Categories
Today

Fordism

In 1913, Ford Motor Company launched a new manner of production for the Model T: a continuously moving assembly line.

Earlier in the year, Ford employees had assembled magnetos using this technique, improving efficiency to a marked degree: “Instead of each worker assembling his own magneto, the assembly was divided into 29 operations performed by 29 men spaced along a moving belt,” explains History​.com. “Average assembly time dropped from 20 minutes to 13 minutes and soon was down to five minutes.”

The chassis was added on such a line on October 7, so that “all the major components of the Model T were being assembled using this technique,” which, when combined with high wages, came to be known as “Fordism.”

The consequence? A complete commercial success for Henry Ford, so much so that “by 1916 the price of the Model T had fallen to $360 and sales were more than triple their 1912 level. Eventually, the company produced one Model T every 24 seconds, and the price fell below $300.”

Categories
Update

$35.6 Trillion

Back in August, John Stossel had this to say about the Democratic candidate for the presidency:

Who is @KamalaHarris

She won’t do interviews with reporters now that she’s running for President. But she has a LONG track record. I dig through it here:

The real Kamala Harris is a big spender. The biggest!

And the context of her demands for increased spending is this: a $35.6 trillion debt.

For the latest debt numbers, click here.

Categories
Thought

Ursula K. Le Guin

If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there’s no way you can act morally or responsibly. Little kids can’t do it; babies are morally monsters — completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Magician,” an interview with The Guardian (2005).
Categories
Today

David Brin

On October 6, 1950, science fiction author David Brin was born.

Brin is the author of many novels, including Startide Rising and the very popular The Postman, a fix-​up set in a post-​apocalyptic America. He has also written a thought-​provoking book on privacy.

Categories
Update

FEMA Is Broke?

On Wednesday, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made headlines by saying that the federal government did not have enough funds to meet emergency needs through the hurricane season, which does not end with Helene.

Despite his careful wording, which acknowledged that it was the full hurricane season that was in doubt, but enough funds were on hand for the Helene disaster, Thursday’s assurances by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has the funds needed for ‘immediate response and recovery’ in the wake of Hurricane Helene’” were taken as a clarification. It was not. It was a mere restatement of Mayorkas’ initial point:

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas said. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”

President Joe Biden said Wednesday, Oct. 2, during a briefing that it will cost billions to recover from the storm and that Congress must ensure states have adequate resources. The funding shortage has led to outrage among Republicans.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded on X.

This is easy.
Mayorkas and FEMA — immediately stop spending money on illegal immigration resettlement and redirect those funds to areas hit by the hurricane.
Put Americans first.

Karah Rucker, “FEMA’s spending on hurricane disasters and migrants crisis under scrutiny,” Straight Arrow News, October 4, 2024.

Governor Abbott’s point was headlined with startling clarity by the editors of the New York Post: “Sorry, hurricane victims: Harris-​Biden already spent your relief funds on migrants.” Those editors also restated a point Paul Jacob made earlier last week: “But don’t expect any of this to rise to the PR disaster that Hurricane Katrina proved for the George W. Bush administration: Too much of the media is running interference for Harris ahead of Election Day.”

Categories
Thought

Benjamin R. Tucker

First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition. Land, tools, and all instruments of production must be wrested from individual hands, and made the property of the collectivity. To the individual can belong only the products to be consumed, not the means of producing them. A man may own his clothes and his food, but not the sewing-​machine which makes his shirts or the spade which digs his potatoes. Product and capital are essentially different things; the former belongs to individuals, the latter to society. Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must. Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle, though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc. The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official. Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves. Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself. Every man will be a wage-​receiver, and the State the only wage-​payer. He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison. All freedom of trade must disappear. Competition must be utterly wiped out. All industrial and commercial activity must be centered in one vast, enormous, all-​inclusive monopoly. The remedy for monopolies is monopoly.
Such is the economic programme of State Socialism as adopted from Karl Marx.

Benjamin R. Tucker, Liberty 5.16, no. 120 (March 10, 1888), pp. 2 – 3, 6.