A POST-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

With the advent of the industrial revolution a pattern of production was established that was successful under the circumstances of that time. I wonder if it is still valid.

For the last 100 or so years we have extracted raw products, shipped them long distances to a centralized place where the raw product was formed into a manufactured product. Then the manufactured goods were reshipped back out to many different destinations for sale. The shipping of raw products in bulk was efficient enough to make the advantages of centralized manufacturing profitable.

Reshipping was less efficient because of the many destinations involved, and because there was additional weight for packaging, record keeping for multiple items, and sales expenses. But while energy was cheap the system worked.

But what happens when shipping is no longer inexpensive? Shipping raw product to central locations, only to be manufactured, repackaged and reshipped may not be the most cost efficient way to do business because of the transportation costs.

Is there another way? What if manufacturing were decentralized and greater care was taken in shipping the raw product? What if careful efficient routes were developed for raw products that would drop off product as it was transported for regional distribution? This would reduce the amount of product in volume and weight as deliveries were made, and thereby reduce the expense of shipping raw product overall.

Then, what if, instead of having huge central-manufacturing plants, numerous mini-plants were built across the country in various regions. Then only the finished product needed in the region would need to be manufactured, and shipping finished product could be restricted to local regions. This would greatly reduce shipping costs for finished products.

While this may seem to have little to do with bees and agriculture, I think it does. You see, that is the model of our capitalistic country for the first hundred and fifty years of its existence. Small farms created the products that served a region. The raw products were sent too many small manufacturing enterprises that served a region, sometimes single families. Shipping of product on all ends of production, manufacturing, and consumption was kept to a minimum. That worked because transportation costs were expensive and inefficient. Without petroleum power, electricity, refrigeration and highways, shipping was just inefficient.

I believe that the industrial revolution was possible because of inexpensive energy. In the future, perhaps near future, the price of transportation is going to increase substantially due to increases in the cost of energy. Petroleum may yet last for many years. Sources such as coal, natural gas, wind power, hydroelectric power, solar and others will certainly be developed. However, the tremendous capital expenses required for these sources of energy is going to make the cost of transpiration continue to increase.

If the industrial paradigm is based upon inexpensive transportation, and if transportation continues to increase in cost, then the only alternative would seem to be a new industrial revolution structured in a far more decentralized manner. Perhaps the family farm will become economically feasible again, along with family manufacturing plants scattered across the nation. The computer is a general purpose machine, so perhaps it could lead us to regional general purpose manufacturing facilities.

WHAT SHOULD WE MAKE?

Let’s begin with vandalism. If one person, or a group, wrecks a private home it is a crime. However, if one person, or a group, destroys a community it is often called progress. There is much oil shale in my part of the world. Many people think we can make it into oil and thereby save our way of life. Of course, the industry needed to make it into oil would destroy the present way of life for all who live here. But I suppose it will happen eventually, just as it has in West Virginia, Kentucky, and other places, because there is so much money to be made.

If I build a home with a wife and children, and put us up in a little house with a garden out back, it is not considered a very big accomplishment by the world. Everyone does that. But if I build a large plant that employees many people to extract oil from shale, and which destroys the way of life that the family enjoyed, it is considered a great accomplishment indeed.

It’s always interesting to me that so often people who want to change things, are seldom the people affected by the changes. The men who own the oil shale plant won’t live there. The politician who passes laws governing land seldom lives on the land that he passes the laws about.

It was decided years ago that the efficient way to get things done was to make the same thing, in the same way, at the same time, in the same place. It was called the industrial revolution. It has a made a lot of money. But making money isn’t making something. It is making an idea. We don’t have words to differentiate between making objects that exist in the real world, and making mental or abstract things.

Making war is not making at all. Making laws are not things but ideas. Making love at least has the potential to make life. Making music is a physical sound wave. Making noise is more about making, than making trouble.

What about making people? It’s a long process that requires more than making the body. It requires making a brain, a mind, a spirit, a person. So look how we do it. Every must learn the same things (standards), in the same way (school), at the same time (math at 10:00 AM), and in the same place. We even have to learn the things we learn within the same time frame. It is not the same thing to learn chemistry as it is to learn chemistry in sixteen weeks. But that is what the government routinely requires. It’s the industrial way.

Okay. So what should we make? What do you think you should make?