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While the Automobile was common by 1914, the majority of families only started to have one in the 1920s and 1930s, and Automobiles did not become a "replacement" industry till about 1954. Till 1954 Automobiles were still in their "Boom" part of its Business cycle.
For you non-management types of there the "Business life Cycle" is a term used to describe how a Business or product goes from invention to obsolescence. Right after its invention, any new product goes through a "Boom" cycle where it is more important to increase the total market then to go after market Share. Thus in a boom part of the Life Cycle, you see a lot of small companies selling the product, but they main interest is to get people to buy the product for the first time and thus increase the overall size of the market. Other Characteristics of the Boom, is a lot of small business who all tend to be very aggressive.
This is followed by the "Mature" phase on the life-cycle, where the market is no longer expanding. People are NOT buying the product for the first time, but replacing existing products that is old, broke etc. The chief characteristics of this cycle is the only way to increase profit is to increase your market share at the expense of your rivals. The many small businesses of the Boom tend to become 3-4 large businesses in the Mature part of the product life cycle. Businesses in a Mature market tend to be very conservative, they are as much worried about LOSING business to their Competitors as to WINNING market share from their Competitors.
Finally you get to the end of the Life-Cycle. People are buying less and less of the product. If you are a marginal producer you pull out of the industry, if you are the dominate producer you gather all the other firms under your control and milk the product till no one buys your product anymore. Minimal investment given the decline in people buying the product. Other Characteristics is the businesses are looking to invest their money into something else while the dominant market holder takes over the whole market WHILE looking for other investments.
In Many ways the Great Depression can be seen as the when the US transformed from a Non-Automotive dominant system to a Automotive based Society. The real boom in Automobiles was in the 1920s through this continued in the 1930s but was transforming from a Boom Industry to Mature Industry. Combined with the related DELCINE in non-automotive transportation systems you had the recipe for the Great Depression. The Boom of the 1920s had been caused by the Raise of the Automobile but as the Boom ended and became a mature product the Automotive industry could NO longer push the over all economy to over come the Decline in the Horse Drawn industry. The US was the Society that most embraced the Automobile and thus we suffered the greatest hit of the Great Depression.
Computers confuses the situation till you realized that you had THREE different Computer Life Cycles, the first was the main frame computers which produces all types of productivity improvements in the 1950s and 1960s. As the Main Frame Computer became a mature Market in the 1970s you had the bad economic situation of the 1970s. The Second Computer period was the Personal Computer invented about 1979 and taking off in the 1980s and into the 1990s. Most people who wanted computers (Except for the net) had them by the early 1990s and it became a Mature market as people purchased new computers for old computers as opposed to buying their first personal computers. The Third Phase in the Internet movement that started in the early 1990s and carried the economy till 2001 when most people who wanted to be on line were on line.
IF we go back in history to the Railroad, you had the same situation, a huge Boom in the 1850s and 1860s followed by a maturing of the Market in the 1870s (Which was the worse depression before the Great Depression of the 1930s).
If you look at the situation you will see a pattern. A new product is invented, it helps productivity immensity. The first people to embrace its use increase their profits which lead others to follow these pioneers to use the new product. Thus you had TWO source of economic improvements, by the people making the new product and the people USING the new product. This produces a Boom, the 1850s (Steam main line railroads), the 1880s (Short line Railroads), the 1920s (The Automobiles), the 1960s (Main Frame Computers), the 1980s (Personnel Computers) and the 1990s (the Internet).
This boom is followed by a Depression as the profits dry up as everyone is using the new technology so no one is making the excessive profits of the boom (and the companies that had NOT embraced the new technology during the boom, either go under to convert to the new Technology). This explains the Depressions of 1870s, the 1890s, the 1930s. This also explains the hard times of the 1970s, the real bad recession of the early 1990s and present economic malaise. Note the Depression does NOT happen AFTER the product becomes a mature Product, but as the product ends its Boom and starts to convert to the Mature part of the Product Life-Cycle.
Now these Depression/Hard Times/Panics/Recessions can be made worse if more than one major product is undergoing its life cycle change from Boom to Mature. For example, Lighting life-Cycle started with Drake's first oil well in 1859 and Boomed till non-electrical indoor Lighting became a mature product during the 1870s Depression. The Great Depression was made Worse as Electrical Lighting replaced the Dying Gas Lighting industry, but both of these product Life-Cycles where shadowed by the larger Railroad and later Automotive Depressions.
The same thing is happening now, you are seeing a transition to an internet based communication system replacing not only letters and Catalogs, but most non-fiction books (Manuals, reference books, databases etc). I do not see the transition to be complete till after this malaise is long over (For example the US Automotive industry only really entered its mature period in the 1950s NOT during the Great Depression). You will see innovation for a few more years (Some of the Best Automobiles NOT produced by the Big Three came into existence in the 1930s as the industry matured and Studebaker and Nash survived till the 1960s) but you will see more and more investments into "Bells and Whistles" as opposed to real improvements as the net enters into its Mature Phase (For example after WWII, US Cars really did not improve till the Japanese Auto Invasion of the 1970s, you had the introduction of Automatic Transmission, Larger Engines, Electric Wipers, Air Conditioning and even improving Lighting during the 1950s and 1960s but these were either Government Mandated or had been long available after-market and once proved in the after-market market, then and only then did the Big Three introduced the improvement).
Now Product Life-Cycle can vary over time and can become complicated. For example Broadcast Television was in its boom from the late 1940s till about 1970 when it became a Mature product (Almost everyone who wanted a TV had a TV by 1970). Cable was a boom Market in the 1960s and continued being a boom market in the 1970s and into the 1980s. Do to competition from Cable, Broadcast TV declined during the 1980s and slowly became part of the new medium of Cable Television. Thus in the 1970s you started seeing a lot of "Safe" TV programs, designed not to turn anyone off, except on Cable as Boom Mentally prevailed (And then this Boom Mentally expanded to Broadcast TV as the difference between Broadcast and Cable TV became more and more blurred). For example when "Friends" had its last show everyone bragged on how high its rating went and it was #1 for that week, then some wag said that such a rating would have caused the show to be CANCELED 20 years before do to LOW ratings. This shows you how much Cable and Broadcast TV have become one in the 1990s as Cable matured as almost everyone who wants Cable now has Cable and Cable is turing more and more to Safe programs not to turn people off watching their programs just like the Big Three Broadcasting have been doing since the early 1970s.
I go into this for our present economic problem is tied in with the transition to a prue internet based information Superhighway. Books (Except for causal reading) will soon disappear. Reference books price will drop like a rock for the cost of publishing them will cease (Once composed on line and no additional cost to produce additional copies for people who need them). Now the problem of how to pay for the material in Reference books will remain but once gathered and formed into a reference Manuel, the cost of ending it out to the public will be minimal.
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