Comment by andrewallbright | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewallbright | Hacker News Reader

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andrewallbright

I honestly do not understand how the mass mobilization of the US economy for war in the 1940s actually happened or operated.

Was it bottom up, with factories competing to make products (trucks, ammo) for lend lease? Basically government used tax payer money to become a big buyer of things, incentivizing companies to reorient towards making those things? And then when the US entered the war, the types of contracts offered changed.

Was it top down, with the government operating more like a command economy telling businesses what to make, and when? It wasn't a choice, it was a demand because the country is at war!

These are two guesses I have. My mental model is based mostly on the movie "War Dogs." I'm sure it's a mix of both bottom up and top down. Maybe with a mix of cocktail parties with important industry business people and important government people chatting about would is feasible sprinkled in.

I do not understand how the war time mobilization of the US economy actually happened. If anyone knows, I would appreciate a summary or a book recommendation. I think I have a topic for my next Wikipedia deep dive.

It was a top down centrally planned economy. The federal government set quotas for production and prices. This was made possible through the war production board which converted civilian companies to wartime use:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board

To expand, so there's more material on this page:

"Gasoline, meat, and clothing were tightly rationed. Most families were allocated 3 US gallons (11 l; 2.5 imp gal) of gasoline a week, which sharply curtailed driving for any purpose. Production of most durable goods, like new housing, vacuum cleaners, and kitchen appliances, was banned until the war ended.[1] In industrial areas housing was in short supply as people doubled up and lived in cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled."

From

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_durin...

It was very much top-down. Most of the production was nominally done by private contractors, but the federal government forced existing factories to be converted to war production, fronted the money to build new factories, directly built public housing for the factory workers, and fixed wages and consumer prices.

> existing factories to be converted to war production

And some amusing artifacts were produced as a result of that. For example, the M1 Carbine was manufactured among others by IBM, Rock-Ola, and the National Postal Meter Company. After the war, these became collector items of sorts, since the manufacturer name is prominent on all of them.

One example of top down mobilization was the mass manufacture of aircraft for World War II. This Fox Business video [1] shows how Roosevelt's advisors found the top industry guys to analyze the artisanal manufacture of B-17 bombers, design and build an assembly line factory, and mass produce the bombers at a rate of one an hour.

After the war, Ford made a promotional film, "The Story of Willow Run" [2], that shows the progression from soybean farm to aircraft factory, the redesign of the bomber for manufacturing, and the assembly line processes. The YouTube comments from factory worker descendants are fascinating.

[1] https://youtu.be/zBj4uD1ODO0

[2] https://youtu.be/p2zukteYbGQ

I think the difference is that the country was managed and run by a tight-knit kabal of ivy-league upper class people. It was a high-trust environment where someone could call up an acquaintance and just say "Bob, you need to change your factory over to tanks this week. Harry will send the schematics, and we'll figure out the fine grained details later." The origins of the CIA and FBI sound mind-boggling to modern ears. These days you only see that kind of high-trust procurement in the special operations community.

Obviously there are some serious downsides to having a cabal of rich white dudes who went to the same schools run the administration of the whole country, but things could change direction a lot quicker.

An good example is the former shipyard at Sausalito, CA.

We needed ships.

The government went in and built a huge shipyard. They hired private contractors, and built 24/7.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinship)

They needed workers. They hired Frank Loyd Wright to build huge buildings to house workers arriving mainly from the south.

The huge apartments went up very quickly.

There were few regulations. I imagine it was like the way China puts up huge projects.

After the war, a lot of the workforce moved on to greener pastures. America used to have a lot of good blue collar jobs.

The apartments are now used as Section 8 housing.

Jump ahead to today. The town of Sausalito didn't like looking at low income Anchor-Outs. They didn't mind when Paul Allen moored in then same spot for months though on his mega-yacht. The town basically hired some dig bat who was related to a town council member to spit out a study on the dangers these Anchor-outs are doing to the Ell grass in Richardson bay. The town used that "cooked" study to confiscate boats, and crush them. The low income people basically went from boat dwellers to living in tents in Dunphy Park. I'm sorry about my tone, but I don't like it when authorities abuse their power, especially when it comes to the low income.

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