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After being discharged from the Army Air Corps following end of the War in 1945, my dad wanted to buy a new car, but none were available. All industrial manufacturing had been drafted into the “war effort”, and there were even shortages of basic appliances like washing machines and refrigerators well into the late 40s after my parents married in 1946, their first child was born in 1948, before they bought a home in 1950 and began to furnish it. Only then were household goods more readily available. As commercial production returned, engineers again took up the question of [[Planned_obsolescence|Planned obsolescence]] that had first appeared in the mid 1920s and 30s — what level of [[Fashion]] or shoddiness (necessitating replacement of goods) would consumers tolerate, which is to ask, to what height of wastefullness could [[The System]] aspire in its “growth” toward [[Capitalism#Love_of_Money|Love of Money]]. | After being discharged from the Army Air Corps following end of the War in 1945, my dad wanted to buy a new car, but none were available. All industrial manufacturing had been drafted into the “war effort”, and there were even shortages of basic appliances like washing machines and refrigerators well into the late 40s after my parents married in 1946, their first child was born in 1948, before they bought a home in 1950 and began to furnish it. Only then were household goods more readily available. As commercial production returned, engineers again took up the question of [[Planned_obsolescence|Planned obsolescence]] that had first appeared in the mid 1920s and 30s — what level of [[Fashion]] or shoddiness (necessitating replacement of goods) would consumers tolerate, which is to ask, to what height of wastefullness could [[The System]] aspire in its “growth” toward [[Capitalism#Love_of_Money|Love of Money]]. | ||
The wastefullness of [[The System]] stood (and still stands even more so today) in stark contrast to [[Agrarianism]] of original American culture in which frugality was practiced and desires by necessity restrained. [[Desire#William_Leach|William Leach]] chronicles how the change to new American culture of [[The System]] transpired, which hadn't yet touched my parents‘ families, not even in the 1940s when they mostly continued living a life of original American culture with few and limited consumer goods, much like the Amish. By the late 50s, my maternal grandparents had already left the land and moved to town, but for a few years my grandfather continued leasing land on which to share crop cotton as he had before. My paternal grandparents remained living on 200 acres settled by my great grandfather in 1880 when Comanches yet roamed freely across Texas, where they had moved in 1934. There was no indoor bathroom only chamber pots and an outhouse, no electricity before 1960, only chopped and split firewood for a wood heater, wood cookstove and a cast iron pot for washing clothes. There was pitch black darkness at night, the heavens full of stars like I've never seen since by which my dad taught me to locate the little and big dippers. The original log cabin had vanished, but the barn with two log cribs prevailed, built from Post Oak trees felled by axe on the property. Lumber for framing the barn roof and attached sheds, from which the farmhouse was also built, was milled from the same Post Oak trees at a local sawmill. Nearly a century later up until the mid 70s, my grandparents were | The wastefullness of [[The System]] stood (and still stands even more so today) in stark contrast to [[Agrarianism]] of original American culture in which frugality was practiced and desires by necessity restrained. [[Desire#William_Leach|William Leach]] chronicles how the change to new American culture of [[The System]] transpired, which hadn't yet touched my parents‘ families, not even in the 1940s when they mostly continued living a life of original American culture with few and limited consumer goods, much like the Amish. By the late 50s, my maternal grandparents had already left the land and moved to town, but for a few years my grandfather continued leasing land on which to share crop cotton as he had before. My paternal grandparents remained living on 200 acres settled by my great grandfather in 1880 when Comanches yet roamed freely across Texas, where they had moved in 1934. There was no indoor bathroom only chamber pots and an outhouse, no electricity before 1960, only chopped and split firewood for a wood heater, wood cookstove and a cast iron pot for washing clothes. There was pitch black darkness at night, the heavens full of stars like I've never seen since by which my dad taught me to locate the little and big dippers. The original log cabin had vanished, but the barn with two log cribs prevailed, built from Post Oak trees felled by axe on the property. Lumber for framing the barn roof and attached sheds, from which the farmhouse was also built, was milled from the same Post Oak trees at a local sawmill. Nearly a century later up until the mid 70s, my grandparents were mostly raising a vegetable garden as usual, tending fruit trees (pears, peaches), keeping a dairy cow, raising beef cattle, hogs, and chickens, milking, cooking with fresh cream, making butter and cottage cheese, buying chicks from a hatchery to raise for fryers, butchering chickens and hogs, making sausage, and smoking sausage, ham, and bacon. The land was poor, deep sandy soil, but the Soil Conservation Society had taught my grandfather to peanut farm, by which he was able to make loan payments and not lose the land. They had little money but I never thought of them as poor. They wanted for nothing, recycled before there was such a word. Their passions were not enflamed nor their desires manipulated by [[Advertising]] rooted in the works of Sigmnond Freud as popularized in America and developed for [[Advertising]] by his nephew [[Propaganda#Eddie_Bernays|Eddy Bernays]]. A grand pile of scrap metal from worn out things was heaped before the workshop garage awaiting a project for which the scraps might be used. We knew not to rip to shreds Christmas wrapping paper on my grandmother‘s packages, because she saved the paper, folding it neatly for use another year. The attic was filled with jars and containers from store bought goods that might be put to good use. Because of boyhood experience of their life, I know that all the blather about economic “growth” raising people out of “poverty” is nothing but yet more [[Propaganda]] of the [[wikipedia:Big_lie|Big Lie]]. | ||
My mom was in high school during the war, and remembers her family having a ration book in which merchants kept track of what was bought per year, with restrictions on quantities, such as only 1 pair of shoes per person and 1 set of tires. If you used up rations in your book, then you could make no more purchases. In other words, America instituted a regulated, planned economy in the 1940s and that was alright by the monied capitalist industrialist powers since it enabled them to fatten themselves on war profits like [[wikipedia:Daddy_Warbucks|Daddy Warbucks]], but after the war such regulation was denounced (by way of [[Propaganda]] of the [[Propaganda#Ad_Council|Ad Council]]) as “socialism” and “communism” that threatened The American Way of life. From WWII, America learned that war was good for the economy (having lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression), and so [[The System]] grew powerful post War by way of [[Permanent war economy]], making “defense contractors” major employers along with Big [[Government]] bureaucracy, | My mom was in high school during the war, and remembers her family having a ration book in which merchants kept track of what was bought per year, with restrictions on quantities, such as only 1 pair of shoes per person and 1 set of tires. If you used up rations in your book, then you could make no more purchases. In other words, America instituted a regulated, planned economy in the 1940s and that was alright by the monied capitalist industrialist powers since it enabled them to fatten themselves on war profits like [[wikipedia:Daddy_Warbucks|Daddy Warbucks]], but after the war such regulation was denounced (by way of [[Propaganda]] of the [[Propaganda#Ad_Council|Ad Council]]) as “socialism” and “communism” that threatened The American Way of life. From WWII, America learned that war was good for the economy (having lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression), and so [[The System]] grew powerful post War by way of [[Permanent war economy]], making “defense contractors” major employers along with Big [[Government]] bureaucracy, | ||