Actually, I think it is the third world that still has the skills. The problem with the overculture, or why swords are "dead" in it, is that it, as a social tenet, considers them dead, considers closerange weapons barbaric, obsolete (this is not always a logical value judgement; they're not technical/magical enough to be nobsolete to the overculture), and primitive, thus it has a force of disarmament toward edged weapons (in addition to its general force of personal disarmament) that tends to quash the market (growing, living, but certainly not what it was 300, 400 years ago, at least relative to populations....), while it's workers are typically (this is insidious, too, IMHO) and increasingly highly specialized, and while highly skilled in the standard practices of their specialties, are discouraged (by market forces) from imaginativeness and from fanatical craftsmanship, and also, are intrinsically isolated from other skills. And the skills, abilities, and lore (knowledge) of making (using) quality swords is not one of the highly valued/often highly paid feilds in said culture, so it exists, and will exist partly/largely as what FC called a "surrogate activity"; the best work and ideas and discoveries and artisans will intrinsically come out of the hobby feild; the amateurs, who work for love, not money. Thus, for instance, it may well be that the only people building truly quality ship models now are people with sharp knives and tiny saws who love it so much they make the whole thing up out of some wood.
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