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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao (田 )
Venkatesh Rao (田 )
Venkatesh Rao (田 )
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao (田 )

@vgr

Personal account. Writing @ribbonfarm. Hail threadthulhu 🐙

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 4 Apr 2020

      Next twitter live read for pandemic, Freedom’s Forge, on WW2 industry/economic mobilization recommended by @jamesgiammona Let’s see how this one goes. https://amzn.to/39IlHMP 

      7 replies 14 retweets 99 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

      Alright, this is gonna be a Great Man story. 2 in fact: William Knudsen who left presidency of GM to head up office of production management, OPM under Roosevelt (funny how the OPM hacked by Chinese was “Personnel”), and Henry Kaiser, construction cartel boss turned shipbuilder

      1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

      “Their foes weren’t German or Japanese soldiers but Washington politicians and bureaucrats, shrill journalists, military martinets, the denizens of Big Labor as well as Big Government — and sometimes the forces of blind date.” Ok, it’s clear what sort of book this will be 😀

      3 replies 2 retweets 16 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

      Apparently 20x as many people were killed or injured in the war machine compared to the actual war 🤔

      2 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

      Now learning about the Nye committee which investigated WW1 production machine in the run-up to WW2. So that’s where the phrase “merchants of death” comes from.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee …

      1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

      Damn the neutrality/non-engagement decades were really anti-military: “From the 4th biggest military force in the world in 1918, the US Army shrank to number 18, just ahead of tiny Holland”

      1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

      Roosevelt started rearming in 1936, years before officially dipping neutrality and joins the war. If you want peace, prepare for war?

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

      Damn, early on Patton ordered nuts and bolts for tanks at his own expense from the Sears catalog, they were so short 😱

      3:14 PM - 5 Apr 2020
      • 1 Retweet
      • 24 Likes
      • H Barath Ben edwardrooster.Ξth 🛳️(303/∞) (✒️/🚀) 🐢 (73/100) A. Lizard Darren LaMarr Random Cap unique indemnifier michael vassar
      3 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

          1940: Roosevelt asks for 700 million in army appropriations, up from... 24 million. This, coming just 7 years after dumping the gold standard must have been a huge shock. How much is that in 2020 dollars?

          1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

          About 15.6B inflation adjusted. Drop in bucket compared to CARES act. But then, shit was low-tech and cheap in absolute terms then.

          2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

          “...on policy matters FDR was a procrastinator. He preferred to put off decisions — or at least to keep news about them from going public.” Hmm. The anti-Trump, who declares mission accomplished before it starts.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

          Bernard Baruch, organizer of WW1 War Industries Board (and target of Nye committee) declines to do an encore for WW2. Don’t blame him.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

          Apparently WIB didn’t manage to pull its act together in time for WW1 despite (because?) of strong economy. Baruch nominates Knudsen, who enters stage left.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 5 Apr 2020

          Hitlers response to FDR plan of 50k planes/year: “What is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records, and Hollywood” Oh shit Hitler had 2016-America viewing palantir

          1 reply 4 retweets 39 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 6 Apr 2020

          Knudsen starts off as an immigrant doing riveting work on the tough New York waterfronts and learning boxing. This is already cartoon grade. Marlon Brando plus Rocky.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 6 Apr 2020

          Montage of early industry career and now Knudsen is systematizing Ford’s assembly lines by 1916. The real Taylorism is Knudsenism it seems.

          2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 6 Apr 2020

          Knudsen leaving Ford after high-level head-butting with Henry Ford, and going to Sloan at GM reads a bit like Wolverine leaving Magneto for Prof. X.

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 6 Apr 2020

          GM is more interesting as an early business case study than Ford, even though Ford steals the technology honors. The invention of the federated conglomerate was a bigger deal than the assembly line.

          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 6 Apr 2020

          “Speed produces nothing in manufacturing,” Knudsen likes to say — which was one reason he eschewed the complicated time-and-motion studies of production gurus like William Taylor. “Accuracy is the only straight line to great production.” I LIKE THIS GUY

          1 reply 5 retweets 60 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 6 Apr 2020

          He’s basically discovered “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” thinking in 1922. True flow thinking including lean vs fat tradeoff. Unlike charlatan F. W. Taylor. There’s an element of Elon Musk first principles thinking to Knudsenism.

          2 replies 2 retweets 35 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 6 Apr 2020

          Knudsen set a “one to one” goal of matching Model T sales and got from 18:1 to 2:1 in a few years. He also invented model year system of annual updates. Damn.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 11 Apr 2020

          Aside: this was clearly the OG example of the Mac vs PC pattern. Dunno why I didn’t see it before. Probably because this is the first time I’ve read about the Chevrolet story.

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 11 Apr 2020

          Kaiser was a dropout hustler who led with sales looks like. Makes his start in photography in upstate NY, then heads west to grow a hardware business, then lands in highway construction. So a hacker-hustler pair saved the US in WW2.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 11 Apr 2020

          Kaiser builds thriving road construction business in BC but WW1 makes the name Kaiser acliability do he he adds back to US and grows big there.

          2 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 11 Apr 2020

          Kaiser building thousands of miles of roads in the west. Early adopter of innovations. Steve Ballmer type seems like. Hard driving and hard working but subtler than Ballmer... not a bull type. Seems like he elevated roadwork from mostly manual labor to mostly machine.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 12 Apr 2020

          Now we have Kaiser orchestrating the Six Companies to build Hoover Dam. He spent most of the time in DC managing the political bosses.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 12 Apr 2020

          Huh, Kaiser apparently pioneered the internal competition model with Grand Coulee dam, which he later used in WW2 work. I guess that’s where the X/Y flyoff model originated perhaps?

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 18 Apr 2020

          Okay. Chapter on 1939-40 world fairs as transition, and we’re finally into WW2. Knudsen meets FDR.

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 18 Apr 2020

          Interior secretary Harold Ickes skeptical of Knudsen; “I have heard that Knudsen even makes his own notes in handwriting” (presumably as opposed to a secretary transcribing shorthand into typewritten notes) Moron. If you aren’t taking your own notes you’re not thinking.

          1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 18 Apr 2020

          Knudsen pulls together a sort of fellowship of the ring from across industry. They have to figure out what the military needs and tell them, because the military if 1940 doesn’t know.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 24 Apr 2020

          Finally into the war production story proper. We’re talking tanks, airplanes, engines. Building for US, British, and French needs all at once, 1939-41. Just a vast amount of action getting underway.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 24 Apr 2020

          Lessons and anecdotes at every level from rivets vs welding through contract laws to amortization regulations, to foreign policy. “Reality has a surprising amount of detail” is a good side read here. This is that times a million. http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail …

          2 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 24 Apr 2020

          Nice anecdote: a banker who has to transfer top secret Merlin engine plans meets the battleship bringing them from the UK with an empty suitcase. The captain laughs: the plans occupy a whole railroad-car sized crate of paper (would be a container today... or a largish USB stick)

          4 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 24 Apr 2020

          I’m honestly kinda excited for the post-covid rebuilding.

          1 reply 1 retweet 18 likes
          Show this thread
        28. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 3 May 2020

          Spark plug and steering gear auto subsidiary companies commandeered into making machine guns. We’re still on Knudsen. Kaiser is trying to get in on the action but Knudsen doesn’t trust him. Yet.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        29. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 3 May 2020

          The auto industry had 1050 factories and $3B in facilities and largest pool of engineering talent. Like Silicon Valley today. Except luckily SV capability is a better match for Covid response.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        30. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 3 May 2020

          “It was also an industry of associations” 850 companies, 1/20 of workforce,... saw this while at grad school at UM. Auto industry is ridiculously full of industry orgs associations densely knitting it together. SV is much looser.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        31. Venkatesh Rao (田 )‏ @vgr 3 May 2020

          “What Knudsen saw in the defense buildup was more than just rearmament... he saw a way to revitalize American business and industry”

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
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