Treat the Earth Well

[allen-uk]

What Ford said was:

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we made today."

Ford knew a lot about time-and-motion, a lot about screwing poor American workers even harder than they were already screwed, but reading his quote shows that he knew damn all about history, the historical process, ethics, culture, and all the rest of it.

He might not have invented modern grinding capitalism, but didn't he empitomise its thoroughly vacant philosophy: no past, only present; no traditions, only The Market. (Maybe 'no such thing as society'? Perhaps she had read Ford's rantings).

Despairingly, except for love and friendship.


Allen (an ageing hippy)

 

[Barnowl]

Assemby lines and History: The Royal Navy beat Henry Ford to it with the Portsmouth Block Mills created in 1801 by Marc Isambard Brunel (father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel), Henry Maudslay and others, for the production of blocks for the Royal Navy. It was so successfull it was still in use in the 1960s.
There was a lot of History, tried and trusted, that went into the making of Henry Fords cars.

PS. Sorry clash of post Allen-UK.

 

[flecc]

That's a little sweeping, Flecc.

It was indeed sweeping, but when debating the future as we've been doing in this thread, the majority truths are the guiding rule. Ergo, history is useless for predicting the future.

That it is broadly the truth you neatly showed with several examples of it being true and one debatable example where you believe it wasn't. That's another complex story though.
.