We Need Militant Nationalism

[David Horn]

(07-26-2017, 08:30 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-26-2017, 04:48 PM)David Horn Wrote: The gas crises and the Great Depression took their toll.

I won't say they didn't have anything to do with it, but at least what I saw of it was more of concentration of expertise and market.  The buildings I worked on had names on the side like Sylvania, GTE, General Dynamics and Verizon.  I never left any of those companies, mind you.  My military service division just got sold and they changed the signs on the building.  The sort of projects I worked on as part of that division included a simulator for a squadron of ICBMs, a front end for a commercial telephone switch that allowed it to handle military security and precedence protocols, computer networks that moved information around in basements of nameless three letter agencies, and a satellite terminal and dish antenna that mounted on the back of a heavy Jeep.

Now, there was a need for all this stuff, but it didn't fit all that well with what a lot of the companies who performed the work they were doing.  What did it have to do with light bulbs, TV sets and telephones?  Names like Raytheon, Lockheed and General Dynamics fit better.  (Lockheed has long had non-airplane groups.)

I assume the car companies were working under a similar theory.  Lots of folks were trying to focus on what they did best.  It's the opposite of diversifying, but some decades it is the fad for how you are supposed to do it.

About that time, Campbell's was trying to sell ketchup, while Heinz came out with a line of soups.  Depending on who you are trying to push out of their core business, diversification doesn't always work.

Business leaders try to act longsighted, but most are like Trump: tactical with a very short horizon.  This is even more the case today, since the idea that we should embrace disruption means that a year is a strategic limit.  I'll wager that the disruption meme dies entirely before the neo-Prophets are old enough to kill it .. which they will if it still exists by the time they get old enough to wield a little power. 

These shortening time frames are in direct conflict with the theory, though.  If the theory hold water, the underlying dynamic must come from outside the power elite.  I sincerely hope so.  The economic elites haven't done much for anyone but themselves since the dawn of time.