On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:12:10 -0500, F. George McDuffee
wrote:

Having attended about 40+ machinery auctions in the past 8 yrs, this
was the first time that I attended an auction on a Saturday. What I
found most interesting was the age of the participants. WHile there
were a few dealers and a few (younger) shop owners / managers there
buying equipment, the majority of attendees appeared to be retirement
age and up. As a fifty year old, I felt like I was a youngster.
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Your observation parallels what I have observed, not only at
machine shop auctions but also farm auctions in this area [SE
Kansas].
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This appears to be a world wide problem in that in their drive to
"modernize," the governmental and private policy makers have
"eaten the seed corn."

What was sold as progress and profit has turned out to be capital
consumption/disipation.

Just as manufacturing is not sustainable unless you continually
update/maintain your machines, manpower, methods, products &
equipment, farming is not sustainable when you deplete resources
such as water and gouge on inputs such as credit, insecticide,
fertilizer and seed.

India did however manage to speed up the process. It took the
U.S. about 100 years 1865-1965 to go through the cycle. India
did it in less than a generation.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=102893816

{includes audio if you have good internet connection}


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).