Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
A couple of different blogs that I follow have linked to one or more of these essays in recent days. Not being mystically-inclined, I don’t know about the magic-working aspects, but I think the sociological observations are spot on. Herewith for your consideration – The Kek Wars, from the Ecosophia blog.
Part One: Aristocracy and Its Discontents
Part Two: In the Shadow of the Cathedral
Part Three: Triumph of the Frog God
Part Four: What Moves in Darkness
Your thoughts?
Happy Victory over Japan Day!
On August 14th in 1945 Imperial Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and averted Operation Downfall, the two stage invasion of Japan. On Sept 2, 1945 the surrender was signed on the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay, This invasion would have resulted in at least a million American casualties and up to 20 millions of Japanese dead from direct effects of the invasion plus the mass starvation that would have been sure to occur in its aftermath.
Since August 2010, it has become an nine years and counting tradition (See link list at the end of this post) for the Chicagoboyz web site to commemorate the major events closing out World War II in the Pacific and address the leftist agitprop surrounding those events. Where the worst recorded war in human history became a nuclear war via the August 6th and 9th 1945 A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by the Imperial Japanese acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and the Sept 2, 1945 formal surrender on the battleship USS Missouri.
This years year’s Chicagoboyz commemoration will focus on how the Imperial Japanese Military’s two nuclear weapons programs — one each for the Army and Navy — helped to obtain a surrender in an irrational polity bent on suicidal martial glory. And how their existence has been erased from the narrative of Japanese surrender by the identity issue academics in the diplomatic history community.
Historical Background IJA Ni-Go & IJN F-Go Genzai Bakuden Programs
The Imperial Japanese Military’ s atomic bomb or “Genzai Bakuden” program had a two separate Army and Navy projects; the Army’s Ni-Go program and the Navy’s F-Go. [1] Neither of these programs produced a working device, despite 1946 rumors about a test near Hungnam, Korea that were later incorporated into the 1985 book Japan’s Secret War: Japan’s Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb. [2]
The bottom line is that if Imperial Japan of the summer of 1945 had a prototype atomic device. It’s first test would have been on a ship or aircraft kamikaze aimed where they thought it would hurt the American war effort the most.
Just after reading your comment about the culture we might pass on to the next generation – and some of us try – I was directed to this essay by VS Naipul, from almost 30 years ago. Long, but quietly powerful about what the Universal Culture, which we have grown up in, consists of. An interesting question, 75% of the way through:
Why, he asked, are certain societies or groups content to enjoy the fruits of progress, while affecting to despise the conditions that promote that progress?
I think this applies not only to other cultures, but subcultures within our own.
The Wall Street Journal, on its editorial page, writes about a company called Standard Textile, whose economic viability is apparently being threatened by the 25% tariffs on imports of its main production input: a type of fabric sourced from China and known as greige, which I believe is basically the fabric as it comes off the loom, unfinished and un-dyed. The company is especially concerned because finished products from China which compete with its own products are tariffed at only 6.7%. WSJ uses this example to argue that Trump is all wrong on tariffs, and does so in the rather superior manner (the title of the piece is ‘a looming trade lesson’) which is common among those who ascribe any objections to absolutely free trade as based on nothing but economic ignorance or political demagoguery.
I will stipulate that it seems rather dumb to tariff raw materials and intermediate goods at a higher level than finished products made from these inputs. But..is it really true that greige fabrics are available only from China? A few minutes of searching suggests that they are available from India, and from at least some US suppliers. Maybe there is some particular variant of the products that is only made by a specific Chinese supplier, or maybe Standard has negotiated such a great deal with their supplier that no one else will match the price–it would be interesting to know.
The big question that the WSJ didn’t ask is: Why is this fabric (if it is truly unavailable in the US) not manufactured here? Textile manufacturing is not generally a labor-intensive activity, it is very different on this measure from the transformation of the textiles into apparel and other finished products. It was one of the first industrial activities to be mechanized, and automation in this field has advanced steadily over a couple of centuries. Moreover, textile manufacturing uses significant amounts of power, and I’ve read about Chinese firms that moved to the US specifically because the electricity was cheaper and more reliable. So the usual arguments about why a particular item needs to be made in China or other non-US setting…labor costs, less-stringent environmental restrictions…don’t seem to really apply here.
Most likely, greige manufacturers tend to locate in Asia and other non-US locations because that is where their customers are…’customers’ here referring not to end consumers but to apparel manufacturers and others who buy the material as an input to their own processes…and geographical proximity is of value in being able to fill orders rapidly and without excessive shipping costs. So this is an example of how supply chains are interconnected, and how losing one industry in a chain tends to pull other industries away also. The same point has also been demonstrated in consumer electronics manufacturing, where the supply chain is now so centered in Asia, especially China, as to make it difficult for a company to produce these products in the US even if they want to. (And ‘supply chain’ in this sense does not include physical products, it also includes certain services. I have been told by the CEO of a medical electronics startup that she would find it difficult to manufacture in the US due to absence of certain specialized services; I believe she mentioned RF test facilities)
A serious analysis of America’s trade situation should involve more than quoting David Ricardo and lecturing people about their supposed economic ignorance. The WSJ article would have been more intellectually-honest and more useful had it also given examples of American manufacturers who are benefitting from the modified tariffs; these examples certainly exist.
Best of luck to Standard Textile. Hopefully, (a) the tariffs, if they remain in place, will be adjusted to level the rate between imported fabric and imported finished goods, and (b) US manufacturers of this fabric will come into being.
I have received a suggestion from a more-experienced – or smarter, anyway – blogger that readers do not tend to click on links to an entire series. This will be a problem for me, and I am not sure how I will handle it. An ongoing series has articles separated by a few days, and is manageable. A list of 4 or 8 links seems a bit much to most readers at one go. I get it. It seems a bit much to me as well. If I publish them all here it will take over the site, which seems neither interesting nor polite.
For the moment, I will put up the entire post of one that was recently only linked. It in turn has multiple links at the bottom, but I hasten to say they are undemanding. They’re just pictures, 10 to a link. Humor me on this. You will be rewarded.
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I made a claim of longstanding media bias, as many conservatives do. It occurred to me that I could give quick evidence of it. I will let the Time and Newsweek covers speak for me.
But, you say, we didn’t take those magazines at our house. Or, those were a long time ago, they didn’t affect me. Then they affected your teachers and parents, and the people around you who found it very important to keep up with current events. Did you never have dental care, visit a friend, go to the doctor? Were there no pharmacies, newsstands, grocery checkouts in your town?
Or perhaps you think that even though those were around you, they didn’t affect you. You were objective, you saw through those things. Well yes. I would say you either consciously saw through them and were offended by them, or you were affected whether you admit it or not. For myself, I mostly didn’t notice until the late 80’s and was affected. After that I did notice and was offended. These weekly covers were ubiquitous, and I contend you were affected. This was the air that you breathed.
If you still think not, then how is it that you arrived at the same opinion of these figures as the editors wished you to?
I started at Ford, as the Nixon covers would be too dominated by Watergate discussions and not a clean sample. I strongly favored solo pictures of a president, taken during his years of office. I stuck with Time and Newsweek. When there was a shortage of these, I chose covers from the campaign, as close to the date of election as possible. I avoided retrospectives after the president had left office, as those are often mellowing. I didn’t have that many choices for Gerald Ford, however. I took them in the order that Duckduckgo, or sometimes Bing images presented them to me. I did not pick and choose for effect. With Clinton, I did limit myself to three covers related to Lewinsky. I back-published all in last month’s archives rather than clutter up my two front pages with pictures of presidents. Notice also what words are on the covers, the expressions captured, the black-and-white.
Res ipsa loquitur
Magazine Covers – Gerald Ford
Magazine Covers – Jimmy Carter
Magazine Covers – Ronald Reagan
Magazine Covers – George H W Bush
Magazine Covers – Bill Clinton
Magazine Covers – George W Bush
Magazine Covers – Barack Obama