"Tom" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
.. .

Spehro Pefhany wrote:


Recently I was shown a ~40lb aerospace part that started off weighting
more than 20 times as much. Believe it or not, it made sense to do it
that way, given the constraints.

I worked with a machinist who claimed to have
made a part for the space shuttle landing gear.
He said he started with a 200 lb billet of AL
and ended up with a 3 lb part. I'm thinking
that mistakes would get real costly in that line
of work...


That kind of thing is fairly common now in aerospace and military work.
The ability of CNC milling to carve out delicate skeletons from large
chunks of metal is a cornerstone of a lot of extreme-performance designs.

I've seen helicopter parts made that way, and airplane sub-structures,
and parts for rockets and spacecraft. It's been going on at least since
the late '70s.

The cartoon I commented upon, though, was something else. That was just
about poor planning and a lack of caring about waste -- two
characteristics of the old Soviet Union.

--
Ed Huntress
Please explain further why the Russian scenario really differs from the US
scenario above?

Productivity in US manufacturing probably was at least 5 times higher than
Soviet productivity. Their entire standard was a typical socialist-based
system of manufacture. There was little motivation to keep costs under
control, and increasing volume, once quotas were met, was a prescription for
headaches. Managers avoided it at all costs.

In the US, even when the subject is government contract work, the standards
and the environment of expectations is based on private enterprise
industries.

It's not dissimilar to what China faced as it started replacing its
state-run manufacturing with private enterprise. Suddenly, roughly 90% of
the workforce in many of those old plants had no jobs, because their
manufacturing was featherbedded to beat hell. Our old friend Hamei, who has
managed several manufacturing operations in China, has confirmed this. He
told me in an article interview that he found roughly ten people doing every
job that one worker would do in the US. A family friend who managed
Caterpillar's manufacturing in China for ten years said the same thing to me
around five years ago. They're getting better, but they still have an
overhang of traditional socialist organization that hangs like an albatross
around many of their industries.

BTW, productivity in China, as of three years ago, was still estimated to be
10% of that of the US, overall, by independent analysts.

--
Ed Huntress

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:42:29 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
The cartoon I commented upon, though, was something else. That was just
about poor planning and a lack of caring about waste -- two characteristics
of the old Soviet Union.

--
Ed Huntress
==========
And I have set in meetings right here in the USA where department
heads were raked over the coals for failing to meet their scrap
accounts because their reject rates were too low, and causing
problems with meeting the scrap metal sales contracts.

FWIW -- the corporation [OEM truck part supplier] went out of
business some time ago. Something about unfair Japanese
competition....


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).

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:56:52 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Tom" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
.. .

Spehro Pefhany wrote:


Recently I was shown a ~40lb aerospace part that started off weighting
more than 20 times as much. Believe it or not, it made sense to do it
that way, given the constraints.

I worked with a machinist who claimed to have
made a part for the space shuttle landing gear.
He said he started with a 200 lb billet of AL
and ended up with a 3 lb part. I'm thinking
that mistakes would get real costly in that line
of work...


That kind of thing is fairly common now in aerospace and military work.
The ability of CNC milling to carve out delicate skeletons from large
chunks of metal is a cornerstone of a lot of extreme-performance designs.

I've seen helicopter parts made that way, and airplane sub-structures,
and parts for rockets and spacecraft. It's been going on at least since
the late '70s.

The cartoon I commented upon, though, was something else. That was just
about poor planning and a lack of caring about waste -- two
characteristics of the old Soviet Union.

--
Ed Huntress
Please explain further why the Russian scenario really differs from the US
scenario above?

Productivity in US manufacturing probably was at least 5 times higher than
Soviet productivity. Their entire standard was a typical socialist-based
system of manufacture. There was little motivation to keep costs under
control, and increasing volume, once quotas were met, was a prescription for
headaches. Managers avoided it at all costs.

In the US, even when the subject is government contract work, the standards
and the environment of expectations is based on private enterprise
industries.

It's not dissimilar to what China faced as it started replacing its
state-run manufacturing with private enterprise. Suddenly, roughly 90% of
the workforce in many of those old plants had no jobs, because their
manufacturing was featherbedded to beat hell. Our old friend Hamei, who has
managed several manufacturing operations in China, has confirmed this. He
told me in an article interview that he found roughly ten people doing every
job that one worker would do in the US. A family friend who managed
Caterpillar's manufacturing in China for ten years said the same thing to me
around five years ago. They're getting better, but they still have an
overhang of traditional socialist organization that hangs like an albatross
around many of their industries.

BTW, productivity in China, as of three years ago, was still estimated to be
10% of that of the US, overall, by independent analysts.
========
Old Communist Worker's Observation:
"They pretend to pay us, and
we pretend to work."


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).

"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:42:29 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
The cartoon I commented upon, though, was something else. That was just
about poor planning and a lack of caring about waste -- two
characteristics
of the old Soviet Union.

--
Ed Huntress
==========
And I have set in meetings right here in the USA where department
heads were raked over the coals for failing to meet their scrap
accounts because their reject rates were too low, and causing
problems with meeting the scrap metal sales contracts.

FWIW -- the corporation [OEM truck part supplier] went out of
business some time ago. Something about unfair Japanese
competition....

I don't think there's really any comparison, George. When I started
reporting on international trade and manufacturing I spent a fair amount of
time reading about the Soviet Union, from expats and European managers who
had ventures in the USSR. You can't remotely compare the inefficiencies and
foolishness you'll find in the West with the insanity that went on there.

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of making
fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at a very high
cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods and they had no
productive capacity left to make anything else, except with horrible
inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they collapsed.

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of making
fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at a very high
cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods and they had no
productive capacity left to make anything else, except with horrible
inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they collapsed.

Sounds not so different from us right now...

At least some of the Soviet inefficiencies were actually theft. I.e.,
they could report making 10 widgets where there could be made 15, but
in fact the waste was stolen and converted to gadgets, which were sold
on the black market without reporting. So the enterprise was not as
inefficient as it seemed from official reports, similar to people here
who are cheating on taxes.

But certainly that could not compensate for the big productivity gap.

i

"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at a
very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods and
they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except with
horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.

Sounds not so different from us right now...

I don't think so, Jim. We still have the capability and the economic
structure. We have, believe it or not, the highest level of productivity in
the world. We also have the highest levels of manufacturing output in
history, I think; I'd have to track it before 1992, because we changed the
industry identifying system then. It's at least the highest since 1992, and,
IIRC, that means it's the highest in history.

This whole thing is widely misunderstood and misrepresented. What's happened
is that our economy has grown much faster in other areas, so it isn't
apparent that manufacturing output has continued to increase. The
*percentage* of our economy represented by manufacturing has declined by
something like 50%, IIRC. It's also true that productivity has made such
enormous gains that the number of *people* employed in manufacturing has
been flat through that period, and has declined in many high-volume
manufacturing segments, as our population has grown and other segments of
the economy have overshadowed manufacturing.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ignoramus3909" wrote in message
...
At least some of the Soviet inefficiencies were actually theft. I.e.,
they could report making 10 widgets where there could be made 15, but
in fact the waste was stolen and converted to gadgets, which were sold
on the black market without reporting. So the enterprise was not as
inefficient as it seemed from official reports, similar to people here
who are cheating on taxes.

I think that the inefficiencies were outrageous anyway. Theft, corruption,
lying statistics of output -- all were epidemic in the Soviet system. But it
sucked in a very big way, any way you measure it.


But certainly that could not compensate for the big productivity gap.

Yup.

--
Ed Huntress

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:17:13 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:42:29 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
The cartoon I commented upon, though, was something else. That was just
about poor planning and a lack of caring about waste -- two
characteristics
of the old Soviet Union.

--
Ed Huntress
==========
And I have set in meetings right here in the USA where department
heads were raked over the coals for failing to meet their scrap
accounts because their reject rates were too low, and causing
problems with meeting the scrap metal sales contracts.

FWIW -- the corporation [OEM truck part supplier] went out of
business some time ago. Something about unfair Japanese
competition....

I don't think there's really any comparison, George. When I started
reporting on international trade and manufacturing I spent a fair amount of
time reading about the Soviet Union, from expats and European managers who
had ventures in the USSR. You can't remotely compare the inefficiencies and
foolishness you'll find in the West with the insanity that went on there.

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of making
fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at a very high
cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods and they had no
productive capacity left to make anything else, except with horrible
inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they collapsed.
==========
I was fortunate to spend some time in Canada at a branch of the
OEM truck parts company doing SPC training and implementation.
They had engineers from all over the world. Of particular
interest to me were the ones from Russia [USSR at that time --
late 70s], west and east Germany, and India. We consumed vast
quantities of Molsen X and Lablatt Blue, and I arrived at several
conclusions, after extended discussions about like what we see on
ACM and RMC, without the B. S.
http://www.molson.com/
http://www.labattblue.com/index.jsp
and the French/Qubec beer was good too [don't remember any of the
brand names].
http://www.mcauslan.com/

First off, the particular solution to an engineering
design/production problem selected will depend on what you have
available and the priorities. One example was a small component
[2 lbs steel] that was to be produced is relatively large
numbers, with some strength and safety requirements.

While a generalization the US engineesr/designers would go for
the cheapest piece-part cost amortized over the production life
of the part, generally some sort of stamping.

The German engineers would go with a forging to produce the best
possible part, even though the physical properties and
strength:weight would be much better than needed, with extra
machining required.

The Russian engineers/designers wanted to know what capabilities
the corporation had so they could improve the internal
utilization of the existing equipment and manpower, and as there
was a small die casting and iron/steel foundry operation, would
use a malable/ductile iron casting, although this would involve
considerable shipping and extra machining. Identification with
ones "Artel" was very high, even to the extent that most meals
were taken there, their social life was organized around their
Artel, and what was "best" for the Artel, was best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artel
[A great deal like SecDef "Engine Charlie" Wilson: "What's good
for General Motors is Good for America, and what's good for
America is good for General Motors." ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Erwin_Wilson

The Indians tended to be more like the Germans, although [at the
time] they admitted if they were still in India, they would use
whatever was available, most likely some sort of local low tech
cupola furnace iron casting with extra material for strength.

Tooling was also a consideration. Wood patterns could be
produced quickly and cheaply, while stamping/pressing and forging
dies take considerable time and are high cost, requiring highly
skilled labor and machines to produce. Much depended on how
"firm," i.e. how subject to change or termination, the
product/component was.

Thus what is an optimal solution in one context is sub-optimal or
even impossible in another context, with a different set of tacit
criteria, meta narratives, and priorities.


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).

Ed Huntress wrote:
"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at a
very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods and
they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except with
horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.
Sounds not so different from us right now...

I don't think so, Jim. We still have the capability and the economic
structure. We have, believe it or not, the highest level of productivity in
the world. We also have the highest levels of manufacturing output in
history, I think; I'd have to track it before 1992, because we changed the
industry identifying system then. It's at least the highest since 1992, and,
IIRC, that means it's the highest in history.

This whole thing is widely misunderstood and misrepresented. What's happened
is that our economy has grown much faster in other areas, so it isn't
apparent that manufacturing output has continued to increase. The
*percentage* of our economy represented by manufacturing has declined by
something like 50%, IIRC. It's also true that productivity has made such
enormous gains that the number of *people* employed in manufacturing has
been flat through that period, and has declined in many high-volume
manufacturing segments, as our population has grown and other segments of
the economy have overshadowed manufacturing.

That's encouraging, Ed.

I have my own company and we actually *make*
a product in this country and I was starting
to feel like me and Tom Gardner were all alone.

regards,
-jim

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:28:49 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, Jim
Stewart quickly quoth:

Ed Huntress wrote:
"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at a
very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods and
they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except with
horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.
Sounds not so different from us right now...

I don't think so, Jim. We still have the capability and the economic
structure. We have, believe it or not, the highest level of productivity in
the world. We also have the highest levels of manufacturing output in
history, I think; I'd have to track it before 1992, because we changed the
industry identifying system then. It's at least the highest since 1992, and,
IIRC, that means it's the highest in history.

This whole thing is widely misunderstood and misrepresented. What's happened
is that our economy has grown much faster in other areas, so it isn't
apparent that manufacturing output has continued to increase. The
*percentage* of our economy represented by manufacturing has declined by
something like 50%, IIRC. It's also true that productivity has made such
enormous gains that the number of *people* employed in manufacturing has
been flat through that period, and has declined in many high-volume
manufacturing segments, as our population has grown and other segments of
the economy have overshadowed manufacturing.

That's encouraging, Ed.

I have my own company and we actually *make*
a product in this country and I was starting
to feel like me and Tom Gardner were all alone.

Ditto here, Jim. My product isn't making me rich, but it keeps me in
socks.

--
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of
leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination
of nonessentials. -- Lin Yutang

In article
,
Jim Wilkins wrote:

On Jun 11, 7:55*am, Spehro Pefhany
wrote:

Remember the laughter when vacuum tubes were discovered in analyzing a
stolen Soviet fighter jet-- then they figured out why (survival of
communications electronics from the EMP of nuclear explosion). As
we've found out from using their ICBMs to launch satellites (pinpoint
accuracy), their aerospace technology was very, very good for the
time, but their commercial stuff was generally lousy-- degrading
perfectly good raw materials into garbage that nobody who had a choice
wanted.

Spehro Pefhany

I remember the laughter coming from the press, not the aerospace
community. Those vacuum tubes were in a chassis that raised up
hydraulically for easier, faster servicing. The plane had rust on it
because it went so fast that aluminum would have weakened from the
heat. Soviet gear was relatively simple and effective.

The Soviet stuff was usually crude but effective, and produced cheaply
in large quantities.


The American
military was substantially a high-tech trade school that gave us the
skills to compete globally, so complexity was an advantage.

There was a deeper reason. The Warsaw Pact had about five times the
numbers of tanks and men at arms in Europe as the West. So, the West
had to have "force multipliers" sufficient to overwhelm a 5:1 numerical
advantage. Thus the complexity. Which the West could do, while the
Soviet could not.

Joe Gwinn

"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
.. .
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had
some excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable
of making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and
at a very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military
goods and they had no productive capacity left to make anything else,
except with horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's
why they collapsed.
Sounds not so different from us right now...

I don't think so, Jim. We still have the capability and the economic
structure. We have, believe it or not, the highest level of productivity
in the world. We also have the highest levels of manufacturing output in
history, I think; I'd have to track it before 1992, because we changed
the industry identifying system then. It's at least the highest since
1992, and, IIRC, that means it's the highest in history.

This whole thing is widely misunderstood and misrepresented. What's
happened is that our economy has grown much faster in other areas, so it
isn't apparent that manufacturing output has continued to increase. The
*percentage* of our economy represented by manufacturing has declined by
something like 50%, IIRC. It's also true that productivity has made such
enormous gains that the number of *people* employed in manufacturing has
been flat through that period, and has declined in many high-volume
manufacturing segments, as our population has grown and other segments of
the economy have overshadowed manufacturing.

That's encouraging, Ed.

I have my own company and we actually *make*
a product in this country and I was starting
to feel like me and Tom Gardner were all alone.

regards,
-jim

A lot of people seem to feel that way. I don't want to oversimplify the
situation, because there have been a lot of shifts in US manufacturing that
have distributed a lot of pain around to different segments. But the
impression that US manufacturing is collapsing is not correct.

One thing we noticed a few years ago is that certain segments, such as
moldmaking, had built up during the '90s, to the point where we had
overcapacity that wasn't readily apparent. That business depends upon growth
and new models in the car industry for a high percentage of total moldmaking
business. If the economy even slows down slightly -- and it was hot in the
late '90s, so even a tapering off to normal growth rates looked like a
slowdown -- the moldmaking business falls off to a sharper degree than the
economy as a whole, the overcapacity becomes obvious, and a lot of newer
shops go bust. From inside of the moldmaking business, it looked like the
sky was falling.

To get the big manufacturing picture you have to pick apart the Census
numbers segment-by-segment, then look at the employment numbers, and so on.
I've done that a few times over the years, but not recently. It's a lot of
work. Maybe I'll write a book about it. The problem is, with all of the
automation that's been going on, there aren't a lot of people left to read
it. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:17:13 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at
a very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods
and they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except
with horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.

There was no concept of real cost of things in the Soviet Union. I have a
nice story about that. Russian had a sophisticated weapons program, and
as part of that had huge isotope separation plants located near their
hydroelectric power dams in Siberia, which produced pure isotopic
elements at zero perceived cost. These are sometimes important; for
instance, pure isotopic diamond has heat conductivity multiple times that
of regular diamond, which in itself is a record-breaking heat conductor.

Some scientists in my old department needed a pure isotope of cadmium.
Free market price of what he needed was in tens of thousands of dollars
per gram, but he heard about some Russians in their Academy of Sciences
having a stock. He took some measuring equipment (an oscilloscope or a
boxcar averaging voltmeter, or something like that), and went to Moscow
to barter with the cadmium guy. The Russian pulled out an enormous chunk,
worth possibly millions, from his drawer, and grabbed a pair of scissors
(cadmium is about as hard as lead). A horse-trading session ensued where
our guy and the Russian kept moving the cut line until they settled on a
fair-sized chunk. There was a lot of samples over many years that got
made out of that cadmium, back in the seventies.


--
Przemek Klosowski, Ph.D. przemek.klosowski at gmail

"przemek klosowski" wrote in message
news:JXn4k.42495$MF3.23246@trnddc06...
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:17:13 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at
a very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods
and they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except
with horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.

There was no concept of real cost of things in the Soviet Union. I have a
nice story about that. Russian had a sophisticated weapons program, and
as part of that had huge isotope separation plants located near their
hydroelectric power dams in Siberia, which produced pure isotopic
elements at zero perceived cost. These are sometimes important; for
instance, pure isotopic diamond has heat conductivity multiple times that
of regular diamond, which in itself is a record-breaking heat conductor.

Some scientists in my old department needed a pure isotope of cadmium.
Free market price of what he needed was in tens of thousands of dollars
per gram, but he heard about some Russians in their Academy of Sciences
having a stock. He took some measuring equipment (an oscilloscope or a
boxcar averaging voltmeter, or something like that), and went to Moscow
to barter with the cadmium guy. The Russian pulled out an enormous chunk,
worth possibly millions, from his drawer, and grabbed a pair of scissors
(cadmium is about as hard as lead). A horse-trading session ensued where
our guy and the Russian kept moving the cut line until they settled on a
fair-sized chunk. There was a lot of samples over many years that got
made out of that cadmium, back in the seventies.


--
Przemek Klosowski, Ph.D. przemek.klosowski at gmail

Ha! Interesting story.

Where were you located at the time?

--
Ed Huntress

On Jun 13, 1:53*am, przemek klosowski
wrote:
Some scientists in my old department needed a pure isotope of cadmium.
Free market price of what he needed was in tens of thousands of dollars
per gram, but he heard about some Russians in their Academy of Sciences
having a stock.
* * * * * * * * Przemek Klosowski, Ph.D. przemek.klosowski at gmail

That can happen in the US when people get the attitude that anything
provided by the government is free. I had a bottle of heavy water for
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance experiments that was regarded similarly.
Not by me, but I was the junior guy in the lab.

Jim Wilkins

On 2008-06-13, przemek klosowski wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:17:13 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at
a very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods
and they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except
with horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.

There was no concept of real cost of things in the Soviet Union. I have a
nice story about that. Russian had a sophisticated weapons program, and
as part of that had huge isotope separation plants located near their
hydroelectric power dams in Siberia, which produced pure isotopic
elements at zero perceived cost. These are sometimes important; for
instance, pure isotopic diamond has heat conductivity multiple times that
of regular diamond, which in itself is a record-breaking heat conductor.

Some scientists in my old department needed a pure isotope of cadmium.
Free market price of what he needed was in tens of thousands of dollars
per gram, but he heard about some Russians in their Academy of Sciences
having a stock. He took some measuring equipment (an oscilloscope or a
boxcar averaging voltmeter, or something like that), and went to Moscow
to barter with the cadmium guy. The Russian pulled out an enormous chunk,
worth possibly millions, from his drawer, and grabbed a pair of scissors
(cadmium is about as hard as lead). A horse-trading session ensued where
our guy and the Russian kept moving the cut line until they settled on a
fair-sized chunk. There was a lot of samples over many years that got
made out of that cadmium, back in the seventies.



Well, don't get me started on my USA surplus buying experiences.

For example, impact wrenches that I bought for $49 and instantly
resold for $1,500 (and clearly set a too low buy it now price too).

etc
--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

"Ignoramus29659" wrote in message
...
On 2008-06-13, przemek klosowski wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:17:13 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at
a very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods
and they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except
with horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.

There was no concept of real cost of things in the Soviet Union. I have a
nice story about that. Russian had a sophisticated weapons program, and
as part of that had huge isotope separation plants located near their
hydroelectric power dams in Siberia, which produced pure isotopic
elements at zero perceived cost. These are sometimes important; for
instance, pure isotopic diamond has heat conductivity multiple times that
of regular diamond, which in itself is a record-breaking heat conductor.

Some scientists in my old department needed a pure isotope of cadmium.
Free market price of what he needed was in tens of thousands of dollars
per gram, but he heard about some Russians in their Academy of Sciences
having a stock. He took some measuring equipment (an oscilloscope or a
boxcar averaging voltmeter, or something like that), and went to Moscow
to barter with the cadmium guy. The Russian pulled out an enormous chunk,
worth possibly millions, from his drawer, and grabbed a pair of scissors
(cadmium is about as hard as lead). A horse-trading session ensued where
our guy and the Russian kept moving the cut line until they settled on a
fair-sized chunk. There was a lot of samples over many years that got
made out of that cadmium, back in the seventies.



Well, don't get me started on my USA surplus buying experiences.

For example, impact wrenches that I bought for $49 and instantly
resold for $1,500 (and clearly set a too low buy it now price too).

That's impact-wrench arbitrage, Iggy. It's a core principle of laissez-faire
capitalism.

You're in a very small, select group. Risk arbitrageurs are a dime a dozen.
Impact-wrench arbitrageurs are true specialists.d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On 2008-06-13, Ignoramus29659 wrote:
On 2008-06-13, przemek klosowski wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:17:13 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at
a very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods
and they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except
with horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.

There was no concept of real cost of things in the Soviet Union. I have a
nice story about that. Russian had a sophisticated weapons program, and
as part of that had huge isotope separation plants located near their
hydroelectric power dams in Siberia, which produced pure isotopic
elements at zero perceived cost. These are sometimes important; for
instance, pure isotopic diamond has heat conductivity multiple times that
of regular diamond, which in itself is a record-breaking heat conductor.

Some scientists in my old department needed a pure isotope of cadmium.
Free market price of what he needed was in tens of thousands of dollars
per gram, but he heard about some Russians in their Academy of Sciences
having a stock. He took some measuring equipment (an oscilloscope or a
boxcar averaging voltmeter, or something like that), and went to Moscow
to barter with the cadmium guy. The Russian pulled out an enormous chunk,
worth possibly millions, from his drawer, and grabbed a pair of scissors
(cadmium is about as hard as lead). A horse-trading session ensued where
our guy and the Russian kept moving the cut line until they settled on a
fair-sized chunk. There was a lot of samples over many years that got
made out of that cadmium, back in the seventies.



Well, don't get me started on my USA surplus buying experiences.

For example, impact wrenches that I bought for $49 and instantly
resold for $1,500 (and clearly set a too low buy it now price too).

Or M2A1 tank dehumidifiers that I bought for $17 each and am selling
for $300-500 ever since, they did not even know what they were selling.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

On 2008-06-13, Ed Huntress wrote:

"Ignoramus29659" wrote in message
...
On 2008-06-13, przemek klosowski wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:17:13 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:

It's no wonder that they drove themselves into the ground. They had some
excellent engineering and materials science and they were capable of
making fine products of various kinds. But only in small numbers and at
a very high cost. They spent all of that capability on military goods
and they had no productive capacity left to make anything else, except
with horrible inefficiency and equally horrible quality. That's why they
collapsed.

There was no concept of real cost of things in the Soviet Union. I have a
nice story about that. Russian had a sophisticated weapons program, and
as part of that had huge isotope separation plants located near their
hydroelectric power dams in Siberia, which produced pure isotopic
elements at zero perceived cost. These are sometimes important; for
instance, pure isotopic diamond has heat conductivity multiple times that
of regular diamond, which in itself is a record-breaking heat conductor.

Some scientists in my old department needed a pure isotope of cadmium.
Free market price of what he needed was in tens of thousands of dollars
per gram, but he heard about some Russians in their Academy of Sciences
having a stock. He took some measuring equipment (an oscilloscope or a
boxcar averaging voltmeter, or something like that), and went to Moscow
to barter with the cadmium guy. The Russian pulled out an enormous chunk,
worth possibly millions, from his drawer, and grabbed a pair of scissors
(cadmium is about as hard as lead). A horse-trading session ensued where
our guy and the Russian kept moving the cut line until they settled on a
fair-sized chunk. There was a lot of samples over many years that got
made out of that cadmium, back in the seventies.



Well, don't get me started on my USA surplus buying experiences.

For example, impact wrenches that I bought for $49 and instantly
resold for $1,500 (and clearly set a too low buy it now price too).

That's impact-wrench arbitrage, Iggy. It's a core principle of laissez-faire
capitalism.

You're in a very small, select group. Risk arbitrageurs are a dime a dozen.
Impact-wrench arbitrageurs are true specialists.d8-)

And all one needs to do, is just look closely.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

"Ignoramus29659" wrote in message
...

Well, don't get me started on my USA surplus buying experiences.

For example, impact wrenches that I bought for $49 and instantly
resold for $1,500 (and clearly set a too low buy it now price too).

etc

How much did that Snap-On wrench set bring? I assume you sold it locally....Paul

On 2008-06-14, catguy wrote:

"Ignoramus29659" wrote in message
...

Well, don't get me started on my USA surplus buying experiences.

For example, impact wrenches that I bought for $49 and instantly
resold for $1,500 (and clearly set a too low buy it now price too).

etc

How much did that Snap-On wrench set bring? I assume you sold it locally....Paul



$150 cash.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/