TIL Henry Ford married the Road Runner. It makes sense, I suppose.

Huh, never thought of that. So true...and I will add to this. In the past jobs in service have been able to absorb people into it to take up the loss of jobs (Say in agriculture and such.) So when Henry Ford made his assembly line, jobs were created pretty much everywhere. Restaurants are but one great example of this.

But with the techno revolution, the service sector was already pretty full. Now it is saturated. If I see one more new gas station down here in Florida, or another restaurant open, it will be too soon. I remember TWO, TWO Starbucks in the same mall. Such a false economy...

Now add automation and boom...

Nah, the Doom 3 palette was pitch black interspersed with the glowing eyes of demons, whose closets you have just foolishly stumbled over.
That demo (if you could really call it that) was very purdy but several things occurred to me while I was watching it. When our futuristic ninja gets busted I couldn't help but think, "Yep, I hate it when that happens" there's always one nosy douchebag who has to ruin an otherwise perfectly good infiltration.
In the future, shutting down an assembly line won't just stop the line but also blow up at least half of it, if only Henry Ford had thought of this, who knows where we would be today.
As good as this looks by the time a significant portion of the population has the hardware necessary to run this in real time we will all have moved on to Unreal Engine version 6. So none of this is especially practical for gaming purposes, it makes me wonder if they aren't trying to market this to film makers as well.

It's an interesting video, and honestly, I'm not sure whether I agree with it or not.

I suppose I'd segregate it into art and engineering

On the one hand, having a single creative vision can result in some great art.

On the other hand, almost all modern engineering of any kind is a collaborative effort. Systems are simply too big and complex for one person to exercise an auteur-like control over.

The problem to me is not collaboration. The problem is getting the right kind of collaboration. The "design by committee" argument is a result of bike shedding.

Henry Ford famously said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Pretty good argument for single creative vision, right? Clearly the "people" didn't understand the paradigm shift.

But no great invention occurs in a vacuum, and no great invention was ever perfect on the first iteration. It's an incredibly hard problem. Feedback from users is undeniably important, but a good engineer must be able to differentiate between useful feedback and people who don't understand the problem domain.

Personally, I work collaboratively 90% of the time. The 10% is the interesting bit though

A bit of a fact problem here about Henry Ford. While it's technically true he paid enough so some of his workers could afford to purchase cars, it's certainly not true of all of them. See the Ford Massacre video footage for more details. Also this wiki.

I agree he is scum. I was just being fair. Otherwise I would be scum too.
>> ^bareboards2:

And?
He owns the factory. He has the ability to increase the wages from "a pittance". He has the ability to improve the living and working conditions.
I keep thinking about Henry Ford, who pissed off his fellow wealthy factory-owning cohorts, when he paid his workers much much more than the other guys did. He started the middle class because he wanted to create demand for his products.
Granted, this is just a clip. Maybe the next thing he said was -- we raised the wages. We reduced the number of people in a room. We improved the workers' situation and left some profit over there in China.
I'm betting he didn't.

>> ^swedishfriend:
Everything he said matches the reality in China. I don't know about the particular factory he was talking about but that is how poor people are in China.

And?

He owns the factory. He has the ability to increase the wages from "a pittance". He has the ability to improve the living and working conditions.

I keep thinking about Henry Ford, who pissed off his fellow wealthy factory-owning cohorts, when he paid his workers much much more than the other guys did. He started the middle class because he wanted to create demand for his products.

Granted, this is just a clip. Maybe the next thing he said was -- we raised the wages. We reduced the number of people in a room. We improved the workers' situation and left some profit over there in China.

I'm betting he didn't.



>> ^swedishfriend:

Everything he said matches the reality in China. I don't know about the particular factory he was talking about but that is how poor people are in China.

Profit means you are utilizing resources effectively. The opposite is net destruction. If everyone consumed more than they produced, we would eventually have nothing. Henry Ford accumulated a lot of personal wealth for his innovations, but everyone he traded with got a car and his employees were better paid than unions. You can pay a guy with a bulldozer a lot more than a guy with a shovel and savings and investment is what makes that upgrade possible. No business can force you to trade your production for theirs, only the government with taxes can do that. If the government didn't have the power to dole out special favors to business, would business bother bribing them? Lobbying is the symptom, the problem is in excess government power.

The thing that socialists don't understand is that the wealth creation is what's important, not concentration. In capitalism, 1 guy could have 7 yachts and a moon base, but if the average person has two cars, two kids, a home, and countless amenities, who cares? Without the profit motive, who would go through the trouble of inventing and selling anything en masse if your greatest reward is no better than someone on the assembly line who took no risk? If everyone equally has very little as the soviets did, how is that better?

But you know, socialists act like all megarich people do is spend their money on frivolous things. In reality, they have too much to do that. It gets invested in upstart companies who need the capital to express their ideas and by the end, most is usually given to charity. In other words, it gets recycled back into wealth creation whereas the government would just waste it on bombs and embassies.

Oh, and to the guy who said the FDA is there to help you from business, look up stevia and aspartame. Your naive belief that giving others the power to choose for you is a complete backfire that accomplishes the opposite. The FDA is bribed shitless into using their "protective ban" powers to ban, harass, or steal from perfectly safe competitors on behalf of their corporate cronies. Also look up all the instances where a company was sued for supplying dangerous or defective products. That's not the FDA, that's libertarian-approved courts and recourse dissuading fraud and abuse in the marketplace. It's not more profitable to take shortcuts, it's less profitable because you'll be sued into oblivion. Do some businesses die because their owners are too stupid to see that? Yes. But business mortality is good, we don't want destructive businesses surviving like a horrid government program can.

So Teddy Roosevelt was a communist?!

It doesn't mean there's no problem government can't fix. It means that gov't can fix shortcomings in a free market system with reforms. You know things like the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, those terrible gov't programs that spend other people's money to do things like ensuring what you buy at the grocery store won't kill you. How wasteful!

The Progressive Movement was about eliminating corruption in government. It was about improving society through various means, including gov't involvement when needed, but not always. For example, Henry Ford paid his workers well, very much against what most factory owners did, as Ford was heavily influenced by the Progressive Movement. Settlement Houses were charity based, not government run, and helped to educate adults to become more effective workers by teaching various skills. Yes, it overstepped its bounds with Prohibition, but it also brought the following communist, socialist, un-American things:

Women's Suffrage
Meritocracy to gov't agencies and officials
Modernized public schools
Food and Drug Administration
Busted up monopolies to protect consumers
Regulated unfair business practices designed to eliminate competition at the detriment to consumers
Safer working conditions
End of child labor
Fairer pay for workers with things like the minimum wage
Unemployment insurance

I'm sure qm will have a problem with some of the above, but how can you argue with the vast majority of them? Most historians rank T. Roosevelt and FDR as two of America's best presidents. They're probably the two most well known Progressives in US History.

This is of course all part of the communist conspiracy!!!

>> ^quantumushroom:

Progressivism = socialism = statism = communism lite and regular brand.
Nutshell:

There's no problem government can't solve! Just keep throwing other peoples' money at it!

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Someone care to explain what "progressive" means? I can't find a suitable definition on the internets, or in commonality of liberal progressives. The only meaningful definition was from progressive tax codes, but I don't think that idea encapsulates the entirety of this vague concept.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^NetRunner:

You're failing to realize that "creating" isn't the same as "recognizing under the law".

You've made me sigh twice in one day. Kudos.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporations
"...legal entity that is created under the laws of a state designed to establish the entity as a separate legal entity having its own privileges and liabilities distinct from those of its members." (emphasis mine)


This is getting quite silly. They're created...by whom? If they're created by government, that means Ford and Microsoft were created by the government, and not Henry Ford and Bill Gates.

If that were the case, how did those people wind up associated with them? Were they appointed by the President? Congress? Governor? State Legislature? Did they win an election?

I know it sounds crazy, but I think the sequence of events was that they started created a business, and then decided to file some paperwork to have it legally recognized as a corporation to get all the legal benefits.

You know, sorta like getting married isn't the same thing as having it be legally recognized, and having it be legally recognized doesn't mean every marriage is "created by" government.

Reporter: So, Mr. Ford, can we get the Model A in another colour?
Henry Ford: Sure, you can get it in Any Colour You Like, as long as it's black.

"If my sons did not want wars, there would be none." - Gutle Schnaper, Mayer Amschel Rothschilds wife.

-

"I am one of those who do not believe the national debt is a national blessing... it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country."

Andrew Jackson, Letter to L. H. Coleman of Warrenton, N.C., 29 April 1824

-

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had mens views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913), Doubleday

-

"From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

Winston Churchill, "Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (London), February 8, 1920, pg. 5

-

"The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few."

Henry Ford, My Life and Work, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922

-

"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create and destroy money. The amount of money in existence varies only with the action of the banks in increasing or decreasing deposits and bank purchases. Every loan, overdraft or bank purchase creates a deposit, and every repayment or bank sale destroys a deposit. And they who control the credit of a nation, direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."

Reginald McKenna, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, addressing the shareholders as Chairman of the Midland Bank, at the Annual General Meeting in January 1924.

-

"The present Federal Reserve System is a flagrant case of the Governments conferring a special privilege upon bankers. The Government hands to the banks its credit, at virtually no cost to the banks, to be loaned out by the bankers for their own private profit. Still worse, however, is the fact that it gives the bankers practically complete control of the amount of money that shall be in circulation. Not one dollar of these Federal Reserve notes gets into circulation without being borrowed into circulation and without someone paying interest to some bank to keep it circulating. Our present money system is a debt money system. Before a dollar can circulate, a debt must be created. Such a system assumes that you can borrow yourself out of debt."

Willis A. Overholser, A short review and analysis of the history of money in the United States, with an introduction to the current money problem (1936), p. 56

When inventor Thomas Edison died in 1931, his friend Henry Ford captured his last dying breath in a bottle.

They actually have most of these limo's at the Henry Ford museum, my dad and I were fortunate enough to go a few years ago.

That trip was worth it to see the original oscar mayer wiener mobile alone.

>> ^MINK:
lithuania has a fairly free market because it's fucking corrupt, and i can tell you it's not beneficial to the consumer. the lies they get away with in unregulated advertising are shocking. of course they do it, because they can and it works.
corruption is what humans do unless someone with a bigger gun tells them not to.
individual freedom will always fuck up the common good. crime does pay. if you legalise business practices which are currently criminal, you'll get more of it, not a magical balanced free utopia.
Imstellar, in your version of a free market, who would stop Microsoft dominating the place with shitty software? I think we need MORE regulation there, not less. How is it efficient for microsoft to keep churning out that crap? you are asking for everything to be a marketing, bribery and advertising contest.
here on the sift we have a free market of ideas and video uploads, and look what happens, a bunch of cliques and lolcats and vote whores and the noise level is so high that you can't find the good shit without watching 10 crappy videos. Can you imagine what it would be like here if siftbot stopped checking for sock puppet accounts?


You're confused, I blame the all-encompassing buzzword of the day "regulation" for this, people don't understand the markets and have come to take it as meaning "government making it all better and overseeing greed." Government indeed has desirable functions in law enforcement and offering recourse through courts for disputes. They should NOT be price-fixing, monopolizing money, or handing out taxpayer money under socialist ideals of directing industry or "enhancing market confidence," this has collusion and corruption written all over it. Politicians are humans and someone spending millions of his own money to get in a low-salary position of controlling other people's money is probably going to be a more harmful source of greed than any businessman. Because even though Henry Ford became a millionaire, thousands of people got cars out of the deal. Not sure the same would have come from government expenditures...

But many would consider this form of corporate wealth redistribution "regulating" the market. I don't.

Your example of false advertising is an example of where law enforcement should take place. Can I sell a product that purports to do something it doesn't? No, that's a swindle, the contract was not upheld, and you can go to government-provided courts to be compensated. Similar things apply to other swindles, though in most cases even the government can't prevent you from falling for some e-mail scam to a Nigerian clearing house. Unless, of course, you agree to have them snoop all your incoming e-mail to check for this stuff. I'd hope you understand that that's a pretty stupid of you, though, for giving up your privacy in order to protect yourself from being gullible. Not understanding cost/benefit ratios is a huge socialist mistake. They're always missing the potential costs and focusing on the benefit.

Gun bans, for example, have the intention of reducing violence but in reality remove the deterrent criminals otherwise have against a society that does have them, causing crime to increase. Plus, it makes you defenseless to oppressive government. The utopian allure of creating a "perfect" society where no gun crime exists and everyone can live in peace and trust is what gets them to miss the greater cost incurred that any thinking man would have foreseen.

The Fed is another one. Fractional reserves caused a lot of bank runs in the old days. Instead of banning this practice, they backstopped it with a central bank, but the central bank price fixed interest rates, causing a crash in 29. Further temporary socialist measures turned it into a fifteen year depression, a nuclear explosion compared to the firecrackers of the original problem. Then the FDIC was created. This incentivized a lot of risk and borrowing, which has helped the current problem fester. See how the failure to correctly solve one problem has led to a cascade of "solutions" that create even more problems that beget even more solutions? That's socialism, my friends. It just builds and builds until eventual collapse.

I would say that another socialist mistake you are making is that law enforcement itself is a proper regulatory measure. Not when they're selective, they're not. There is plenty of legislation out there that legalizes something for one industry, but not the other. Banks can loan out money they don't have at interest. Any other industry, and you're thrown in jail for fraudulent lending practices.

LOLskers at your Microsoft argument, too. Who prevents Microsoft from churning out crap? Consumers, mayhaps? People were free to not adopt Windows ME or Vista, and that's exactly what happened, their sales were disappointing for both. Anyone investing in Microsoft don't like failures leading to lost earnings. But Microsoft is smart and continues to sell XP, which is a perfectly good OS even today. But if they currently get any tax credits or subsidies, they shouldn't. No company should have access to forcibly appropriated money, period.

I think the real scary thing about all this, besides the fact that you don't understand it, is that you seem to be implying that a government office operating on forcibly appropriated money is capable of greater efficiency than the private sector. Maybe it comes close for laying pavement and picking up garbage. But in the grander scheme, no. It wasn't the case with Chernobyl and it ain't today, buddy. You take a hell of lot of innovations and products for granted if you believe that.