32 ms·
300k airplanes in five years
- melling 2y agoHere’s a video about how China out produces the United States in ship building. https://youtu.be/tRVVXDyg3RY?si=Yin_cVGx57IHavUr https://youtu.be/tRVVXDyg3RY?si=Yin_cVGx57IHavUr
- encoderer 2y agoGermany grossly out-produced America — until America actually started trying.
- jononomo 2y agoWhat if China actually started trying? They have 3x the population that the US has.
- stanleykm 2y agoI don’t think you get it. It’s actually impossible for other countries to beat the US at anything.
- cpursley 2y agoSuperman Syndrome
- NotSammyHagar 2y agoYou must be making a sarcastic comment, right? Some people do honestly believe that because god is on 'our' side, the us and constitution were divinely motivated and everything in it was coming from god somehow. All the horrible justifications are still being made today about that stuff.
- Hayvok 2y agoPopulation is a single, low-resolution parameter into a theoretical ship-building-capacity equation, which really needs a basket of parameters. Raw resource availability, fuel capabilities, naval training, coastline details, etc. Great Britain historically had a fraction of the population of France and other European powers, but consistently out-produced the rest in ships and projecting naval power.
- HPsquared 2y agoChina produces 12 times as much steel as the US, per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoDuring a peacetime economy. Don't forget during war time, your factories are being bombed. You're pre-war numbers don't indicate what your war time numbers will be. China's manufacturing tends to be focused around the easter coast and it's rivers. The USAs is spread throughout the country. The USA is pretty good at setting up factories. My understanding is China is more into single large factories. The USA is a net exporter of oil (that greases the entire machine). China is an oil importer (not good when you country is being sieged during war).
- csomar 2y agoYou seem to be having a kind of a blind bias. You argue that during war time China will be less productive; and the opposite will be for the US: more productive. As if China can't target/hit back at the US. Both have massive geography and given that the US is likely the attacker, China only has to play defense. > The USA is a net exporter of oil (that greases the entire machine). China is an oil importer (not good when you country is being sieged during war). This seems to be their largest risk (if you are playing defense). They seem to be going crazy on solar though.
- 2y ago
- nickff 2y agoChina had an even bigger advantage in population in 1930 (~474:123MM). Population is one factor, but not a determinitive one.
- Jtsummers 2y agoMore like 4x, and closing in on 5x. And China has done a good job of tying many smaller nations, globally not just regionally, to themselves economically. That gives them an edge in terms of resource extraction where the US has been losing ground. It doesn't help that the US also sends many "waste" products to China like steel that could be processed and reused domestically. And then there's just the cluster fuck that is the US defense industry. Who could make aircraft for the US in mass numbers anymore? Boeing can't even figure out if they installed a few bolts, NG can't do basic maintenance without wrecking a plane, LM will get you your aircraft for 5x the initial estimate and a decade late.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> And China has done a good job of tying many smaller nations, globally not just regionally, to themselves economically. That gives them an edge in terms of resource extraction The US has the capacity, in the event of conflict, to nullify most if not all of the out-of-region advantage China has in resource extraction, unless China’s build up pre-conflict is sufficient to nullify the global force projection capacities provided by the US Navy and the US Air Force to which China currently has no equivalent or counter beyond its region. (The US usually presents these capacities as being oriented to protecting free resource flow in peacetime, but they can be directed at the opposite purpose equally well.)
- Jtsummers 2y agoPresently, yes. If China doesn't push too hard, though, they've got the right partnerships in place to start building out a global military presence under the same pretenses as the US within its partner nations' borders. Give it a decade (maybe less) of serious effort on their part and they could rival the US globally, not just regionally. If they decide to start a hot war (say by invading Taiwan) today, then it'd be catastrophic for them. Most of those partnerships would dry up (by being a good excuse to end a bad deal for the partner nations or by force from the US and other nations).
- NotSammyHagar 2y ago
- rsynnott 2y agoI mean, if there's a WW3 where winning is predicated on "who can make the most planes", then, eh, maybe that might be a relevant question. But that doesn't seem particularly likely; even if there were to be a WW3, it would probably not be a Plane-Building Olympics.
- NotSammyHagar 2y agoDrones and missiles will be perhaps the most important. One day it will be military robots. And guess who can makes the mass quantities of drones and missiles.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoThe USA would fight a standoff siege war with China, not a close in war when drones come into play. As to missiles, that's why the USA has developed the (chinese siege weapon named) Rapid Dragon system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)
- krisoft 2y ago> not a close in war when drones come into play What do drones mean to you? It sounds like you think it means “quadrocopter” when it is also used to describe RQ-4 Global Hawks and similar aircraft.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoI mean the discussion here is specifically referring to the drone China accells at (quadrocopter) versus the USA such as RQ-4s. So I am referring to what the discussion is talking about.
- krisoft 2y ago> So I am referring to what the discussion is talking about. That is why I am asking. Because it definietly sounds like you think the discussion is about quadrocopters and not say China building many WZ-7 Soaring Dragons. Is it possible that when the others said that china will build many drones they meant the second kind and not some toy copters? Because that would make their comments make sense.
- throwway120385 2y agoFor a more modern example, one of my former employers had to ramp by a couple of orders of magnitude to build ventilators during Covid-19. One of my former coworkers told me the story of having to go to Detroit and build a factory there, and how they were able to go from 10-20 a day to hundreds a day by hard work and know-how. The point I'm trying to make here is that the will to do this still exists in the US today and I have no doubt that if we as a country decided to enter a world war like WWII we would very quickly ramp. We certainly still have the culture and the resources to do it were we to discover the will.
- freshpretzels 2y agoOh yeah, if it became necessary all American muscle and might would get channeled into domination once again. America truly is a sleeping giant, and NATO more broadly is awakening already.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PreInternet01 2y ago[flagged]
- eastbound 2y agoChances that China is starting to build pretend-planes to be used as bombers for South-East Asia?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pvg 2y agoThat's not how they were built. The crews cost far more than the than the planes, on multiple axes.
- PreInternet01 2y agoSure. Suddenly the US puts a value on air crews (other than, of course, clapping for the survivors when they board a civilian plane).
- pvg 2y agoI’m not sure what that means. The claim that these planes were built for one way trips is just ahistorical and you can refute it for yourself with a google search.
- PreInternet01 2y ago[flagged]
- Teever 2y agoMaybe. But you[re missing the point. How many 'good enough' planes could we build in 5 years starting now, if we needed to?
- 2y ago
- ramesh31 2y agoThis will happen again with drones. No doubt China is watching Russia closely and ramping up their production. What we're seeing now with FPV and bomber quadcopters is literally the equivalent of WWI biplanes tossing grenades and mortar shells, which only took a decade to become long range strategic bombers dropping thousands of pounds. Once the production is in place, autonomous swarms are an inevitability. And we will be forced to match.
- NotSammyHagar 2y agoGreat observation. I have this idea (apparently semi-obvious based on this discussion) that if there is a future war with China (sure hope we can avoid it), in terms of production and technology, the US is in Germany's position and China is in the place of the US in WW2 parlance. There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though, with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce heterodoxical ideas. There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our current times in the US and the world, groups of countries pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries want their shot at power and riches too.
- marcosdumay 2y ago> Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty This has always been much more important than dead capital.
- NotSammyHagar 2y agoI think so too, but it doesn't seem like most people remember this.
- aidenn0 2y agoAnyone else feel like in today's world, China could do this better than the US?
- dzink 2y agoThey could, but China has to feed a Billion people through manufacturing and trade with foreign countries. To keep the peace, they dedicate a huge % of their military to internal policing. They have a soft influence policy vs the US hard, or their trade imbalance can turn violent.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoWhen I last visited China in 2002, the military was both a jobs program and involved in public works projects similar to the US Corps of Engineers but with higher priority.
- pie420 2y agoThis is every military in the history of the world.
- vkou 2y agoThe US military does not do a lot of domestic work, because it would undermine the private sector. It could, though, and it could do a lot of good. But it doesn't.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoSorry, but you're not making any argument or refutation with any sort of nuance. The Chinese military civic works and infrastructure development Bechtel look like 2 TaskRabbit helpers. USACE does a lot of good domestically and internationally, but it isn't even close. See also: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-xinjiang-border-india-military-airport-heliport/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-xinjiang-border-indi...
- rsynnott 2y agoHuh. There were _800k_ aircraft built during the war. Hadn't realised it was anything close to that. That's easily over a million pilots - how on earth did they train them all?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 2y agoNot all the aircraft built were used by the US: a sizable minority (18% according to one contemporary source [0]) were transferred (by sale or lend-lease) to other allies. [0] https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-13-how-shall-lend-lease-accounts-be-settled-(1945)/how-much-of-what-goods-have-we-sent-to-which-allies https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-hist...
- wffurr 2y agoQuickly and dangerously. There's an entire cemetery dedicated to RAF pilot cadets in Montgomery, Alabama killed during training at US airfields. * https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/622200 https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/622200 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Cemetery_(Montgomery,_Alabama) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Cemetery_(Montgomery,_...
- skullone 2y agoThat's sombering, words can't express the gravity of that war
- idontpost 2y ago[dead]
- janniehater 2y ago[dead]
- 2y ago
- bogtog 2y ago> Between 1939 and 1944, the value of aircraft produced annually in the U.S. increased by a factor of 70, and the total weight of aircraft produced (a common measure of aircraft industry output) increased by a factor of 64 Something about evaluating production quantity by weight always puts a smile on my face
- marcosdumay 2y agoJust like lines of code, it's a very useful metric. ... As long as you don't do something stupid with it, like using it to evaluate people.
- vkou 2y agoSomeone who successfully ran an organization that successfully delivered 70 4,000-tonne ships is probably more qualified to be put in charge of building an aircraft carrier, than someone who delivered 70 4,000-lb boats. When it comes to material goods that dramatically vary in size (ships, planes, bombs), tonnage is usually a good first metric.
- NegativeLatency 2y ago4000 70lb boats?
- cowgoesmoo 2y agoIt's hard to abuse for aircraft - you can't just strap a bunch of lead to a plane because then it won't fly.
- dylan604 2y agoWas that a requirement in the contract? Mine says just need to produce a certain number of planes. There's nothing in there that says the plane must be able to fly. If that's what you wanted, you should have stipulated that during negotiations. Remember, you picked fast and cheap.
- dr_dshiv 2y ago> As late as 1941, the U.K. was building more planes per year than the U.S. But by 1942, the U.S. was building roughly as many aircraft as Germany, Japan, the U.K. and Italy combined. Wow. Unbelievable
- kgeist 2y ago>It’s no secret that the Allies won World War II on the back of the U.S.’s enormous industrial output. The author ignores the USSR completely in their article, except for a brief mention in the graphs (where it's #2). 157k planes is impressive, too, considering that many of the factories had to evacuate to Siberia. 22k planes were also additionally leased by the US and the UK.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoIt definitely is, but the US' industrial output wasn't limited to just planes, and the USSR received a ton of supplies and equipment from the US to bolster its war machine.
- NotSammyHagar 2y agoThat's true, the ussr did some impressive things, and the millions of deaths they suffered fighting the germans in ww2 can't be forgotten, along with the impact of their weakening of the german forces over time.
- Koshkin 2y agoA 1000-mile “weakening”
- pie420 2y agoThe vast majority of the USSR factories were funded by american cash. Without the US, Germany wins WW2 handily. Without the USSR, the united states drops nukes on berlin in 1946 and handily wins ww2 by 1947.
- jltsiren 2y agoThose factories were paid with Soviet money, but many were built by Western companies in the 20s and 30s. Because apparently communism was not such a big deal after all, as long as you could benefit from it. Germany had already lost the war before Lend-Lease had a significant impact. The offensives of 1941 and 1942 failed before Western aid started arriving in significant quantities. The aid had much more impact on the Soviet offensive, particularly on the logistics side. It can be argued that Lend-Lease won Eastern Europe for the USSR. As far as I understand, there are two schools of thought on what would have happened without Lend-Lease. In one, the USSR would have won anyway, but the war would have lasted until 1946 or 1947 and it would have been even bloodier and more destructive. In another, the USSR would also have lost, and there would have been an uneasy peace between them and Germany. In both cases, I'd assume the US would not see the Continental Europe worth fighting for.
- photochemsyn 2y agoThis is a nice write-up, although it focuses solely on the US industrial output, which is indeed impressive, going from ~2,100 aircraft to ~50,000 in six years. However, that first table raises some questions - the Soviets were already at ~10,300 in 1939, and the Germans at ~8,200. How were they able to do it? One major influence is that American industrialists were busy expanding global markets and happily supplied their technology and manufacturing processes to the two major buyers, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, in the 1930s, with Ford being one of the major actors, perhaps more active in Germany: In Germany: > "Ford and the Führer: A History of Ford Motor Company's Involvement in Nazi Germany" by Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White: This work delves into Ford's business activities in Germany, documenting the introduction of assembly-line manufacturing and the company's interactions with the Nazi regime." > "The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich" by Max Wallace: This book explores the relationship between American industrialists like Henry Ford and the Nazi regime, including detailed accounts of Ford's manufacturing contributions." In Soviet Union: > "Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ): Built with the technical assistance of Ford, the Gorky Automobile Plant began producing vehicles using American-style assembly lines. Ford provided machinery, blueprints, and training to Soviet engineers and workers. Soviet engineers and technicians received training in Ford’s American factories, learning about assembly line production and modern manufacturing techniques." I don't know if there's a particular moral to this story, other than that in search of short-term profit major American industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers.
- fransje26 2y ago> other than that in search of short-term profit major American industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers And that has changed since then..?
- vkou 2y ago> the Soviets were already at ~10,300 in 1939, and the Germans at ~8,200. How were they able to do it? The US was pursuing a largely isolationist foreign policy, and was not investing in armaments. The USSR had, between 1917, and 1939: * Spent six years fighting an incredibly brutal and bloody civil war. * Was attacked by Poland in ~1920. * Spent another decade putting down various secession movements, mostly in central Asia. * Had multiple minor conflicts with China and Japan. * Was heavily involved in the Spanish Civil War. * Also needed a strong, standing army to put down any further internal resistance. * Could smell which way the wind was blowing, and was ready to capitalize on German's ambitions in Europe, by taking its chunk of Poland (And later invading Finland). Given all that, it was functioning on a war economy pretty much from ~1917 to 1941. (At which point it transitioned to a total war economy.) This was all in the context of a strong central push for mass industrialization. Steel production alone increased ~5x between 1930 and 1940. Up until the Nazis took power, the USSR worked very closely on both industrialization, and military armament with Weimar Germany. Krupp was building factories in the Don, and future Luftwaffe pilots were being trained in Lipetsk.
- simplicio 2y agoSort of interesting to compare the US experience in WWI, where a program to deliver 20k planes by the summer of July 1918 managed to get a whopping 196 planes into service before the war ended that November. http://www.worldwar1.com/tgws/relairprod.htm http://www.worldwar1.com/tgws/relairprod.htm
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoThe US was a place of hardworking, talented folks with natural geographical safety and a lot of resources. The only thing we need to do is stop anti competitive practices, break up monopolies, basically keep pure capitalism going.
- akira2501 2y agoWhat this article misses is that the US "private planes" were being sold directly to Japan and then being converted into military aircraft. What we didn't sell we licensed the designs directly to them. This went on well into the late 1930s. It was recognized as a potential problem by some but the profits were large enough that these were ignored. I encourage everyone to read the book "Human Smoke." It is a collection of headlines and newspaper excerpts from the period surrounding WW2. It's a fascinating read and wonderfully exposes all the propaganda driven half truths and complete fabrications we've sold ourselves about the conflict ever since it ended.
- Optimal_Persona 2y agoIn "Critical Path", Buckminster Fuller said that US scrap metal companies were furiously selling scrap to Germany & Japan in 1939 to capitalize on all-time high prices...
- JacobThreeThree 2y agoUkraine to this day still gets most of its gas and oil imports from Russia and also continues to transit Russian gas through pipelines to Europe.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoWeird, but there's probably good reasons. For one, EU countries that depend on Russian gas via Ukraine would stop their support of Ukraine if they were to stop the flow.
- dctoedt 2y ago> US scrap metal companies were furiously selling scrap to Germany & Japan in 1939 In Herman Wouk's novel The Winds of War, an admiral, aboard an aircraft carrier near Pearl Harbor in 1940 or -41, groused to his officers that (paraphrasing from memory) "sooner or later the [Japanese] are going to come steaming over the horizon, burning Texaco oil and shooting pieces of old Buicks at us."
- credit_guy 2y agoHere's an underappreciated fact of history: in WW1 the US was so ill prepared that it had to borrow rifles from France. People now take for granted that "the sleeping giant" was going to awake after being attacked. But in WW1 the US was also the largest economy in the world, and it did not transform overnight in a weapons manufacturing behemoth, like it did in WW2. If a conflict with China ever comes to pass, it is not at all predestined that the US will repeat its WW2 feat rather than its WW1 experience.
- treme 2y agohttps://www.csis.org/analysis/china-outpacing-us-defense-industrial-base https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-outpacing-us-defense-ind... China is heavily investing in munitions and acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the United States. China is also the world’s largest shipbuilder and has a shipbuilding capacity that is roughly 230 times larger than the United States. One of China’s large shipyards, such as Jiangnan Shipyard, has more capacity than all U.S. shipyards combined. "U.S. Defense Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China" https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-to-deter-conflict-with-China/ https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-t...
- atleastoptimal 2y agoI don’t understand why the US voluntarily gave up its significant advantage in manufacturing. Is it just because it would be impossible to have an industrial base in a world where Asia exists and can produce everything that could be built in the US for 1/5 the cost? In every universe where the US dollar is significantly stronger than the next greatest probable superpower, will that next greatest probable superpower always be in a perfect position to exploit this disparity and become the de facto world leader in heavy industry?
- lazide 2y agoIt’s very profitable having someone else make it for 1/5th the cost, and as long as it isn’t literally artillery and stuff, why not? Or are you saying people wouldn’t do something short sighted if it made them super rich in the meantime?
- dclowd9901 2y ago> The Vinson-Trammell Act limited profits on government contracts to just 12% (later reduced to 8%) What the actual _hell_ happened to this idea?
- Manuel_D 2y agoIt's still in force, unfortunately. Cost plus incentives unnecessarily expensive projects. If the government orders 100 planes and your profit is fixed at 8% of cost, do you want to build a $10 million dollar plane or a $20 million dollar plane?
- dclowd9901 2y agoPoignant. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
- matt3210 2y agoDon't forget that the armistice was just a pause for the new soldiers to grow up. Everybody knew WW2 was coming and was preparing for over 20 years.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> Don't forget that the armistice was just a pause for the new soldiers to grow up. The armistice was a pause for the peace treaty to be negotiated and signed. Now, if you think the Treaty of Versailles was intended as just a pause for new soldiers to grow up...I don't think that's particularly accurate for most signatories. Had it been, appeasement wouldn't have been tried.
- DeathArrow 2y ago>It’s no secret that the Allies won World War II on the back of the U.S.’s enormous industrial output. Now China is the country with the largest industrial output.
- torginus 2y agoIt's very weird to me that we could build airplanes at this scale almost a century ago, yet nowadays even the biggest airforces can barely field more than a tousand planes. It's not like those old machines were primitive, and there have been major breakthroughs in mass-manufacturing.
- bjord 2y agoI don't think they're limited to "a thousand planes," I think that's just all they need the capabilities of planes from ww2 and today are almost not worth comparing
- torginus 2y agoImo the Ukraine war has shown just how inadequate the (relatively large by modern standards) Russian airforce is at serving a front of WW2 proportions. The F-35 is on back-order to the mid 2030s. Even superpowers can't make more than tens of planes every year. It's just that the modern world is relatively peaceful, that's why they don't need more.
- pjc50 2y agoThere's some sort of r/k selection effect happening here; modern aircraft have been getting more and more sophisticated to improve survivability, which raises their cost, so there are fewer of them. Things like the stealth bombers are at the far end of that curve. (the logical end point of that thought process is some kind of Space Battleship Yamato scenario where the designers produce an "invincible" design, but only one of it. Hopefully real planners can be dissuaded from that nonsense, although the Axis were prone to this way of thinking)
- _xnmw 2y agoMeanwhile America is now struggling to produce something as simple as artillery shells, while Russia is producing 2-5 times the number produced by the entire US + EU combined. Sources: [1] https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artillery-shells-us-eu-see-different-results/392288/ https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artill... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery-shell-production-us-europe-ukraine/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery...
- immibis 2y agoCapitalism at work.
- _xnmw 2y agoSlavoj Žižek talks about "wartime communism", the tendency towards centralized control during extreme situations like a war or pandemic, because it is absolutely necessary for effective results at scale, when the problem is narrow and well-defined. Capitalism tends to do better at peace when there is no single fixed objective.
- Negitivefrags 2y agoI guess the market isn’t demanding a lot of mortar shells.
- pjc50 2y agohttps://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artillery-shells-us-eu-see-different-results/392288/ https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artill... makes it clear that's exactly what's happening in Europe: there's vague statements about demand, but not cash-up-front payments to make it actually happen. The economics and politics actually matter! The public do not want a war, and they do not like forseeing one, they want their own pricing issues dealt with, and they have power at elections. Whereas Russian and Chinese leaders can simply impose whatever level of hardship they need that doesn't provoke full scale open revolt and mass slaughter in their own streets.
- sumosudo 2y agoExcept The Red Army actually won WWII.
- aaa_aaa 2y agoWhat a waste.
- AlOwain 2y agoI don't know how; but I find that you said that ingenious. This comment section is full of touting it as a positive (somehow?) and being pessimistic about U.S. capabilities today in comparison to China. No one seems to mention that all this is unnecessary wastefulness. World hunger would have been solved decades earlier had they not hindered the productive output of those folk expended on such wastefulness.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI will say, that I live on Long Island, which was a major industrial area, during WWII. We enjoy one of the highest cancer rates in the world. All those factories used to dump their waste into our aquifers.
- pulkitsh1234 2y agoFactorio IRL The post has one interesting resource that can become a bottleneck: people, what if there is a mod where you need to find and employ aliens to run your production line? Maybe some of the aliens will choose to work in factories instead of attacking you..
- openasocket 2y agoI haven’t finished the article yet, so I’m not sure if this is brought up. But I’m always amazed by how much government control there was in mobilizing the US economy for WW2. Factories were converted to producing war goods overnight. From Pearl Harbor to Japans surrender, the US produced less than 200 commercial cars! The amount of centralized government control during this period was astounding. It makes you wonder if that would be possible in the US today. Not just would the American people tolerate this kind of drastic change, but whether the modern economy and supply chains could support these kinds of sudden, drastic re-directs
- hn8305823 2y agoYes, they would tolerate it. Both because of the Government's monopoly on violence, and because citizens always rally to support a war when under direct attack. The latter effect was popularized by Randolph Bourne in an essay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randolph_Bourne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randolph_Bourne > the phrase "war is the health of the state" that laments the success of governments in arrogating authority and resources during conflicts. The problem the US might have in full war mobilization today would be due to cronyism. Remember all of the exceptions to Covid lockdowns for "essential" employees? Some of that is of course necessary but I suspect it would be very widespread if it happened today. This would stoke resentment from people/companies not so privileged.
- dmix 2y agoOne thing about these sorts of gov run industry things is that when it works it almost always coincides with great national urgency where you get total civilian/private industry buy in. Everyone points to NASA in the 60s as a perfect example of gov production but like all newly formed bureaucracies they are largely the sum of the people they recently absorbed into it. NASA mined all the universities and nerds from private industry who brought their work patterns, leadership, and attitudes to the organization. But as these orgs age it’s the classic Iron Rule story of managers taking over and accountants ruining things etc etc. Maybe we need to move away from monolithic mega gov orgs and create new ones to solve new problems each generation instead of being catch alls that do nothing well and never face any risk of being replaced. There needs to be ways to breed new life and kill off the natural development of bad management and crippling rulemaking.
- consp 2y agoI could not find it in the article and here but i wonder how much not getting the factories bombed helped with this.
- freshpretzels 2y agoTime to produce 300k F-35s and a much larger Navy.