After being coddled up by the govt for so many years (NatSec tariffs, tax breaks, bailouts, import restrictions, etc), ultimately it still failed.
But steel is just steel. You make it and then you sell it. If you make money, great. That is what US Steel does. They make steel, they sell it at a profit. I call that a win.
There are many folks who are long-term-value oriented who would much rather own a healthy and sustainable business than something that looks good short-term but is getting IBM'ed long-term. Case in point: Warren Buffett and See's Candy.
I like the steady accumulation of equity or dividends paid out to me. The business doesn't need to go to the moon for that to happen.
Warren Buffett is letting See's Candy is happily chug along, staying true to their identity (as far I hear, I'm not a customer), whereas another investor might have insisted on quick quarterly results and ended up IBMing them.
nothing should have to grow forever.
especially not amounts of natural resources, or basic necessities like food and beverages.
With desalination, nuclear + solar + geothermal, we can feed an essentially unlimited number of people.
There are always second-order effects to everything, including growth. But I find it interesting that we have such a huge runway ahead of us, without even considering resources and energy elsewhere in the solar system.
we can use the solar system, of course, but just discarding earth because other planets are available, seems a bit wasteful.
A knee-jerk response against growth is hardly going to fix the situation. We can drastically reduce our footprint while growing the economy even faster by building more nuclear + solar power, and digging deeper, improving our water treatment ability, etc.
- what do we say to poor people? Sorry your life sucks, but the economy is big enough now?
- even if we did say that, perish the thought, nobody's going to accept that. Africa, India, China, the rest of Asia, and South America have tons of poor people who want their turn. Why shouldn't they also get to be as rich as us? That implies a huge and growing demand for more and more energy and resources, regardless of what the US and Europe think of growth/degrowth/the environment.
Therefore I think it's much better to instead accelerate, and do it using clean technologies. By building clean tech in rich countries, we can make it better and cheaper until it's the default option for rapidly growing poor nations.
By demonstrating a commitment to growth, we also show them that our way is something to emulate, because growth is what they want and need. Degrowth is going to win you exactly zero friends in the poor world.
Nations like Russia and China can easily go to Africa and make the West look like self-centered rich fools who should be ignored. If that happens, there goes your environmental ambitions.
we talk to rich people and tell them, "Sorry, but we've f*cked poor people long enough now, time to adjust downwards and meet in the middle."
Convince Western countries, which are mostly some form of republic or a parliamentary system emulating one, to lower their citizens' living standards, in order to theoretically set a better example of resource usage for developing countries, who will 100% ignore this supposed role-modeling anyway because they actually want the best possible living standards, like most people do, and they have a point that even if we start limiting things now, we didn't artificially limit ourselves for the past 100 years, so why should they not get their turn at cheap growth?
That's a pretty tricky plan. Just asking voters to accept even minor inconveniences like "Hey maybe let's not install indoor gas stoves in new construction going forward because they literally poison our indoor air" was met with fiery rage. Telling people they'll have to just consume a lot less plastic, fuel, etc. to leave more for developing countries is political suicide.
i can't change what China does, i can't really change what my country does. i can barely influence what my family and friends do.
but i refuse to believe that "just grow the economy and gather more resources" is a viable path.
Plus, meeting in the middle is even less sustainable than the current situation.
The options are:
- Dramatically less (like prehistoric levels)
- Dramatically more (star trek)
Maybe ecological collapse after decades of growing the economy. After all, shareholder are worth more than humans :)
> one of the few lucky people who aren't enslaved in manual labor
Actually, we got quite a few of them, right now.
Ah, maybe that's why I like Solarpunk so much...
> In some respects it reminds me of this obscure, old web comic
which makes fun of the bourgeoisie who notice that they're not worth a lot without the proletariat ;)
Everything fails if you only look at the last few moments.
Success is typically seen as something that is improving, whether profit or market share. Shrinking while still remaining profitable sits in a more gray zone. I think most don't see this as successful, but I wouldn't call it a complete failure either, unless you consider selling a local company to a foreign company a failure.
I've heard Japanese steel is pretty great, or at least a common sentiment
Aluminum, copper and steel. Something to think about next time you get anywhere near a car, train, airplane, skyscraper, or bridge.
https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/16/news/companies/kobe-steel-s...
They were probably being compelled to do that because of the vast amounts of fraud committed by Chinese Aluminum producers. The purity issue was so bad my anodizing shop started recommending our customers demand mil certs from a reputable manufacturer, like Alcoa or Kaiser, and then specifically clarifying to the extruder that they intended to anodize it; being a chemical process anodizing is very dependent on the metal’s makeup and the extruder knows this.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-fraud-idUSKCN1U...
Is a scandal at one company evidence for the entire industry in a country?
Is there similar information about other Japanese companies? What about the industry at large? The prevailing sentiment is that Chinese steel has similar issues.
You can’t build a successful business by ignoring reality.
Look at what's happening to GM, called Government Motors when they were bailed out, they seem to be headed down the same path US Steel is. Their thinking is broken
but look at the recent decisions that led to
- recent statements about EVs
- the Cruise debacle
- deciding not to allow Apple/Google car infotainment systems and opting for a homegrown solution, despite consumers repeatedly stating they want the system that aligns with their phone
They aren't listening and management seems to think they know better
True, at least in the long term.
However some of those government interventions are an attempt to balance out other government interventions.
Sometimes tariffs are a response to a foreign government subsidizing a company in order to undercut a market and destroy dominant players.