5 ms·

I'm always amazed by the quality and craft of works produced in the periods before roughly the 1960s. Not sure what changed so drastically about society around

I'm always amazed by the quality and craft of works produced in the periods before roughly the 1960s. Not sure what changed so drastically about society around that time to make modern times so wasteful, slow, expensive, and unambitious but if we could go back, I would

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I have my theories, but it's probably best that I keep them to myself, and do my best on my projects.
vundercind 2y ago
Professional management class. Various major reforms toward “more efficient” management, first in manufacturing and such, then applied to knowledge work. Reduced specialization when it comes specifically to bureaucratic tasks in white collar work (everyone’s their own secretary, among other things, now—even doctors) [edit] anecdotally, as related by people who watched the transition happen, one of the things this new management culture screwed up was management itself, especially lower and middle management. There used to be a gradient of how much time managers spent in meetings with peers and higher-ups, with the lowest ones doing very little of that and mostly focusing on the needs of their subordinates and keeping things running well—after the shift, all levels of management got sucked into a culture of meetings, meetings, meetings, most of them very low-value. Posturing and politics soaked down into lower levels of organizations so-afflicted to a much more extreme degree than before.
- wslh 2y ago
  Are there good historical references of the inflection point you talk about? Thanks!
  - seb1204 2y ago
    Yes indeed I would like to learn more about this too, this historic image of the first managers.
121789 2y ago
Cheaper labor, less opportunity to have negative impact, and you’re also probably biased and not looking for the projects that failed
MattGaiser 2y ago
Survivorship bias. Plenty of failures, incompetence, corruption, and stupidity before. But it fades into history.
ip26 2y ago
There were supposedly 400,000 people behind Apollo 11. I bet you could make some pretty high quality, well crafted stuff today as well, if you had nearly half a million people devoting their lives to building one thing. Nvidia: 26,000 people TSMC: 73,000 Intel: 124,000 AMD: 25,000 Qualcomm: 50,000 ASML: 42,000 So, in terms of manpower, the entire global semiconductor industry might be comparable scale.
- fy20 2y ago
  Maybe a better comparison is SpaceX. In 2022 they had around 12,000 people.
  - seb1204 2y ago
    At least space X is producing something. How useful their products are is a subject of debate but in my opinion much higher ranked than meeta who die yet another screen glueing, mind numbing, radicalising add network. What has meta ever done for us?
    - Intralexical 2y ago
      What would it take to convince Meta to pivot into aqueduct-building?
- bombcar 2y ago
  With about 400,000 people you could make … Target, Home Depot, or United Healthcare.
octopoc 2y ago
It's not just the quality and craft of works. Worker's pay didn't increase but productivity did, the wealthy have become ever wealthier, the bottom 90% of earners stopped doing better off, etc. etc. It's kind of crazy how so many measures have gotten steadily worse since then[1]. [1] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
- lolinder 2y ago
  An interesting thing about those charts is that most of them start during the 40s, but the ones that don't ("income concentration at the top" and "income share at the top") pretty clearly show that the 30s–70s was the anomaly and we've just reverted to the pre-Great Depression status quo. A more illuminating question might be "wtf happened in the 1940s and how can we get back there short of another total war?"
  - seb1204 2y ago
    One view is that after the war people had a lot of new technologies and knowledge but nothing else, as it was destroyed during the war or all drilled to support the war machine. Since the knowledge was there and also a lot of level plain field (pun intended) new visions were developed to rebuild and put people to work. Nowadays most people have most necessities and also luxury stuff making it easy to be on the nimby train rather than developing a small understanding for the complexities of our current world and what decisions can be simple but impactful.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    FDR Wouldn't you know it, adding a little socialism to free market capitalism is insanely effective... Another thing people don't seem to recognize, after both world wars the west basically dismantled all proprietary IP from Germany and gave it away for free. This affected everything and anything that was patented. It was as if the entirety of science development for several decades was open sourced. And it was glorious and literally minted a golden age for about 30 years.
marshray 2y ago
* Postwar surplus of machine tools and experience with metal manufacturing processes. * Lack of injection-molded thermoplastic suitable for much more than toys. * Relatively high labor costs may have reduced incentives to save money on materials. * Consumers accustomed to paying higher prices for manufactured goods with the expectation that they would be repairable and last a long time. * Tube-based electronics tended to require high voltages and heavy transformers or batteries. This dictated the form of the enclosure (metal or wood) and its usage (non-portable). For example, radios made for consumers would typically be incorporated into furniture.
justin66 2y ago
> I'm always amazed by the quality and craft of works produced in the periods before roughly the 1960s. Yeesh. This statement is not defensible. The fifties-era cookie cutter houses were pretty bad (but at least they moved past using coal and gaslight and knob and tube wiring and so on). The quality of passenger cars has only ever trended upward, with a dip during the combined energy crunch and inflation of the seventies that was remedied pretty quickly. The sixties ushered in the era of solid-state consumer electronics.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> always amazed by the quality and craft of works produced in the periods before roughly the 1960s Survivorship bias. I have a 19th century Eerie Company cast iron pan. It’s beautiful. It is not representative of most cast iron of the era. We can cast far better iron today, we just don’t devote those production processes to making pans.
chis 2y ago
My theory is that capitalism wasn't quite as sophisticated and globalized yet, so an important project could collect literally the top 100 engineers in a field together. It's also back in a time when working for the government was a prestigious job that paid top of field. Additionally the U.S. had probably better education and a stronger work culture. When only 5% of your country goes to college the classes can move really fast.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

I have my theories, but it's probably best that I keep them to myself, and do my best on my projects.

vundercind 2y ago

Professional management class. Various major reforms toward “more efficient” management, first in manufacturing and such, then applied to knowledge work. Reduced specialization when it comes specifically to bureaucratic tasks in white collar work (everyone’s their own secretary, among other things, now—even doctors) [edit] anecdotally, as related by people who watched the transition happen, one of the things this new management culture screwed up was management itself, especially lower and middle management. There used to be a gradient of how much time managers spent in meetings with peers and higher-ups, with the lowest ones doing very little of that and mostly focusing on the needs of their subordinates and keeping things running well—after the shift, all levels of management got sucked into a culture of meetings, meetings, meetings, most of them very low-value. Posturing and politics soaked down into lower levels of organizations so-afflicted to a much more extreme degree than before.

wslh 2y ago
Are there good historical references of the inflection point you talk about? Thanks!
- seb1204 2y ago
  Yes indeed I would like to learn more about this too, this historic image of the first managers.

121789 2y ago

Cheaper labor, less opportunity to have negative impact, and you’re also probably biased and not looking for the projects that failed

MattGaiser 2y ago

Survivorship bias. Plenty of failures, incompetence, corruption, and stupidity before. But it fades into history.

ip26 2y ago

There were supposedly 400,000 people behind Apollo 11. I bet you could make some pretty high quality, well crafted stuff today as well, if you had nearly half a million people devoting their lives to building one thing. Nvidia: 26,000 people TSMC: 73,000 Intel: 124,000 AMD: 25,000 Qualcomm: 50,000 ASML: 42,000 So, in terms of manpower, the entire global semiconductor industry might be comparable scale.

fy20 2y ago
Maybe a better comparison is SpaceX. In 2022 they had around 12,000 people.
- seb1204 2y ago
  At least space X is producing something. How useful their products are is a subject of debate but in my opinion much higher ranked than meeta who die yet another screen glueing, mind numbing, radicalising add network. What has meta ever done for us?
  - Intralexical 2y ago
    What would it take to convince Meta to pivot into aqueduct-building?
bombcar 2y ago
With about 400,000 people you could make … Target, Home Depot, or United Healthcare.

octopoc 2y ago

It's not just the quality and craft of works. Worker's pay didn't increase but productivity did, the wealthy have become ever wealthier, the bottom 90% of earners stopped doing better off, etc. etc. It's kind of crazy how so many measures have gotten steadily worse since then[1]. [1] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

lolinder 2y ago
An interesting thing about those charts is that most of them start during the 40s, but the ones that don't ("income concentration at the top" and "income share at the top") pretty clearly show that the 30s–70s was the anomaly and we've just reverted to the pre-Great Depression status quo. A more illuminating question might be "wtf happened in the 1940s and how can we get back there short of another total war?"
- seb1204 2y ago
  One view is that after the war people had a lot of new technologies and knowledge but nothing else, as it was destroyed during the war or all drilled to support the war machine. Since the knowledge was there and also a lot of level plain field (pun intended) new visions were developed to rebuild and put people to work. Nowadays most people have most necessities and also luxury stuff making it easy to be on the nimby train rather than developing a small understanding for the complexities of our current world and what decisions can be simple but impactful.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  FDR Wouldn't you know it, adding a little socialism to free market capitalism is insanely effective... Another thing people don't seem to recognize, after both world wars the west basically dismantled all proprietary IP from Germany and gave it away for free. This affected everything and anything that was patented. It was as if the entirety of science development for several decades was open sourced. And it was glorious and literally minted a golden age for about 30 years.

marshray 2y ago

* Postwar surplus of machine tools and experience with metal manufacturing processes. * Lack of injection-molded thermoplastic suitable for much more than toys. * Relatively high labor costs may have reduced incentives to save money on materials. * Consumers accustomed to paying higher prices for manufactured goods with the expectation that they would be repairable and last a long time. * Tube-based electronics tended to require high voltages and heavy transformers or batteries. This dictated the form of the enclosure (metal or wood) and its usage (non-portable). For example, radios made for consumers would typically be incorporated into furniture.

justin66 2y ago

> I'm always amazed by the quality and craft of works produced in the periods before roughly the 1960s. Yeesh. This statement is not defensible. The fifties-era cookie cutter houses were pretty bad (but at least they moved past using coal and gaslight and knob and tube wiring and so on). The quality of passenger cars has only ever trended upward, with a dip during the combined energy crunch and inflation of the seventies that was remedied pretty quickly. The sixties ushered in the era of solid-state consumer electronics.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> always amazed by the quality and craft of works produced in the periods before roughly the 1960s Survivorship bias. I have a 19th century Eerie Company cast iron pan. It’s beautiful. It is not representative of most cast iron of the era. We can cast far better iron today, we just don’t devote those production processes to making pans.

chis 2y ago

My theory is that capitalism wasn't quite as sophisticated and globalized yet, so an important project could collect literally the top 100 engineers in a field together. It's also back in a time when working for the government was a prestigious job that paid top of field. Additionally the U.S. had probably better education and a stronger work culture. When only 5% of your country goes to college the classes can move really fast.