Making The Modern World

23 Replies to “Making The Modern World”

1. How about no to ” promoting quality and longevity “, you statist clown?
   How about we let people run their own lives insofar as they are not violating the Golden Rule; how about we permit human liberty?
   Why is this crap posted to SDA?

2. I apologize, Kate, for that intemperate outburst. ‘Tis your blog.

3. Where Vacuum Smith implies that cars of he early 70s were lighter and smaller than they are today is idiotic. He must be talking about small cheap; European Ladas and Peugeots and Volkswagens and other little pieces of junk that nearly vanish in a collision with a full sized vehicle. Same fear today with the wave of new tiny cars like the Smart Car and the Fiat 500 …. Whilst everyone else has an SUV.
   I owned several American cars from that era and they all weighed closer to two or more tons. ‘Detroit Iron’ baby … big chrome bumpers, big V8 engines … very little plastic and … aluminum was not yet widely used in most vehicles. I also remember getting about 20 miles per on the hwy and about 16 in town. So the 24 MPG average I am getting on my new Subaru is not much of a improvement. Considering … I am paying ten times as much to gas it up and ten times as much to buy in the first place …. however, it beats taking the bus …. busses are dangerous. People on busses are really angry that they can’t afford a car and have to take the bus.

4. Big names, big rich names, and monumental drivel
   often keep close company. That surprises some people
   but it shouldn’t. Motives are often very unclear or
   far removed from just public generosity.
   The SUV, for example, became popular in the US as a
   result of certain tax advantages structured in such
   a way that Japanese designed vehicles were not able
   to participate.
   The gas milage example given as the “starting point”
   was not an especially “fair” one.

5. Why do we need another preacher telling us how to live? His revelations are nothing unusual if you look at those facts in proper context. Sure China pours a lot of concrete. But they also have huge cities and harbour the World’s largest population by a staggering margin. Modernization has a cost and yes it requires material. There’s no sin in that. Halleluah.

6. The total, official, count of the use of cement by the Chinamen is probably inflated about like their economic figures.
   Can’t trust a communist to tell the truth…
   Anyhow, it gives something for these fool professors to do, sit around and comment on what others are doing. Giving ‘wise’ advice, even though he can’t do any of it.
   ‘Vacuum’, good name for him.

7. Yeah I recall helping a friend scrap a V8 with auto trans from his friends back yard….it was mid ’50’s Oldsmobile.
   I did a recon and then made sure power was on call….I couldn’t even roll that sucker.
   It sold for dirty motors…a class of scrap….it exceeded a ton…
   The car it came from likely went about 2.5 tons outa the box.
   I thought at the time that engine weighed as much as a new SUV.
   The 70’s was the high water mark for poor gas mileage…the anti-pollution thing was in full cry.
   My ’75 Peugeot was not a feather weight, it had a 2800 lb dry weight…with a 2 litre cast iron motor.
   I intended to run the wheels off it but my new wife of the time killed it. I came home and found it rammed backwards into a tree, clutch smoked, starter burned out.
   She knew how to drive so standard trans instruction was a no go….till then. She told me she fired it up but couldn’t get it in gear with the motor running…so put it in reverse and then started it. “That car was a piece of junk….2 brake pedals and neither worked.”
   I miss that car but not that wife…
   One of the pluses and minuses of concrete is it’s durability…
   Iron/Steel is the most recycled material on earth….there is a good chance there is some in your car that once attended a classic(Roman/Greek) or medieval battle.
   Aluminum is heavily recycled and doesn’t corrode much….

8. Quality and longevity sound good to me. I drove my first Volvo for 16 year until my daughter beat the hell out of it. His remarks about the Chinese are frightening, I would prefer to see them back in the rice paddies.

9. I agree with Sandra (and the prof) on quality and longevity. I drive a 28-year-old diesel Mercedes with 400,000Km on the clock and it still gets 36 mpg on the highway. I have no time for “built-in obsolescence” and loads of plastic.

10. How about yes to “promoting” those values, since he didn’t say impose them. Taking the example of vehicles, most of them built twenty or forty years ago were structurally and mechanically strong enough that if they had been properly maintained and kept clean (a preventative measure against rust) would still be giving good service today, fifteen to thirty-five years after they were paid for. But most are scrap and most people can be suckered into refinancing every five years to get the latest shiny, noisy crap that looks “cool.”
    What is small c conservative about an economy based on conspicuous consumption and built-in redundancy of goods manufactured by dumbed-down unionized workers instead of quality goods maintained by local skilled tradesmen working in small businesses?

11. Tooner- ” Promoting ” always leads, in the end, to subsidization of ” correct ” behavior; punisment of ” incorrect ” behavior by the state.
    Incentivizing auto makers to suit the tastes of a subset of the electorate, or any other attempt to affect how other subsets act is never proper for the state.
    I would hope, by now, most people would have at least reached the conclusion that, even if such nanny state actions by the government were desirable, they bring with them a cost of general governmental incompetence in those fields that only it government can effect, such as maintaining law and order, a sound currency, protection of natural rights, and maintenance of armed forces.

12. And unsafe at any speed. Rarely do I see a pick up with anything in the back. I see them as a substitute for a small penis. Detroit iron = pieces of crap

13. I drove a Toyota pickup, 4×4 new, from 1985 to 1996. Over 250,000 kms on it and the original clutch when I sold it. It got 35 miles per gallon (that number actually means something to me).
    My current Ford F-150 4×4 gets 26 miles per gallon and weighs probably twice what the Toyota did, but then I now have more stuff to take to the job and I need a bigger truck to move it. It’s a 2005 model. It cost 3 times what the Toyota did, 20 years later and the Toyota equivalent was priced a bit more at the time and got worse mileage than the Ford. Like 18 mpg, highway. I’m still driving the Ford and don’t see the need to buy another until this one becomes too expensive to keep operating it. There is very little rust underneath and none outside.
    There is no bus service where I drive to work, nor subway or LRT. Bikes need not apply, as I’d still be pedaling to get to the last job that finished a while ago. I doubt than a Volvo, or Mercedes could do the job and neither manufacturer puts out a vehicle in North America that is designed to do the job required that a Ford F-150, or Dodge Ram 1500 can do, for a price that I can afford.
    I use the pickup to cart all the office and work equipment that is needed to do the job I do, plus food for the length of time that I spend on the job site. It fills all the available space inside and out. Rides like a car at speed.
    In Calgary, I walk down to the LRT station and take the train downtown to see my clients, unless I have too much to pack.
    I have an average sized penis.

14. Hey SDA readers !
    Do (some of) you even read stuff, or just beak off w/o actually understanding WTF the post is all about.???
    The ‘Prof’s’ claim is ENTIRELY legitimate: +/- 2,000 Million (3rd World) people will soon enter some level of the middle class, and when they do things will get, well, complicated.
    Our task is to manage this difficult technical process.
    Closed (ie: dumb-ass stupid “small c conservative”) minds will be of absolutely no fooking help to us at that point.
    Kate’s point is that we need an EFFECTIVE method to conserve our way of life into the future.
    That’s why we are “conservatives”: ie: those who preserve the best from the past, for the benefit of our progeny.
    Frikkin sharpen up SDA fans !!
    YT
    Niall from Winnipeg

15. Went to Vaclav’s page ant the U of M website. Of course his page is heavily into self-promation; since 2008 he has published 27 books and 350 articles. I believe that most professors must be paid too much since they seem to think quite a bit more highly of their work than do most of the rest of us. His areas of pontification are China. the environment, sustainable development, energy, population, bla bla bla.
    I agree with a comment above that speaking your views on such things is OK, but I always hate the way academics try to insert themselves into government policy making. Since college in my 20’s, I could never understand why academics and gov’ts always felt the need for policies on everything since it seemed to take away freedom. They seemed to get misty eyed when referring to soviet 5 year plans.
    Speaking of longevity, I usually do a cost/benefit analysis when purchasing things. I have some power tools which are used on a regular basis that are over 15 years old (one more than 25). I don;t see the point in buying a vehicle that is less than 8 years old (too much depreciation to be absorbed before that point). A friend of mine got rid of a 2003 Kia Rio last year with 780,000 km on it and I thought they were garbage. I was wrong. Nobody can convince me that 1970’s cars were better than todays. They were horrible. Most didn’t last past 160.000 km, they rusted badly, didn’t have the amenities of today’s basic car, poor performance, poor fuel economy and therefore far more polluting, bad tires, horrid handling, and most american cars were death traps in a collision (weight does not equal safety).

16. evolution folks, evolution. Knowledge, techno shit, consumer goods, you name it, it evolves. Aviator and his 280…erm 28 year old car, OK. My F-150 is 2 years old and has 118500 K on it, if it was 28 yrs old….ahm, that would be 118500 X 14…yah, a pretty big number. CONTEXT, the all important ingredient that usually falls on the floor and disappears under something. By “rotating” things we “supply” those who live in lower soci/income levels, and breed the need for more advanced technology, if we lived by the suggested standards of some, we’d still be driving horse and buggies, cuz the damn things hadn’t wore out yet.

17. I agree with the good professor about quality and longevity. Take appliances for example. an old freezer used to last 30 years (had one that did), now you are lucky if it lasts 7-8 years. Ditto with fridges, stoves, and sundry other appliances. Electric shop tools are not much better.
    Of course the initial cost of most of these dry goods would then also cost more than the garbage built now, but in the long run there would be less material used and hauled to the waste site.

18. He has a point. We’ve all experienced the cordless tool syndrome. You need to replace a battery, only to find the cost difference between the replacement battery and an entirely new tool/battery is so small that we end up turfing a perfectly functional tool because there is no economic benefit in retaining the old one.
    Disposal of perfectly workable but uneconomic products is not a good thing.

19. Our task is to manage this difficult technical process.
    Yeah, because Manitoba is such an economic powerhouse from all that ‘management’…heh…five year plans.

20. The 70s. Rust buckets that lasted 5 years at most.Though a few of the big wagons lasted, but looked like they suffered skin cancer after 3 . Its why most have dissipated into auto wreckers lots. Who can forget the ever flamy Pinto. The great Gremlin.
    Its why the Japanese took over the markets at the time. Motor city produced what it became.
    Detroit. Cheap flashy hunks of decomposition with a self life of a hamster.
    The late 50’s with the sixties till 1972 where the real era of the Motor car. Those magic vehicles, Barracudas, Mustangs, challengers, Cadillacs.. The list is long. Latter replaced with Rabbits.

21. “… ” Promoting ” always leads, in the end, to subsidization of ” correct ” behavior; punisment of ” incorrect ” behavior by the state….”
    So it is interesting to see what you “promote” while presenting yourself as a small c conservative.

22. “quality and longevity”
    Let’s apply those fine qualities to oh, I don’t know, car tires.
    Radial car tires have quality, fuel efficiency, and longevity.
    They are also very expensive compared to adequate bias ply tires.
    In fact, like producing “better cars”, the result is industry
    employment contraction on a huge scale.
    Appliances are on a ten year design life cycle these days thanks
    to foolish governments and their ever changing “energy saving”
    mandated standards.
    Anyone beginning to see a pattern?

23. Tooner – you are evading the question – does government involvement in peripheral issues lead to incompetent execution on core responsibilities of government.