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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.'"
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.
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.