It’s not just too expensive. We need to seriously ask ourselves do we want too, at all, even?
My dad worked in a steel mill all his life so that me and my siblings didn’t have to. We’re he and the other guys at the plant proud of their work? Absolutely. Does nearly everyone wish their kids would do something else? Absolutely.
Industrialism has ipso facto become the soup du jour for thr agrarian myth. The reality is that it’s long, hard, relentless, menial labor. It’s also terrible for just living in general. My dad basically turned the lights off on a steel plant. That was 20 years ago and the land it was on will be unusable for even landfills for another 100 years. It was on a river and the river still smells like chemicals, and fish routinely die when passing through that area due to chemical runoff from the land.
So, I’m sorry, why do we want that here (let alone anywhere)?
I’m not saying that I don’t complain about my work from home job or that there aren’t negative effects but good luck weighing me getting carpal tunnel or taking anxiety meds to the stuff that industrial labor does to your body and our living environments.
>We’re he and the other guys at the plant proud of their work? Absolutely. Does nearly everyone wish their kids would do something else? Absolutely.
Most office work is not terribly satisfying. It turns out that work is work. And while working in AC with a coffee maker is "better" than sweating it out over a crucible, the drudgery is the same.
I spent some time with a large group of teenagers at a summer camp where the kids do a lot of the work, including activity scheduling and such. I worked in the cafeteria kitchen, which was hot, hard work. But the kids that were doing the administration kept coming over to offer to help: mop, sweep, serve food, whatever. I tried to take a mop bucket away from one of them, and she said "I've been staring at spreadsheets all day, I want to do something."
It's not 1850 anymore; we don't have to have industry be dehumanizing quasi-slave labor. If we decide to, we can make things in America again without Triangle Shirtwaist-style horrors.
You’re not wrong on most of your points - and I’m not denying the value of hard work. And I’m also well aware of the drudgery of office work.
That said, have you worked in the kind of factory that will come back? I did a summer stint at my dad’s steel mill as a 19 year old. I’m proud of that summer but that work took a lot of me. When other friends were out doing things, I was too exhausted to hang out. The money wasn’t great either. And that’s a microcosm of most of those older worker’s lives. Many drank heavily. I’m not bemoaning them at all or their work.
I’m just saying that the early 2000s wasn’t the 1850s either.
I don’t deny there’s a better life than office work but let’s not gloss over the kind of hard - as in, really hard - labor that industrialization requires.
Absolutely it's hard work, and dangerous too. In the case of steel, in the early 2000s they would be competing more or less heads-up with foreign steelmakers--mostly Chinese--and that puts a kind of pressure on working conditions.
Most people wouldn't mind hard work if it's rewarded with home and family. It's the idea that we have to work in a sweatshop and live alone in a fifth floor walkup that makes people pause. To avoid that situation isn't easy, there are a ton of factors involved, but it is possible. In the end, a country that doesn't make things is a country beholden to others.
Let's not gloss over the other part of it too though. Not everyone is smart enough to be a doctor or a lawyer, or even a nurse or a paralegal, and those people need jobs too. It shouldn't be backbreaking soul crushing work, but they do need jobs.
One of my hopes is that we can use our environmental and safety regime to do the industrial stuff in a more humane manner. Outsourcing everything to "somewhere else" only moved the externalities to another country. But people still get hurt.
Totally agree but is more environmentally friendly and more humane part of the current political rhetoric?
And absolutely outsourcing to somewhere else hurts somewhere else. But let’s be realistic: the kind of drastic change that would require no one getting hurt is not in the American discourse.
Have you been to a current US factory? All the big-company ones I've been to have safety and environmental compliance departments focused on zero-injuries and zero-environmental incidents.
Looking at what was done in the early to mid-1900's isn't a good guide to the current state of things. We've learned a bunch since then.
Define current. My dad turned the lights off on one factory as recently as 2018, a factory that Trump visited and bragged about saving (it wasn’t saved).
It’s not the same as factories in the 1989s true, but people are still missing fingers or limbs as a result of the work. Not only that but the resentment between workers and management remains extremely antagonistic.
We really need to stop glossing over the dangers of industrial work. It’s not a triangle shirtwaist fire but it’s not some kind of imaginary industrial utopia of pristine machinery.
There could be some legacy places out there that are stuck in the 50's. Also, small businesses seem to be more likely to not have good programs for safety than large outfits. But I've been working in industrial settings for 20 years on 3 continents, and all the big places have had extensive environmental and safety programs. Having said that, I've never been to a steel mill. The workers themselves can be their own worst enemy though. Places that have a large contingent of workers that started in the 70's and 80's tend to think the safety stuff is 'gay', and forced upon them by management.
but the industrial work still has to be done. Whether it's done in the USA (with OSHA and the EPA to keep people safe) or in another "cheaper" country where they lack the safety regulations we take for granted is the question.
I am rejecting the premise that I should be happy that industrial jobs are being outsourced overseas because those jobs are dangerous and kill people. I don't want people dying in industrial accidents anywhere and I trust the US EPA/OSHA (generally). I have severe qualms about outsourcing jobs because they are too dangerous for Americans.
> So, I’m sorry, why do we want that here (let alone anywhere)?
To the second question, not everything in the modern world is going to be clean and green. If you want things like steel, plastic, computers, etc. there's gonna be some dirty manufacturing involved. No way around it.
To the first, ideally every country wants some amount of self-sufficiency, or at the very least, some amount of redundancy. Remember how badly the world's pants got pulled down during Covid?
And finally -- frankly, not everyone is capable of more than unskilled or semi-skilled labor. Supply-chain redundancy with a side-effect of employing people who might otherwise have very little in the way of employment prospects? That's a good thing!
Why was the steel mill producing a lot of chemical pollution?
Steel makes a lot of mill scale and slag, but those are generally inert. It’s a physically dirty process, but not a chemically dirty one, unless I’m missing something?
And certainly nothing I’m aware of there would make it unsuitable for even landfill.
I looked up the EPA report for the brownsite. It listed arsenic, barium, multiple chromium compounds, 2,4-dimethylphenol ethylbenzen lead, 4-methyl-2-pentanone, methlyene chloride, naphthalene, toluene, and xylene at hazardous levels. It also mentions steel, zinc, and nickel dust and fumes.
I do know that I drove by the old site a few years ago, and you can see the outlines of not just the buildings but the machinery because the dirt is a different color, and there's either no or very little grass or just stubborn weeds growing in those areas.
A lot of steel is coated with grease or oil to avoid rusting. Just by nature of working with it you also need solvents to remove it. The degreasers of the past were magically powerful and environmentally catastrophic. Never mind all the oil/grease used.
> The reality is that it’s long, hard, relentless, menial labor.
Which is perfectly fine to do for some time if the salary is great. Which it should be, considering the high productivity output from those kind of jobs.
Steel mill workers of your dad's generation had a much higher living standard and much more money than service or office workers of today's young generation.
Young people are supposed to work hard and build up their wealth so that they can change to a less taxing job when it's time to make a family. Not waste their time in academic institutions for 20 years and then work for a low salary.
> had a much higher living standard and much more money than service or office workers
I don't see how you could say this with a straight face. We know at this point that factory jobs inflict physical damage to the body, a priceless artifact that no wage could replenish. I find it difficult to address your last paragraph as it's just not based in reality. Anecdotally, many people I know who take an hourly wage at factories never shift elsewhere. There is no waiting, and often they will start their families younger than their salarymen equivalent, 30 years ago or now. Perhaps they failed by your standards?
Not unexpected that people would react strongly against any mention of physical labour on this forum – and immediately take a hostile attitude.
I've done my fair share of these kind of jobs in my life and my body is great. You can do it for some years while you are young. Yes – if you do the same job your entire life you will destroy your body. Especially if you do not take care to listen to it and adapt how you work and how you exercise.
Young people should work hard and be paid well, that's how a healthy economy functions. Not by having manufacturing based on foreign slave labour.
Anecdotally, I know many people who started on the ground floor and then moved on to management or sales with experience. Or switched jobs and careers. People switch jobs all the time, staying at the same post for life is mostly a thing of the past.
My dad worked in a steel mill all his life so that me and my siblings didn’t have to. We’re he and the other guys at the plant proud of their work? Absolutely. Does nearly everyone wish their kids would do something else? Absolutely.
Industrialism has ipso facto become the soup du jour for thr agrarian myth. The reality is that it’s long, hard, relentless, menial labor. It’s also terrible for just living in general. My dad basically turned the lights off on a steel plant. That was 20 years ago and the land it was on will be unusable for even landfills for another 100 years. It was on a river and the river still smells like chemicals, and fish routinely die when passing through that area due to chemical runoff from the land.
So, I’m sorry, why do we want that here (let alone anywhere)?
I’m not saying that I don’t complain about my work from home job or that there aren’t negative effects but good luck weighing me getting carpal tunnel or taking anxiety meds to the stuff that industrial labor does to your body and our living environments.