patrick.net

The number of interesting positions that require manual labor is extremely small.

Not to nitpick, but 'interesting positions' is subjective. I've known many farmers (come from farmers) and what they find most interest in is their work. Their implements to them are what a piano was to Duke Ellington. Perhaps the type of work you were originally referring to was subhuman manual labor, but even these jobs have a place & time as well - if only as a stopgap while someone is paying their way through school, so that they can have a shot at making a living in a field better suited them.

Industrial society is a temporary blip in human history. It isn’t just going away in the US — it’s going away everywhere. It was a necessary evil to get us over a hump where our needs grossly outweighed our technology, and we nearly ruined the planet to get through it.

Industrial society is morphing, but it will never really go away unless you take Moore's Law all the way to the point where micro and nanotechnologies become self-propagating/self-manufacturing/self-repairing.

No it isn’t. It’s about 70% “consumables” (that is, goods and services that have to be replaced periodically), which is significantly less than most other countries.

Right - two thirds of our GDP is consumer spending/consumer goods/service sector, rather than durable goods, which used to be our bread and butter, (along with farming.) That's my point.

The fact that we don’t produce as many disposable trinkets domestically as we once did is meaningless.

Again, I wasn't referring to cereal box treasure or playing cards, but to durable goods. Think anything from Snap-On tools to Levi's jeans to engine blocks to doorknobs. Not having an industrial sector is not meaningless! Maybe in two hundred years, when we're all wearing liquid clothing and listening to liquid music and we create our own hand tools at home with our 3D carbon printers...but you're jumping the gun!

No wealthy country does.

Really? Do I need to compile lists of durable good manufacturing and how it relates to exports/GDP from Germany, the UK, Denmark or Japan and compare them to our anemic output?

Your talk about “IOUs” is nonsense.

National Debt is nonsense in which context? We don't make anything, and I fail to see how this doesn't help exacerbate an already flagging economy, in part, by making our debt less attractive to other countries.

The only potential issue that our lack of factories poses is that we would have a harder time mobilizing the country to a massive war effort if the need arose again, but that just isn’t going to happen in a world of Nuclear weapons (not to mention the fact that we are the most natural resource-rich country on the planet, and most of the countries with industrial economies are resource poor and would be completely screwed if you cut off their supplies).

That plays into my point as well; America is in a unique position of natural resource wealth that not many other industrialized nations share. (Remember when Russia decided to try to grow cotton in it's deserts?) Given this, it seems a no-brainer that we should have more mills and plants here than we do. That we do not has less to do with the age of automation, and everything to do with our flawed Free Trade policies and how it concentrates profits at the top. Trickle down, indeed.

Now you’re just plain wrong. This is entirely subjective, and for the most part not even something you can compare.

On this point, I am intransigent. There is nothing subjective about measuring design/quality control standards, build specs, reliability/longevity and performance issues of a product. The major design principles behind the whizz-bang consumer products being offered today are convenience and built-in obsolescence. Fresh garbage. The example I gave with the Ipod vs the stereo amplifier from forty years ago is not even close to subjective unless you are deaf, but it's true of other durable goods, too, be it hand tools, cotton undershirts, shoelaces, leather belts, flatware, etc. The quality is not there, and it is measurable. Face it: you get less for your money...or rather, the option of more lessers for the same money.

Houses in particular are an amusing claim. You think people go about bringing old homes “up to code” for the hell of it? Do you have any idea how quickly a fire will tear through a timber + plaster wall as compared to drywall?

They bring them "up to code" to sell the bastards, as we all know American's are obsessed with newness.

I know a thing or two about old houses, as they're kind of a thing of mine. For starters, plaster is more fire-resistant than drywall: fact. It is also ten times more durable, acoustic and just plain ages/looks better. The timber and wood lath used in many old houses was generally comprised of native hardwoods, selected for their natural resistance to rot, termites and mold. If it does catch fire, there will probably be more of the place left to rebuild than with modern construction. What's more, plaster doesn't corrode all of the copper wire in your home and cause you chronic upper respiratory infections. Hardware was also superior, including sinks, tubs, fixtures and even many window designs - despite the popular notion otherwise. Don't take my word for it, do a little research. Today's homes are designed to be built more quickly and cheaply. It should be visibly evident even to the layman. It would cost you an arm and a leg and at least one vital organ to build a house to the same or similar specs today. In short, I'll take the bungalow built in the thirties, and you can have my share of the Garage Mahals.

There will certainly be a diminished level of WORK required from human beings, but it’s absurd to think of that as a “lackluster, soulless standard of living”.

But why is that so absurd? I'm not saying if all the jobs in chicken factories went away tomorrow, that civilization would suffer a loss, only that, in your given scenario, civilization will become even more dependent on machines, and thereby less communal, less experienced (READ handy) and more soft and sedentary. In the broader scope of your wisdom, we would become redundant, but perhaps for art. Too much of anything is too much, and leisure time is no exception. It all brings to mind visions of a great big Dubai, but with robots instead of chattel labor. Sounds awful.
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o you think the poor and middle classes were able to afford “elite, boutique thrills” back then?

You're misconstruing my point with that, which was that off-the-shelf consumer or dry/durable goods were so often ten times better than what you can get today for the same price (adjusted). You have to go to upmarket grocers or boutique dealers to enjoy what was a mainstream concern seventy years ago.

Do you believe that the standard of living / quality of life was superior in the 1930s?

I'm too skeptical to believe in anything, but I do know that there were certain sensibilities (pride in craftsmanship, for one) that pervaded the mindset that were, in my opinion, wholly superior to the ideal of total automation. A world that embraces these sensibilities is a far superior world to me than the one you portend.

There were also certain dark spots absent on the mindset, like unbridled consumerism, obesity and disposable culture.

Apologies for the majorly off-topic subject!

What I don’t get is - nobody seems very interested in talking about the housing market anymore. There is a miscellaneous forum here that doesn’t get nearly as much traffic as the housing forum, yet as soon as a housing forum thread gets off track, you guys go nuts with the off-topic posts. Why does everyone hang out here if they want to talk about engineering or programming or whatever?

I guess because, like any subject, the subject of housing is finite.

Again, apologies to all for the long off-topic posts.

In short, I’ll take the bungalow built in the thirties, and you can have my share of the Garage Mahals.
I think we all can probably agree that Bubblenomics produced some homes of dubious quality (issues arising from quality of materials and 'underskilled' labor). FWIW, you're probably not going to live in a 30's bungalow without some significant upgrades. See Debunking the Myth of Old Homes and Good Bones for more details.

EBGuy says

In short, I’ll take the bungalow built in the thirties, and you can have my share of the Garage Mahals.
I think we all can probably agree that Bubblenomics produced some homes of dubious quality (issues arising from quality of materials and ‘underskilled’ labor). FWIW, you’re probably not going to live in a 30’s bungalow without some significant upgrades. See Debunking the Myth of Old Homes and Good Bones for more details.

Great little article. "So I suggest a new version of an old ditty: Good Bones, Good Heat, Good Pipes, That’s Sweet." I couldn't agree more. I had a late 1800's folk victorian / craftsman and the big work was plumbing and wiring. The foundation had been re-done in the 70's; all the houses in the n'hood had this done since they had been built with sandstone bricks that were literally turning to sand (this is back east).

I would add - the plumbing was EASY since the house was on a foundation and had ample crawl space (dirty, but ample). I had all new water service run in CPVC and it was something like $1500 for the whole house. The low pressure (sewer) was mostly fine - it was cast iron and will be there when humanoid cockroaches own the place. The sewer lateral was clay, however, and I learned about that the hard way ...

Wiring? Well, this place had a mix of added on wiring - some of the oldest copper was as thick as my little finger. I talked to a pretty knoweldgeable guy on the disastrous experiment with aluminum wiring in CA in the 50s or so. He said that has all either been replaced or the house is burned down. Seriously, it is replaced or burned down.

And I also agree with the author on this: the details and other 'craftsman' work on older houses is usually preferable - with notable exceptions of houses they might call 'custom' in more recent years - i.e. not cookie cutter aseembly-line jobs but houses built one by one individually. My parents had modest means and we lived in beautiful homes on MI built this way. I think the builder barely turned a profit, but it was a labor of love for him.