Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I make my own silicon wafers!
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.
Yes, I've also heard software developers complain that today you can use ExtJS 4 to instantly have a windowing option in your browser and now it's sad because all the UI guys are using something like this. These "prefab architectures" are so terrible because nobody actually writes JavaScript anymore. Well, I know how to put together a window sill, a window frame and put the pane in and everything (even know how to build the headers for load bearing regulations on houses). And I'll tell you right now my implementation of a JavaScript windowing system wouldn't be as slick or universal as ExtJS 4 just like my window would be pretty shitty compared to something prefabbed up. Both would cost my employers more time and money. I would wager that if you were someone that built houses for a living, you would be okay with someone else putting together factory made windows with a low defect rate. Unsurprisingly it saves you a bunch of money just like a lot of software libraries save me time and money.
Yeah, I can make a table. But I need a jointer and a planer and whole bunch of other tools. The barrier to entry is high. Or I can go down to Ikea and find some veneered particle board for comparative pennies. Welcome to capitalism.
'In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on,'
Oh, right, your ancestors were the farmers. It was okay for you to move on to something more interesting like building houses and cities instead of devoting every waking moment to growing growing growing. Now we've moved on and it's time to mourn the loss of ... what exactly? Am I supposed to feel ashamed that all four of my grandparents were farmers and none of their 14 children are? Or that my dad was a carpenter and cement pourer and I'm a software developer? It's funny, none of my relatives guilt trip me like this New York Times writer that probably hasn't spent a day of his life working in a factory.
From the NYTimes author's bio:
Mr. Uchitelle was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York in 2002-03 and taught journalism for many years at Columbia University’s School of General Studies. Before joining The Times, he worked for The Associated Press as a reporter, an editor and a foreign correspondent in Latin America. He and his wife, Joan Uchitelle, live in Scarsdale, N.Y. They have two grown daughters.
Hey, anybody know of a good factory job near Scarsdale for Mr. Uchitelle? Maybe one of those industrial revolution jobs with industrial revolution pay? Then I think I'll listen to him bitch and moan about how progress is losing our nation's toolbox. Afterwards, take him around to farms at night (you know, the ones where people are working after sundown and before sunup) and let everyone tell him their stories about how they were injured on the job. Every hard working farmer or carpenter has those stories. I still got all my digi
My work here is dung.
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.
It's hard for a craftsman to know if he's violating a patent, environmental law, or something that will make a TSA knuckle-dragger feel is a weapon of mass destruction.
Car manufacturers seem intent on specifically requiring special tools for their cars, and use patents to protect them.
The DMCA, copyright, and patent laws make it neigh illegal to tinker with electronic devices you've bought, because some a$$hole in Holywood bought some corrupt legislators. I mean, discussed how to make America more competitive in a global IP marketplace.
Finally, cheap manufacturing from Asia has lead to a situation where it's cheaper to replace consumer products than to repair them. So how are many people going to learn repair skills on them? It's certainly not a valid career path in the U.S.
Just as people now believe that you can run perpetual Federal deficits, or that all children are above average, or that form is more important than function, or that you can borrow more money to buy a house than you can pay back, there's a growing disdain for people who point out that the emperor has no clothes. Tell people you work on your own car instead of dropping it off at the dealer? Subtle sneer. Drive a used car instead of a new one? Sneer. Study hard and get good grades? You're just a dork, and you're not cool. It's the same anti-science mentality that's been around for years, now broadening to the more practical skills.
It's also the Walmart mentality - why buy something for $100 that lasts forever when you can buy one a Walmart for $9.99 and replace it every six months?
Just as people no longer distinguish between news and entertainment, they can no longer distinguish crap from quality. Our cultural egalitarianism now covers everything - and since values are subjective, who are you to say that 1 person's skills are better than another? They're just different, right?
As a homeowner, the only decent work I've had done at my house has been by older, family-run businesses. Newer, younger contractors inevitably do a horrible job and require constant handholding.
Personally, I'm glad that I'll be dead in 40 years - the way things are going I think soon after that we'll be back living in caves.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is yet another in a long line of alarmist articles about the 'loss of' X or Y in our modern technological culture. What is being missed is that 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. What we should be asking is not 'how do we go back to hard work with our hands?' but how do we transition to 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. We can then realise that we can work with our hands, enjoy DIY and reconnect with the land in a way that is about personal growth, community and coexistence, instead of commerce, because commerce takes less and less work to keep running. It's not a hippy dream, or a Socialist agenda, it's actually the victory of the Capitalist model being unable to see it's own success clear enough to embrace it yet.
Sorry, but they do.
Inevitable really. With a large service sector comes services. Services like having a kitchen installed or a carpet laid. I don't see it as a bad thing, if anything it shows a marginal increase in living standards.
As an aside, all these rose tinted submissions are getting silly. Before long it'll be "Slashdot. News for reactionaries, stuff used to be better."
Same with cooking. With so many pre-packaged frozen meals, fresh pre-prepared ready-to-cook meals at the grocery store, vacuum-packed foods, ubiquitous drive-thrus, and universal Take Out Taxi restaurant delivery, cooking is either a lost art or relegated to holidays and "I'm going to cook today" days. The gourmet kitchen has become the SUV room of the house -- a $50k expense useful for that one excursion spent off-roading or the one blizzard of 24".
Division of labor is a double-edged sword. More cynically, one might say it is seductive, tempting the populace into comfort in exchange for reduction of self-sufficiency, independence, resilience, and sustainability.
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."
no one who has worked on a farm says 'discer'. It's a disc.
It's true. I've been living a lie. Sure, I talk the talk and I might sound like I've worked on farms but it's all a sham. "Why do I do it?" Well, there's something about being able to tell all the Carnegie Mellon, Princeton and MIT graduates I work with that I spent my childhood picking up rocks and throwing bails. I keep a bucket of pig shit behind my house and sometimes I just smear that all over me before I hit the town. But it's all a lie. I'll step into the local bar and the women will take one whiff of that sweet fecal matter and come running to me. "What were you doing today, eldavojohn?" they ask as they swoon around me. "Castratin' pigs," I'll lie. And they will just fall all over each other to touch me. I know, it's all very glamorous but it requires a lot of research to go into detail about making two incisions to get the testicles out on the small male pigs and then wiping them down with antibiotic. Or injecting the blue crap into the female piglets' ovaries. Women just absolutely adore a man who knows his way around ending the reproductive cycle of pigs. Bring up that topic at a fine family dinner and even East Coast grandma is on the edge of her seat.
And the money. My god, the money I've made claiming to have worked on farms. I get $25,000 a night just to make an appearance at places and rub elbows with businessmen, musicians and diplomats. They would trot me out like a one trick pony and all ask me questions -- hanging on my every word. That too, has been all a lie. "Con man" would be a kind label for me now.
But you caught me. I never worked on farms growing up. I only brag about walking up and down scorching black earth, picking up any baseball sized or larger rock and returning it to the flatbed behind the tractor. But I've never done it. Never done it for hundreds of hours every summer between the hours of 5am and 11am daily. Never received $8/hour under the table nor the right to use some of their equipment at my folks' place. The details are there but the colloquialism of "discer" versus "disc" ruined me. I suppose this slip has been a blessing in disguise.
I'm glad you caught me before I cut off one of my own fingers so I could tell people I lost it trying to free up the gears of a frozen motor. All the Slashdot karma that would have gotten me and all the pussy that would have been so easily accessible with only nine fingers would have been great -- but it all would have been a lie.
Thank you, Anonymous Coward. Thank you for helping me help myself and own up to this horrible vile lie that has given me an undue elevated societal status.
My work here is dung.
When technology moves on, the end users learn to use the new tools and new materials, and only experts use the expert's tools to make the tools and materials for the every day man. But the experts do that much more efficiently and at a lower price than the normal people could do before.
There was a time when you could fix your own car, but that car would be so simple that it could only do 100 km/h, had no satnav, no ABS, no fuel injection, no mp3 player, no central locking system, no electrical windows, no indicators when something was wrong. And I spend my time to do something else (like spamming on /.), instead of tinkering on my car.
Nostaligia is a rubbish argument against technological progress.
I was about to say "tell me something i don't know". The middle class that owns a house, work 40 hours in a week are almost forced to be a diy guy (or girl ? ) since they are not rich people. I don't know for all of you but I like building things, repairing and renovation things by myself. It makes me feel useful and it will serve as a good example for my son.
I own a house that was originally constructed in 1942. I purchased it from the estate of the original owner in 2004. Every single thing I have tried to do in the house has been thwarted by the previous owner's amateur attempts at home improvement. Electrical (four electrical boxes, knob & tube wiring under the attic insulation), carpentry (crooked doors, cheep 70's aluminum frame windows, bathroom floor supported by rusty screws and good intentions), plumbing (copper tubing to the attic furnace, automotive radiator hose for the u-bend on the tub drain). Every single thing has taken twice as long and cost almost twice as much as needed due to poor craftsmanship, kludges, and stubborn refusal to follow code or even basic principles of home construction.
Seriously. I wish he had just hired a professional.
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My mom taught primary school back in the day. She noticed that the kids (ages 5-8, depending on which grade she was teaching each year) who came from the apartment blocks down the street had no finger dexterity at all - their hands were like clubs because they had never had any practice _doing_ anything, never got to go outside and play, make things, but just watched TV. This was back in the mid-1960s. Many of them were 'latchkey kids' whose parents both worked, so these kids went to school, came home and sat alone in the apartment until Mom and/or Dad came home. It's been a problem for a long time.
Another part of the problem is the relative cost of parts vs. assembled units. I recall wanting to fix a toaster (about 1970) that had stopped working - the nichrome wire inside had burned out. The cost of the wire was only slightly less than the cost of a new toaster. I think it's even worse today as increasingly automated manufacturing makes assembled units so cheap. I've noticed that in general it's cheaper to buy a new bookcase than to buy the wood to build your own of the same quality, _if_ you're that good - it's hard to match the precision with which even Ikea furniture is made.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
It's not that they are clueless. I've seen some young kids (16-18 or so) able to rebuild computers, car engines, do almost any arbitrary house work, etc.
I'm 30, I'll rebuild computers, and wire a house. Aside from that, my manual skills are, admittedly, limited. The rest doesn't interest me, and I know people I can call for help to get the job done better than a handy man, and with less time than it would take me to do it myself - I'll learn a bit along the way as well, to help with doing the smaller repairs. And my friends get excellent cooking and/or money. Everyone wins. Some of them instead of taking food or money, get assistance from me in computer related stuff, tutoring their kids or themselves in a mathematical, computer or scientific subject, etc.
If you don't have the interest, and don't need to do it, there really isn't a good reason to worry about it beyond a modest familiarity. Could you live your lifestyle, having built everything you own, from the ground up? Probably not, you don't have the time. The point is to be good at at least a few things, and then know who to talk to, to get the rest done effectively, and if possible, know enough of the basics to shave off some diagnostic time.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
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.
I was a latch-key kid, and sure, I watched some TV. But we also ran around, rode bikes, played with legos, etc. And I'm not some old guy, I'm a child of the 80's.
Now get of my lawn before I finished loading my flintlock rifle. You got about about ten minutes, because I will have to cast another bullet and mix the gunpowder first.
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.
If 29 is older than the age group TFA is complaining about, then which group are they referring to? "God damn 12 year olds these days! They don't even know how to manufacture their own code-compliant hurricane-resistant fucking windows these days!! Gafaww!!!"
I am in my mid-20s and know my way around carpentry, however, when I was in my teens this was not the case. The whole "experience" thing comes to mind.
I've noticed that in general it's cheaper to buy a new bookcase than to buy the wood to build your own of the same quality
Having done some carpentry and built some bookcases both walmart and "real" you cannot even buy veneer particle board of a quality level as low as walmart flat packs. Literally unavailable to retail consumers. So I cry bogus on that claim.
The real problem is people who can't appreciate quality. I can and have built bookcases out of solid oak and hand rubbed finish, which end up costing quite a bit and look beautiful. However the average joe just wants the $19 saggy walmart bookcase. Sort of like McDonalds "food" vs real restaurant.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'm 30, I'll rebuild computers, and wire a house.
Wire a house? Right this way, citizen. You have the right to remain silent...
A few years back the county commissioners in our area voted to apply city building codes to construction anywhere in the county. Not only do you need permits out the wazoo if you so much as want to bang two rocks together, but the odds that you'll actually pass the inspection the first time around if you're not on the commission or screwing somebody who is on the commission are somewhere between jack and squat.
We had a basement foundation put in for a modular house and jumped through all their hoops; when the inspector came out we failed the inspection because the front porch light was loose and there was no handrail on the concrete stairs leading to the basement OUTSIDE the house. Because of that -- and that alone -- we were not permitted to occupy our own house on our own property. Apparently he felt it was safer for my handicapped wife, my dog, and me to live for six weeks in a leaky motor home in our driveway with no running water in below-zero winter than to sleep in beds in our heated house because of that porch light and handrail.
Do I sound just ever so slightly bitter? Six months later we're going through the same Kafka nightmare trying to be allowed permission to use the interior stairs we had installed. Our builder submitted plans to the commission, those plans were approved, and still the jackass tyrants wanted us to rip out the stairs and install them in a different place because the treads were 1/2" narrower than his arbitrary building code prescribes. No, I'm not saying arbitrary because I'm angry; I'm saying arbitrary because they didn't have a problem with stair tread width five years ago before adopting those building codes, and the width they decided on isn't a standard for anyone, anywhere -- building codes other places recommend different widths, so there's nothing magically safe about the width he wants.
This time around, we do have a friend-of-a-friend of one of the commissioners so we were at least able to get the stairs themselves approved. But we still can't get final acceptance of the construction until we rip out the lighting we put on the stairs ("you might bump your head on the bulb if you grow to 7 feet tall"), put up safety mesh over a window at the foot of the stairs ("if you're drunk and you trip going downstairs, you might break the glass and cut yourself"), and replace a steel beam we had to remove in the first place because it really was too low to go under without smacking into it.
So why bother learning how to use tools? I'll never be allowed to use them anyway; it's for my own good that I leave all construction to licensed professionals.
The real problem is people who can't appreciate quality.
I'm with you here. People in general do not appreciate quality. But this has almost always been the case.
I can and have built bookcases out of solid oak and hand rubbed finish, which end up costing quite a bit and look beautiful. However the average joe just wants the $19 saggy walmart bookcase. Sort of like McDonalds "food" vs real restaurant.
If by average joe you mean people who live on a budget and can't always afford quality.
I don't know many people who would choose Wal Mart particle board over solid wood if the costs were the same. Most people need their furniture to perform a function. If it performs the function and looks nice that's a bonus. If it is also durable that's incredible.
It's not unreasonable to expect a premium for premium goods. What is unreasonable is to expect everyone to pay those premiums if they don't have to.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
We had a basement foundation put in for a modular house and jumped through all their hoops; when the inspector came out we failed the inspection because the front porch light was loose and there was no handrail on the concrete stairs leading to the basement OUTSIDE the house. Because of that -- and that alone -- we were not permitted to occupy our own house on our own property. Apparently he felt it was safer for my handicapped wife, my dog, and me to live for six weeks in a leaky motor home in our driveway with no running water in below-zero winter than to sleep in beds in our heated house because of that porch light and handrail.
Is there any building department in the country that will approve stairs with no railing? Your wife is disabled, so you should understand the need for hand railings on stairs. Even if they are OUTSIDE the house, since presumably they may be used for emergency egress. If the porch light was installed as part of the permitted work, then I can understand why they rejected it -- a loose light can be a shock hazard. If it wasn't part of the permitted work, then the inspector was being petty and should have just pointed it out without writing it up. But if it was done under the permit and he gave his signoff and your wife electrocuted herself while changing the light bulb, it's his head on the line.
I don't see why it took you 6 more weeks of sleeping outside to get the handrail installed and porch light fixed? A handrail is a couple hours of work, even in concrete. Couldn't you just fix them and schedule a followup inspection?
As annoying as they are, building department regulations are supposed to insure a minimal standard of construction - any licensed contractor should be able to build to code without a problem. If you're doing the work yourself, stop by your building office and speak to an inspector -- don't assume that if you just submit plans that the inspector is going to call out every little non-compliant item.
No, the real problem is that that solid oak furniture with hand-rubbed finish takes:
1) A long time to build;
2) A minimum level of expertise to build a passably "quality" unit - adding to the time required to build it;
3) A minimum set of relatively expensive tools and workspace to build that passable "quality";
4) A relatively expensive set of materials with which to construct this unit;
If you took any random person, and offered them a choice (totally free, no strings, no fees - whatever they prefer is given to them at no cost to them) between:
1) A hand-crafted, solid-maple bookshelf, that sells for $700-1200 dollars (http://www.pompy.com/configurations/?category=45&product=6319);
and
2) A mass-produced MDF-and-veneer monstrosity that sells for $20 dollars (http://www.walmart.com/ip/Mylex-4-Shelf-Bookcase-Black/20836837);
Most people are going to choose the $700 hand-crafted-by-master-crafters bookshelf. So why do people choose the cheap furniture? Because... it's cheap. $700 for a bookshelf is a LOT of money. $20 not so much. So yeah, people will buy the cheap one, because they don't have the extra $680 to spend.
As for building their own, they'd need a whole lot more than $700 to build their own bookshelf. Time, materials, tools, and expertise all cost you something to acquire or develop. Spending hundreds - maybe into the thousand+ range - on tools and materials for a project that you probably will only use once or twice more in your life is a pretty expensive hobby.
Nothing to do with people "preferring" shoddy workmanship and shitty furniture. Everything to do with people making an economic decision.
I've been building computers since I was your age, I'm 60. But the problem is how stuff is made these days. Take cars, for example. When I was young, I'd work on my own. Now? I'd have a hard time changing the spark plugs. When my battery died, I had no clue where the damned thing was. Turns out it's inside the front passenger wheel well, it took a trained mechanic 45 minutes to change, you have to remove the wheel, fender, and wheel well to change the battery. THAT'S what the problem is.
Ever try to take a laptop apart? Pain in the ass, I won't work on laptops any more. Same thing.
Free Martian Whores!
I don't see why it took you 6 more weeks of sleeping outside to get the handrail installed and porch light fixed? A handrail is a couple hours of work, even in concrete. Couldn't you just fix them and schedule a followup inspection?
Now that I think about it, it was more like 3 weeks but to answer your question it was because the contractors who did the initial work had squeezed us in between larger jobs and moved on to their next job in another state as soon as they got their truck unloaded, and everybody else within a hundred miles (it's a rural area in Wyoming) was booked months in advance. Once the original contractor was able to send somebody back to do the handrail, we had to wait for the inspector to come back out for the followup inspection.
Your wife is disabled, so you should understand the need for hand railings on stairs. Even if they are OUTSIDE the house, since presumably they may be used for emergency egress. If the porch light was installed as part of the permitted work, then I can understand why they rejected it -- a loose light can be a shock hazard. If it wasn't part of the permitted work, then the inspector was being petty and should have just pointed it out without writing it up. But if it was done under the permit and he gave his signoff and your wife electrocuted herself while changing the light bulb, it's his head on the line.
She will also never, ever be able to use those stairs under any circumstances. But that's beside the point. I'm saying it's intrusive and counterproductive to deny occupancy of our bedroom because of an outside handrail. Yes, all the things you cite are potential hazards and it's quite conceivable that some poorly placed item or loose fixture could someday hurt me. Our choice of placement of chairs and the exercise bicycle in the living room are tripping hazards (ask me how I know). The stupid cat who parks herself right in front of my office door in the unlit hallway at night before I go back to the bedroom is a safety hazard who is, at this point, lucky to be alive and that only because she made it out of reach before I could find an axe.
But all of that is my problem. If I get hurt, or somebody decides to sue me because they got hurt, on my own property due to decisions I made; if a future buyer refuses to make an offer until I change the layout of the stairs, I bear the consequences of my actions. I don't need every minuscule aspect of my life safety inspected, protective helmeted, or compliance regulated. I shouldn't have to stop by my building office and speak to inspector to manage my property to my specifications. If they want to offer advice as to what they think is the best way to approach things, I think that's great and I'll seek out such advice and take it into considerations; making me legally bound to adhere to every jot and tittle of that advice goes beyond helping me make my home safe and becomes an unreasonable intrusion into my private life.
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.