RCA and the Roaring Twenties | Hacker News Reader

RCA and the Roaring Twenties

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61 pointsbenbreen27 comments

A very interesting article. I worked in the prototype lab of RCA Australia (Artarmon, Sydney) in the late 1960s but left before the division/manufacturing plant was closed down the early 1970s. We made professionsl broadcast and telecommunications equipment and the plant did very well (I mentioned my time there and my meeting with Sarnoff on HN a while back).

Thus, it came as quite a shock when I later heard the plant had closed down as only several years earlier ('68 if I recall) Sarnoff Senior (not Robert) had visited the plant and to open a new record factory only about a dozen miles away.

As I'd left before the plant was closed I wasn't privy to employees' scuttlebutt about Camden's reasons for closing it so I had to rely on industry rumors for reasons of which there were a number but none was definitive (for me it's always been a bit of a mystery).

I was already aware RCA stagnanted from about 1967 onwards but this article's Fig 4 (RCA—1920 to 1986) adds numerical info of which I was unaware such as the steeper downturn around 1974, which is about when the Australian division was closed. Presumably, this downturn was at least part of the reason (many have long said the '67 decline was due to Robert Sarnoff's mismanagement).

I hope someone will soon write a definitive history of RCA, it's important it's written because the Company played such an important/pivotal role in early broadcast/electronics manufacturing (BTW, when I was working there RCA was the biggest electronics company in the world).

interesting tidbit:

After World War II, stars that made over $70,000 faced a marginal tax rate of 77%. Paley worked out an accounting technique whereby individual performers would set themselves up as a corporation so they could be taxed at 25% rather than 77%. Sarnoff, the head of NBC and RCA, decided this method was legally and ethically wrong and he ended up losing most of his biggest stars.

> Sarnoff, the head of NBC and RCA, decided this method was legally and ethically wrong and he ended up losing most of his biggest stars.

This is why the government needs to assure that everybody plays by the rules.

If companies out there are lying about an employee status to make them instead a contractor (looking at you Uber) the rest of companies that are following the law are hurt as other workers and society at large.

Enforcing labor law is good for the economy and good for society.

>Enforcing labor law is good for the economy and good for society.

It may be good for society but if you compare countries with more labour laws to those with less, e.g. Europe vs America (or Western Europe vs Northern Europe, which has stronger welfare but less onorous regulation), more labour law is not good for the economy.

> more labour law is not good for the economy

If by economy you mean the richest 0.1% earning more money, I have to agree. But I disagree with that definition of "economy".

For me economy includes the ability of citizens to make ends meet and afford good health care and education. A good economy requires a well regulated labor market.

That definitions of a "good economy" are excluding these considerations it is just an effect of inequality and an increasing focus on the needs of the 0.1% over the economy as a whole. And it is not a real representations of the real economy at all.

GDP isn't the only measure of a country's success. European countries surpass the United States in many metrics relating to the actual wellbeing of their citizens.

Which European countries specifically? Europe is a big place. Are you including Moldova? Or just the nice parts of the EU?

You can cherry pick measures of success to make one country look better than other countries. So what. For example, the USA does better than almost all European countries in 5-year cancer survival rates.

Or you can dig into the details, as Politico did https://www.politico.eu/article/cancer-europe-america-compar...

and found: The reason the U.S.’s strong performance on cancer comes as a shock is because access to care in the country is notoriously unequal. But, it turns out, that's far less true of the elderly.

Age 65 is when virtually everyone in the U.S. qualifies for Medicare — America’s national, taxpayer-subsidized, government-run (dare we say socialized), comprehensive health insurance program.

in other words, the data you are arguing with shows that EU style socialized medicine produced better outcomes.

Although Medicare isn't cheap if you currently (or recently) had a high W-2 income. I pay about what I would for a private plan (or COBRA) for now.

Presumably you can afford it if your income is that high. While there are arguments to be made that it shouldn't be means-based at all (it destigmatizes it, for one), it does seem to be working as intended.

It's not unreasonable for a plan that the government is always trying to chip away at for financial reasons. But a lot of people look at Medicare and think that it's essentially free which it decidedly is not for anyone with a current or recently high salary. (The add-ons cost a bit too but relatively not.)

My wording was sloppy: I should have said "...many European countries..." or just "many countries", for that matter. My point is that the level of GDP in the United States is not required for a thriving society.

What is the minimum GDP per capita required for a thriving society?

This is a bad-faith question and you know it.

I know no such thing. A high GDP per capita might not be required to have a thriving society in the modern world but surely there is a lower limit. It should be possible to at least roughly quantify that limit. Could we still have a thriving society if GDP was cut to, let's say, $10000 per person?

I don't have that answer. But I see no evidence that the United States benefits—as a society—from our high GDP.

Would we be better off with a lower GDP?

I don't know. But we certainly would be better off if we optimized for other metrics besides GDP.

Which other metrics should we optimize for, and how should those metrics be weighted relative to each other?

was Moldavia included in the grandparent's comment on labor laws?

re: cancer survival. Are you referring to this work from 2020, showing that the US has more cancer than the EU, even though odds of survival are better?

The US Has Higher Incidence, Survival of Rare Cancers Compared With Europe (2020) https://www.ajmc.com/view/the-us-has-higher-incidence-surviv...

and shows that Age-adjusted incidence for all rare cancers combined was 17 percentage points higher in the United States than in Europe. The 5-year net survival for all rare cancers was significantly higher in the United States compared with Europe (54% vs 48%).

so 17% more likely to have it and a 6% increase in survival.

Can we talk about cherry picking?

Right, which was exactly my point. By cherry picking statistics you can make any developed country look better than any other developed country. So what.

I think you’d really have to break it down in much more detail to say much at all. I mean, it isn’t even obvious to me at least that “more labor law” is a meaningful measure. We have some onerous and overbearing regulations in the US, for example Right To Work laws, which restrict the types of terms that a company and union can put in their contact. But we don’t think of that as “more labor law” because it works against labor.

Paperwork in the US can be kind of complicated. It is just both complicated and poorly aligned.

Amount and enforcement are orthogonal. Regardless of how much you have, it must be consistently enforced.

RCA and the Nifty Fifties.[1] This is an orientation film for employees.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEPS1uYRCdE

Conspicuously missing here is RCA Astro Electronics, responsible for the first weather and satcom satellites, and RCA Missile and Radar, responsible for BMD and radars leading up to the Aegis system.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVP0SGNlBiBtF... is an exploration of the CED, essentially RCA’s last major attempt at relevance before Welsh acquired it for butchering.

Nice compact history of US radio. Also lovely to trace a company history through several techs, phono->tape->radio->tv. And very interesting to hear about stolen lunches and ethical binds still relevant today. The invitation here (from the author, and submitter I presume) is to compare halcyon radio days with "AI". Not sure that works myself. The golden era of non-linear physics literally created fundamental new technologies each decade, By contrast "AI", blockchains etc are culmination advancements.

The concluding remark is spot on IMHO.

> it was unable to find a new source for dramatic growth. You wonder whether the same will be true of the Apples, Googles, Netflixes, Teslas and similar companies of the 2020s

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