Was Life Better Before The Industrial Revolution?

To Karen: Yeah, it usually takes an ecosystem to be completely wiped out before the last bit is saved. I'm only against cutting old growth since it is an actual functioning forest and takes literally hundreds of years to return to normal if cut. The part of the forest already logged are now basically tree farms.

 

Sometime around 1990, George H.W. Bush removed the last of the meaningful barriers to free trade between the US and China. It took some time for additional Chinese factories to be built and brought up to full production, so Bill Clinton was in office (1993) before the impact was felt here in a significant way.

I was in college in the early 1980's, and my business professors were trying to prepare future managers for explosive corporate growth that never materialized. We were already investing heavily in our infrastructure, and expanding our capacity to build infrastructure at a faster pace in the future. None of that was needed.

So many of these old, small, former manufacturing towns no longer seem to have any reason to exist. They seem to have no role to play in a postindustrial Information Age economy. Added together, those widely scattered places account for many times more abandoned, underutilized, and degraded buildings and land area than all of Detroit, so it's a great, tragic, largely untold story. My childhood took me through three of those towns. They were filled with locals who were mostly third generation residents, assuming that the torch would eventually pass to them to carry on with working to improve the quality of life in their communities, for future generations. Right now, I can't think of anything anyone could do that would make anything even one percent better in any of those places.

These are the places that fuel the fires of bitterness that power today's Republican Party. They want to go back to the past, when everything seemed to be moving in the right direction. I think they blame Clinton more than Bush Sr. for the job losses, because of the timing. To be fair, Clinton did nothing to stop the bleeding.

 

There's a similar situation over here in certain areas of the country. These are places like the north east of England, which was once home to a great deal of heavy industry such as shipbuilding and steel making, as well as coal mining. South Wales is in a similar situation. Unemployment rates tend to be much higher the the national average, and very few new jobs have been created or new industries come in to fill the gap.
These were at one time (up to the 70's) vibrant working class communities, and also hot beds of trade union power.

Most of the industry went in the 80's. Some because it was no longer viable given competition from the far east, and some, ie coal mining because of ideological reasons. Back in the 70's a strike by miners had brought down a Tory government, and when Thatcher got in she decided to go to war with the miners when they went on strike again. It all ended up in the closure of most of the mines, even though they were still viable for several hundred years. It also spelled the end of any real power for unions, which IMO has been a disaster for the ordinary working person.
Skilled jobs in industry have been replaced by unemployment or part time work and zero hours contracts.

There are also post industrial wastelands in parts of the midlands. It's quite depressing to travel through such areas.

It's all been complicated by the 2007-08 crash, but the right over here are increasingly scapegoating immigrant workers from the EU and further afield for the present dismal state of the economy.

 

This^^^

 

actually its a population issue. which is one of many things that tie in to environment, as much or more then the development of technology. there's a lot of back and forth between culture, population and technology, all of which interact with environment. not always, but more often then not, in negative ways.

 

Is there anywhere for them to go? Larger cities in the American South are where the jobs are. Most of the people who remain in the isolated small towns are retired, or sick, or lack the intelligence or useful skills to compete in the job market. A small number commute a ridiculous distance to work in a larger city, because of family and religious ties. A few more have menial jobs in the small towns.

Western Pennsylvania, western New York (state), and most of West Virginia come to mind. Southern states are actually quite the opposite. In our larger cities, the few remaining industrial buildings are mostly on the bad side of town, where we have no reason to visit. Driving on the freeways between towns, we mostly see suburbs, farms, and trees. It's easy for a young person to forget that manufacturing was once the cornerstone of our state's economy. The little factory towns are out of sight and out of mind for most of us.

Going back to a small population currently isn't an option.

 

by attrition, over time, by reducing human fertility, actually it is. it's not an instantanious solution, but it is really the only long term one.
obviously we can use cleaner technologies then we are currently. failing to do so imparels the future of our species.
and the obstruction to that isn't one of technology, but of political will.

 

I agree, but we have to survive the short term first. We could lose thousands of species to extinction before the human population even levels off.

 

Generally for people in the areas I mentioned there's no real prospect of moving to another place to find work. Partly that's because they are just the worst blackspots - but the employment situation over here is not that great anywhere, especially if you want a quality job. Many jobs that have been created here in recent times are very poorly paid. Even though we have a mandatory minimum wage, it's acknowledged to be less than a 'living wage'. Mainly these are jobs in the service sector. There's not that much actual industry left here.

In my own opinion, this 'downgrade' has had a bad effect on the whole fabric of society here. Someone like a skilled shipbuilder held a position where they commanded some respect, and most important of all, self respect. They did a job where they could see tangibly the result of their labours, and even feel some pride in their work.
Under the conditions we have now, I feel that has gone. Not completely, but certainly in terms of communities in former industrial areas.

Also because of the fact that this is a small country, there's nothing like the scope for migration that exists in the US. And we have European migrants coming in - eager for even the lowest paid and most menial of jobs that Brits don't want to do.

On the other point about post industrial wasteland - where I live there never was much industry. But if I take a train to Birmingham, a major urban conurbation, I have to pass through the heart of the area known as the Black Country. It earned the name during the industrial revolution because it became a centre for the new iron smelting trade due to having some of the richest coal deposits ever discovered. There was a seam of coal found that they dubbed the '30 foot' because that was how thick it was, and it was close to the surface. It was entirely mined out by the mid 19th c. Thousands of so called Nail Shops and other dirty types of industry were crowded into the area and they said that a constant pall of black smoke hung over the entire area 24/7.

They've made some efforts to clean up over years, and now a lot of the slag heaps and scars on the land have been cosmetically landscaped. But it still has a kind of tainted feel to the whole area, and there are many empty factory buildings. Dotted here and there a modern business park or small industrial estate. It's depressing.

On the other hand I'm also close to Coalbrookdale, where the industrial revolution really first kicked off with mass iron smelting. A lot of stuff there has been preserved and it's an interesting place to visit.

 

I'm with you on that one bro. If only we had some way to have a global one-woman-one-child policy. But given the lack of political will to even bring up something that controversial, I can't see it happening.

Likewise with sustainable energy etc. Politicians are mostly corporate puppets, and there's no will to move to a more green or sustainable model.

 

You're clearly have been brainwashed and become a pawn of the people who want to install the NWO JK ... although I don't see how this policy could be enforced succesfully if too much people would be against it.

 

I don't see how it could be enforced or even enacted. I certainly don't want to have to live in a world where it would be enforced. It would need a massive global awakening before most people would even see the dangers of over population. I think we're a long way from a place where the human race can act in a unified way on this problem. So probably nothing will be done and the billions will continue to multiply unfettered.

But shit - looks like my cover's blown now.

 

Do you think they would be willing to move? Most of the people left in our small manufacturing towns are fiercely loyal, having been indoctrinated by previous generations that they were socially obligated to work hard to make their local communities as good as they could be. They often express contempt for larger cities, and for those who move there.

Even though I got out of that lifestyle as fast as I could, finding it to be much too confining, I do feel bad for those who wanted to stay, and had to watch everything crumble away.

The big winners in the postindustrial transition have been the larger cities of the South, which used to be mostly racial minority poverty and crime centers, and transportation hubs. Their downtown areas have become very nice and progressive, with plenty of old tobacco and cotton warehouses converted into loft apartments and condos for young professionals. Old downtown retail stores are now antiques shops, art galleries, bars, and upscale restaurants. Former factory buildings house medical research labs and marketing firms.

I can definitely relate. Many days, I leave my office at a loss to explain in simple terms exactly what I accomplished that day. Without a physical product, success can be hard to define.

I used to know some third generation manufacturing employees who were intensely proud of what they and their companies had accomplished, in terms of establishing a great reputation for quality work. They felt like they were making a difference. You don't feel that in the big city.

Do they have problems with the ground sinking? The downtown area of Fairmont, West Virginia has old abandoned mines underneath it, and the maps have been lost. Now and then, a part of a mine will cave in, and it's close enough to the surface that the buildings above it may collapse.

I'm having a hard time visualizing an area as large as the Black Country where heavy industry was done on such a large scale. Our early efforts were so much smaller. Underground coal mines and mining communities were once scattered all through the New River Gorge, but they were small enough that after 40 to 50 years of abandonment, the gorge has returned to the appearance of a natural mountain wilderness.

We have vast coal reserves down deep, which will probably someday be mined by underwater robots. Too expensive to remove it now. We have vast strip mines operating now, mostly in remote areas where almost no one sees them except from airplanes.

 

A lot of people wouldn't be willing to move for the reasons you give. Even in fairly large cities people have a kind of regional sense of identity.

Most of the money in the UK is in London, but costs of housing and living in general are much higher there than in other parts of the country. Unless you had a professional kind of job, you wouldn't be able to afford to move there.or the surrounding areas.

I've hardly ever done a job where there was an actual concrete product you could look at at the end of the day. About the only time was when I worked in a studio back in the 80s. And we did want to do the best we could in terms of the finished recording for our clients.

The mines in the Black Country were mainly open cast. In other parts, such as the North East, there were deep pits that extended miles out under the sea bed. The journey out to the coal face could take an hour, and until the mid 20thc. miners were only paid for time at the actual coal face.

The Black Country as it was in the 19thc is not easy to visualize now. The area covered is quite big, and most of it bears the scars to some extent.

Birmingham, which is the largest city outside London was damaged a lot in WW II by bombing. The city was rebuilt as a kind of archetypal concrete jungle. But there's quite a lot preserved there too.

 

That's a polite way of describing enforced conformity of thought and culture.

We haven't centralized quite so much. If you have the right skills and education for a post-industrial career, you can live just outside a larger Southern city and spend a third or a fourth as much on a nice house as it would cost near a major Northeastern city.

In some ways, some of these young professionals have the best of both worlds; enjoying the products and services of an industrial world, while most of the associated problems stay in China.

Yikes! It's hard to imagine a worse job! I'd be terrified!

 

Now that we are near the end of the electronic age and are entering the burgeoning bio tech age, who knows what potentially beneficial biological discovery's we stand to lose, let alone what we may have already lost.

Anyone see the Sean Connery movie "Medicine Man"?

 

It's unimaginable, and I don't know how human beings could work under those conditions, and for a pitiful wage, as they did through the 19th and half of the 20th centuries.

After WW II though it all changed. Mines became safer and more mechanized. Miners were paid a high wage, and their union became very powerful, and also by the 80's, very far left - marxist in fact.
The miner's strike of 1984 remains one of the most divisive incidents in recent British history. They lost - the strike, then the entire industry, or almost. We now import over 400 mil. tons of coal a year to feed power stations.
Insane.That's what happens when ideology triumphs over good sense.

 

From where? Our coal exports fell dramatically after the fall of the Soviet Union, and East European coal became available to Western Europe.

Ironically, one of our nation's biggest coal mining disasters took place many decades ago, when a methane explosion killed more than 300 miners, mostly from Russia, who had been lured to West Virginia through false promises and deceptive advertising. Most of them spoke no English.

 

Some from eastern europe, some from Russia, some from the USA. There are very few mines left here. Only small scale.

And actually, the coal we used to get from UK mines was of far higher quality than the coal you can buy now as a domestic consumer.

 

I think the Netherlands are still buying coal from the US (well, 'still'... don't know since when but they are doing so in the last couple of years)