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Yup. My grandfather worked for Zenith for 50 years, and he lived in Chicago, and was the head of quality control for factories that made TV’s that were literall

by CPLX 5y ago

Yup. My grandfather worked for Zenith for 50 years, and he lived in Chicago, and was the head of quality control for factories that made TV’s that were literally in Chicago. It seems inconceivable today but people in the US used to make consumer electronics. The fact that we don’t any more was a catastrophic policy decision not some kind of law of nature.

rasz 5y ago
Direct assault on the entire American electronics industry as a form of revenge for ww2. Frontline: Coming From Japan [The Fall Of The US Television Industry] (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c "September 30, 1990. HOW DID Japan destroy the American television industry? The secret history of that strategy reveals how Japanese manufacturers and the Japanese government first created an anti-competitive cartel ..." https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iVdEh3wdnXAJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/09/30/japan-and-the-big-squeeze/0fb1617e-8756-4390-a776-f1619d59869a/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iVdEh3...
dehrmann 5y ago
> The fact that we don’t any more was a catastrophic policy decision One effect of this is that the US and China are economically interconnected. It makes war a lot harder. It's why the EU is dragging its feet on oil and gas from Russia because that's the one Russian export they need.
- CPLX 5y ago
  Yes and our supply chain is a house of cards that was bound to melt down one day because of a shock and finally did. And the industrial base of the country's interior has endured two generations of economic collapse leading to widespread misery and political upheaval. The free trade and industrial policy decisions of the 90's and early 2000's will go down in history as era-defining mistakes in this county's political history.

by CPLX 5y ago

rasz 5y ago

Direct assault on the entire American electronics industry as a form of revenge for ww2. Frontline: Coming From Japan [The Fall Of The US Television Industry] (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c "September 30, 1990. HOW DID Japan destroy the American television industry? The secret history of that strategy reveals how Japanese manufacturers and the Japanese government first created an anti-competitive cartel ..." https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iVdEh3wdnXAJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/09/30/japan-and-the-big-squeeze/0fb1617e-8756-4390-a776-f1619d59869a/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iVdEh3...

dehrmann 5y ago

> The fact that we don’t any more was a catastrophic policy decision One effect of this is that the US and China are economically interconnected. It makes war a lot harder. It's why the EU is dragging its feet on oil and gas from Russia because that's the one Russian export they need.

CPLX 5y ago
Yes and our supply chain is a house of cards that was bound to melt down one day because of a shock and finally did. And the industrial base of the country's interior has endured two generations of economic collapse leading to widespread misery and political upheaval. The free trade and industrial policy decisions of the 90's and early 2000's will go down in history as era-defining mistakes in this county's political history.