How the U.S. Engineered Its Sovereignty

In 1939 the US had an outdated navy, army, and air corps. European instability is the direct cause of the change in US military and economic dominance.

idk, maybe being on an isolated continent really helped

Honestly, this is just a bad article.

The history of engineering in the USA is actually SUPER important. The article touches on some restrictions the British imposed on their colonies, but it goes much further. The fight for 'Sovereignty' took a long time and was almost never certain.

I HIGHLY recommend the Yale lecture series. They're not engineering-specific, unfortunately. But still really, really, good (I mean... it's Yale)

The Revolution with Professor Freeman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shTBSGoYtK0&list=PLDA2BC5E78...

America at 250 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TNcFQiqHGw&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...

The Civil War and Reconstruction with David Blight - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXXp1bHd6gI&list=PL5DD220D6A...

I don't think that the corporations and the government would allow a cell phone manufacturer or operating system to be developed that wasn't under their control.

The amount of anti-US sentiment and dismissiveness in these comments are just...laughable.

"In 1839 [...] the United States had already defeated Britain’s navy in two wars"

This statement is wrong and trivially falsifiable. Perhaps the author meant that the U.S. had by that point won some naval battles against the British?

Some nationalistic articles are just cringe.

Kinda glossed over the whole IP theft industrial espionage thing.

Not at all ironic given the shrieking about China.

This article is cherry picked nonsense.

my oh my, the hardware haters are smoking there hats. the real is all. try it, it's good.

I guess it's time for some jingoistic rewriting of history. If you want to sum up America's rise to power it's the slave trade, war and a healthy dose of luck (eg the Louisiana Purchase).

There is a concerted attempt to rewrite history on slavery. You will hear things like "slavery was an economic drain" or "slavery was inefficient" or even "it was technology like the cotton gin that created wealth, not slavery". All of it's nonsense [1].

It's true that industrialization (particularly the railroad ans mass production of steel) was a huge driver in the mid-19th century but what really kicked the US into high gear was war [2].

It's true that material conditions and real wages started stagnating in the 1970s but this piece writes that off as Wall Street shenanigans. This was a political goal to break organized labor. We had McKinsey producing reports to argue that executives were "underpaid" [3]. The post-war era went from a marginal tax rate of 91% and the CEO to median worker ratio went from 21:1 in 1965 to 351:1 in the 2020s [4]. But also the post-war economy shifted from housing being a utility to being a speculative asset. The median house price went from $18,000 to $26,000 between 1953 and 1973 (in nominal terms) [5] and decreased in real terms. And, well, we know what's happened since.

But what's less well-known is the link between money going into housing and decline in manufacturing. That's not an accident. Why invest money and run a factory when sitting on a house produces a 7%+ real returns that are government-protected?

As for the whole "right to repair" bit for tractors and the like, yeah, companies engage in rent-seeking behavior in a capitalist mode of production. Film at 11.

[1]: https://equitablegrowth.org/new-research-shows-slaverys-cent...

[2]: https://laraballard.substack.com/p/how-the-us-became-the-wor...

[3]: https://observer.com/2013/08/the-godfather-of-ceo-megapay-mc...

[4]: https://x.com/RBReich/status/1575516013009018880

[5]: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/