Why we can't build sh#t

For well over two years, Canadian officials, from the PM to various senior ministers to the top guns in the Canadian Armed Forces, have been blowing smoke up Zelensky’s arse about standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes with whatever it takes. The pathetic reality is, aside from words of encouragement, we ain’t got nothin’ in quantities that will make a difference, and we can’t produce anything because we’ve spent the past fifty years destroying our own industrial capacity. Compare that to what we used to be capable of. During the WWII, Canada built over 4,000 naval vessels in five years, with a population of roughly a quarter of what we have now. Contrast that to our current shipbuilding prowess. In 2008 the federal government announced a plan to replace the Halifax-class frigates built in the ‘80s and ‘90’s. It’s now 2024 – WWII could have been fought three times over in that span! How many of the new ships have been built? Why, none, of course! And don’t get your hopes up about seeing any until at least the mid 2030s, more likely the 2040s – if we’re lucky. So what went wrong? There’s a fascinating essay on view at The Atlantic right now, exploring the demise of Boeing. The iconic American company has gone from the pinnacle of the global aviation industry to a laughing stock whose products have become know for dropping random parts from 30,000 feet, or worse. Jerry Useem pins the blame on how finance capital has gradually subsumed the economy. Old-school industrialists like Walter Chrysler, Henry Ford, and Bill Boeing eventually were supplanted by a managerial class that put quarterly profits above any and all other considerations. That was part of a broader shift in societal attitudes. In the ‘50s the US had a top marginal tax rate on high earners of 90%. Seems outrageous by today’s standards, but there were jobs aplenty, people who worked in factories could afford to buy houses and cars, and rich people were still rich, although not by the obscene standards that prevail today. Manufacturers took pride in building stuff that worked well and lasted. In those days the guy who designed a washing machine that lasted twenty years was celebrated. Today the ethos is; only an idiot would build such a thing when you can push a new one on the consumer every five years. The old-timey “social contract” was jettisoned along the way. Employers were responsible only to their share-holders and had no obligations whatsoever to the communities they operated in. “Free trade” ramped up the disintegration. Why pay a worker in Guelph twenty bucks an hour when a peon in Guadalajara will do the job for twenty bucks a week? Along the way the working classes were bamboozled into believing our “dirty industrial jobs” would be replaced by some “new economy” that would “lift all boats,” as the experts assured us. We’re still waiting. War on unions became a fashionable thing. Thatcher took on the mine-workers. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Peter Pocklington destroyed the union at Gainers. In every case the destroyers were celebrated in the pages of our leading media organs. Fuck the workers – they’ll drink themselves to death soon enough! Fast-forward to the here-and-now. Zelensky’s standing at the door with his begging bowl. The war we goaded him into has, at horrific costs in human lives, demonstrated the bankruptcy of our new and improved economic model. The Russians alone have greater industrial capacity than the combined West. The $90 billions congress just approved isn’t going to Ukraine; it’s going to the US military-industrial complex, there to be pissed away on $6k artillery shells the Russians produce for $600, and their North Korea allies for even less. That, in brief, is how we got here. The lesson is this; countries that deindustrialize would be wise to avoid industrial-scale warfare.