I found this yesterday via Tam and have been thinking how to comment/elaborate on it: “Assortative Relocation, Remington, and You” by WeaponsMan.
He’s taking the long look at Remington’s just-announced decision to open a plant in Huntsville, Alabama.
Remington has been identified for nearly two centuries with an otherwise unheralded burg in upstate New York. Ilion. That’s where a man with the marvelous name of Eliphalet Remington designed his first gun. And since 1816, apparently not much else has ever happened in Ilion other than … Remington.
The company says it has no intention of abandoning its plant or employees there; it’s just expanding (and good for Remington). Furthermore, a Cuomo spokesthing waves its arms and frantically shouts, “New York isn’t losing any jobs! New York isn’t losing any jobs!”
But this is how it works. Even a union official (member of a crowd that tends to be oblivious to ways in which actions produce consequences) understands.
SAFE Act … general nannying … high costs of doing business … crushing regulation = eventual goodbye.
Drip … drip … drip.
Remington isn’t abandoning New York now. But five or ten years from now, if they need to downsize, will they close the plant in the state that hates and taxes them to death? Or the state that welcomes them? Five or ten years from now, if they need to expand, will they expand in the state that hates and taxes them to death? Or the state (or, hate to say it, country) that welcomes them?
Drip … drip … drip.
—–
There are no surprises here. This is just human history in action. Sometimes we could wish it happened faster, though, so that more people would understand the connection.
It’s easy to see what’s happening when a pogrom or a famine or a military coup drives people and their money and their creativity and their entrepreneurial energies out of a country or a region. The smartest leave.
In a way, we’re seeing pogrom-like results right now as firearms-related companies move out of, or at least diversify out of, states that just passed laws to damage them. You and I see that clearly. Unfortunately, we’re in the seeing minority.
So much harder to perceive when decades of regulations put the squeeze on businesses or when minimum wage laws gradually make it pointless to hire the unskilled. (When McDonalds and Starbucks replace burger-flippers and baristas with dispensing machines, it’ll be because “big business is evil,” you know, not because the skills of burger-flippers and baristas aren’t worth a $15/hour minimum wage. And yes, such a minimum has already been mandated for some employees here in the Northwet, and there’s active agitation to spread it.)
So it goes.
Drip … drip … drip.
I know most readers of this blog aren’t much interested in emigration or the tax benefits of going offshore. But that’s next, folks. Businesses have already done it en masse of course. But even though we all already know that, the specifics still have the ability to shock. (JB sends word that the U.S. is now almost entirely dependent on China not just for cheap clothing and iDevices, but for antibiotics; think on that, preppers).
When Alabama — or Texas or Wyoming or New Hampshire — is no longer protection enough, there’s always someplace else.
Drip … drip … drip.
And even though it’s still a small movement, individual Americans are increasingly understanding that there’s always someplace else for them, too, just as individual companies have understood for a long time. For now, Alabama or Texas or Wyoming or New Hampshire may be sufficient for worried Americans.
But when that’s no longer true, there is always someplace else.
Drip … drip … drip.
Or, alternatively, somewhere to make a stand.
But that’s a story for a different day.
I was still scratching my head wondering how Kimber moved from Oregon to *Yonkers*, but the process was all explained in Wikipedia. However they are now expanding to a plant in *New Jersey*. Sheesh, some folks never get the word.
That’s a great post Claire, and very true. However I will say that companies sometimes go overboard with outsourcing, possibly doing it because “that’s what everybody does”. My wife, in the IT business for decades, complains that it is actually now biased toward Indians over Americans. And she was not even born here so you can’t blame her for bias (in fact she has hired many Indians herself).
One of L. Neil Smith’s best books is “Pallas”. In that one he develops the notion that freedom requires some place to escape to. I certainly agree. Look at this country, that had its origins in a religious dictatorship. Hard to keep people in line when they can just pick up and move a hundred miles up the coast, away from any government at all.
@ paul b.
Contra all the Randian/ancap, et.al. stuff about how freemarket capitalism the perfect incarnation of human morality, businesses and those that run them just want to make as much wealth for themselves as they can get away with, period. Esp. Once the dear founder dies the enterprise reverts to form and make whatever “compromises” it must to continue ountil the very end. Cf. The UK firearms industry.
“Or, alternatively, somewhere to make a stand.”
Somewhat off-topic, but then again…
I haven’t stopped smiling yet over the VW employees in Chattanooga, TN who refused to allow UAW into their midst.
So when reading Drip…drip…drip, the first thing I thought was “The South shall rise again!” And without a one-crop/one-service (cotton/slavery) economy, they might just win the next war.
Much of the Northeast is paralleling the east-and-west coast PIS (“Progressive” Illness Syndrome), and some of the mid-west is not much better; while the South– Virginia to Florida, Alabama to South Carolina–is growing into economic adulthood yet retaining many of the higher values of its origin. There’s nothing the South can’t manufacture now, nothing it can’t entice to its region, or offer incentives for.
Its cities are growing and manufacturing hand-over-fist, its agriculture is gearing up to local/regional sustainability, scientists in every department at major (and some minor) universities are applying new technologies to old problems, and even political loyalties are being challenged–unlike the older, urban-thinking, mainstream and traditional solution-solving that ended the 20th Century.
I have High Hopes. I may not be around to see it, but that doesn’t matter. I only wish the western and southern states lived closer together for mutual support.
When I first heard of Remington’s “expansion” my thoughts were a little like Pat’s.
But I mostly felt sorry for those Northeasterners. When the police state clamps down on them completely, will they try to smuggle guns from Dixie to defend themselves?
I was told by a management employee of GM (he works on maintenance logistics) that the best American cars by far are built in the South. He owns a Toyota Tundra and says its’ the best truck in America and will no longer buy a car built by UAW members. As for Kimber, They are slick, but make some of the worst guns in America. I’m not sure why people still buy them? One of the first things I found out while working on one, their slide stop pin holes and trigger assemblies are often way out of spec. A couple of weeks ago I attended a 1911 armorers class and was told of their frames and slides are build overseas, along with all of the parts. Which mostly do not meet JMB’s design limits. They don’t do manufacturing as much as assembly… but now I’ve managed to get off topic.
Drip, Drip, Drip, Indeed. It’s so obvious that Remington is leaving, they just intend to lie about it and do it slowly to not have to deal with retribution by the state. My big thing in life, the one thing I know a lot about, is the Nation State of Venice. New York reminds me so much of Venice near the end. It’s been dead since the 1940s and before that if you take out wartime industry, but the amount of wealth in the system has kept it’s banking sector solid and those evil rich have kept the place alive. But that will end as they are leaving. Just as Venice’s businesses were forced to move onshore a little at a time to avoid state penalties, NY businesses are doing the same. Venetian shipbuilding, which was totally owned by the state, failed to innovate and adapt to the era of sail… and it died a slow death. They ran out of money, which always happens to statists.
@kenk
This seems like a good place to quote Adam Smith:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”
I’m not sure this is a moral issue; the free market seems amoral to me. When Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself, which seems a moral statement, he was taking it as a given that we love ourselves.
Ancaps et. al. expect people to attempt to work in their own interest. That does not mean they can’t make mistakes in doing so.
While the free market is amoral (unless I’m mistaken), it’s clear that the controlled market and non-market systems are inherently immoral, because they requires violence to operate.
@paul b
I didnt mean to go off on a tangent about political economy by replying. I was giving my 2 cents about Kimber moving to Yonkers, NY and expanding to NJ. Corps owned by shareholders dont care about anything at all but their profits as far as I can see. Barrett turned down a deal to service LAPD 50 cal sniper rifles as a matter of principal but im sure some other company took it up. If DHS put out a bid to build gallows and supply rope and train hangmen to in order to solve the Tea Party problem for the Dear Leader some one would take it. The drip..drip..drip CW refers to will continue until we drown, fix the faucet, or remove ourselves to higher ground, IMO.
Thanks for going OT, EN. I had no idea there were any problems with Kimbers.
Shel, Kimbers are, “The most bought and least shot”. At times they’re all you can get. If you do buy one get a standard (5″ barrel) model. I like Colt series 70 if you can get them but the best bet by far is Springfield Armory TRP, which can be had for an arm and a leg… but are ready to shoot right out of the box. Stick with full size 1911s. The dwell time (time the slide takes to reach slide stop) on the short barreled pistols isn’t long enough on anything less than a five inch barrel, although Commander/Champion size (4.5 inch) barrels can be made to work if you want to spend the money. At the end of the day most people are better off buying a Glock/XD/M&P.