[HN Gopher] "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel ___________________________________________________________________ "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel Author : gok Score : 166 points Date : 2023-12-29 17:35 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com) | erehweb wrote: | Reminiscent of the business school joke - What does US Steel | make? The answer is not "steel", but "money", that being the | point of any company. | pjscott wrote: | Although it's true, that's a hazardous way of thinking. If they | had put more of their focus on making steel, keeping up with | the technological advances rather than being dragged along | grudgingly, perhaps they'd be making more money these days. | sgt101 wrote: | It's a very successful strategy in any corporate. Focus on | the books, produce results, take the bonus and then jump. | | When things go pear shaped do not be found holding the bag. | If later questioned: "it was all great when I was there, it's | so sad that it went south - it was a great place and there | was a lot of value on the table." | | Strangely the big investors don't seem to ever cotton on to | this - the big pension funds and sovereign wealth seem to | respond by getting out of the equity markets and investing in | things like property. | hef19898 wrote: | The oposite is true as well so: don't focus on the books, | bottom line and so on and the company goes bust as well. | | Any successful company has to do both. | sgt101 wrote: | you are quite correct - it becomes a plague when one is | addressed to the exclusion of the other. As they say | "don't run out of cash". | swexbe wrote: | This comment reads like it was written in the 70s. Even | with the interest rate hike, this is still the age of VCs | with infinite pockets, companies that don't plan on going | profitable for decades, every company in sp500 throwing | money in the AI money hole, etc. | sgt101 wrote: | Yes, let us exclude tax scams and money laundering and | address the real economy where things get made and real | people get paid. | atrus wrote: | It reminds me of that old quote that democracies die when the | citizens realize they can vote themselves money. It's the | same with these companies, the upper managements realizing | they can just give themselves more money and coast on their | companies momentum. | | It's not the innovators dilemma, it's the c-suite lines their | pockets while the company burns dilemma. | nradov wrote: | It's the eternal principal/agent problem. Those things go | in cycles. When management goes too far off the rails then | corporate raiders and private equity eventually take over | to replace management and unlock latent value. | Unfortunately, the managers who caused the problem still | often end up fabulously wealthy while regular employees get | screwed. | | This problem can be somewhat ameliorated by compensating | executives primarily using equity with long vesting or | lock-up periods. That keeps their interests aligned with | long-term shareholders. | scotty79 wrote: | It doesn't really fit the modern collapse. Democracies seem | to decline when oligarchs extract so much wealth that the | entire economy suffers and common people flock to strong | political figures to bring back order and prosperity. | | > citizens realize they can vote themselves money | | Although this certainly sounds true if you consider just | the richest citizens and by "vote" you mean inflence the | votes. | feoren wrote: | As other replies have pointed out, your problem is with the | word "they". There is no "they" at a publicly traded | corporation. The key decision-makers are only there for 2 to | 5 years, however long it takes them to suck out the blood of | the company before they scurry off to parasitize a juicier | host. Nobody with decision-making power ever gave two shits | whether US Steel was going to make lots of money in N | decades. | araes wrote: | Had a thought the other day, that the natural course of many | businesses is towards becoming a bank and eventually a casino. | If it were Pokemon, all corporations final form would be | casinos with executives gambling investors money. | | It fits the economy surprisingly well. Harvard, arguably a bank | not a school. US Steel, joke is they produce money not steel. | Airlines are trying to avoid flying airplanes, and operate air | miles banks. Hasbro no longer produces toys, only money. | Article today where the main commentary on Intel was the | finance bros took over a long time ago. | feoren wrote: | Car companies making their money off of financial instruments | only loosely related to the cars people drive off their lots | ... | davidthewatson wrote: | I'm happy to see the link here as I was curious about the subject | given that my career started in US Steel's data center in | Pittsburgh. | | I'm saddened by the fact that this retelling seems mostly | negative and ignores a large part of US Steel's evolution into | USX. The retelling is subtractive whether you view Marathon Oil's | involvement as a positive complementary asset play at the time or | a negative given the history of its divestiture. | | I can say that there was innovation in the data center where I | worked in the evolution from manual human mainframe era data | center operations to token ring networks of PC API's along with | abstraction and automation via glue code. | | The minimization of manual human labor as people retired is | likely lost to the history books unless one of my old technical | collaborators decides to write a book in retirement. | | The CMU kids I worked with at US Steel's data center in | Pittsburgh were just as smart as the ones I worked with in the | software industry from Boston to Seattle. | WhitneyLand wrote: | I don't doubt you at all, but what kind of innovation was | there? | | Did it tend to be strategic or tactical? | | How closely was tied to their core competencies? | | How many innovations were industry firsts? | | What percent impact did they have on profits / growth / market | share? | | From the article it sounds like innovation and investment were | consistently blocked by short term financial goals. | | I can easily believe there were lots of very smart people, with | transformative ideas, that were never given a chance to thrive. | Digory wrote: | I had the same feeling at the end. Of all the ways to spend the | 20th century, being tied to US Steel wasn't exactly a bad ride. | | "Arguably, the Harvard system was a disappointment every day | since 1636..." | a1o wrote: | Wasn't US Steel who commissioned the books from a SciFi | illustrator to ensure that lots of reference drawing | illustrations would have steel in the future and got these books | for free available to anyone who called, and they ended up | getting famous in the film industry so people ended up always | designing futuristic movies with things made of steel like ships | and vehicles? | aresant wrote: | Yes you are thinking of Syd Mead - here's the series | | https://sydmead.com/category/gallery/us-steel/ | BasilPH wrote: | Syd Mead did the designs for Blade Runner and Tron, and | absolute legend. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Gotta say, I'd live in that steel modular house in a | heartbeat. | csours wrote: | There's a reason that house isn't pictured in the snow. | genman wrote: | I can be insulated. People have built small houses from | marine containers for long time. | sbierwagen wrote: | Then you'll love the article OP wrote about Lustron | stamped-steel houses: https://www.construction- | physics.com/p/the-lustron-home | fudged71 wrote: | You're telling me the Stanford torus space colony that has | filled my dreams for my entire life was propaganda for US | steel? | marcosdumay wrote: | Anybody since the 70s designing those radial supports out | of anything that isn't a polyester isn't paying attention. | scotty79 wrote: | Starships in After Earth have very cool designs with a | lot of threads and fabrics and membranes instead of rigid | steel. | k7sune wrote: | Makes me wonder who supplies the stainless steel used for the | starships and cybertrucks. US steel might just turned out to be | prescient. | cturner wrote: | Clayton Christensen talk about the steel industry, and how | businesses resist change - | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpkoCZ4vBSI&ab_channel=Sa%C3... | legitster wrote: | My grandfather worked in a metal shop for 30 years after he | served in Korea. I remember him telling me they switched to | Chinese made steel in the 70s because of the quality problems | they were having with American made steel. Being out West, they | were somewhat more free from the political/social/union pressure | to use American commodities. | SoftTalker wrote: | Probably meant Japanese, I don't think China had much of a | steel industry in the 1970s and given the politics of the time | I don't think it would have been imported in the USA even if | available. | margalabargala wrote: | China started pushing for a large domestic steel industry in | the late 50s. | | It did not go well. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace | altairTF wrote: | The paradox of rights(don't quote me, i just made this up). In | wealthier societies, demands for greater worker rights from the | government increase. This can lead to more bureaucracy and | higher labor costs, potentially making third-world countries | with lower regulations more attractive for importing goods or | outsourcing production. Countries already operates in a | libertarian interaction with each others. I find these global | economics aspects fascinating | hammock wrote: | Plenty of innovation by US Steel. Just in operations, not in | materials. | darth_avocado wrote: | So in other words, short term value for the shareholders? | hammock wrote: | Define short term. 120 years? | | US Steel's vertical integration practices changed the game | and influence goes all the way to Apple and Tesla today. | | Their way of standardizing manufacturing processes inspired | Henry Fords assembly line. | | Their Research Lab paved the way for the establishment of | similar, famous labs at IBM, Bell, Xerox and others. | | Their corporate structure set a precedent for large-scale | corporations, influencing the development of conglomerates | like GE to diversify various industries under a single | corporate umbrella | ganzuul wrote: | Steel remains a technology with huge potential for future | development. Some keywords: eutectic solution, bulk metallic | glass, and boron steel. | | It seems crazy to me that any first world nation would let it's | steel production fall into foreign hands. As a machinist for 5 | years in my country I would have been excempt from military | service even in total war. | | If US steel is unable to innovate and foreign ownership is | somehow not a problem, this development is probably a good thing. | The Zaibatsu system is a good fit for what steel is. | araes wrote: | America has started to have the appearance of griefing their | own enlisted. I'm not sure if America actually cares about | those types of war and military considerations any longer. Have | you looked at ship construction times lately? | | On the materials side. Totally agree. However the issue there, | is that's not what corporations tend to optimize. The story | itself really spells it out pretty clearly (it may be biased, | never worked at US Steel personally). However, the article's | description is: | | US Steel became a monopoly, and immediately acted like a | monopoly. Innovation ceased. Money extraction began. Commanding | obedience was the norm. Convincing themselves all competitors | would fail was the norm. And US Steel did not want to invest in | anything outside its own sunk costs. | vGPU wrote: | Which they are likely sorely regretting as tensions flare | higher with China and our navy is struggling to protect | shipping around Israel. | stjohnswarts wrote: | They really aren't struggling. But yeah, China will soon | outstrip our naval numbers by a large amount within the end | out of the decade. We still have better tech but what do we | do when they launch, at the same time, 200 "good enough" | cruise missiles at each aircraft carrier sitting in the | Taiwan Straight? | stjohnswarts wrote: | They really aren't struggling we have plenty of firepower | there. But yeah, China will soon outstrip our naval numbers | by a large amount within the end out of the decade. We | still have better tech but what do we do when they launch | 200 "good enough" cruise missiles at each aircraft carrier | sitting in the Taiwan Straight? | ren_engineer wrote: | >I'm not sure if America actually cares about those types of | war and military considerations any longer. Have you looked | at ship construction times lately? | | it's kind of funny because the US won WWII by the ability to | churn out huge volumes of decent quality goods but now our | military seems to be adopting the German idea that small | numbers of expensive wunderwaffen will turn the tide | stjohnswarts wrote: | And Chinese military build out seems to be "perfect is the | enemy of good enough" and "quantity has a quality all its | own", so soon we're likely to be the ones playing catch up | despite our huge military budget and outlays. | sbierwagen wrote: | Well, what will a future war look like? | | We're never going to fight WW2 again, because all the great | powers have nuclear weapons now. The US army will never | take the field in a straight up slugfest against Russia or | China. | | So that leaves non-nuclear regional powers. But you simply | don't need a whole-of-society mobilization to fight Iran. | The phase of active combat against Iran will not take | years-- it won't take months. | | If we really needed to, we could be building millions of | Jeeps again. But we don't need to, and won't need to. | mkoubaa wrote: | US steel and steel production in the USA are not the same | thing. The company's name is that of a legal entity, not an | accurate description of what it is. | hyperthesis wrote: | At that propitious 1900 banquet, perhaps pricing power was | discussed? | | _People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for | merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a | conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise | prices._ | WhereIsTheTruth wrote: | I wasn't too far off | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38689019 | WhitneyLand wrote: | Well written, informative, worth reading. | | It's fascinating how so many business mistakes from the last 100 | years continue to be relevant and continue to be repeated. | hyperthesis wrote: | Reminds me of the Wright Brothers. After their incredible | invention of controlled heavier-than-air flight (using a wind- | tunnel - did they invent that too?), the focus was on patent | royalties, while others innovated. | pomian wrote: | One of the ideas that seems to be missed from the study of | history and economy, was the effect on the total destruction of | the Japanese and German industrial base - during WWII. Britain | and USA, were left with their archaic industrial systems. After | WWII, the Japanese and the German steel industry had to be | completely reborn. (At the cost of primarily USA financing.) | Those two countries had no more relics of the past, and started | over, necessarily, with the most modern technology and science. | North American industry was in a slow evolution from the 1900's, | but Germany and Japan, had a hot start from the 1950-60's. No | wonder everyone was impressed by their modern approach to | construction, design, manufacturing, which more or less started | to out perform USA and Britain in the 70's. China, started it's | industrial rebirth even later. | mitthrowaway2 wrote: | Solution for the future of American industry: Bomb US Steel? | | Maybe this would also be an effective way of clearing out | NIMBYs blocking the routes for high-speed rail lines? | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _Solution for the future of American industry: Bomb US | Steel?_ | | Plenty of places are bombed into oblivion. What makes the | rebirth is the rebuilding. The marshalling of public | resources. You can replicate that without the bombs with a | public-spending initiative. | Fatnino wrote: | How do you spend away a bunch of NIMBYs? Their whole thing | is that they refuse to cooperate with that. | | Bombs would solve that, but come with a host of other... | issues. | pstuart wrote: | Eminent domain is the best we've got. | mitthrowaway2 wrote: | The OP's contention was that Japan and Germany had an | advantage _due to their steel industry being bombed_ , | which is apparently easier than upgrading legacy production | facilities that haven't been blown to rubble. | sokoloff wrote: | It's often easier to rebuild rubble using other people's | money than to modernize in-place using your own. | | Beyond just the "whose money is buying?" is that the | latter costs you current production while the bombed-out | scenario has no current production to forego. | altairTF wrote: | Every 100 years, the government send a warning and carpet | bomb a city to the ground. This for sure would remove all the | past vicious of the region affected. That would be something | tandr wrote: | Sounds like a good plot for a (short) sci-fi story. | yetanotherloss wrote: | You jest but my friend is a professor in Toyama, Japan, and | makes the occasional dark joke about moving the people out | for a few days and having the US raze it again from time to | time. | | Sometimes getting rid of ossified organizations is a good | thing, but there are probably better ways than high | explosives. | Aloha wrote: | Arguably the Occupation of Japan was more important than | the carpet bombing for changing Japanese culture. | | We brought in many new ideas - both in business and in | government - most of which persist in some form today - and | the Japanese in many cases have taken those ideas, refined | them mightily, infused them with some Japanese culture - | and re-exported them to us. | | The best example of this that I can think of, is Kaizen - | the various scientific management techniques exported to | Japan by W. Edwards Deming - which was re-exported to us as | Kaizen. | nerdponx wrote: | This concept is related to the idea of "creative | destruction": | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction | hef19898 wrote: | >> (At the cost of primarily USA financing.) | | The Marshall Plan was one of the best foreign policy ideas ever | so. | kevbin wrote: | I'd like to see Chris Nolan follow-up "Oppenheimer" with | "George (Marshall)" and "(William) Knudsen" | ProjectArcturis wrote: | Similar to many cities having catastrophic fires (New York, | Chicago) which allowed them to rebuild their streets on a grid | system. Vs Boston, which never had a great fire but which is | known today for the phrase "You can't get there from here." | turndown wrote: | Chicago had a grid system before the great fire, maybe NY is | a good example of this but I do not know. See this[0] 1869 | map which shows Chicago was already quite regularized | | 0: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/1869_B | la... | ericjmorey wrote: | It's not. The older parts of NYC are still not on a grid, | there was no massive fire in NYC that needed to be rebuilt. | They may have been thinking of London `-\\_(tsu)_/-` | caboteria wrote: | We've had a couple of big fires: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Boston_Fire | | Somehow they didn't result in exchanging grids for winding | streets. | | The back bay, though, is newer than other parts of the city | and it's a grid. | technofiend wrote: | Re, Boston: The way I heard it was "Three rights make left, | except in Boston." | KMag wrote: | See the movie "The Mouse That Roared". Having seen the results | of Germany and Japan being bombed and rebuilt by the US, a | small fictional country comes up with the brilliant development | plan of intentionally starting and losing a war with the US. | Spoiler alert: they end up having to deal with the tragedy of | accidentally winning the war. As I recall, part of it was they | just assumed their generals would lose, so the generals weren't | in on the plan. | l33t7332273 wrote: | A small country winning the war against post WW2 USA seems | like it would be a bit of a plot hole. | loloquwowndueo wrote: | Vietnam. | ben_w wrote: | It's a comedy, one I feel I ought to watch at some point. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared_(film) | morkalork wrote: | Peter Sellers playing 3 different roles. Poor guy really | did get type cast in the weirdest way. | robertlagrant wrote: | "Comedies involving diamonds and/or nuclear weapons" | vanderZwan wrote: | Also one movie with him in brownface that oddly enough is | actually extremely popular in India and Pakistan (to the | point where I was introduced to it on a New Year's Eve | party hosted by a friend from Pakistan). | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Party_(1968_film)#Racia | l_c... | sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: | Which war did the US win post WW2? Afaict they all ended in | stalemates and eventual retreat | (Korea,Iraq,Vietnam,Afghanistan,..) | delecti wrote: | That's mostly because we keep going into situations with | political goals, and military means (when all you have is | a hammer, every problem looks like a nail). If a small | country declared war on us, we could easily bomb them | back into the iron age. Though in 20 years, the young | adults there would probably provoke us into another dumb | situation like the above. | Beijinger wrote: | "with political goals, and military means" | | True | | "If a small country declared war on us, we could easily | bomb them back into the iron age." | | Putin probably thought the same about Ukraine. | | Military objectives were achieved in Afghanistan, but not | in Korea and Vietnam. And based on Clausewitz: "War is | politics by other means" And our politics changed.... | nostrademons wrote: | Military objectives were achieved in Korea and Vietnam in | the sense that we killed lots of people. What we learned | (and really, already knew from WW2, where we very | intentionally did not invade the Japanese home islands) | is that killing lots of people on an enemy's home soil | just turns a lot more people against you. | fodkodrasz wrote: | > "If a small country declared war on us, we could easily | bomb them back into the iron age." | | > Putin probably thought the same about Ukraine. | | I doubt, as Ukraine is far from being a small country. It | is the second largest European country (counting Russia | as an European country, as is common in geography). (he | most likely had other miscalculations leading to the | current situation) | mnau wrote: | First gulf war would qualify. | jonplackett wrote: | I think that's more like quitting while you're ahead | KMag wrote: | I would argue both Iraq wars and the war in Afghanistan | were cases of losing the peace in equal measure to easily | winning the war. | nostrademons wrote: | This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won" | Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense | that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back | into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But | WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not | dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the | U.S. was not the aggressor. It _felt_ like a victory, | because we emerged as the dominant power, with the only | industrial base that wasn 't destroyed, and then enjoyed | the economic fruits of rebuilding a country that had been | bombed back into the stone age and then capitulated. | Additionally, Germany and Japan _expected_ that U.S. | occupation would be absolutely terrible, that we would be | tyrants in the same way that their militaristic | governments of the time were, and so when it turned out | we just wanted to make money, that was a huge relief to | them. | | With all the post-WW2 wars, we've gone in as a dominant | power, as the aggressor, to a country that is far smaller | and less developed. In terms of casualties, they've been | even more lopsided victories than WW2. The second Iraq | war killed about half a million Iraqis and displaced | about 1.8M, vs. < 1000 Americans killed, for a kill ratio | of ~500:1. But what does it even _mean_ to achieve | victory here? We go in as a bully and ruin our world | reputation. The average American sees zero benefit from | killing Iraqis; it just means higher oil prices, larger | government debt, more inflation, reduced civil liberties, | and a lack of focus on domestic problems (...which may be | the point). Defense contractors make out like a bandit, | and the executive branch gets to consolidate power | (...which, again, may be the point), but there isn 't | room to grow the way there was after WW2. | scotty79 wrote: | I don't think any other country considers any of those | cases to be wins ... Perhaps maybe wars in Iraq or | Jugoslavia. | | I think eventual loss in Ukraine will be last nail in the | coffin of US military reputation. | mikeyouse wrote: | The US isn't fighting in Ukraine so that'd be a strange | result. Especially since our surplus weapons with novice | operators have laid waste to the invasion force of what | was considered to be the 2nd or 3rd strongest army on the | planet.. | SoftTalker wrote: | The fight isn't over yet and there is trouble in the Red | Sea and it could all turn into WW-III at some point. | scotty79 wrote: | > The US isn't fighting in Ukraine | | Same way that russia is not fighting a war but commencing | special military operation. | | US is doing it with both hands tied behind their back but | it will make defeat no less devastating. | | In reality US is fighting their penultimate war right now | if it ends in a loss. | | > what was considered to be the 2nd or 3rd strongest army | on the planet.. | | That was summarily debunked about two weeks into the | conflict. And noone but russians believes it today. | dmurray wrote: | > The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in | the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were | bombed back into the stone age and the existing | governments fell. | | This might be taught in US schools, but outside the US we | have a rather different take on how the Vietnam war ended | - the _US-backed_ government fell and the North | Vietnamese government took over the rest of the country. | And we learned that the Korean war ended in some kind of | stalemate, where the government structures on both sides | exist largely intact today. | Gibbon1 wrote: | You're missing the forest for the trees. Reality is the | US won it's war against communism by the early 1970's. | There wasn't much reason to continue the war in Vietnam | after that. Not the least because the communists in | Vietnam had no intention of being a Russian or Chinese | vassal state. Suited the US just fine. | kriro wrote: | In my opinion, this is a misrepresentation of the Vietnam | war. The country was not "bombed back into the stone | age". The U.S. merely used extremely despicable tactics | like Agent Orange, My Lai etc. | | I'm also not aware of the existing Vietnamese government | falling (depends on which one you consider the existing | one but it was not the government the U.S. wanted to fall | that fell). The country resisted a superior invader like | it did in the past (China) and I'm pretty sure most | people would consider Vietnam the winner of the war (if | there's a winner in war). | AdamH12113 wrote: | The government of North Korea did not fall or surrender. | You can argue that it was a political win if the goal was | defending South Korea, but militarily, it was a | stalemate. | | North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam after we withdrew. | It was in no way a victory for the United States. | Afghanistan was arguably pretty similar, although we did | install a new government while we were there. | | Germany and Japan, on the other hand, surrendered | unconditionally. Saying that Germany and Japan were | "bombed back into the Stone Age" is a wild exaggeration, | though -- strategic bombing famously failed to cripple | Germany's wartime industrial production. (Strategic | bombing in general is overrated.) | | Your number for US deaths in Iraq is low by at least a | factor of four. | | You may wish to learn the actual histories of these wars | before trying to draw big conclusions. | robertlagrant wrote: | The US picks extremely difficult battles to fight in a | way its citizens deem acceptable, and they aren't wars of | conquest. Those factors are going to make it very hard to | point at a simple winner. | beambot wrote: | Technically, the US hasn't fought _any_ wars since WWII | -- as a declaration of war is a Congressional function. | All of the other things people think of or refer to wars | were technically "conflicts". | bejk22 wrote: | I'm unsure the US can unilaterally decide if it's in a | war or not. Do the opposite side consider it a war? Do | the international community consider it a war? Semantic | games internal to a single side do not matter much. | tshaddox wrote: | That's not even correct on a technicality, because you | switch mid-sentence from discussing "war" to discussing | "declaration of war." A declaration of war is plainly | different from a war. Declarations of war are frequently | made well after a war has begun or well before any | fighting takes place. And as you state, many wars are | fought without any declaration of war. | anjel wrote: | Granada and Panama. | sbierwagen wrote: | Gulf War 1. Invasion of Panama. The 1994 invasion of | Haiti, debatably. The Kosovo war, kinda. | achates wrote: | The diplomat in charge of central Europe thinks their | declaration of war is a practical joke from another | department, so nobody notices when their army (of about 10 | crossbowmen) shows up in New York and grabs a fictional | doomsday device out of a secret lab. | CrazyStat wrote: | They "win" the war by accidentally kidnapping a scientist | with a powerful new nuclear weapon. No actual fighting | happens. | | It's an excellent movie though. | vanderZwan wrote: | A satirical movie involving nuclear weapons and Peter | Sellers plays three roles? Where have I heard that one | before? | | (actually, it looks like it is five years older than Dr. | Strangelove? This looks like it could be turned into a very | mean pubquiz trivia question, hahaha) | lisper wrote: | Reminds me of "The Producers." | sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: | The German industrial base was not totally destroyed after WW2. | Especially in western Germany most of it was still good and | they had to rebuild little to get it going again. The myth of | the Trummerfrau rebuilding Germany into a Wirtschaftswunder | from total destruction is exactly that, a myth. | | Edit: also the effect of Marshallplan is usually vastly | overstated - due to the massive bureaucracy involved it had | relatively little impact. | WalterBright wrote: | Much larger shares of the MP money went to Britain and | France. | robocat wrote: | Can we set up a system to occasionally bomb our industrial base | to get these benefits? | | Your point is mostly irrelevant. US steel could have innovated | or even copied - but it didn't. | | The idea that poor US steel couldn't compete because other | startups had an advantage is assinine. That is a core message | of the article itself. | boringuser2 wrote: | I don't really like this claim because we are perfectly capable | of blowing up our own factories, but people generally agree | that it probably isn't a good idea. | hulitu wrote: | > North American industry was in a slow evolution from the | 1900's, but Germany and Japan, had a hot start from the | 1950-60's | | You forgot that US took every German and Japanese engineer as | prisoner. As a friend said, US chemical industry worked 40 | years after the WWII with German patents. | justrealist wrote: | > You forgot that US took every German and Japanese engineer | as prisoner. | | This is not even slightly true. | dhdudbd wrote: | white man's burden | | never change hn | ApolloFortyNine wrote: | I'm not sure innovation is really the issue, this article never | actually goes into the alloys US Steel developed (of which there | are many), and alloys are what makes steel steel really. It's | always been fascinating to me how the just a tiny percent of | another element in a metal can have an absolutely dramatic affect | on the strength/resilience of the material. | | And they tried more complicated alloys, for instance they | developed Corten steel, the biggest example of which is probably | the US Steel building in Pittsburgh, [1]. It's a steel where it's | 'rust' essentially works as a protective layer. | | More than anything this article shows US Steel simply couldn't | compete with foreign suppliers. It's interesting to me that they | don't even mention the Steel Workers Union, which was/is one of | the largest and most powerful unions in the U.S. I'm not saying | the cause, but if you need 5% more steel to cover the | deficiencies in foreign steel in strength, but it's 20% cheaper, | than it's simply cheaper to import more foreign steel. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_steel | rhapsodic wrote: | _> And they tried more complicated alloys, for instance they | developed Corten steel, the biggest example of which is | probably the US Steel building in Pittsburgh. It's a steel | where it's 'rust' essentially works as a protective layer._ | | Also worthy of mention is the New River Gorge Bridge. [1] | | And the recently-collapsed Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh. | [2] | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_Gorge_Bridge | | [2] https://www.carboline.com/solution-spot/posts/pittsburgh- | bri... | steveklabnik wrote: | Or... the US Steel Tower | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Steel_Tower | shrubble wrote: | Is Corten used in shipping containers (I seem to recall that it | is)? | hulitu wrote: | > More than anything this article shows US Steel simply | couldn't compete with foreign suppliers | | Because the only inovation came from stolen patents from | eastern europe. | | You can survive doing nothing until your competitor comes with | something new. | tmm wrote: | Seems fitting to leave this here: | | https://youtu.be/1D2Q9-1EmB4?si=gXwIO3FzpSKkp3VV | | US Steel, Tom Russell | pfdietz wrote: | Something like 70% of US steel production is now from scrap. Part | of this was moderation of growth. In steady state, nearly all | steel could come from scrap (limited by contaminants, I guess.) | | I expect aluminum to displace more steel in the future. Witness | what's happening with "gigacasting" at Tesla and elsewhere. | kube-system wrote: | Whether or not an application can use aluminum or remelted | scrap depends on how picky an application is for the material. | KMag wrote: | It would have been interesting to get the take from my dad's | cousin, who did early powdered metallurgy work research as an MIT | undergrad in the 1940s, and later became a VP at US Steel. | Unfortunately, he's no longer with us. | Animats wrote: | For an overview of how Nucor became #1 in the US steel industry, | see "American Steel" (1992) by Richard Preston. The author was | present for the building and startup of Nucor's first continuous | thin sheet casting mini-mill. Nucor bought a new experimental | continuous caster from a German company, after trying to build | their own, and built a mill around it. This plant could turn | scrap metal into sheet steel. "You could punch garbage cans out | of it all day." Gradually, the quality improved, and soon they | were making steel for auto parts. Previously, steel recycling | just produced lower grade steel - cars in, rebar out. So this | closed the recycling cycle. | | The amount of steel in use per capita in developed countries | seems to have reached a constant level. About 69% of steel | produced in the US is the same steel going round and round. If | you ignore rebar, low-grade steel stuck inside concrete, it's | even higher. It's the developing countries that are still making | and using new steel. They don't have enough steel infrastructure | yet. | | "Mini-mill", in this context, means "smaller than a square mile". | Here's Nucor's Crawfordsville plant.[1] It's not small. Compare | with US Steel's Gary Works.[2] That century old plant is just | about their last remaining big plant in the US. | | US Steel somehow missed this change. | | [1] | https://earth.google.com/web/@39.97805108,-86.8271336,264.41... | | [2] | https://earth.google.com/web/@41.62932676,-87.36187513,174.7... | pfdietz wrote: | A very good book, although being 31 years old some of the | characters are dead now (like the then-head of Nucor.) | | The chapter describing the accident (where a ladle of molten | steel fell and the steel drained into a depressed area with | standing water) is horrific. It's fortunate the body count | wasn't higher. | pseudolus wrote: | For individuals interested in the steel industry who are visiting | or living in the Northeast of the United States, the National | Museum of Industrial History (affiliated with the Smithsonian) | situated in Bethlehem, PA is a great place to visit [0]. It's | located in one of the repair shops of the now defunct Bethlehem | Steel plant and offers a wide ranging introduction to the | production of steel in the US as well as various types of | industrial machinery. As a bonus visitors can stroll the grounds | of a largely intact, but derelict, steel plant. Interestingly, | that particular area of Pennsylvania was also a center for the | production of silk and more women were employed in the production | of silk in that region then men were employed by steel plants. | | [0] https://www.nmih.org/ | petermcneeley wrote: | This analysis does not seem properly include wage/labor costs. | | "By 1958 some steelmakers in Germany and Japan were able to | compete on price with US producers, and by the mid-1970s input | costs for Japanese steel (ore, labor, coking coal, etc.) were | nearly half those of US costs." | | So the input costs were half almost certainly all due to labor | either directly or indirectly. | | Viewed in this light the fall of US Steel is no different than | any other manufacturing process in the USA. | jmclnx wrote: | >The American steel industry responded to the rise of foreign | producers not by trying to improve their operations, but by | demanding government protection from "unfair" foreign trade | practices | | I remember this happening in school. Plus the teacher of a class | (70s) I was in blamed the Steel Problems on the Marshall Plan. | Until I saw this article I believed that. | | Now I know it seems to point to the usual US trend of profits | before anything else. | aslgbb wrote: | Ticker symbol is "X". I wonder who gets that when US Steel is no | longer traded . . . ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-29 23:00 UTC)