizing.

Again your definition of "working in a field" is retarded because it treats agricultural labor as some kind of special form of labor that could never be conformed to the rest of the economy through rule of law.

On modern commercial farms there is absolutely no reason why 8 hour shifts and everything else associated with manual labor in first world economies could not be implemented. All you are doing is showing your ignorance and justifying slave labor conditions in farms because I guess that makes you progressive or something. Are you even aware of what year it is?

It's coming from someone who has done both but I guess you know better than me.