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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      Wages rose by 70%. About 7 million left farming for military or industry, driving farm automation and fertilizer use. The war was pretty good for the American economy. The US bought itself a modernization via wars wrecking Europe and Asia.

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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      Blacks fought for a big social level up: executive order 8802, patchy desegregation in industry (though nothin the military), race riots in Detroit. Book skips rather lightly over this bit. Sounds like a whole other book could be written about this alone.

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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      8802 introduced minimal anti-discrimination protections fir race, color, religion, creed, but not sex. But women made the biggest gains despite headwinds. Kinda tedious how incumbents predictably resist any new entrants to anything.

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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      “By July 1944, 36% of all workers in prime defense contractors were female” Steel: 22.3% GM: 30.7% Kaiser yards start Richmond: 70%

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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      “Rosie the riveter” archetype was really 3 women: Vera Lowe of Lockheed, used in Lockheed PR after a photo appeared in Life magazine Geraldine Huff for “we can do it” ad council poster by J. Howard Miller May Doyle, Norman Rockwell’s model for Saturday Evening Post

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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      Shipyard diary of a woman welder, 1944 bestseller. On google bookshttps://books.google.com/books/about/Shipyard_Diary_of_a_Woman_Welder.html?id=9vQ9AQAAIAAJ …

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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      Back to Henry Kaiser. Now he’s building baby aircraft carriers and developing a very high public profile. Then ships cracking mysteriously topple his rising reputation. Brittle steel, not his fault.

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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      Kaiser partners with Howard Hughes to build an airplane version of the liberty ship, the gigantic Spruce Goose. Spoiler: project went nowhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules …

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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      Now into B-29 story, probably the most complex project of the war, costing more than the Manhattan project. Bridge between early and modern planes, except for jet engines it had most familiar features of today.

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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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      Lots of production innovations: multi lining being the big one. Unlike one long assembly line like at the B-24 Willow Run plant. Interesting that this is still how it’s done if you visit the Boeing plant in Everett. 40k parts instead of 25k for B24. Built at 4 plants.

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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 13
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      Serious crash kills test pilot and sets back B-29. Knudsen called in to rescue the program. Wings prone to catching fire.

      12:06 AM - 13 Jul 2020
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 13
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          Such a lovely plane. Gotta remember though — only plane yo actually drop nuclear bombs in war.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncUdqT8AxY0 …

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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          I will admit I got sucked into watching a bunch of bomber videos on YouTube today. Well back to the book.

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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Knudsen working through endless B-29 production troubles. Manhattan project starting up. Apparently the B-24 and B-17 couldn’t handle the nuke. So if the B-29 hadn’t made it in time, it would have been British Lancasters that did the job.

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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          “This nation seems to be able to do more by accident than any other country can do on purpose” — Bechtel-Cone B29 modification employee. Shades of British empire described as created in a fit of absent-mindedness. Imma call it imperial serendipity. Or serendipitous imperialism.

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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          The Marianas campaign in the Pacific war was fought just to create a staging base for B-29 missions. I didn’t know that. Must resist WW2 bunny trail. This read is for industrial production story.

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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          B-29 missions going very poorly until they start using incendiary bombs based on magnesium “goop” developed as a byproduct of Kaiser’s magnesium plant. Hence firebombing of Tokyo. Worst attack of the war after the nuclear bombs. Damn. War is ugly.

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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Curtis LeMay, architect of the low-altitude firebombing strategy that brought Japan to its knees. Makes me really question whether Hiroshima was even necessary. Even this was rightly considered over the line. Ender Wiggin level total war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay …

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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          83k civilians killed in the firebombing of Tokyo. Dresden was 25k. That’s about the US Covid deaths so far. WW2 was one bloody war.

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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Into the epilogue now. Another wall-of-statistics view. The US produced more than all other combatants combined AND did so with smaller fraction of economy AND kept consumer economy growing AND wages rising.

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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          $183B in arms 141 aircraft carriers 807 other combat ships 203 subs 52m tons of merchant shipping 88,410 tanks 257,000 artillery 2.4m trucks 2.6m machine guns 41b rounds of ammo 324,750 aircraft, 170/day since 1942 Raw materials to UK and USSR $50B lend-lease

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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          47% of economy as opposed to 60% for Britain and more for Germany and USSR YOY consumer goods also grew through war. Americans ate more meat, used more gas, electricity etc than before Hitler invaded France Guns AND butter. All mostly free market. Germany used 17m serfs

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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Total economy of production doubled, wages rose by 70%, Americans 2x more productive than Germans and 4x Japan (true even before war started). Underlined just how qualitatively next-level the US economy was with true mass production tech. Old world was still half artisanal.

          1 reply 1 retweet 4 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          A huge theme of this book has been how artisan production methods got properly mechanized, with British designs being ported being the best illustration. The brits were great at design but sucked at radical industrial scale. This was true since mid 1850s. They never did learn.

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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Though this book is almost embarrassingly pro-capitalist and paints a cartoon straw man view of unions, the picture rings true to me (admittedly a proud neoliberal shill). The unions failure was ultimately one of imagination. They never quite navigated the huge 100-year leap leap

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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Though the unions evolved from guild/trade union based to general mass organizing, like the British, they never quite mentally came to terms with the vast gap between 1830s artisan tech and 1930s mass tech. No wonder in 2020, dregs of unions are a humanities/liberal arts cause.

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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Book says post-war everybody was scared of depression/slump and big demob unemployment. To believe aggregate demand boom would persist into consumer economy was to be contrarian in 1946. Alfred Sloan was one. He turned out to be right.

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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Small blip in 1946 with 20% inflation and 3.9% unemployment then of course it’s all history as we know now. 30y of uninterrupted growth as the production engine of a bombed out world. Private capital investment tripled from 10.6B in 1945 to 30.6B in 1946. Stocks up 92% by 1947.

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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          3 jobs waiting for every returning soldier. Women went back to homes and feminine mystique era. 2 decades of 4% growth. The China of mid-century Ofc Cold War superpowernomics and military industrial complex and stuff. Not all rosy. But war machine go brrr in peacetime basically

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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          1948, Knudsen dies of brain hemorrhage. Health destroyed by the war years. Book argues that in postwar years the labor/new deal left tried to push a revisionist narrative of this being primarily a labor and government spending success, indication of new deal economics.

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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          The book’s counter narrative is that the success was entirely due to Knudsen &co shielding the free market dynamics from command economy approach successfully enough to avoid killing golden goose.

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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          So ideological argument of book is: - New deal failed - Business won the war AND the peace despite New Dealer interference - This was by Knudsen etc protecting it - Post-war New Dealers rewrote narrative and took credit AND control - They eventually killed golden goose in 30y

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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Needless to say I’m basically sympathetic to this narrative and hostile to the labor-sympathetic narrative, but I’m not inclined to buy the fully hagiographic version of either story, valorizing either capital or labor. The world is messy. Heroes and villains on both sides.

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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          William Whyte Organization Man is a perfect natural sequel to this, both in terms of narrative continuity and ideological harmony. This is your basic business conservative/social liberal posture that eventually turned into neoliberalism in the 80s.

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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Aside: for Econ 101 in 1993, I had a Keynesian prof who used Samuelson text but the other section was taught by a Friedmanite prof. Pure chance that I landed in one section rather than the other (we couldn’t choose). Took me a decade after to discover supply side Econ in my 20s.

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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Ah, now for Kaiser’s story. He called the postwar boom correctly, and expanded ambitiously. Bought Willow Run and Willys the Jeep company. All failures. Lost his entrepreneurial cred. Still recovered financially with global success in construction. Plus aluminum go brr.

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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Kaiser dies in 1967 at 85. Outlived Knudsen by 19y. Much of his industrial legacy in heavy industry got outsourced or unionized away. That’s why today we know the name primarily as an employee healthcare firm. His legacy was decent non-union employee treatment I guess.

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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Okay done. This book was fun and honest on economic and engineering side, but a bit lightweight and hagiographic/demonizing on the human side. Despite my strong sympathies I’d give it only a qualified “good enough for topic, not great; needs ideological caveats” recommendation.

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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Thanks @jamesgiammona for the recommendation. Scratched my itch to apply WW2 industrial mobilization story lessons to Covid reboot and climate action.

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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          My takeaway in that front is... not optimistic. The US lacks the kind of economic guts that allowed this story to happen. Outside of parts of Silicon Valkey tech economy this spirit is basically missing. And SV does not dominate the YS as strongly as Detroit etc did in 1940s.

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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Also an equally worrisome trio of red, blue, and green new-deal crowds is at work today, pushing the exact same sorts of bad thinking as in the 1930s, requiring the same kind of protection/interference to allow a recovery.

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