Within a few centuries, the new capitalist spirit challenged the basic Christian ethic: the boundless ego of Sir Gales Overreach and his fellows in t… - Lewis Mumford

Forget the damned motor car and build cities for lovers and friends.

Richter compares the conditions of rat domestication with those now provided by the 'Welfare State'-ample food, no danger, no stress, uniform environment and climate, and so forth. But he notes that, under these seemingly favorable conditions, organic deterioration has taken place: a decrease in the size of the adrenal glands, which help the organism meet stress or fatigue and forfend certain diseases: while the thyroid gland, the regulator of metabolism, becomes less active. Not strangely, perhaps, the brains of the domestic rat, and perhaps their mental ability, are smaller. At the same time, the sex glands mature earlier, become bigger, show more activity, and result in a higher rate of fertility. How human!

The point I am making is that if craftsmanship had not been condemned to death by starvation wages and meager profits, if it had, in fact, been protected and subsidized as so many of the new mechanical industries were in fact extravagantly subsidized, right down to the jet planes and rockets today, our technology as a whole, even that of 'fine technics' would have been immensely richer-and more efficient.