Twenty Years Into the New Century and What have We Lost: American Dominance in Manufacturing and Our Privacy

But the bigger trend has been in the private sector. Facebook and Google have been the leaders in this attack on our privacy. It’s curious that when I do a Google search for some consumer product, all of a sudden, I get ads popping up on my screen about that same product. 

We know that the big online groups are aggregating our information – that’s their business model. 

But what’s equally scary is that political groups have been making use of our personal information with malign intent. Targeted political ads, tailored to the particular demographic, are nothing new, but the precision with which modern political campaigns make use of such information has been a developing concern. 

The loss of privacy is a continuing issue that has been building since the year 2000. There is a lot of pretend-concern about the online companies, but little gets done. 

Back to our lost leadership in manufacturing, -- it may be impossible to ever get it back. How do you compete with a hard working nation of a billion people, one whose government supports a broadly based manufacturing sector? Perhaps we will gain something back in the manufacture of prescription medicines, considering the recent scandals about contaminated drugs. The problem is that American companies don’t seem very interested in actually making things since they can outsource to the foreign sector. Only a major marketing advantage – the fact that various foreign companies are allowing carcinogens to remain in their products – would be enough motivation. 

In the meanwhile, things like electric motors and tools and clothing and electronics are flooding our markets and we don’t seem to do anything about the issue. We still make airplanes and movies, but there is competition. And the gross negligence of Boeing over the 737 Max will continue to do damage for years to come. 

What we’ve gained in this new century: 

Vastly increased understanding of climate science and medicine 

The irony of it all: 

In spite of these gains in knowledge, we’re not doing much about CO2 buildup, a major disaster in the making, and we’re not moving aggressively towards a European type healthcare system. Democratic presidential candidates are talking about a public option for health insurance, but the way to the goal line is cluttered with opponents. 

Slow but steady changes: 

The Ikea-ization of consumer manufacturing and sales continues. Ikea outsources its manufacturing, and its business model seems to be working well. 

The evolution of Amazon as a model for sales and delivery also continues. It’s taken a long time for Amazon to become dominant, but we’ve seen an accelerating curve for the past few years. 

What do Ikea and Amazon have in common? They are like the old department stores which sold every manner of goods. They’ve marketed themselves a little differently – Ikea in particular hangs a novel image on their products by labeling them with Swedish names (I guess they are Swedish) – but a desk is still a desk and a bed is still a bed. The main advantage for Ikea, Amazon, and Walmart is that they can sell cheaper by outsourcing to foreign factories. 

The topic that hardly anyone talks about 

The growing human population makes for a labor surplus all over the globe. Manufacturers understand how to take advantage. Southern Asia has taken over a lot of manufacturing, clothing creation, and every manner of other product creation, because the work force can be exploited. We don’t seem to be talking about the population explosion very much. And in addition, the human population is key to the rising carbon dioxide that is leading to global warming.  

Digitization and destruction of union organizing 

There used to be secretaries and clerks. The modern trend is to force customers to do a lot of this work. Centralized computer systems make it possible, whether it’s the do-it-yourself cash registers we now see at Target, the automated sales of fuel at gas stations, or the ATM. As one colleague said, “We are all clerks now.” It’s a way of reducing the sales force. A few years ago, Chase Bank had lots of tellers who served lots of customers. Then they installed indoor ATMs and cut the teller jobs drastically. 

Recently, there was a dust-up at the Port of Los Angeles about automating one of the cargo terminals. The union was adamantly opposed, as there are hundreds of jobs on the line. There is currently a murky compromise over this issue, but we may be on the verge of losing millions of dollars’ worth of unionized jobs in the coming decades. 

The business sector has been fairly effective in propagandizing against unionization. In the backwoods, low paid store clerks parrot the line that they don’t want a union because of the dues. They don’t seem to be able to do simple arithmetic – they would be making lots more money and have improved employment security if they had a union, and significantly, they could negotiate for a more regularized set of part time hours. 

But the long term trend, going back to anti-union legislation of the 1940s, is to bust the unions by whatever means are available. There is even an industry that works to talk workers out of voting for the union in unionization elections. What’s missing in this country is a strong union movement and a dedicated labor party in government. We could also use a white collar labor movement in this country, something for the remaining clerks and tellers and theme park employees and all the other workers who go without effective representation. 

Meanwhile, as the new century goes on, unionization continues to fail in the increasingly failing manufacturing sector. 

The R Word makes a comeback 

The advent of the Trump years has brought with it an acceptance – at least among a lot of his followers – of express racism. We went through a period after the civil rights era in which racism was not considered publicly acceptable. Obviously (in hindsight) there were lots of racists still around, but they had been intimidated from spouting their hatred. Public marches of outright racists carrying tiki torches and chanting anti-Semitic slogans were rare. And they did not have the public support of the president of the United States. 

It’s been a perfect storm of right wing hatred over the radio and television that has provided permission to the haters. This has gone along with the ranting of political candidates. It is a bad moment in American history. Perhaps the 2020s will be different. We can only hope.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])

-cw