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This is a poor article. The main evidence for “Americans can’t build stuff good” is the NYC subway cars ordered in 1970. Even the most “America First” of Amer

by OldHand2018 5y ago

This is a poor article. The main evidence for “Americans can’t build stuff good” is the NYC subway cars ordered in 1970. Even the most “America First” of Americans will readily agree that manufacturing in the 1970s was horrible compared to present times. If you actually click on the provided link and scroll down to where it talks about those train cars, you’ll see that the first problem came from running an extended-distance speed test where the average speed over the entire distance exceeded the maximum speed in the design of the train cars. You can’t seriously say that burning out the electric motors as a result of this is a manufacturing deficiency. Then there is this quote: > When the R-44s initially entered service, failure rates increased tremendously because of a combination of new technology and inadequate training. You can probably attribute some of the “new technology” part to manufacturing problems. How much? Who knows? But if your subway system is poorly run and has inadequate training, the best subway cars built in the best factory in the world isn’t going to save you.

rsynnott 5y ago
> Even the most “America First” of Americans will readily agree that manufacturing in the 1970s was horrible compared to present times. Of course, a big part of the reason for that was presumably lack of external competition in the 70s. If you say to Manufacturing Company X "don't worry about the European and Japanese manufacturers, they're not allowed bid on this" you are unlikely to get the same sort of quality than you'd get if they were. British car manufacturing is a nice example; in effect, the government forced consumers to buy the British manufacturers' output via protectionism. The result was _legendarily_ awful quality. And by the time the protectionism waned (when the UK joined the EU), it was too late; the industry was so used to not really having to compete that it just couldn't adapt to having to produce a good product, and largely collapsed.
- OldHand2018 5y ago
  > Of course, a big part of the reason for that was presumably lack of external competition in the 70s. If you say to Manufacturing Company X "don't worry about the European and Japanese manufacturers, they're not allowed bid on this" you are unlikely to get the same sort of quality than you'd get if they were. Yes! (And no). In the US, by 1970, foreign auto manufacturers had achieved a 10% market share, and it had been growing steadily since the mid 1960s. The Detroit manufacturers were fully aware of this, they just weren’t making changes. That was a time of great societal unrest and huge labor strife. It’s not hard to imagine the elites not wanting to save American manufacturing jobs or at least making them competitive.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    I'd argue that the gap between American and European/Japanese automakers was probably smaller than the gap between American and European/Japanese train manufacturers at the time, though. Also, it's probably far easier to justify inaction on cars because some of the things they're judged on are pretty subjective. A GM exec could plausibly have said something like "we don't need to increase reliability to match Japanese cars, because people don't want that sort of car here; they're too small/whatever". They'd have been wrong, as it turns out, but it wouldn't have been obvious nonsense. Whereas a train manufacturer exec wouldn't have had the same sort of arguments; they'd have _had_ to compete on the things railways care about, which are mostly just reliability.

rsynnott 5y ago

> Even the most “America First” of Americans will readily agree that manufacturing in the 1970s was horrible compared to present times. Of course, a big part of the reason for that was presumably lack of external competition in the 70s. If you say to Manufacturing Company X "don't worry about the European and Japanese manufacturers, they're not allowed bid on this" you are unlikely to get the same sort of quality than you'd get if they were. British car manufacturing is a nice example; in effect, the government forced consumers to buy the British manufacturers' output via protectionism. The result was _legendarily_ awful quality. And by the time the protectionism waned (when the UK joined the EU), it was too late; the industry was so used to not really having to compete that it just couldn't adapt to having to produce a good product, and largely collapsed.

OldHand2018 5y ago
> Of course, a big part of the reason for that was presumably lack of external competition in the 70s. If you say to Manufacturing Company X "don't worry about the European and Japanese manufacturers, they're not allowed bid on this" you are unlikely to get the same sort of quality than you'd get if they were. Yes! (And no). In the US, by 1970, foreign auto manufacturers had achieved a 10% market share, and it had been growing steadily since the mid 1960s. The Detroit manufacturers were fully aware of this, they just weren’t making changes. That was a time of great societal unrest and huge labor strife. It’s not hard to imagine the elites not wanting to save American manufacturing jobs or at least making them competitive.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  I'd argue that the gap between American and European/Japanese automakers was probably smaller than the gap between American and European/Japanese train manufacturers at the time, though. Also, it's probably far easier to justify inaction on cars because some of the things they're judged on are pretty subjective. A GM exec could plausibly have said something like "we don't need to increase reliability to match Japanese cars, because people don't want that sort of car here; they're too small/whatever". They'd have been wrong, as it turns out, but it wouldn't have been obvious nonsense. Whereas a train manufacturer exec wouldn't have had the same sort of arguments; they'd have _had_ to compete on the things railways care about, which are mostly just reliability.