Respectfully, what?

The US is the world’s largest agricultural exporter, still ahead of even China and India. It’s not just corn and soy: 20% of the world’s beef and chicken, 70% of the world’s almonds, 63% of the world’s pistachios, 30% of the world’s cheese, #1 barley exporter, #1 walnut exporter, #1 cotton exporter.

The US produces 70% of the world’s semiconductors, 60% of global aerospace, 41% of global pharmaceuticals, 40% of global medical equipment, 39% of global media and entertainment, and 30% of heavy construction equipment. The US is #2 in auto manufacturing after China.

I don’t have a particular love for US politics, but I don’t let that blind me to the reality that the US is an industrial powerhouse.

And sure, we may not make a lot of furniture here, but that’s because it’s made in Sweden or whatever. That’s globalization for ya.

Every major agricultural product has failed.

What? The US is a top-5 global producer for wheat, apples, tomatoes, pork, chicken, and on and on. It’s still #7 globally for tobacco production, despite your suggestion otherwise. The US is still an agricultural powerhouse.

I don’t have time to cover all your other points. I think your doomer mentality is a bit overdone. Yes, there are things in the world that suck and need to be fixed, but you’re punching at strawmen.

There’s no question here, wrong community.

I think your post comes across a bit jaded, and you make a bunch of objectively untrue statements. Gotta have some basis in reality if you’re going to toss around terms like “absolutely zero”

I’m wondering if you are perhaps limiting yourself to whatever you can perceive where you live and what you allow yourself to be exposed to.

Ultimately, the world changes and clinging to nostalgic “good old days” isn’t healthy.

California produces 80% of the world’s almonds and substantial amounts of the world’s grapes, strawberries, and walnuts. Oregon’s strawberries are highly renowned, but the state also produces more than half of the world’s grass seed and a substantial portion of the world’s hazelnuts.

Cannabis is an entire industry and job market. There are many who have profited massively from developing it, people do earn a living as budtenders.

I’ve been to several medium and small cities that have multiple record stores, multiple tailors, multiple toy stores, one-of-a-kind furniture builders. These things exist, they’re just not as ubiquitous as they once were.

Kids absolutely do play, which is something that anyone who knows more than a few can tell you. Just because it’s more technology focused than it was doesn’t mean that tech has outright replaced play.

Everything my eyes point to

I think it’s time you broaden your horizons. Look further and deeper.

I agree that the system is broken, but I don’t think that any of your points are the reason.

I also resent the concept of “getting us ahead”. I see treating everything as a race / competition as a limiting humanity, we can all be elevated through cooperation.

Capitalism just isn’t a very good system for longevity. To keep making profits you have to keep finding ways to run the business cheaper. Eventually shit doesn’t run. No country is more capitalist than America so our shit gets fucked first

We won capitalism, and capitalism sucks.

American companies outsourced everything to countries where it was cheaper to manufacture, to increase billionaire and shareholder profits--AKA the rich getting richer.

Now China and others have all the manufacturing skills and infrastructure, so we as a nation are dependent on them for everything. But, don’t worry, the billionaires got richer and that’s all that matters.

The problem in alot of your examples is unchecked capitalism chasing manufacturing offshore in the chase of profit, or online distribution killing brick and mortar. But I also don’t think every example of yours is quite as bad as you make it out to be. You might just need to dig a little harder.

The great wave of cannabis got zero people raised up from low wages even though it was selling like crazy.

This just isn’t true. Due to its still largely illicit nature these people just can’t claim they’re rich from cannabis. Cash rich, asset poor. It’s definitely got some large players, but because it’s not an industry that’s entirely legal, it hasn’t stratified wealth into a few players like a lot of the other industries you’ve mentioned. There are definitely those who very easily are able to provide for their basic needs and more because of that industry. They’re just not going to let you know. But there’s no country doing it as well as us I’d argue. Maybe the Dutch on a smaller scale?

Tobacco industry you’ve got a few major players like BAT and Swedish Match who are able to dictate how the industry unfolds. They were a step behind on the vape craze until just recently where they were able to muscle out all the small players via legislation. Tobacco isn’t in the same number of household that it used to be, but the ones who own the industry are nigh unassailable at this point. But US tobacco is still huge. Cigars aren’t as popular as they used to be, but anyone into them know US broadleaf tobacco is a coveted product by many outside the country. I know I’ve seen Europeans lament the choice we have stateside for anything other than Cubans.

On the growing food side, goto a farmer’s market. You’re not wrong that there’s a problem with monocultures. But step away from the box stores and you’ll find there’s some weirdo (I use that term affectionately) growing heirlooms that would have been impossible to find in the past 50 years. Thanks to the internet knowledge of these varieties has disseminated knowledge, seeds, clones, and cultures to an extent that didn’t exist for my grandparents.

Music industry has its problems on the financial side no doubt (looking at the monopoly that is livenation/ticketmaster), but I’d argue it’s more diverse and in a better place artistically than it’s ever been. Lines between genres are more opaque, and the general shit state of politics has put genres like punk in a good state. Your local mall might not have a record store, but that’s because malls are dying because of online distribution. Pay attention to Bandcamp though, and you can easily get vinyl presses of a wealth of new artists. I’d argue there’s so many the problem is parsing through all of them. No longer do you need a record label to produce your album. Maybe there’s fewer people getting rich off music, but that was never the point.

The bit about kids not playing I don’t get. I don’t have kids, but I frequently see the little ones in my family playing with toys. The thing is the legos are now three generations old. They’re unbreakable to small kids. But they definitely play. They for sure have a wealth of toys not made here, but I envy the breadth of choice/complexity they have compared to when I was a kid. But balls, blocks, and boxes still reign supreme.

Clothing has definitely been largely outsourced in the chase of profits. Won’t find many textile mills in the states anymore but we still are a leader in cotton production. There are still small producers who are making small batch stuff, but again you’re not going to find brick and mortar stores because of online distribution. Truce designs, FarPointe, Jolly Gear, Hilltop Packs, Hill People Gear, there’s plenty of small players in the outdoor scene making top of the line gear.

There’s an incorrect assumption in Capitalism that says human nature would lead to business being ran by people with a sense of self preservation, and therefore business would self regulate to not destroy itself. This is a deeply flawed assumption that’s been disproven over and over and over again. And that’s just capitalism, corporate markets are designed to destroy businesses. Sears Holding was bought by a hedge fund manager, he then used his hedge fund to provide all the debt the company needed to operate on for years, he and his management team then intentionally ran the business into the ground to make it as unprofitable as possible, ultimately resorting to only having one register open at any given time. once the business was ruined he filed bankruptcy, and since he owned all the debt, he sold off the assets of the company and kept all the value, that’s billions in real estate alone. he walked away with all the money and all he had to do was destroy thousands of careers, and harm consumer choices and competition. why? so he could go from being one of the wealthiest men in the world to an even wealthier man. our system rewards sociopaths as long as they want more money and power.

Re: car manufacturing, and manufacturing in general. Part of it is literally every piece of the puzzle is more complicated now, and it raises the minimum capital floor. You have to have hundreds of millions for the people, the supply chains, the logistics, the legal and regulatory oversight, the distribution, etc. And you have to do that under fierce global competition. Few have that kind of access and want to make such a gamble. So what happens is, progress is left to established players. All roads of capitalism lead to entrenched financial power.

But the other part of your post is just wrong. People are still buying cars. Its just not growing as fast, but every year new cars are made and sold, even at “overpriced” rates. Because people need cars and debt is cheap now. An expensive future is hard to conceptualize. All finance people understand that and prey on poor human intuition.

Products are also not “worse” despite the zeitgeist. Most products have to survive harsher operating conditions and use. They generally need to support features that consumers demand that make them more complicated compared to the past (small wires, computers, more energy efficient designs, more complexity, brittle software).

Re cannabis: industrialization rarely helps workers. Employee-owned large businesses are far and few between. They can be successful but it’s not a given. I would like to see more, but this isn’t a new thing.

Software and hardware engineering are gone? You’re just wrong. How about doing some research instead of living in your news bubble. Despite layoffs, despite AI, the industry is still growing. The demand has never been higher. Its just there’s that many more people available for the roles.

Why would there be any record stores? Nobody wants to buy records. They are inconvenient. I am finding new artists all the time. Independent artists have access to a global audience on some of these channels. How is that not “mass scale”. That global scale may not make them filthy rich, but there are tons of artists traveling internationally for smaller venue concerts to supplement the smaller streaming income. This is also a natural consequence of the population growth. Hundreds of millions of people have hundreds of thousands of options, making competition to “get big” more difficult. You’re being intentionally obtuse if you think music isn’t way bigger than it was decades ago.

Furniture makers and furniture stores are everywhere. The issue is inflation, increases in cost of living, and expectations. Nobody wants heavy furniture from their parents and grandparents anymore. Some furniture is handed down, but generally second generation children don’t need their grandparents furniture – they’ve already moved out and need to buy their own. People need cheap furniture at younger ages. So the demand just keeps rising for cheap, flat packed builds.

There’s toy stores everywhere, they just have new names that don’t say “toy store”. Do you have kids? Do your siblings have kids? There’s plenty of stores selling toys. They are garbage toys though and part of that is the influence of media. But it was no different 30+ years ago. Theyve just changed the media manipulation from action heros to tiny widgets.

I generally agree the system is not good, but I feel like you’re not raising a meaningful discussion. Its just “the world is not the same, old man shakes fist at clouds”. I mean… complaining about records heh.

kinda more of a soapbox than a question. most of this is pretty well understood. it sucks due to the inevitable conclusion of capitalism without regulation. /thread?

American companies didn’t invest in sustainable production. Other countries did.

1919s Dodge versus Ford Motor Company was a good point to pick as a starting point. Where a Michigan court ruled that a corporation’s primary duty was to shareholders and not its workers, etc.

Regulations and programs put in post Great Depression as part of the New Deal stabilized things for a bit. But as soon as they started to tear apart and cannibalize the New Deal. It became every Ceo’s duty to turn a profit for shareholders, even if it meant slicing up and selling off the company.

Because we switched from an agriculture society (150 years ago over half of Americans were farmers), to an industrial society (peaking around WWII), to a modern one (the biggest stocks are tech). These were huge transitions.

This place is cursed because it was built on a Native American burial ground

I mean, more accurately, the sociopolitical beliefs that would underpin committing a racialized genocide as a means of securing economic and territorial dominance have gone unchallenged and been passed down through generations of social elites who have created modern versions of the same violent exploitations,

but “cursed” is a lot easier to say

Pretty much every industry ever has met massive change.

The leather drive belt industry no longer exists, because the electric motor replaced the need for massive drive shafts in the ceiling of facilities. But the companies that survived turned to manufacturing belts for other purposes.

This also brought a massive increase in safety.

None of this has anything to do with just the US - change is a worldwide phenomenon.