get out

I am not a happy person when I am stuck in the house.

Content, yes. Happy, no.

This externally-imposed travel hiatus due to The Virus has driven many of us a bit foot-tied and fancyless. My blogger chum Gary over at The Mexile and I have been commiserating with one another over our mutual clipped wings.

I was hoping to share a break-free story today about flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo to Dubai to Los Angeles (around the world in two days as something of an inspirational tale), but, unless I can work out two minor bureaucratic issues that would have been mere bumps in the road prior to These End Times, the only around-the-world tour will be on offer in my library looking at my college-era Goode's Atlas.

But who needs Tokyo when I can find tales to tell merely by walking the streets of Barra on my daily outings? Such as the truck in the photograph.

Concrete pumper trucks are not a rare sight up north. In fact, they are standard construction tools. And I assume that they are in the larger cities of Mexico, as well. But here in the villages around the bay, they are rare indeed.

There is a good reason for that. It is the same reason why large crews of men repair roads with picks and shovels. It is cheaper to pay wages than to buy large pavers.

When concrete is poured here, especially when roofs are poured, the construction method steps right out of the ancient world. If the operation is fancy, a concrete mixer will be used. Otherwise, the concrete is mixed right on the ground in a self-formed bowl. It is then loaded into five gallon buckets that are toted along a line of well-medicated workers up ladders and poured in one day to ensure it is set evenly.

The pumper truck cuts out almost the entire crew. It is another example where contractors could never recoup the capital investment of a pumper truck as long as wages are as low as they are -- even for a team of twenty or so workers.

In the 13 years I have lived in this area, I have seen exactly three pumper trucks being used in construction, and, in one instance, the boss insisted on paying a full crew merely to sit and watch the pumper because they would have gone without a job as a result of the equipment. There were undoubtedly more pumpers that I have not seen over the years. But they are truly uncommon.

The truck reminded me of a story I read in this week's edition of The Economist. California has a huge housing problem. One company is answering that need by constructing houses in less than 24 hours, rather than the usual two or three weeks. It can do that because the houses are made modularly from 3-D-printers. The cost of the houses is held down because the total labor cost is 5% of a conventionally-built house.

Increasing productivity is how national (and personal) wealth is created. The old ways step aside for the new. In a free-market economy, it is known as "creative destruction." Buggy-whip manufacturers learn how to make steering wheels for Model-Ts.

We often talk about Mexico's economy. How insulting it is to refer to Mexico as a "third-world" country -- when it has perhaps the 12th largest economy in the world and is a member of the G20 and OECD.

Even with its great resources, it will take a series of events happening before the local economy here replaces concrete carriers with pump trucks. The most important being the development of circumstances that will increase the market value of labor relative to capital investment.

Until then, I will be pleased to treat each pumper sighting as a rare event on a par with catching a glimpse of an ivory-billed woodpecker. After all, most of my younger Mexican friends make their daily tortillas as part of the bucket brigades.

And just maybe I can diversify my travel tales to take you along on some more-exotioc trips to Asia or the Middle East. In the future. The near future.

Maybe.