h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Pinniped-
Goodness. There's a lot of points to address in your post!

About Nantucket community and Quaker ethics, to start. I think it is sometimes surprising to realize that early American economics was so grounded in religious belief. Quaker morals are much more passive and accepting than others, but at the same time, there is a feeling of moral superiority. Also, to, when one's life is so bound by strictures of living in an upright manner (no drinking, carousing, etc), at some point, all of that energy has to go somewhere, and it goes into commerical enterprises. The men went out on the boats for long stretches of time because they had to... they saw it as part of their moral imperative, to take what God had given them and improve it. Quakers, among others, are *very* big on the whole caretakers-of-the-earth thing. Which is why, to this day, so many of them are environmental activists.

Being good caretakers also means that they need to provide for their families, which were often quite large, so the acquisition of goods and land was more of a trust fund than anything else.

As far as Saddam being smarter than Bush....my cat is smarter than Bush. The man is a used-car-saleman redneck who just happened to luck into the presidency, mostly because Ralph Nader stole Gore's votes (not that Gore would have been any better, mind you).

You said something about the US being isolationist for so much of it's history. What I find ironic is that it's only been since WW II that we've NOT been isolationist. Part of that may very well come from the mental picture we created of ourselves after "saving" Europe from Hitler. Although Manifest Destiny really did occur before this....

Wo MR-and-FG-both!

Isn't it a shame you can only type so fast? So much to say...

Anyway, I only put in the Pilgrim Fathers reference out of (misguided) deference to what I took to be the prevalent American view. I notice from my kids' text-books that British schools now teach the colonization of America as an extended process with many protagonists, in which the Mayflower gets scant mention. Not what was taught in my day, but maybe right, it seems.

Shame you missed out on the Romans, really. All those nice straight roads, etc. You could see where they'd been, and it's pretty obvious they made a difference.

The Quakers as nature-loving was part of what I found ironic. Whale-hunting is pretty much a global benchmark for environmentally-irresponsible behaviour, and there was nothing very sanitised about the nineteenth-century version. It would need a hard heart to do what they did, a couple of dozen times a tour.

OK, less of that - let's jump forward and get industrial. (Pinniped shows his true colours, very predominantly grey). Either of you got an opinion about Frederick W. Taylor and Scientific Management?

First, I must address the question of whaling. Here's where population growth and industrialization combine to create an environmental and conservation nightmare. The Nantucket whalers did NOT get dozens of whales. One whale, perhaps two, in a month. And unlike commerical whaling now, the WHOLE whale was used. The skins were used to make waterproof clothing, the blubber was melted down for use in lighting, preserving, and lubrication. The baleen was used for decorative purposes and making various utensils (a baleen spoon is pretty indestructible), and the meat was eaten. We're not talking about wholesale slaughter of pods and pods of whales here. Yes, they were out for long stretches of time, but that was because they were following the pods, and manual harpooning is no easy task. There's a difference between doing what you can to survive, and killing to provide expensive delicacies for the elite.

You'll have to refresh my memory on Taylor....for some reason, I always get him mixed up with Fredrick Jackson Turner.

You forgot about the ambergris used as a fixative in perfume, MR...

Scientific management, and correct me if I'm wrong, Pinniped, was part and parcel of the Industrial Revolution. It was born in the late 19th Century as part of a larger look at labor efficiency. The goal was to create an assembly line (though that did not come about fully until Henry Ford's auto plants) made of humans. An efficiency expert would be hired by your company--say, a harness factory--and he would observe you at your job. He would then determine, after study of each worker and how long it took for them to do their tasks, how long it *should* take per movement and what your output really *should* be. The worker was reduced from craftsman--creating an entire object such as the harness again--to a cog in the machine. Each worker would only work on one portion of the whole; you do the leather part, I do a hinge, he does something else. If products were efficiently made, then the employer saves (and gets to keep more of the profits) money. The added bones is that you no longer have skilled workers, cause they only know how to do one thing. Therefore, wages can be driven down, you can hire unskilled workers, and unskilled works are less likely to unionize.

The added *bonus*, I should have said...

I hope this is correct, P.

While I am thinking about it, scientific management--and, let's face it--the whole ethos of Corporate America beginning with J.P. Morgan's US Steel and John Rockefeller's oil trusts, would not have come about without the Victorian corruption of Darwin's theories. Social Darwinism was responsible for much of the classist laws, abuses, and culture of early industrial America.

Ah, okay. Thank you for the reminder, FG. I think you *are* correct (fancy that).

Mmmm...

I'm not looking for an argument, but I think you're going to find that New England whalers did get pretty industrial. Their highest annual kill was 6,700+ sperm whales in 1837, compared with a highest-ever world figure of just under 30,000 in 1964. Between 1804 and 1876, they killed 225,000 according to their own records, reducing the world population over that period by an estimated 75%. No-one else was in this league till post-war Japan, and some of today's scapegoats (Iceland, for example) never have been. By the 1830s, single Nantucket whaleboats were returning 2000 barrels of oil per tour, with the prime stuff cracked out of the whales' skulls and supplemented by rendering from blubber using purpose-designed on-board tryworks. Most of these whales were taken in the Pacific, twenty or more per tour, and there was no chance of using the rest of the beast in the way you describe. They couldn't even get the carcass (typically 60 tonnes) on board - they lashed it to the side and tore at it with hooks, winding the flesh off in strips and detaching only the valuable head. Except for oil and ambergris from the lower intestine, everything else was dumped back into the sea.
The version you describe was the early years in the North Atlantic, MR. They had to move on from there, because they depleted the whales close to home.
It was a terribly hard life, of course - harder in fact than the one you describe. I don't belittle it; it amazes and impresses me, but I couldn't get sentimental about it. You've read Moby Dick, I guess? That was it. That's what this community was like, surely?

As for Taylor, I think we're going to differ over him too, but I'll work on that one. Bethlehem Steel at the beginnining of the 20thC, for all its present-day tribulations, has a claim to be the Foundry of the Modern World. On the more general point, you mustn't try to have it both ways. You can't enjoy the largesse of the modern USA and deplore exploitation by corporations, because they made the place what it is. America, more so perhaps even than Britain, was built on exploitation. Without it, your country would be...well...a bit to the south of Canada.

P.

Certainly the US was built on exploitation. However, I believe it was a Brit who wrote the treatise from which that exploitation took off like a rocket. Before The Wealth of Nations, the exploitation was confined to land-grabbing, and of course, *that* aspect has continued.

It was only when the idea that something *other* than land was found to be valuable that mass exploitation took place. When people were found to be commodities, and social cohesion, built on shared ethnic background, religious beliefs, or other "communal" values began to be replaced by the marketplace that you see exploitation on the massive scale practiced by the US in the 19th century.

And I must say that I disagree that that US was "perhaps more" exploitative than Britain. Britain, and certainly Great Britain (the UK, etc) was founded on the exploitation of non-British indigenous peoples all over the world, and on the repression of the Irish. A prime example would be Australia, where the indigenous tribes were nearly wiped out by disease, family separation, and massive repression by the white settlers (although what happened in Australia is eerily similar to what happened in the US with the native american population). Other examples include India, Canada, and hell, the US in earlier times. The Boston Tea Party was not some petty complaint about the cost of tea, for heaven's sake. It was about the whole of the Townsend Acts, and Parliment's refusal to allow the US to develop its own industry. Maybe part of the US's problem stems from that original subservient position....once the US won out from under Britain's rule, it refused to allow any sort of outside rule, even from the UN.

And honestly, can either country not take some responsibility for what has happened in the Middle East? Both the US and Britain have exploited the hell out of the region. Okay, I will grant that the US uses more oil, but then again, the whole of the UK fits into 4 western states here with room to spare. We have a population that I think is more than double Britain's.

(Some of this is pure devil's advocacy, you know!)

Don't worry - I just love Devil's Advocacy!

I like the point about Adam Smith. I once saw a play in Uni days, where a series of historical characters appeared and complained how they'd been stitched up by history. Adam Smith and Albert Einstein were among the self-proclaimed wronged individuals who consoled each other that someone else had done it, but you could tell they were all wracked by guilt really.

Brits tend to claim that all the profound ideas of the late 18thC were ours. The fledgling US can be fairly-plausibly characterised as a Utopian Project for a loose collective of radical British libertarian intellectuals. Yeah, I thought that one would rankle . While we're at it, the population difference is more than four-to-one.

On relative exploitation - I concede readily that Britain's has been worse in absolute terms. The hardest question for the US is maybe not how much but WHEN it did its exploiting. Britain has the European "excuse" that its social morality grew out of the anything-goes Dark Ages, and that it gradually learned to be civilised and just, in little steps, more or less always going forward.
The charge for the USA to answer is that it came into being with high moral principles, constitutionally enshrined, and then proceeded to backslide on them. It's arguably still doing so.
I'll suggest examples if you like, but first I wanted to offer the general point to chew on.

There's a point beyond this that I really believe though, and it's a view that all my US friends seem to miss by a distance on one side or the other. The conservatives should be more contrite; the liberals should be more pragmatic. The modern US was built on exploitation, sure, and it was a tremendous success. The modern country is the envy of the world. The price was worth paying overall, but it was worth paying in order to arrive here today, not to get stuck back there.

Responsibility for the Middle East? Sure, we've all got some. Four out of five of the UN Security Council had a hand in the foul-up (we probably can't pin this one on China). But again, responsibility is measured by the ability to change things TODAY. It's a long-dead Britain/France/Russia that spoiled the region. Rather like the previous point, it's present-day America that's arguably destabilising the situation.

Another "four out of five" disaster-area is instructive. All world superpowers suffer the occasional chastening experience of watching a colonial project disintegrate. Of the Big 5, it was like that for France in Vietnam. They accepted it with a Gallic shrug, but the US seem to have taken a "never again" stance over the snub.

This essentially American mindset is the real danger in the Middle East. This time it's Israel, of course, that's the doomed project. The eventual dissolution of the State of Israel is probably inevitable. It's how we all get there : how fast, how equitably, how violently, that ultimately counts in this pragmatic, diplomatic world.

What do you think? And remember, just like you, I didn't say a lot of this. It was him >>>>

Okay, I will give you the point about the US backsliding on high morals. We want everyone to have democracy, blah, blah, blah, and yet, we're actually a republic, so how's that one for you?

As to the conservative/ liberal problem, I'll offer this example of how they don't need to be contrite/pragmatic, they just need to be realistic (both sides). In 2000, around a million acres of the Bitterroot National Forest burned down. (Why is a whole 'nother story!) In a forest fire, some trees burn completely, but many burn only on one side, or the top, etc, so there's lots and lots of trees which, if left standing, will simply die and turn into more tinder for the next fire. The Forest Service decided hey! Let's kill a couple of birds with one stone here. We'll have a timber sale, sell the timber, make some money, and get the potential deadwood cleared out, and, on top of it, supply loggers with jobs and ourselves with some real forest management, so that the next time there's a fire here, it won't be so insanely bad. We're taking a tenth of what had burned, mind you.

Good idea, right? Well, the environmentalists didn't think so! They fought the cutting tooth and nail, protesting, damaging logging equipment, suing in federal court....you name it, they did everything to block it. When a logger took six trees (six!) that were not part of a very small logging operation, they sued to get the trees destroyed. These trees had already been cut, and the logger, in an effort to appease them, offered to have the wood made into boards at his own expense and donate them to Habitat for Humanity, a charity that builds homes for low-income families. The environmentalists said NO!

On the other side of this was the all-out, log it bare group, made up of loggers and republican lawmakers (including the governor).

I know, I know, what does a bunch of hippies protesting logging in Montana have to do with American foreign policy? But it has everything to do with it. Politics in the US are dominated by extreme right and extreme left groups. There is NO middle ground, NO common sense, and NO compromise. Senators who say they are for peace initiatives vote against those same initiatives simply because the other party put them forward. On the rare occasions that a bill is introduced by a bi-partisan commission, 9 times out of ten, it gets rejected. No one gives a rat's ass what's good for the people, they just vote against things. When John McCain and Russell Feingold introduced a bill to reduce campaign spending contributions from special interest groups, like insurance companies, industrialists, the pharmaceutical companies, etc., Congress nearly flipped its lid.

America is a bundle of contradictions, which I think is based on the fact that we have ONLY two parties (the green party, although it sometimes has a candidate for president, is not really an option), and everything is oppositional. That internal conflict spills over into our foreign dealings, as well. There's an us against them mentality....the US vs. everyone else. Part of that, I think, is that we are, as one country, the size of Europe as a whole. You can get to France in a day, or Germany, or Italy in a couple of hours by plane. In the US, it takes 5 hours to fly, non-stop, from one side of the country to the other. The sheer size of the US makes it feel alone. Australia is a continent, sure, but it would still fit pretty comfortably into the Midwest, although part of it might hang over into southern Canada.

What all of this boils down to is that internally, we are so large, and so conflicted, that when it comes to foreign policy, there's a mental game we play. You know how it's easier to fix your friend's lousy life, rather than deal with your own problems? Well, that's how the US works.

Also, too, I think a lot of the current bullying we're doing in the middle east is a desperate ploy by Bush (Shrub) to take the American people's mind off the sliding stock market, the crappy economy, and the ever-expanding corporate scandal.

Re the US and Viet Nam. We'd never lost a war before. All of Europe had lost wars before, to Napoleon, or Claudius, or Caesar, or the Borgias (in Italy pre 1860), or Hitler. The US, in almost 200 years, had kicked everyone's ass, and man, that was a hard lesson to learn. Which is why, until 1991, and Kuwait, all we ever did is lightning raids, or trained others how to do it....but our Central American fiasco is, again, a whole nother thing. And what Europeans tend to forget is that, frankly, in less that 225 years, we've come a damned long way. It took Germany a thousand years to get itself back together, and given what England, or France, was like when it was 200 years old, I think we've done exceptionally well.

The forest story's astonishing. Black/white thinking is certainly one of American society's weaknesses. I've never heard anything quite so extreme before, though.

<> There's a lot in that. And in the world of political posturing it's easier to look decisive and in-charge if you act that way, particularly when your audience aren't inclined to look too hard at what's really happening next-door.

You could be right about Bush's Middle East motivation. What surprises me is that, having squeezed in with such a blatant one-termer, the GOP itself hasn't got a solid alternative lined up. For that matter, why aren't the Democrats pushing a new man, when it seems that Gore is just about the only person imaginable who'd look inadequate when set alongside the present incumbent?

Perhaps the US has managed to create the ultimate political nightmare - that it's become impossible for an intelligent, remotely-sophisticated, controversial and appropriately-motivated individual to get elected. (Wash your mouth out, Pin)

The British experience is telling. After a decade of faceless PM's, we suddenly found we'd elected Thatcher. Many, many people both loathed and admired her, at one and the same time. She took charge; she always had a view, usually radical, and she always tried to push it through. Sometimes the results were catastrophic, sometimes there was a kind of "scorched-earth" outcome that gave us a much-needed fresh start, sometimes she just did the obvious that was nonetheless supposed to be electoral suicide. It was as if she cared about something more than re-election, which is maybe why she got re-elected more times consecutively than anyone since the 1820s. Regardless of politics, Britons were persuaded that no-one else but Thatcher could do the job.

Then she fell, toppled by intriguers within her own party, and we got Major. For a very brief period, Conservative Britain seemed to believe that Thatcher's project had run to completion, and that Grey John was the perfect, affable guy to preside sagely over the stable outcome of Thatcher's travails. But you know what happens when you take your foot off the gas. Within months, everybody personally knew someone who could do the job better.

Now we have Blair. His talent is seeming normal and statesmanlike at the same time. He doesn't get his hands dirty, though, not like Thatcher.

If the Brits were the US electorate, Bush (and Gore for that matter) could never have run in the first place. We seemed to quite like Carter, tolerated Bush Mk I and Clinton, stared in pure horror at most of the others. Of the present halfway-plausible crop, we'd probably gravitate to Powell, who exudes something like the combination of humility and strong-mindedness that generally sells well over here.

Go on, then. Who will, and who should, be the next President of the United States?

That's the easiest question you've asked! If we wanted someone intelligent, compassionate, and strong, we would have made John McCain, a senator from Arizona, the candidate over Bush. He votes with his conscience, often across party lines, and is one of the most solid citizens you'd ever want to meet. He is one of the sponsors of last year's campaign finance reform bill (which, sadly, was passed in a much watered-down form), and even has clout with the military hawk types, as he was a "guest" in the Hanoi Hilton for 5 years (the Hanoi Hilton was a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam....he had every finger broken, both his legs broken...the man was tortured for 5 years). And, much to my surprise, he is quite possibly the only republican outside of Colin Powell that I would even consider voting for.

(Of course, and pardon me if I offend your sensiblities here, he *is* pro-choice, which is one of my major criteria for voting.)

I think, in the end analysis, Jimmy Carter will be proven to be one of the most brilliant presidents the US ever had. His brokering of the peace accords between Israel and Egypt was a brilliant stroke of foreign policy, and his continuing efforts with Habitat for Humanity and other empowering social welfare organizations just proves that he really is a good man. I think electing Reagan was the worst thing the US electorate has done in a long time....well, okay, since Nixon.

As far as a democratic candidate, I think it's really up in the air. There aren't any politicians that I think have the charisma and ability to carry the presidency (which probably means another 4 years of this dreck). Possibly Dick Gephardt, or John Edwards (that last comes courtesy of FG, whom I spoke to a bit ago).

Actually, MR, McCain is pro-life. It's one of the issues on which he and I part company. And as for winning every war until Vietnam, what was the outcome in Korea? It was an undeclared war where there was no real winners (the Communists still held onto North Korea) and the US vanished quietly into the night. I wouldn't call it a loss, but it was hardly a "butt kicking".

Pin, the US has it's fair share of *internal* human rights abuses--most created by Corporate America, unlike many other countries where El Dictator for Life or the Rebels Against Everyone Else do the maiming, raping, and slaughtering. We're not perfect, and I think that's an important point to make in any discussion of America's greatness. You have to take the bad with the good. You might think Bethlehem, PA was the Modern Foundry, but I say what was going on in the background also led to the loss of high-paying high-skilled jobs, worker confidence and loyalty, and ultimately American pride. We can wave our flags all we want, but we still have to work two low-paying service jobs to make ends meet while somewhere else a political prisoner or a child is putting together Nike sneakers and a CEO is building a 5,000 square foot vacation cabin on Puget Sound and collecting a $1,000,000 bonus.

On that note, I read an article in this week's Missoula Independent, [Broken link removed by Moderator] about a plan hatched years ago by our Vice President, Dick Cheney (long before his current office) and some members of the current administration to foment trouble in Iraq by pressing for UN intervention, deposing Saddam, and ultimately paving the way for America partitioning the region. We get the oil, and we let whoever's interested that if they don't support a regime change, then they won't get any of it themselves. Lest you think that's just a conspiracy theory take a look at today's news. Bush has been on the line with various world leaders--such as Vladimir Putin--promising them that if they support a possible war with Iraq then they and their corporations will be looked on favorably when it comes to trade by a future Iraqi government.

Aha! The conspiracy revealed:

http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=2724

FG, McCain only started being pro-life during the campaign, for which I have yet to forgive him. During his senatorial terms, he has repeatedly voted for less intervention in that area, and told my mom, who is one of the biggest pro-choicers I know, that he believes that until the senate has a majority of women on board, they have no business even visiting the issue.

It's sort of like his being a "Reagan Republican." All evidence points to the contrary.

I promised myself to learn about McCain before posting a reply. Predictably, I've only got as far as confirming a vague recollection that he was the guy who beat Bush in New Hampshire in the last primaries. There are a couple of intelligent UK press cites that have a host of references; I should go learn.

No-one will offend me with a pro-choice opinion. For me, birth control is a prerequisite of human prosperity (and I don't mean that in the profit sense, FG; I just mean something better than subsistence). Religious intolerance of birth control is grotesque and archaic - but that view has got me into trouble round here before, so perhaps I'd better can it.

And you reckon, FG, that Taylor's enterprise, and that of his peers, left a bad legacy? I really doubt that the US would be on the map today without it. Not wholly good and honourable; a product of it's time which is unfit for today; cost many their jobs - I agree with all of that. It fed and grew an economy, though - or am I just blinded by the audacity of the achievement? At least the US continued its tradition of the engineer as entrepreneur well into the last century, an example that the rest of us would have done well to follow.

Hey, MR, you answered one part only last time. Who will be the next President, then? Surely there can't be a majority of Americans who can see any point in re-electing Bush? (A US acquaintance of mine is convinced that some die-hard Republican or other will shoot him soon, and in so doing will save 'Marraga)

Pin

Sadly, Bush will be re-elected unless someone really puts on a strong show in the next year or so.

If he is shot, it won't be shot by some hard-line republican. It will be by a former white-collar worker at Enron, or maybe Arthur Anderson. Someone who was a victim of the corporate scandal encouraged and allowed by the deregulation pushed by the republican party.

Why, you ask, will the Shrub be given another 4 years? Because he did something about terrorism (not really, but you know what I mean), because he talks the good talk, doesn't offend anyone, and because his brother is the governor of Florida, which is how he won it the last time.

Why wouldn't he be re-elected? Because Osama bin Laden is never caught, because Saddam Hussein actually complies with UN requirements, or because suddenly it's proven he's a member of the gay mafia who wears women's underthings and dances to the light of the moon on Samhain. Other than that, and it breaks my heart, he will be re-elected because most people are too stupid to make the connection between his doings, and his party's doings, i.e., corporate fraud due to deregulation and lax enforcement, lax INS policies due to underfunding, and the ever-growing disparity between the rich and the poor, due to overtaxation of the working class, and continual tax cuts to the wealthy. All thanks to the republican party.

And I think I speak for myself and FG when I say that being pro-choice, at least among the three of us, is something we can all agree on.

There's no guarantee that Bush II will be re-elected. Just over a decade ago, Bush I was enjoying record public support after the Gulf War and it looked as if he was unbeatable. Then came a recession and that Arkansas charmer, Bill Clinton. Anything can happen in the next year and a half. I'll bet someone we never heard of will come out of the woodwork by the time 2004 rolls around. After all, no one really heard of Clinton a year before the 1992 elections.

In terms of worker pride and craftsmanship, Pin, I think Taylorism left a bad legacy. Skilled, high-paying jobs are essential to any nation; they're what pays the bills, funds the government, supports families, and determines the amount of social services offered. When workers are looked upon as parts of a greater whole--parts that can be paid minimum wage, given sub-basic training, and no real skill level--then a country suffers. We see that attitude today when companies move jobs from the US or the UK to third world nations where they don't have to comply with pesky labor and environmental laws. Yes, in order to make *our* respective countries great those had to be ignored and abused in their time, but now humankind supposedly knows better. We're connected by a global economy. We should expect and demand the best treatment, wages, and policies from any corporation in any country, regardless of first or third world status.

A perfect example of that would be the maquilladoras (my spanish isn't very good), which are factories right across the Mexican border, that used to be in the US. The product still costs the same to the consumer, but they pay incredibly low wages (I think the average is $300 a month, which is higher than the national average, but still.), throw off an obscene amount of pollution, and fire anyone who so much as breathes the word "union." The companies are making millions more than they did in the US.

Where's the pride in that? Mass production and lowest-bid wages/ highest bid profit margins have made a job a job, rather than something to be proud of doing. I agree with FG....when the workers become dispensable, there's something not quite right about that.