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The Nation Is Losing Its Toolbox
Hugh Pickens writes "Louis Uchitelle writes that in Aisle 34 of Home Depot is precut vinyl flooring, the glue already in place. In Aisle 26 are prefab windows, and if you don't want to be your own handyman, head to Aisle 23 or Aisle 35, where a help desk will arrange for an installer, as mastering tools and working with one's hands recede as American cultural values. 'At a time when the American factory seems to be a shrinking presence, and when good manufacturing jobs have vanished, perhaps never to return, there is something deeply troubling about this dilution of American craftsmanship,' writes Uchitelle. 'Craftsmanship is, if not a birthright, then a vital ingredient of the American self-image as a can-do, inventive, we-can-make-anything people.' Mass layoffs and plant closings have drawn plenty of headlines and public debate over the years, and they still occasionally do. But the damage to skill and craftsmanship — what's needed to build a complex airliner or a tractor, or for a worker to move up from assembler to machinist to supervisor — has gone largely unnoticed. 'In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on,' says Michael Hout. 'People who work with their hands are doing things today that we call service jobs, in restaurants and laundries, or in medical technology and the like.' The damage to American craftsmanship seems to parallel the precipitous slide in manufacturing employment. And manufacturing's shrinking presence helps explain the decline in craftsmanship, if only because many of the nation's assembly line workers were skilled in craft work. 'Young people grow up without developing the skills to fix things around the house,' says Richard T. Curtin. 'They know about computers, of course, but they don't know how to build them.'"
Quite an achievement on an article so devoid of content worth commenting on. Hey, Baby-Boomers, if you're so pissed off with how the world's turned out maybe you shouldn't have pulled the ladder up after yourselves?
It's getting hard to find anything but pre-pack import junk at Lowes and Home Depot. "Brass" fittings are cheaply plated steel that rusts when you look at it sideways, Kobalt tools are half plastic -- it's like a branch of Wal-Mart. If my local hardware guy doesn't have it, I mail order. The only things I go to Lowes for are immediate needs.
I had a conversation with my step-father a few months ago (he's 71) when he was talking about how when he was a teenager and young adult he used to tinker with his cars all the time, trying to squeeze a bit more performance out of it. Now, of course, he never opens his car's hood. "Do you miss it?" I asked him. "Of course not," he said. "Those cars were garbage. They lasted half as long as the new models, and the reason we were always tinkering with them is that stuff went wrong with them so often that you couldn't afford to take it to the mechanic for every little thing."
Must've been a different kind of "latch-key," in that neighborhood. My dad worked days; me mum, nights; we were pretty much left to our own devices all day. And there was just about nothing we didn't do. Played all kinds of games in the woods on the hill, drinking water straight from the little stream rather than trudge back to the house. Playing with Matchbox cars in the gravel. Racing bikes in the dirt parking lot down the block. Playing hide-and-seek at night. But the big thing was baseball. If we had a quorum, we played. We'd ride from neighborhood to neighborhood, gloves on our handlebars, looking for people to play.
Yeah, we watched our share of TV, too - reruns of Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, Munsters, Get Smart, etc. - but, if the weather was good enough, we were outside, for the most part.
Also three pane windows are mainly filled with argon today. The low heat conductivity, even lower than nitrogenium or normal air, has its advantages. Also argon filled double pane windows are lighter, cheaper and provide about the same thermal isolation than three pane air filled windows.
this state of affairs is exactly was Capitalism was meant to bring about, a day when we all have much more leisure time because automation and division of labour has made long hours of back-breaking subsistence working obsolete.
This seems wrong at many levels. "Capitalism was meant" suggests capitalism was designed or created with a purpose, rather than being the evolution of one mode of exploitation (serfdom) into another (slavery). Furthermore, historians of the late medieval period show that peasants where self-sufficient in food and had more leisure time than early factory workers, who were forced off the land (e.g. Enclosure Acts) and hence food self-sufficiency to work 12-14 hour days. It was the labor movement that fought for shorter work days; and even if we nominally have an 8 hour day today, modern capitalists always find a way to squeeze more out of you (e.g. work from home).
a new model (a post recession model) which acknowledges that there is no viable reason for people to need to be working 40+ hours a week
Yes, that would be socialism, not the dreary factory-centric model in which the corporation is replaced by the state, but where free associations of people produce to fulfill needs and wants without the rusted-out fetters of money to dictate everything.
it's actually the victory of the Capitalist model being unable to see it's own success clear enough to embrace it yet.
I'd suggest you look at some of the early advocates of capitalism, particularly in the Scottish enlightenment, who were quite explicit that forcing peasants into starvation was the most efficient way to boost labor discipline. Here's a link to get you started
Louis Uchitelle needs at attend a Maker Faire -- it was there that I regained hope in the American spirit of ingenuity and the ability to make anything out of anything.
Of course, that ability isn't limited to the USA, the net is littered with stories about African kids in poor villages that manage to make generators out of bike parts or have managed to turn junk into pieces that provide services for their community.
However, the hacker community is the one place where innovation is happening -- too bad the authorities frown on doing things your own way, and that laws are in place to prevent reverse engineering.
If anything, Louis Uchitelle should look to Congress to see where craftmanship is being stifled. Kids can no longer build plastic models because they can't buy glue, they can't whittle because they aren't allowed knives, they can't do anything except sit in front of the TV. It's all been made illegal -- to 'protect' the children.
That's why no one knows how to do anything anymore, because all the valuable skills you learn as a kid are now forbidden due to safety concerns. And then when you grow up, all you're left with is the Home Depot way of doing things.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Thank you for making this point. For me, space is the utmost consideration. My wife and I live in a one-bedroom apartment with not even so much as a dedicated garage space to our name. If I want to do even a little bit of woodworking, like building a bird house, I'm laying down sheet plastic, cutting hardboard with a dremel, and possibly vacuuming sawdust out of the carpet. (Not to mention, all of this probably violates my lease.) Forget about working with pieces of wood large enough to build a small bookcase.
If I had space, the question would then be whether or not I wanted to invest in tools. A power drill? Sure. A table saw? Maybe not.
I'm crafty enough that if I have access to space and tools, I'm a reasonably handy guy. Maybe not "build my own beautiful bookcase" handy but certainly "build my own functional bookcase" handy. Now, fortunately, I have a buddy who has a garage and plenty of woodworking tools. If/when I move closer to him, borrowing becomes an option.
Ultimately, while I sympathize with the tenor of this article, it seems to me that there are a lot of hidden costs to craftsmanship. Should everybody have a workshop in the garage or at least enough that everybody's one degree of separation from a workshop? And what other expertise would we have to give up to maintain that level of craftsmanship? The article discusses some of its advantages but it also seems to downplay other areas of expertise. What exactly is wrong with a shift toward skilled services like cooking, laundry, tailoring, etc.? Isn't a diversity of specialists supposed to be good for an industrial/post-industrial economy?
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
Coming to a town near you. It is with much horror that I keep reading stories just like this, and I have heard much worse. There are many people who are enthusiastic about and advocate for sustainable architecture and alternative types of human habitat. Earthships, strawbale homes, yurts, geodesic domes, monolithic domes, the small homes movement, etc. The list goes on, but the point is that in spite of the collapse in the housing market, there is still a shortage of affordable housing for many of the nation's poor and working class. Even for the middle-class and well-to-do, there are many of us who would prefer to build our own homes to our own preferences, requirements, and objectives - such as living sustainably or being more self reliant (as in not worrying that the utility bill could increase 300% in three months). By providing their own labor, there are alternative dwellings that cost less than $20k to build, using materials that are either recycled (straw bales, car tires, etc.) or made on site (cob, stone, log, rammed earth, adobe, etc.). But most often these alternative dwellings cannot be built according to standard building codes, not because they are any bit less safe or structurally sound, but because the code is written by the same industry that supplies the high-priced standardized lumber, brick, and hardware. In addition to complying with an arbitrary code that many say is feeding the depletion of the earth's natural resources, contributing to global warming, and redistributing wealth from working class families to the world richest 1%, the home builders also have to pony up arbitrary fees for permits, inspections, drawings, approvals, etc. that end up costing more than the total materials.
Many of these alternative dwellings are designed to take advantage of passive heating and cooling techniques as well as collecting rain water into cisterns, draining greywater into gardens, sometimes even processing blackwater, and also generating power on-site, such as with wind turbines, micro-hydro-turbines (creek power), and solar. Efficient hand made ovens that burn biomass grown in the backyard provide more than enough heat for comfort, cooking, and other applications. But even when these dwellings are completely self reliant, most municipalities REQUIRE these homes to have and pay for utility connections such as gas and electricity.
What is ridiculous is that many of the rules have silly loopholes. The codes that apply to my home no longer apply if I build my home on a chassis trailer. While I might be required to hire an electrician to wire my house, I can do my own low-voltage wiring (say 24V for indoor and outdoor lighting). I might not be allowed to install my own solar panels, but I could build a fold-out solar power plant on a trailer chassis without any questions - even add a backup generator, transformers, and a battery bank to boot without raising any eyebrows from the regulators. I can't install a new plumbing fixture in my kitchen without paying for a permit, hiring a plumber, and paying for an inspection, but I can use a pre-installed connection and use a portable dishwasher and a portable sink and relocate them in my kitchen any way I choose. But if my sink was built into the counter then I wouldn't be able to even fix a dripping faucet in some municipalities.
With already such a division between the haves and have-nots in our country, as these regulations tighten, the ability to fall back on self reliance or subsistence farming like our forefathers only one century ago has all by already been taken away. The poor and working middle class will still be blamed for their own socio-economic lot in life, they won't get sympathy or aid from the well-to-do, but they won't be allowed the basic means to provide for their own necessities. Living homeless on the street will continue to be legal, as long as you don't erect a tent or an elaborate cardboard box for shelter. Welcome to Metropolis - workers, please proceed to the depths.