[HN Gopher] "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
___________________________________________________________________
"No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
Author : gok
Score : 166 points
Date : 2023-12-29 17:35 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| erehweb wrote:
| Reminiscent of the business school joke - What does US Steel
| make? The answer is not "steel", but "money", that being the
| point of any company.
| pjscott wrote:
| Although it's true, that's a hazardous way of thinking. If they
| had put more of their focus on making steel, keeping up with
| the technological advances rather than being dragged along
| grudgingly, perhaps they'd be making more money these days.
| sgt101 wrote:
| It's a very successful strategy in any corporate. Focus on
| the books, produce results, take the bonus and then jump.
|
| When things go pear shaped do not be found holding the bag.
| If later questioned: "it was all great when I was there, it's
| so sad that it went south - it was a great place and there
| was a lot of value on the table."
|
| Strangely the big investors don't seem to ever cotton on to
| this - the big pension funds and sovereign wealth seem to
| respond by getting out of the equity markets and investing in
| things like property.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The oposite is true as well so: don't focus on the books,
| bottom line and so on and the company goes bust as well.
|
| Any successful company has to do both.
| sgt101 wrote:
| you are quite correct - it becomes a plague when one is
| addressed to the exclusion of the other. As they say
| "don't run out of cash".
| swexbe wrote:
| This comment reads like it was written in the 70s. Even
| with the interest rate hike, this is still the age of VCs
| with infinite pockets, companies that don't plan on going
| profitable for decades, every company in sp500 throwing
| money in the AI money hole, etc.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Yes, let us exclude tax scams and money laundering and
| address the real economy where things get made and real
| people get paid.
| atrus wrote:
| It reminds me of that old quote that democracies die when the
| citizens realize they can vote themselves money. It's the
| same with these companies, the upper managements realizing
| they can just give themselves more money and coast on their
| companies momentum.
|
| It's not the innovators dilemma, it's the c-suite lines their
| pockets while the company burns dilemma.
| nradov wrote:
| It's the eternal principal/agent problem. Those things go
| in cycles. When management goes too far off the rails then
| corporate raiders and private equity eventually take over
| to replace management and unlock latent value.
| Unfortunately, the managers who caused the problem still
| often end up fabulously wealthy while regular employees get
| screwed.
|
| This problem can be somewhat ameliorated by compensating
| executives primarily using equity with long vesting or
| lock-up periods. That keeps their interests aligned with
| long-term shareholders.
| scotty79 wrote:
| It doesn't really fit the modern collapse. Democracies seem
| to decline when oligarchs extract so much wealth that the
| entire economy suffers and common people flock to strong
| political figures to bring back order and prosperity.
|
| > citizens realize they can vote themselves money
|
| Although this certainly sounds true if you consider just
| the richest citizens and by "vote" you mean inflence the
| votes.
| feoren wrote:
| As other replies have pointed out, your problem is with the
| word "they". There is no "they" at a publicly traded
| corporation. The key decision-makers are only there for 2 to
| 5 years, however long it takes them to suck out the blood of
| the company before they scurry off to parasitize a juicier
| host. Nobody with decision-making power ever gave two shits
| whether US Steel was going to make lots of money in N
| decades.
| araes wrote:
| Had a thought the other day, that the natural course of many
| businesses is towards becoming a bank and eventually a casino.
| If it were Pokemon, all corporations final form would be
| casinos with executives gambling investors money.
|
| It fits the economy surprisingly well. Harvard, arguably a bank
| not a school. US Steel, joke is they produce money not steel.
| Airlines are trying to avoid flying airplanes, and operate air
| miles banks. Hasbro no longer produces toys, only money.
| Article today where the main commentary on Intel was the
| finance bros took over a long time ago.
| feoren wrote:
| Car companies making their money off of financial instruments
| only loosely related to the cars people drive off their lots
| ...
| davidthewatson wrote:
| I'm happy to see the link here as I was curious about the subject
| given that my career started in US Steel's data center in
| Pittsburgh.
|
| I'm saddened by the fact that this retelling seems mostly
| negative and ignores a large part of US Steel's evolution into
| USX. The retelling is subtractive whether you view Marathon Oil's
| involvement as a positive complementary asset play at the time or
| a negative given the history of its divestiture.
|
| I can say that there was innovation in the data center where I
| worked in the evolution from manual human mainframe era data
| center operations to token ring networks of PC API's along with
| abstraction and automation via glue code.
|
| The minimization of manual human labor as people retired is
| likely lost to the history books unless one of my old technical
| collaborators decides to write a book in retirement.
|
| The CMU kids I worked with at US Steel's data center in
| Pittsburgh were just as smart as the ones I worked with in the
| software industry from Boston to Seattle.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| I don't doubt you at all, but what kind of innovation was
| there?
|
| Did it tend to be strategic or tactical?
|
| How closely was tied to their core competencies?
|
| How many innovations were industry firsts?
|
| What percent impact did they have on profits / growth / market
| share?
|
| From the article it sounds like innovation and investment were
| consistently blocked by short term financial goals.
|
| I can easily believe there were lots of very smart people, with
| transformative ideas, that were never given a chance to thrive.
| Digory wrote:
| I had the same feeling at the end. Of all the ways to spend the
| 20th century, being tied to US Steel wasn't exactly a bad ride.
|
| "Arguably, the Harvard system was a disappointment every day
| since 1636..."
| a1o wrote:
| Wasn't US Steel who commissioned the books from a SciFi
| illustrator to ensure that lots of reference drawing
| illustrations would have steel in the future and got these books
| for free available to anyone who called, and they ended up
| getting famous in the film industry so people ended up always
| designing futuristic movies with things made of steel like ships
| and vehicles?
| aresant wrote:
| Yes you are thinking of Syd Mead - here's the series
|
| https://sydmead.com/category/gallery/us-steel/
| BasilPH wrote:
| Syd Mead did the designs for Blade Runner and Tron, and
| absolute legend.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Gotta say, I'd live in that steel modular house in a
| heartbeat.
| csours wrote:
| There's a reason that house isn't pictured in the snow.
| genman wrote:
| I can be insulated. People have built small houses from
| marine containers for long time.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Then you'll love the article OP wrote about Lustron
| stamped-steel houses: https://www.construction-
| physics.com/p/the-lustron-home
| fudged71 wrote:
| You're telling me the Stanford torus space colony that has
| filled my dreams for my entire life was propaganda for US
| steel?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Anybody since the 70s designing those radial supports out
| of anything that isn't a polyester isn't paying attention.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Starships in After Earth have very cool designs with a
| lot of threads and fabrics and membranes instead of rigid
| steel.
| k7sune wrote:
| Makes me wonder who supplies the stainless steel used for the
| starships and cybertrucks. US steel might just turned out to be
| prescient.
| cturner wrote:
| Clayton Christensen talk about the steel industry, and how
| businesses resist change -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpkoCZ4vBSI&ab_channel=Sa%C3...
| legitster wrote:
| My grandfather worked in a metal shop for 30 years after he
| served in Korea. I remember him telling me they switched to
| Chinese made steel in the 70s because of the quality problems
| they were having with American made steel. Being out West, they
| were somewhat more free from the political/social/union pressure
| to use American commodities.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Probably meant Japanese, I don't think China had much of a
| steel industry in the 1970s and given the politics of the time
| I don't think it would have been imported in the USA even if
| available.
| margalabargala wrote:
| China started pushing for a large domestic steel industry in
| the late 50s.
|
| It did not go well.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace
| altairTF wrote:
| The paradox of rights(don't quote me, i just made this up). In
| wealthier societies, demands for greater worker rights from the
| government increase. This can lead to more bureaucracy and
| higher labor costs, potentially making third-world countries
| with lower regulations more attractive for importing goods or
| outsourcing production. Countries already operates in a
| libertarian interaction with each others. I find these global
| economics aspects fascinating
| hammock wrote:
| Plenty of innovation by US Steel. Just in operations, not in
| materials.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| So in other words, short term value for the shareholders?
| hammock wrote:
| Define short term. 120 years?
|
| US Steel's vertical integration practices changed the game
| and influence goes all the way to Apple and Tesla today.
|
| Their way of standardizing manufacturing processes inspired
| Henry Fords assembly line.
|
| Their Research Lab paved the way for the establishment of
| similar, famous labs at IBM, Bell, Xerox and others.
|
| Their corporate structure set a precedent for large-scale
| corporations, influencing the development of conglomerates
| like GE to diversify various industries under a single
| corporate umbrella
| ganzuul wrote:
| Steel remains a technology with huge potential for future
| development. Some keywords: eutectic solution, bulk metallic
| glass, and boron steel.
|
| It seems crazy to me that any first world nation would let it's
| steel production fall into foreign hands. As a machinist for 5
| years in my country I would have been excempt from military
| service even in total war.
|
| If US steel is unable to innovate and foreign ownership is
| somehow not a problem, this development is probably a good thing.
| The Zaibatsu system is a good fit for what steel is.
| araes wrote:
| America has started to have the appearance of griefing their
| own enlisted. I'm not sure if America actually cares about
| those types of war and military considerations any longer. Have
| you looked at ship construction times lately?
|
| On the materials side. Totally agree. However the issue there,
| is that's not what corporations tend to optimize. The story
| itself really spells it out pretty clearly (it may be biased,
| never worked at US Steel personally). However, the article's
| description is:
|
| US Steel became a monopoly, and immediately acted like a
| monopoly. Innovation ceased. Money extraction began. Commanding
| obedience was the norm. Convincing themselves all competitors
| would fail was the norm. And US Steel did not want to invest in
| anything outside its own sunk costs.
| vGPU wrote:
| Which they are likely sorely regretting as tensions flare
| higher with China and our navy is struggling to protect
| shipping around Israel.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| They really aren't struggling. But yeah, China will soon
| outstrip our naval numbers by a large amount within the end
| out of the decade. We still have better tech but what do we
| do when they launch, at the same time, 200 "good enough"
| cruise missiles at each aircraft carrier sitting in the
| Taiwan Straight?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| They really aren't struggling we have plenty of firepower
| there. But yeah, China will soon outstrip our naval numbers
| by a large amount within the end out of the decade. We
| still have better tech but what do we do when they launch
| 200 "good enough" cruise missiles at each aircraft carrier
| sitting in the Taiwan Straight?
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >I'm not sure if America actually cares about those types of
| war and military considerations any longer. Have you looked
| at ship construction times lately?
|
| it's kind of funny because the US won WWII by the ability to
| churn out huge volumes of decent quality goods but now our
| military seems to be adopting the German idea that small
| numbers of expensive wunderwaffen will turn the tide
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| And Chinese military build out seems to be "perfect is the
| enemy of good enough" and "quantity has a quality all its
| own", so soon we're likely to be the ones playing catch up
| despite our huge military budget and outlays.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Well, what will a future war look like?
|
| We're never going to fight WW2 again, because all the great
| powers have nuclear weapons now. The US army will never
| take the field in a straight up slugfest against Russia or
| China.
|
| So that leaves non-nuclear regional powers. But you simply
| don't need a whole-of-society mobilization to fight Iran.
| The phase of active combat against Iran will not take
| years-- it won't take months.
|
| If we really needed to, we could be building millions of
| Jeeps again. But we don't need to, and won't need to.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| US steel and steel production in the USA are not the same
| thing. The company's name is that of a legal entity, not an
| accurate description of what it is.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| At that propitious 1900 banquet, perhaps pricing power was
| discussed?
|
| _People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for
| merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a
| conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise
| prices._
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| I wasn't too far off
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689019
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| Well written, informative, worth reading.
|
| It's fascinating how so many business mistakes from the last 100
| years continue to be relevant and continue to be repeated.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| Reminds me of the Wright Brothers. After their incredible
| invention of controlled heavier-than-air flight (using a wind-
| tunnel - did they invent that too?), the focus was on patent
| royalties, while others innovated.
| pomian wrote:
| One of the ideas that seems to be missed from the study of
| history and economy, was the effect on the total destruction of
| the Japanese and German industrial base - during WWII. Britain
| and USA, were left with their archaic industrial systems. After
| WWII, the Japanese and the German steel industry had to be
| completely reborn. (At the cost of primarily USA financing.)
| Those two countries had no more relics of the past, and started
| over, necessarily, with the most modern technology and science.
| North American industry was in a slow evolution from the 1900's,
| but Germany and Japan, had a hot start from the 1950-60's. No
| wonder everyone was impressed by their modern approach to
| construction, design, manufacturing, which more or less started
| to out perform USA and Britain in the 70's. China, started it's
| industrial rebirth even later.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Solution for the future of American industry: Bomb US Steel?
|
| Maybe this would also be an effective way of clearing out
| NIMBYs blocking the routes for high-speed rail lines?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Solution for the future of American industry: Bomb US
| Steel?_
|
| Plenty of places are bombed into oblivion. What makes the
| rebirth is the rebuilding. The marshalling of public
| resources. You can replicate that without the bombs with a
| public-spending initiative.
| Fatnino wrote:
| How do you spend away a bunch of NIMBYs? Their whole thing
| is that they refuse to cooperate with that.
|
| Bombs would solve that, but come with a host of other...
| issues.
| pstuart wrote:
| Eminent domain is the best we've got.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The OP's contention was that Japan and Germany had an
| advantage _due to their steel industry being bombed_ ,
| which is apparently easier than upgrading legacy production
| facilities that haven't been blown to rubble.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's often easier to rebuild rubble using other people's
| money than to modernize in-place using your own.
|
| Beyond just the "whose money is buying?" is that the
| latter costs you current production while the bombed-out
| scenario has no current production to forego.
| altairTF wrote:
| Every 100 years, the government send a warning and carpet
| bomb a city to the ground. This for sure would remove all the
| past vicious of the region affected. That would be something
| tandr wrote:
| Sounds like a good plot for a (short) sci-fi story.
| yetanotherloss wrote:
| You jest but my friend is a professor in Toyama, Japan, and
| makes the occasional dark joke about moving the people out
| for a few days and having the US raze it again from time to
| time.
|
| Sometimes getting rid of ossified organizations is a good
| thing, but there are probably better ways than high
| explosives.
| Aloha wrote:
| Arguably the Occupation of Japan was more important than
| the carpet bombing for changing Japanese culture.
|
| We brought in many new ideas - both in business and in
| government - most of which persist in some form today - and
| the Japanese in many cases have taken those ideas, refined
| them mightily, infused them with some Japanese culture -
| and re-exported them to us.
|
| The best example of this that I can think of, is Kaizen -
| the various scientific management techniques exported to
| Japan by W. Edwards Deming - which was re-exported to us as
| Kaizen.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This concept is related to the idea of "creative
| destruction":
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction
| hef19898 wrote:
| >> (At the cost of primarily USA financing.)
|
| The Marshall Plan was one of the best foreign policy ideas ever
| so.
| kevbin wrote:
| I'd like to see Chris Nolan follow-up "Oppenheimer" with
| "George (Marshall)" and "(William) Knudsen"
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Similar to many cities having catastrophic fires (New York,
| Chicago) which allowed them to rebuild their streets on a grid
| system. Vs Boston, which never had a great fire but which is
| known today for the phrase "You can't get there from here."
| turndown wrote:
| Chicago had a grid system before the great fire, maybe NY is
| a good example of this but I do not know. See this[0] 1869
| map which shows Chicago was already quite regularized
|
| 0: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/1869_B
| la...
| ericjmorey wrote:
| It's not. The older parts of NYC are still not on a grid,
| there was no massive fire in NYC that needed to be rebuilt.
| They may have been thinking of London `-\\_(tsu)_/-`
| caboteria wrote:
| We've had a couple of big fires:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Boston_Fire
|
| Somehow they didn't result in exchanging grids for winding
| streets.
|
| The back bay, though, is newer than other parts of the city
| and it's a grid.
| technofiend wrote:
| Re, Boston: The way I heard it was "Three rights make left,
| except in Boston."
| KMag wrote:
| See the movie "The Mouse That Roared". Having seen the results
| of Germany and Japan being bombed and rebuilt by the US, a
| small fictional country comes up with the brilliant development
| plan of intentionally starting and losing a war with the US.
| Spoiler alert: they end up having to deal with the tragedy of
| accidentally winning the war. As I recall, part of it was they
| just assumed their generals would lose, so the generals weren't
| in on the plan.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| A small country winning the war against post WW2 USA seems
| like it would be a bit of a plot hole.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Vietnam.
| ben_w wrote:
| It's a comedy, one I feel I ought to watch at some point.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared_(film)
| morkalork wrote:
| Peter Sellers playing 3 different roles. Poor guy really
| did get type cast in the weirdest way.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| "Comedies involving diamonds and/or nuclear weapons"
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Also one movie with him in brownface that oddly enough is
| actually extremely popular in India and Pakistan (to the
| point where I was introduced to it on a New Year's Eve
| party hosted by a friend from Pakistan).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Party_(1968_film)#Racia
| l_c...
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| Which war did the US win post WW2? Afaict they all ended in
| stalemates and eventual retreat
| (Korea,Iraq,Vietnam,Afghanistan,..)
| delecti wrote:
| That's mostly because we keep going into situations with
| political goals, and military means (when all you have is
| a hammer, every problem looks like a nail). If a small
| country declared war on us, we could easily bomb them
| back into the iron age. Though in 20 years, the young
| adults there would probably provoke us into another dumb
| situation like the above.
| Beijinger wrote:
| "with political goals, and military means"
|
| True
|
| "If a small country declared war on us, we could easily
| bomb them back into the iron age."
|
| Putin probably thought the same about Ukraine.
|
| Military objectives were achieved in Afghanistan, but not
| in Korea and Vietnam. And based on Clausewitz: "War is
| politics by other means" And our politics changed....
| nostrademons wrote:
| Military objectives were achieved in Korea and Vietnam in
| the sense that we killed lots of people. What we learned
| (and really, already knew from WW2, where we very
| intentionally did not invade the Japanese home islands)
| is that killing lots of people on an enemy's home soil
| just turns a lot more people against you.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| > "If a small country declared war on us, we could easily
| bomb them back into the iron age."
|
| > Putin probably thought the same about Ukraine.
|
| I doubt, as Ukraine is far from being a small country. It
| is the second largest European country (counting Russia
| as an European country, as is common in geography). (he
| most likely had other miscalculations leading to the
| current situation)
| mnau wrote:
| First gulf war would qualify.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I think that's more like quitting while you're ahead
| KMag wrote:
| I would argue both Iraq wars and the war in Afghanistan
| were cases of losing the peace in equal measure to easily
| winning the war.
| nostrademons wrote:
| This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won"
| Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense
| that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back
| into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But
| WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not
| dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the
| U.S. was not the aggressor. It _felt_ like a victory,
| because we emerged as the dominant power, with the only
| industrial base that wasn 't destroyed, and then enjoyed
| the economic fruits of rebuilding a country that had been
| bombed back into the stone age and then capitulated.
| Additionally, Germany and Japan _expected_ that U.S.
| occupation would be absolutely terrible, that we would be
| tyrants in the same way that their militaristic
| governments of the time were, and so when it turned out
| we just wanted to make money, that was a huge relief to
| them.
|
| With all the post-WW2 wars, we've gone in as a dominant
| power, as the aggressor, to a country that is far smaller
| and less developed. In terms of casualties, they've been
| even more lopsided victories than WW2. The second Iraq
| war killed about half a million Iraqis and displaced
| about 1.8M, vs. < 1000 Americans killed, for a kill ratio
| of ~500:1. But what does it even _mean_ to achieve
| victory here? We go in as a bully and ruin our world
| reputation. The average American sees zero benefit from
| killing Iraqis; it just means higher oil prices, larger
| government debt, more inflation, reduced civil liberties,
| and a lack of focus on domestic problems (...which may be
| the point). Defense contractors make out like a bandit,
| and the executive branch gets to consolidate power
| (...which, again, may be the point), but there isn 't
| room to grow the way there was after WW2.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I don't think any other country considers any of those
| cases to be wins ... Perhaps maybe wars in Iraq or
| Jugoslavia.
|
| I think eventual loss in Ukraine will be last nail in the
| coffin of US military reputation.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The US isn't fighting in Ukraine so that'd be a strange
| result. Especially since our surplus weapons with novice
| operators have laid waste to the invasion force of what
| was considered to be the 2nd or 3rd strongest army on the
| planet..
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The fight isn't over yet and there is trouble in the Red
| Sea and it could all turn into WW-III at some point.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > The US isn't fighting in Ukraine
|
| Same way that russia is not fighting a war but commencing
| special military operation.
|
| US is doing it with both hands tied behind their back but
| it will make defeat no less devastating.
|
| In reality US is fighting their penultimate war right now
| if it ends in a loss.
|
| > what was considered to be the 2nd or 3rd strongest army
| on the planet..
|
| That was summarily debunked about two weeks into the
| conflict. And noone but russians believes it today.
| dmurray wrote:
| > The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in
| the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were
| bombed back into the stone age and the existing
| governments fell.
|
| This might be taught in US schools, but outside the US we
| have a rather different take on how the Vietnam war ended
| - the _US-backed_ government fell and the North
| Vietnamese government took over the rest of the country.
| And we learned that the Korean war ended in some kind of
| stalemate, where the government structures on both sides
| exist largely intact today.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| You're missing the forest for the trees. Reality is the
| US won it's war against communism by the early 1970's.
| There wasn't much reason to continue the war in Vietnam
| after that. Not the least because the communists in
| Vietnam had no intention of being a Russian or Chinese
| vassal state. Suited the US just fine.
| kriro wrote:
| In my opinion, this is a misrepresentation of the Vietnam
| war. The country was not "bombed back into the stone
| age". The U.S. merely used extremely despicable tactics
| like Agent Orange, My Lai etc.
|
| I'm also not aware of the existing Vietnamese government
| falling (depends on which one you consider the existing
| one but it was not the government the U.S. wanted to fall
| that fell). The country resisted a superior invader like
| it did in the past (China) and I'm pretty sure most
| people would consider Vietnam the winner of the war (if
| there's a winner in war).
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| The government of North Korea did not fall or surrender.
| You can argue that it was a political win if the goal was
| defending South Korea, but militarily, it was a
| stalemate.
|
| North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam after we withdrew.
| It was in no way a victory for the United States.
| Afghanistan was arguably pretty similar, although we did
| install a new government while we were there.
|
| Germany and Japan, on the other hand, surrendered
| unconditionally. Saying that Germany and Japan were
| "bombed back into the Stone Age" is a wild exaggeration,
| though -- strategic bombing famously failed to cripple
| Germany's wartime industrial production. (Strategic
| bombing in general is overrated.)
|
| Your number for US deaths in Iraq is low by at least a
| factor of four.
|
| You may wish to learn the actual histories of these wars
| before trying to draw big conclusions.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The US picks extremely difficult battles to fight in a
| way its citizens deem acceptable, and they aren't wars of
| conquest. Those factors are going to make it very hard to
| point at a simple winner.
| beambot wrote:
| Technically, the US hasn't fought _any_ wars since WWII
| -- as a declaration of war is a Congressional function.
| All of the other things people think of or refer to wars
| were technically "conflicts".
| bejk22 wrote:
| I'm unsure the US can unilaterally decide if it's in a
| war or not. Do the opposite side consider it a war? Do
| the international community consider it a war? Semantic
| games internal to a single side do not matter much.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That's not even correct on a technicality, because you
| switch mid-sentence from discussing "war" to discussing
| "declaration of war." A declaration of war is plainly
| different from a war. Declarations of war are frequently
| made well after a war has begun or well before any
| fighting takes place. And as you state, many wars are
| fought without any declaration of war.
| anjel wrote:
| Granada and Panama.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Gulf War 1. Invasion of Panama. The 1994 invasion of
| Haiti, debatably. The Kosovo war, kinda.
| achates wrote:
| The diplomat in charge of central Europe thinks their
| declaration of war is a practical joke from another
| department, so nobody notices when their army (of about 10
| crossbowmen) shows up in New York and grabs a fictional
| doomsday device out of a secret lab.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| They "win" the war by accidentally kidnapping a scientist
| with a powerful new nuclear weapon. No actual fighting
| happens.
|
| It's an excellent movie though.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| A satirical movie involving nuclear weapons and Peter
| Sellers plays three roles? Where have I heard that one
| before?
|
| (actually, it looks like it is five years older than Dr.
| Strangelove? This looks like it could be turned into a very
| mean pubquiz trivia question, hahaha)
| lisper wrote:
| Reminds me of "The Producers."
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| The German industrial base was not totally destroyed after WW2.
| Especially in western Germany most of it was still good and
| they had to rebuild little to get it going again. The myth of
| the Trummerfrau rebuilding Germany into a Wirtschaftswunder
| from total destruction is exactly that, a myth.
|
| Edit: also the effect of Marshallplan is usually vastly
| overstated - due to the massive bureaucracy involved it had
| relatively little impact.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Much larger shares of the MP money went to Britain and
| France.
| robocat wrote:
| Can we set up a system to occasionally bomb our industrial base
| to get these benefits?
|
| Your point is mostly irrelevant. US steel could have innovated
| or even copied - but it didn't.
|
| The idea that poor US steel couldn't compete because other
| startups had an advantage is assinine. That is a core message
| of the article itself.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| I don't really like this claim because we are perfectly capable
| of blowing up our own factories, but people generally agree
| that it probably isn't a good idea.
| hulitu wrote:
| > North American industry was in a slow evolution from the
| 1900's, but Germany and Japan, had a hot start from the
| 1950-60's
|
| You forgot that US took every German and Japanese engineer as
| prisoner. As a friend said, US chemical industry worked 40
| years after the WWII with German patents.
| justrealist wrote:
| > You forgot that US took every German and Japanese engineer
| as prisoner.
|
| This is not even slightly true.
| dhdudbd wrote:
| white man's burden
|
| never change hn
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| I'm not sure innovation is really the issue, this article never
| actually goes into the alloys US Steel developed (of which there
| are many), and alloys are what makes steel steel really. It's
| always been fascinating to me how the just a tiny percent of
| another element in a metal can have an absolutely dramatic affect
| on the strength/resilience of the material.
|
| And they tried more complicated alloys, for instance they
| developed Corten steel, the biggest example of which is probably
| the US Steel building in Pittsburgh, [1]. It's a steel where it's
| 'rust' essentially works as a protective layer.
|
| More than anything this article shows US Steel simply couldn't
| compete with foreign suppliers. It's interesting to me that they
| don't even mention the Steel Workers Union, which was/is one of
| the largest and most powerful unions in the U.S. I'm not saying
| the cause, but if you need 5% more steel to cover the
| deficiencies in foreign steel in strength, but it's 20% cheaper,
| than it's simply cheaper to import more foreign steel.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_steel
| rhapsodic wrote:
| _> And they tried more complicated alloys, for instance they
| developed Corten steel, the biggest example of which is
| probably the US Steel building in Pittsburgh. It's a steel
| where it's 'rust' essentially works as a protective layer._
|
| Also worthy of mention is the New River Gorge Bridge. [1]
|
| And the recently-collapsed Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh.
| [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_Gorge_Bridge
|
| [2] https://www.carboline.com/solution-spot/posts/pittsburgh-
| bri...
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Or... the US Steel Tower
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Steel_Tower
| shrubble wrote:
| Is Corten used in shipping containers (I seem to recall that it
| is)?
| hulitu wrote:
| > More than anything this article shows US Steel simply
| couldn't compete with foreign suppliers
|
| Because the only inovation came from stolen patents from
| eastern europe.
|
| You can survive doing nothing until your competitor comes with
| something new.
| tmm wrote:
| Seems fitting to leave this here:
|
| https://youtu.be/1D2Q9-1EmB4?si=gXwIO3FzpSKkp3VV
|
| US Steel, Tom Russell
| pfdietz wrote:
| Something like 70% of US steel production is now from scrap. Part
| of this was moderation of growth. In steady state, nearly all
| steel could come from scrap (limited by contaminants, I guess.)
|
| I expect aluminum to displace more steel in the future. Witness
| what's happening with "gigacasting" at Tesla and elsewhere.
| kube-system wrote:
| Whether or not an application can use aluminum or remelted
| scrap depends on how picky an application is for the material.
| KMag wrote:
| It would have been interesting to get the take from my dad's
| cousin, who did early powdered metallurgy work research as an MIT
| undergrad in the 1940s, and later became a VP at US Steel.
| Unfortunately, he's no longer with us.
| Animats wrote:
| For an overview of how Nucor became #1 in the US steel industry,
| see "American Steel" (1992) by Richard Preston. The author was
| present for the building and startup of Nucor's first continuous
| thin sheet casting mini-mill. Nucor bought a new experimental
| continuous caster from a German company, after trying to build
| their own, and built a mill around it. This plant could turn
| scrap metal into sheet steel. "You could punch garbage cans out
| of it all day." Gradually, the quality improved, and soon they
| were making steel for auto parts. Previously, steel recycling
| just produced lower grade steel - cars in, rebar out. So this
| closed the recycling cycle.
|
| The amount of steel in use per capita in developed countries
| seems to have reached a constant level. About 69% of steel
| produced in the US is the same steel going round and round. If
| you ignore rebar, low-grade steel stuck inside concrete, it's
| even higher. It's the developing countries that are still making
| and using new steel. They don't have enough steel infrastructure
| yet.
|
| "Mini-mill", in this context, means "smaller than a square mile".
| Here's Nucor's Crawfordsville plant.[1] It's not small. Compare
| with US Steel's Gary Works.[2] That century old plant is just
| about their last remaining big plant in the US.
|
| US Steel somehow missed this change.
|
| [1]
| https://earth.google.com/web/@39.97805108,-86.8271336,264.41...
|
| [2]
| https://earth.google.com/web/@41.62932676,-87.36187513,174.7...
| pfdietz wrote:
| A very good book, although being 31 years old some of the
| characters are dead now (like the then-head of Nucor.)
|
| The chapter describing the accident (where a ladle of molten
| steel fell and the steel drained into a depressed area with
| standing water) is horrific. It's fortunate the body count
| wasn't higher.
| pseudolus wrote:
| For individuals interested in the steel industry who are visiting
| or living in the Northeast of the United States, the National
| Museum of Industrial History (affiliated with the Smithsonian)
| situated in Bethlehem, PA is a great place to visit [0]. It's
| located in one of the repair shops of the now defunct Bethlehem
| Steel plant and offers a wide ranging introduction to the
| production of steel in the US as well as various types of
| industrial machinery. As a bonus visitors can stroll the grounds
| of a largely intact, but derelict, steel plant. Interestingly,
| that particular area of Pennsylvania was also a center for the
| production of silk and more women were employed in the production
| of silk in that region then men were employed by steel plants.
|
| [0] https://www.nmih.org/
| petermcneeley wrote:
| This analysis does not seem properly include wage/labor costs.
|
| "By 1958 some steelmakers in Germany and Japan were able to
| compete on price with US producers, and by the mid-1970s input
| costs for Japanese steel (ore, labor, coking coal, etc.) were
| nearly half those of US costs."
|
| So the input costs were half almost certainly all due to labor
| either directly or indirectly.
|
| Viewed in this light the fall of US Steel is no different than
| any other manufacturing process in the USA.
| jmclnx wrote:
| >The American steel industry responded to the rise of foreign
| producers not by trying to improve their operations, but by
| demanding government protection from "unfair" foreign trade
| practices
|
| I remember this happening in school. Plus the teacher of a class
| (70s) I was in blamed the Steel Problems on the Marshall Plan.
| Until I saw this article I believed that.
|
| Now I know it seems to point to the usual US trend of profits
| before anything else.
| aslgbb wrote:
| Ticker symbol is "X". I wonder who gets that when US Steel is no
| longer traded . . .
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