7 ms·

The Glass Famine

122 points by baud147258 2mo ago

roenxi 2mo ago
> It's that it is possible to resuscitate dormant or shrinking sectors. It is possible to re-industrialise quickly. China managed to go from peasantry in the grip of communism to arguably the biggest economy in history over a remarkably short period. And it is hard to get a read on exactly what is going on in that country but that seems to be despite heavy state intervention in the economy and without the benefits of political free speech. I'd also rate their rule of law as a bit rubbery. It is clear that industrialisation can happen like lightening if best-of-breed policies are adopted. Which is to say, policies in the West since the end of the cold war have been an absolute disaster and we are well due some political remove-the-spec-from-your-own-eye reflection on our industrial strategy. And, frankly, the endless reign of military terror that the middle east is subjected to doesn't seem to help. Keeping the military at home has been a massive win for China, all of that money went into investments instead of pointless murder. It is enough to make you wonder if it is the politicians or the voters who are more evil and incompetent.
- paleotrope 2mo ago
  It's probably obvious to say, but I think a nation's most important resource is people. And if you can just order them around and kill the dissenters and not care about what individuals want, then you can achieve quite a bit, be it industrialization or war or agricultural surplus.
  - abirch 2mo ago
    I'm not saying that the economy or markets are everything; however, if you don't have dissidents you don't as much friction. If China wants to move your mother's grave for a factory, there's not a lot you can do. Whereas in democracies you can try to draw it out with legal action, etc.
    - Vasbarlog 2mo ago
      That’s not true at all. China is known for its “nail houses” for example. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...
      - bmacho 2mo ago
        Among all these pictures there is exactly 1, the first one that would be an example of someone living in an important place, a middle of a road, and refusing to move. And the occupied place isn't very important to the state, but rather only to a couple of residents. All others just show that demolitions have started, and there are houses not yet demolished. 0/1.4 billions of people is actually convincing the other way you intended.
        pessimizer 2mo ago
        This reply doesn't make a lick of sense. You're just making things up off the top of your head. The point is that China doesn't "just crush" dissenters. This is ignorant Western fantasy which is used by people to justify the dismantling of their own rights. China needs a Bill of Rights like the US's, and most of the US populace needs to stop being such a sucker for nearly century-old propaganda that it doesn't burn its own treasure in service of elite-propagated paranoia.
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
    - Telemakhos 2mo ago
      The phenomenon of "nail houses" testifies against the notion that the Chinese government will expropriate whatever land it wants, although nail houses aren't graves. Graves are less of a concern, because the dead by law must be buried in public cemeteries: isolated rural burials are uncommon.
      - 2mo ago
  - jingpostmedia 2mo ago
    [flagged]
  - majormajor 2mo ago
    There are many more countries with violent governments that don't tolerate dissenters than there are ones that have the technological success of China. Most of them are much less strategic about what they drive for. But a "more free" state could certainly be more strategic as well about aims, goals, and definition of success; the US has done it before to various extents, for instance. The claim has often been that it'll eventually collapse like in the Soviet Union—because "not caring about what individuals want—has been believed to be a major limiting factor, not an advantage. But it hasn't yet.
- frobisher 2mo ago
  > [to your comment] Unfortunately it seems that often Western governments serve narrow interest groups (sometimes overseas) over their own people. In other words, open systems that have been usurped by these interest groups, including the military-industrial complex, to your point. It is a pity, because values of the Enlightenment can be truly beautiful, and are often in fact embodied by the people themselves - just not their economic and governmental systems. > [to the article more broadly] If one presumes certain material wealth is in support of the people, then hopefully fixing the underlying resource allocation system away from interest groups can, as evidenced, lead to these industries being reborn. But the core issue to fix is the underlying systems I think. How? Well, it's tough, but perhaps some garbage collection on structures that don't actually serve the nation(s).
- one33seven 2mo ago
  Not despite heave state intervention. Because of it!
  - ifwinterco 2mo ago
    Was going to say this. The right form of state intervention can be hugely beneficial
    - JKCalhoun 2mo ago
      The U.S. will have to come around to that. I'm not sure how low it has to sink relative to China , but there will come a time when it will be seen as the obvious strategy. Perhaps Great Depression II will be the spark as Great Depression I was the spark for the limited socialism in the U.S.
      - GolfPopper 2mo ago
        My own best guess is that the U.S. will never come around, but its successor states probably will.
    - peterfirefly 2mo ago
      http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#SECTION_G006 http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#SECTION_G006
  - bluGill 2mo ago
    State intervention has a reasonably good history of getting what the state pushes for. It just has a poor history in everything else the state needs/wants but doesn't realize and so doesn't push for. Also people often miss what the state is pushing for (for example: most of the people pushing transit are really interested in expensive contracts to push money to their friends - any transit that results is a side effect they don't care about. If you are interested in transit most of the people who appear on your side are a long term negative even if you must work with them)
  - cucumber3732842 2mo ago
- A_D_E_P_T 2mo ago
  > despite heavy state intervention in the economy Arguably because of state intervention in the economy. They give generous cash subsidies across various industrial sectors -- and as "investors" they have a remarkably light touch! Their standard modus operandi is to subsidize a number of competing ventures per sector (which number could be somewhere in the dozens or hundreds) and have competition take care of the rest. This is always good for the consumer, good where the perception of fairness is (internally) concerned, and good for the government's position of power. They don't build monopolies, nor are most firms left to scramble for multiple successive rounds of VC funding. America prefers protectionism and tax credits; a markedly inferior overall strategy. We know this from the past five decades of economic history. Subsidies to high-value and growing technological industry are the best way to go from poor to rich, and the best way to go from "not producing much" to "producing everything we want."
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - oblio 2mo ago
    > Arguably because of state intervention in the economy. More than that. It's the closest thing we have to a successful economic experiment replicated multiple times in real life. It's the Japanese model. Meiji Japan, post-WW2 Japan. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China more or less followed the same pattern.
    - Mainan_Tagonist 2mo ago
      On the topic of economic development, David Landes is worth reading, both the Unbound Prometheus and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations provide a solid understanding of the reasons behind the development of Western Europe over the past 500 years. The 5 Dragons (Taiwan, South Korea, HK, Singapore, Japan) followed pretty much the same recipes that made Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland industrial powerhouses in their days.
- mc32 2mo ago
  In some ways China acts more like WWII Germany than SU Marxist Leninism or Maoist China. Private enterprise exists and encouraged but the state ultimately dictates what happens and has party members in leadership positions in those companies.
  - pessimizer 2mo ago
    The heads of tech companies in the US are no less embedded in government than the heads of tech companies in China.
    - mc32 2mo ago
      I’ll accept that there is a gamut but to say they are the same, I disagree. The state in China has ultimate say in how a company operates over there. Here that can happen during war time. And yes during the Biden Admin the feds had “embeds” on media companies who would flag stories they did not like (covid as well as negative laptop stories), but overall it’s not in the same ballpark. My main point though is that the government-industry relationship in China in many ways mimics the one in Nazi germany more than a continuity of the Maoist industry-government relationship where 5-year plans were part of the plan and it was much more unidirectional.
- palmotea 2mo ago
  > And it is hard to get a read on exactly what is going on in that country but that seems to be despite heavy state intervention in the economy and without the benefits of political free speech. It's because the free market is not perfect (as is often claimed). "Central planning" has been debunked (at least with 20th century technology), but it's become pretty clear that state control + markets > markets alone. > Which is to say, policies in the West since the end of the cold war have been an absolute disaster and we are well due some political remove-the-spec-from-your-own-eye reflection on our industrial strategy. And, frankly, the endless reign of military terror that the middle east is subjected to doesn't seem to help. Keeping the military at home has been a massive win for China, all of that money went into investments instead of pointless murder. I think the "keeping the military at home" has been a marginal reason. The real reason is Chinese government can redirect resources to where they're needed, and they've got a long-term vision for what they want to do.
- pessimizer 2mo ago
  > China managed to go from peasantry in the grip of communism Communism is what brought China out of peasantry. They were literally peasants for a couple thousand years, then they became Communists at which their standard of living started to improve and never stopped. Admittedly the Communism became a lot less Communist, but to paint Communism something that existed at the same time or even as a contributor to peasantry was weird. > policies in the West since the end of the cold war have been an absolute disaster The US adopted socialist policies after shattering the organized left, pouring money into the safety net, elevating unions, and subsidizing housing, health care, education and technological innovation. In the late-70s to the early-80s it gradually stopped, and that's why we have what we have now. > It is enough to make you wonder if it is the politicians or the voters who are more evil and incompetent. What?
SideburnsOfDoom 2mo ago
A while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36739279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36739279
- dredmorbius 2mo ago
  With a single comment, from 2023. Generally, it's considered useful to post prior links with significant discussion. I usually consider that to be about 20 comments or so.
raphinou 2mo ago
I find it interesting that the book is available about everywhere save for North America according to the author, but the first distances in the text are given in yards, mainly used only in North America. Ok, this is not the exact book text, but still, it looks as a misfit to the audience of the book.
- clickety_clack 2mo ago
  In England they still use imperial for some things, like miles, mph and mpg for cars, pints for drinks etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if shooting still used yards as well.
- cestith 2mo ago
  The UK wasn’t on the metric system during the first world war. https://ukma.org.uk/press/metrication-timeline/ https://ukma.org.uk/press/metrication-timeline/
  - williamdclt 2mo ago
    still isn't for most purposes, and most people are still more comfortable with yards than meters for day-to-day stuff (friends are often looking at me blankly when I give a distance in meters)
    - RugnirViking 2mo ago
      > most people are still more comfortable with yards than meters I feel this is highly context dependant, too. Hanging out with a rural group of people born in the 80s? yards. Anyone in a city and/or born after 1990 is probably more comfortable with meters
      - roryirvine 2mo ago
        I'm a year older than Conway and have never heard people using yards to mean anything other than a concreted or paved area, even in rural settings. Maybe posh horsey types are different, but even they're mostly concerned with furlongs and hands and suchlike. (Not wanting to disparage Conway or his work - it's likely that, as gp suggests, his choice of measurements is simply due to the historic source material)
cjs_ac 2mo ago
> The picture above is a clue. In the 18th and then 19th century there was a sequence of taxes on glass. Most famous of all is the window tax of the 18th century which, in fairness, wasn’t primarily a tax on glass. It was mostly a tax on housing (the more windows, the more you paid - hence why people bricked in windows). Eighteenth century Britain levied a great many consumption taxes on things that were disproportionately bought by the wealthy. These were the taxes that the Boston Tea Party rebelled against. > Here’s a chart I dug out of the UK National Archives while researching Material World. It shows you optical glass supplies to the UK. And look: the standout thing is how quickly UK domestic production rose. > The UK didn’t need German glass by the time that deal was done because it was producing plenty by then, and output was rising fast. UK factories had swung into action. They turned around the deficit so quickly that by the end of the war they were producing more than they needed - enough to supply their allies. > The glass famine, in other words, was followed by the glass feast. > (the other thing to note is what happened AFTER this chart: having rebuilt its glass industry, the UK allowed it to waste away again. By the post-WWII period it was back in the doldrums. Most of the optical producers shut down. It was a short-lived feast). There's a strange pattern of Britain performing best when it's least prepared. I think this ties in well with the observation that the British establishment is unconcerned with 'theory' and wholly concerned with practical matters, which I first read in The Sloane Ranger's Handbook. Compare also the discourse surrounding the US Bill of Rights to that surrounding the English Bill of Rights, which includes pretty much the same rights (including the right to bear arms).
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
polotics 2mo ago
This gives me sickening vibes of the "War is a racket" take. Both side's agreeing to enable each other's massacre of their own country's downtrodden young masses, while all sorts of profiteering going on at the back no doubt.
- GolfPopper 2mo ago
  When you have time, you might wish to track down the history of Krupp[1]. A German company, they sold arms to all sides in WWI, having gained the the freedom to do so by previously threatening the Kaiser with moving their operations to Russia. My recollection is that Krupp was paid a premium based on the effectiveness of their artillery shells - which, again, were being sold to both sides. Said effectiveness was calculated based on casualty numbers... so the more soldiers died (on both sides) the more Krupp was paid. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp
- roryirvine 2mo ago
  Very much a two-way street, that. The "economist" faction in the British government (that is, those who wanted to fight a limited war, sparing men and materiel) semi-deliberately failed to ramp up domestic production as part of their campaign to constrain the extent of any conflict. Their opponents did the opposite, exaggerating the lack of production as part of their campaign to move the economy much more completely onto a war footing. It came to the head with the "shell crisis" in 1915 when Lloyd George (previously chief amongst the economists) switched sides and, with the aid of a coordinated series of attacks in the press, caused the fall of the government and its replacement by a coalition. The coalition massively increased war production by borrowing heavily and taking over huge swathes of the economy. Conscription was introduced, and millions were shipped off to the trenches. Lloyd George soon became prime minister, the military expanded massively, the economy grew, and the war was won. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands more lives were lost, the increased industrial capacity was largely destroyed in the economic retrenchment of the 1920s, and the unsustainable levels of borrowing almost bankrupted the country (and the Empire in general - with Egypt and India bearing much of the burden). Of course, Germany also followed the "total war" model and suffered terribly for it too. In both cases, it's hard to say who was driving who - the politicians, the industrialists, or the military. The first stirrings of the Military Industrial Complex, half a century before Eisenhower talked about it.
petesergeant 2mo ago
It's annoying that Trump squandered a political opportunity to help America reindustrialize key areas. He had political support to use protectionism and general Trumpiness that could have enacted some useful onshoring reforms, and instead ended up setting illegal tariffs on the Heard Island and McDonald islands.
- forlorn_mammoth 2mo ago
  Didn't we also create a very large internal jobs program to 'enforce immigration law'? instead of creating a very large internal jobs program to build/repair fundamental infrastructure? Such a waste. The ROI from 'better roads' is massive.
VLM 2mo ago
Its interesting to read post WWII accounts of the early amateur telescope making hobby. There was a fear there would be a second glass famine in WWII so a somewhat massive cottage industry sprung up to make optics which indirectly led to easily available supplies and ability to make homemade amateur telescopes. Which led directly to "The Amateur Scientist" column in the old Scientific American Magazine. And that column led indirectly to magazine columns like "Computer Recreations". I had only read the WWII and post WWII coverage so it was interesting to read the linked article about the original WWI glass famine. In a strange way, overtaxing window glass in the UK in the 1800s indirectly resulted in me implementing a Mandelbrot calculator on an 80s home computer based upon some interesting columns.

122 points by baud147258 2mo ago

> It's that it is possible to resuscitate dormant or shrinking sectors. It is possible to re-industrialise quickly. China managed to go from peasantry in the grip of communism to arguably the biggest economy in history over a remarkably short period. And it is hard to get a read on exactly what is going on in that country but that seems to be despite heavy state intervention in the economy and without the benefits of political free speech. I'd also rate their rule of law as a bit rubbery. It is clear that industrialisation can happen like lightening if best-of-breed policies are adopted. Which is to say, policies in the West since the end of the cold war have been an absolute disaster and we are well due some political remove-the-spec-from-your-own-eye reflection on our industrial strategy. And, frankly, the endless reign of military terror that the middle east is subjected to doesn't seem to help. Keeping the military at home has been a massive win for China, all of that money went into investments instead of pointless murder. It is enough to make you wonder if it is the politicians or the voters who are more evil and incompetent.

paleotrope 2mo ago
It's probably obvious to say, but I think a nation's most important resource is people. And if you can just order them around and kill the dissenters and not care about what individuals want, then you can achieve quite a bit, be it industrialization or war or agricultural surplus.
- abirch 2mo ago
  I'm not saying that the economy or markets are everything; however, if you don't have dissidents you don't as much friction. If China wants to move your mother's grave for a factory, there's not a lot you can do. Whereas in democracies you can try to draw it out with legal action, etc.
  - Vasbarlog 2mo ago
    That’s not true at all. China is known for its “nail houses” for example. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...
    - bmacho 2mo ago
      Among all these pictures there is exactly 1, the first one that would be an example of someone living in an important place, a middle of a road, and refusing to move. And the occupied place isn't very important to the state, but rather only to a couple of residents. All others just show that demolitions have started, and there are houses not yet demolished. 0/1.4 billions of people is actually convincing the other way you intended.
      - pessimizer 2mo ago
        This reply doesn't make a lick of sense. You're just making things up off the top of your head. The point is that China doesn't "just crush" dissenters. This is ignorant Western fantasy which is used by people to justify the dismantling of their own rights. China needs a Bill of Rights like the US's, and most of the US populace needs to stop being such a sucker for nearly century-old propaganda that it doesn't burn its own treasure in service of elite-propagated paranoia.
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
  - Telemakhos 2mo ago
    The phenomenon of "nail houses" testifies against the notion that the Chinese government will expropriate whatever land it wants, although nail houses aren't graves. Graves are less of a concern, because the dead by law must be buried in public cemeteries: isolated rural burials are uncommon.
    - 2mo ago
- jingpostmedia 2mo ago
  [flagged]
- majormajor 2mo ago
  There are many more countries with violent governments that don't tolerate dissenters than there are ones that have the technological success of China. Most of them are much less strategic about what they drive for. But a "more free" state could certainly be more strategic as well about aims, goals, and definition of success; the US has done it before to various extents, for instance. The claim has often been that it'll eventually collapse like in the Soviet Union—because "not caring about what individuals want—has been believed to be a major limiting factor, not an advantage. But it hasn't yet.
frobisher 2mo ago
> [to your comment] Unfortunately it seems that often Western governments serve narrow interest groups (sometimes overseas) over their own people. In other words, open systems that have been usurped by these interest groups, including the military-industrial complex, to your point. It is a pity, because values of the Enlightenment can be truly beautiful, and are often in fact embodied by the people themselves - just not their economic and governmental systems. > [to the article more broadly] If one presumes certain material wealth is in support of the people, then hopefully fixing the underlying resource allocation system away from interest groups can, as evidenced, lead to these industries being reborn. But the core issue to fix is the underlying systems I think. How? Well, it's tough, but perhaps some garbage collection on structures that don't actually serve the nation(s).
one33seven 2mo ago
Not despite heave state intervention. Because of it!
- ifwinterco 2mo ago
  Was going to say this. The right form of state intervention can be hugely beneficial
  - JKCalhoun 2mo ago
    The U.S. will have to come around to that. I'm not sure how low it has to sink relative to China , but there will come a time when it will be seen as the obvious strategy. Perhaps Great Depression II will be the spark as Great Depression I was the spark for the limited socialism in the U.S.
    - GolfPopper 2mo ago
      My own best guess is that the U.S. will never come around, but its successor states probably will.
  - peterfirefly 2mo ago
    http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#SECTION_G006 http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#SECTION_G006
- bluGill 2mo ago
  State intervention has a reasonably good history of getting what the state pushes for. It just has a poor history in everything else the state needs/wants but doesn't realize and so doesn't push for. Also people often miss what the state is pushing for (for example: most of the people pushing transit are really interested in expensive contracts to push money to their friends - any transit that results is a side effect they don't care about. If you are interested in transit most of the people who appear on your side are a long term negative even if you must work with them)
- cucumber3732842 2mo ago
A_D_E_P_T 2mo ago
> despite heavy state intervention in the economy Arguably because of state intervention in the economy. They give generous cash subsidies across various industrial sectors -- and as "investors" they have a remarkably light touch! Their standard modus operandi is to subsidize a number of competing ventures per sector (which number could be somewhere in the dozens or hundreds) and have competition take care of the rest. This is always good for the consumer, good where the perception of fairness is (internally) concerned, and good for the government's position of power. They don't build monopolies, nor are most firms left to scramble for multiple successive rounds of VC funding. America prefers protectionism and tax credits; a markedly inferior overall strategy. We know this from the past five decades of economic history. Subsidies to high-value and growing technological industry are the best way to go from poor to rich, and the best way to go from "not producing much" to "producing everything we want."
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 2mo ago
  > Arguably because of state intervention in the economy. More than that. It's the closest thing we have to a successful economic experiment replicated multiple times in real life. It's the Japanese model. Meiji Japan, post-WW2 Japan. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China more or less followed the same pattern.
  - Mainan_Tagonist 2mo ago
    On the topic of economic development, David Landes is worth reading, both the Unbound Prometheus and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations provide a solid understanding of the reasons behind the development of Western Europe over the past 500 years. The 5 Dragons (Taiwan, South Korea, HK, Singapore, Japan) followed pretty much the same recipes that made Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland industrial powerhouses in their days.
mc32 2mo ago
In some ways China acts more like WWII Germany than SU Marxist Leninism or Maoist China. Private enterprise exists and encouraged but the state ultimately dictates what happens and has party members in leadership positions in those companies.
- pessimizer 2mo ago
  The heads of tech companies in the US are no less embedded in government than the heads of tech companies in China.
  - mc32 2mo ago
    I’ll accept that there is a gamut but to say they are the same, I disagree. The state in China has ultimate say in how a company operates over there. Here that can happen during war time. And yes during the Biden Admin the feds had “embeds” on media companies who would flag stories they did not like (covid as well as negative laptop stories), but overall it’s not in the same ballpark. My main point though is that the government-industry relationship in China in many ways mimics the one in Nazi germany more than a continuity of the Maoist industry-government relationship where 5-year plans were part of the plan and it was much more unidirectional.
palmotea 2mo ago
> And it is hard to get a read on exactly what is going on in that country but that seems to be despite heavy state intervention in the economy and without the benefits of political free speech. It's because the free market is not perfect (as is often claimed). "Central planning" has been debunked (at least with 20th century technology), but it's become pretty clear that state control + markets > markets alone. > Which is to say, policies in the West since the end of the cold war have been an absolute disaster and we are well due some political remove-the-spec-from-your-own-eye reflection on our industrial strategy. And, frankly, the endless reign of military terror that the middle east is subjected to doesn't seem to help. Keeping the military at home has been a massive win for China, all of that money went into investments instead of pointless murder. I think the "keeping the military at home" has been a marginal reason. The real reason is Chinese government can redirect resources to where they're needed, and they've got a long-term vision for what they want to do.
pessimizer 2mo ago
> China managed to go from peasantry in the grip of communism Communism is what brought China out of peasantry. They were literally peasants for a couple thousand years, then they became Communists at which their standard of living started to improve and never stopped. Admittedly the Communism became a lot less Communist, but to paint Communism something that existed at the same time or even as a contributor to peasantry was weird. > policies in the West since the end of the cold war have been an absolute disaster The US adopted socialist policies after shattering the organized left, pouring money into the safety net, elevating unions, and subsidizing housing, health care, education and technological innovation. In the late-70s to the early-80s it gradually stopped, and that's why we have what we have now. > It is enough to make you wonder if it is the politicians or the voters who are more evil and incompetent. What?

SideburnsOfDoom 2mo ago

A while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36739279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36739279

dredmorbius 2mo ago
With a single comment, from 2023. Generally, it's considered useful to post prior links with significant discussion. I usually consider that to be about 20 comments or so.

raphinou 2mo ago

I find it interesting that the book is available about everywhere save for North America according to the author, but the first distances in the text are given in yards, mainly used only in North America. Ok, this is not the exact book text, but still, it looks as a misfit to the audience of the book.

clickety_clack 2mo ago
In England they still use imperial for some things, like miles, mph and mpg for cars, pints for drinks etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if shooting still used yards as well.
cestith 2mo ago
The UK wasn’t on the metric system during the first world war. https://ukma.org.uk/press/metrication-timeline/ https://ukma.org.uk/press/metrication-timeline/
- williamdclt 2mo ago
  still isn't for most purposes, and most people are still more comfortable with yards than meters for day-to-day stuff (friends are often looking at me blankly when I give a distance in meters)
  - RugnirViking 2mo ago
    > most people are still more comfortable with yards than meters I feel this is highly context dependant, too. Hanging out with a rural group of people born in the 80s? yards. Anyone in a city and/or born after 1990 is probably more comfortable with meters
    - roryirvine 2mo ago
      I'm a year older than Conway and have never heard people using yards to mean anything other than a concreted or paved area, even in rural settings. Maybe posh horsey types are different, but even they're mostly concerned with furlongs and hands and suchlike. (Not wanting to disparage Conway or his work - it's likely that, as gp suggests, his choice of measurements is simply due to the historic source material)

cjs_ac 2mo ago

> The picture above is a clue. In the 18th and then 19th century there was a sequence of taxes on glass. Most famous of all is the window tax of the 18th century which, in fairness, wasn’t primarily a tax on glass. It was mostly a tax on housing (the more windows, the more you paid - hence why people bricked in windows). Eighteenth century Britain levied a great many consumption taxes on things that were disproportionately bought by the wealthy. These were the taxes that the Boston Tea Party rebelled against. > Here’s a chart I dug out of the UK National Archives while researching Material World. It shows you optical glass supplies to the UK. And look: the standout thing is how quickly UK domestic production rose. > The UK didn’t need German glass by the time that deal was done because it was producing plenty by then, and output was rising fast. UK factories had swung into action. They turned around the deficit so quickly that by the end of the war they were producing more than they needed - enough to supply their allies. > The glass famine, in other words, was followed by the glass feast. > (the other thing to note is what happened AFTER this chart: having rebuilt its glass industry, the UK allowed it to waste away again. By the post-WWII period it was back in the doldrums. Most of the optical producers shut down. It was a short-lived feast). There's a strange pattern of Britain performing best when it's least prepared. I think this ties in well with the observation that the British establishment is unconcerned with 'theory' and wholly concerned with practical matters, which I first read in The Sloane Ranger's Handbook. Compare also the discourse surrounding the US Bill of Rights to that surrounding the English Bill of Rights, which includes pretty much the same rights (including the right to bear arms).

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

polotics 2mo ago

This gives me sickening vibes of the "War is a racket" take. Both side's agreeing to enable each other's massacre of their own country's downtrodden young masses, while all sorts of profiteering going on at the back no doubt.

GolfPopper 2mo ago
When you have time, you might wish to track down the history of Krupp[1]. A German company, they sold arms to all sides in WWI, having gained the the freedom to do so by previously threatening the Kaiser with moving their operations to Russia. My recollection is that Krupp was paid a premium based on the effectiveness of their artillery shells - which, again, were being sold to both sides. Said effectiveness was calculated based on casualty numbers... so the more soldiers died (on both sides) the more Krupp was paid. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp
roryirvine 2mo ago
Very much a two-way street, that. The "economist" faction in the British government (that is, those who wanted to fight a limited war, sparing men and materiel) semi-deliberately failed to ramp up domestic production as part of their campaign to constrain the extent of any conflict. Their opponents did the opposite, exaggerating the lack of production as part of their campaign to move the economy much more completely onto a war footing. It came to the head with the "shell crisis" in 1915 when Lloyd George (previously chief amongst the economists) switched sides and, with the aid of a coordinated series of attacks in the press, caused the fall of the government and its replacement by a coalition. The coalition massively increased war production by borrowing heavily and taking over huge swathes of the economy. Conscription was introduced, and millions were shipped off to the trenches. Lloyd George soon became prime minister, the military expanded massively, the economy grew, and the war was won. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands more lives were lost, the increased industrial capacity was largely destroyed in the economic retrenchment of the 1920s, and the unsustainable levels of borrowing almost bankrupted the country (and the Empire in general - with Egypt and India bearing much of the burden). Of course, Germany also followed the "total war" model and suffered terribly for it too. In both cases, it's hard to say who was driving who - the politicians, the industrialists, or the military. The first stirrings of the Military Industrial Complex, half a century before Eisenhower talked about it.

petesergeant 2mo ago

It's annoying that Trump squandered a political opportunity to help America reindustrialize key areas. He had political support to use protectionism and general Trumpiness that could have enacted some useful onshoring reforms, and instead ended up setting illegal tariffs on the Heard Island and McDonald islands.

forlorn_mammoth 2mo ago
Didn't we also create a very large internal jobs program to 'enforce immigration law'? instead of creating a very large internal jobs program to build/repair fundamental infrastructure? Such a waste. The ROI from 'better roads' is massive.

VLM 2mo ago

Its interesting to read post WWII accounts of the early amateur telescope making hobby. There was a fear there would be a second glass famine in WWII so a somewhat massive cottage industry sprung up to make optics which indirectly led to easily available supplies and ability to make homemade amateur telescopes. Which led directly to "The Amateur Scientist" column in the old Scientific American Magazine. And that column led indirectly to magazine columns like "Computer Recreations". I had only read the WWII and post WWII coverage so it was interesting to read the linked article about the original WWI glass famine. In a strange way, overtaxing window glass in the UK in the 1800s indirectly resulted in me implementing a Mandelbrot calculator on an 80s home computer based upon some interesting columns.