quote:

ORIGINAL: Kmot

I guess this is why Obama was elected...

quote:

ORIGINAL: ctdahle

I read the ''boring airplane'' thread and became very depressed.

Lots of people lamenting that very few people build, or even have the skill to build anything anymore, and lots of others explaining, accurately, why building is impractical, uneconomical and unnecessary. The tragedy is that both sides are right and it is a phenomenon that permeates American culture. Writer Michael Pollan addressed the same topic in the New York Times today, explaining how the preparation of good food has mutated from something every family did for itself, to something done by corporations and their minimum wage workers, or by superstar chefs on television shows, but not by normal people.

We have number crunched everything that takes effort, patience, practice, knowlege, and skill, turned it into drudgework and delegated it to others.

Now things like building model airplanes, cooking good meals, making heirloom quality furniture, and crocheting baby quilts, along with all of the character building skills, qualities, and values that go with those things have become relics.

I am firmly on the side of the scratch builder, the hand quilter, the home gardener and chef. The fact that we are too bloody lazy to build our own model planes or cook our own scampi is a national disaster. The rise of ARF culture is symptomatic of America's moral decline, and to pass it off with the platitude ''to each his own'' is a cop out, an apathetic acceptance of an American nation in decline, forfeiting its role as a beacon of freedom, a crucible of innovation, and the undisputed leader in technical skill and industrial quality.

An ARF nation is a nation on the ropes, unable to educate it's children, feed itself, manage it's ports, appropriately regulate it's economy, fabricate it's own semi-conductors, provide its own customer service centers or maintain it's own industries. An ARF nation is a dying nation.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hossfly

quote:

ORIGINAL: ctdahle

I read the ''boring airplane'' thread and became very depressed.

Lots of people lamenting that very few people build, or even have the skill to build anything anymore, and lots of others explaining, accurately, why building is impractical, uneconomical and unnecessary. The tragedy is that both sides are right and it is a phenomenon that permeates American culture. Writer Michael Pollan addressed the same topic in the New York Times today, explaining how the preparation of good food has mutated from something every family did for itself, to something done by corporations and their minimum wage workers, or by superstar chefs on television shows, but not by normal people.

We have number crunched everything that takes effort, patience, practice, knowlege, and skill, turned it into drudgework and delegated it to others.

Now things like building model airplanes, cooking good meals, making heirloom quality furniture, and crocheting baby quilts, along with all of the character building skills, qualities, and values that go with those things have become relics.

I am firmly on the side of the scratch builder, the hand quilter, the home gardener and chef. The fact that we are too bloody lazy to build our own model planes or cook our own scampi is a national disaster. The rise of ARF culture is symptomatic of America's moral decline, and to pass it off with the platitude ''to each his own'' is a cop out, an apathetic acceptance of an American nation in decline, forfeiting its role as a beacon of freedom, a crucible of innovation, and the undisputed leader in technical skill and industrial quality.

An ARF nation is a nation on the ropes, unable to educate it's children, feed itself, manage it's ports, appropriately regulate it's economy, fabricate it's own semi-conductors, provide its own customer service centers or maintain it's own industries. An ARF nation is a dying nation.

Scary thoughts but OH so true. One thing you forgot is that the tests given kids in school for determining the worth of a school are all that the school system focuses on. I know several good teacher. They despise what these politicians are doing to our children. Unfortunately most of the teachers also despise the programs.
As you so state, the do-it-yourself culture is gone, but I wonder if it really is. Having 10 grand-kids from 3 to 25, I find a lot of good ol' pioneer spirit in several of them. They work hard to stay abreast of things but they also value their freedoms and I keep pushing so.
ctdahle, I graduated from High School in 1954. I was the only kid in that class that had a desire to be a pilot and did fly model airplanes (CL at the time) I had 3 friends in a much larger school, some 20 miles away, that I flew with when we could get together. Even then I did not let modeling interfere much with my hunting, fishing, and sometimes going to school. [:)] In summers I usually worked 6- to 84 hours per week to be able to have living money. Even back then I could build a 19-60 size CL model in 3 days. Now, maybe 3 months. [sm=confused_smile.gif]

IMO, today aeromodeling is an action sport, however if one reads the magazines, especially Flying Models and visits with the FF/CL fliers, I think one will find that aeromodeling is very much alive along with the scratch build crowd. Back in the 1970 '76 period when I owned a Hobby Shop in the Chicago area, building was still the almost only way to go. As the ARFs came on line, certainly they became the way to go. People could go fly, if they crashed, they could go fly again very quickly. That is same for today.

Here in the south, few people can afford homes with basements and/or air conditioned areas to build. Houses for most middle class do not have good workshop areas. I have the area but not air-conditioned. Cold in winter and hot in summer. Unless one grew up crazy about airplanes, that doesn't work well when an ARF can get one in the air quickly. My ''first life'' lasted at least 3 years longer that it should have because I hated to give up that comfy basement workshop up close to Chi-town.

While our society leaves much to be desired, there are changes that we all do. My first car had 4 wheels, one engine two doors, a radio and a heater. About all. My truck now has a lot more creature comforts. My wife's mini-van seats 7, has TV and DVD stations, sirrus radio, navigation mapping and all sorts of stuff I have not yet figured out. Yep, the times they are a'changing, but it is because we demand so.

quote:

ORIGINAL: gboulton

So I've been thinking about this for 24+ hours now (you knew I'd jump in here, right Chris :))

============

Being an ''ARF Nation'' is, indeed, a symptom of a broader issue.

We don't produce.

We don't make cars. We assemble them from bits and pieces made elsewhere. (ARDs?) We don't make DVD players either. We'll sure as heck find a way to install them in the cars we didn't make though. Why? Simple...we've spared parents the onerous task of raising children who behave for the 10 minutes it takes to get to the store. No longer need you instill discipline, respect, or courtesy in your child...simply shut them up with a dose of SpongeBob while you, feeling smug in your minivan, flip off the gass-guzzling SUV that just cut you off.

We don't even grow our own beef any more...instead importing it, along with a healthy dose of Mad Cow, from Canada, processing it beyond recognition, and offering it up to you as a $2.99 value meal you don't even have to quit yakking on your cellphone to consume, on your way to your next important meeting.

We are no longer a nation of producers. We're consumers and servants. We make life easier, faster, better, more efficient, more comfortable, flashier, quicker, and less troublesome in any way possible for anyone willing to pay our fees, desperate only to pass the fees along to the next internet site that'll offer us whatever ''must have consumable'' we absolutely NEED to own right NOW. If we don't have the money, no worries..an entire industry devoted to making slaves of us all has opened up, eager to see us further in debt at every turn.

Did ARFs ''cause'' any of this? Of course not. Is their popularity and success just one more thing we won't produce for ourselves, instead preferring to run up another debt, or write another check, for someone else to do it for us? Absolutely.

Is an ARF nation, then, a dying one?

It is, indeed.

Consider what we're saying here...

We've become so unwilling to COMPETE, on an HONEST level, with the rest of the world, that we no longer even try...not even for our HOBBIES. It's not a question of exchanging the value created our lives for the highest possible value in return...WE HAVE NO VALUE TO EXCHANGE. We've created NOTHING.

We're so averse to the idea of producing that we won't even bother to do so to fulfill our spare time, or engage in trivial pursuits. We can't, in short, be bothered to create value EVEN FOR FUN.

Go look in the gas engine forum. There's an entire thread about a new 30cc engine. Its great claim? IT'S MADE IN THE UNITED STATES! The manufacturer BEGINS the thread telling us he can not and will not compete on price...yet offers no evidence he is competing on any other level! His assertion is that of the looter:

You should be GUILTED AND BULLIED into buying his product, because if you don't, you're UNAMERICAN!

Ask yourself 2 questions:

1) Why is ''MADE IN THE USA'' such a ''big deal''?

Simple...because it's SO RARE.

2) What would you think of a man who told you not to buy a product made by blacks, jews, women, or tall people?

Differently than you think of a man who's telling you not to buy a product made by oriental people?

That manufacturer is absolutely right...he will not compete on price. He hopes, however, you will IGNORE the fundamental FOUNDATION of this country:

The
Best
Man
Wins

He WILL NOT offer you the BEST VALUE in exchange for some fixed chunk of your life. That being the case, he's right..he CAN'T COMPETE. His only hope then...the only method he has of convincing you to buy his product is the same method the looter uses to separate you from your money:

Coercion

If he can convince you that buying another product is unpatriotic, immoral, or wrong....you'll buy his! REGARDLESS of the fact that you're LOSING the value for value exchange. His ONLY hope of success is to take MORE of your life than he RIGHTLY DESERVES.

What's this have to do with ARFs? Simple...

We're no longer interested in making things. As a result, those very few who try find a market dominated by others...others who have become much better at making things...things WE consume.

==========

We're a nation of consumers. The few producers left amongst survive only by looting. And we dismiss this mindset by calling people foolish and telling them they ''think too much'' (even that form of creation has become something to criticize), and should just leave us alone, because we're doing what we want.

Truly, a dying nation indeed.

quote:


"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money."