Category Archives: View

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Saturday, July 30, 2016

The wall is done.

 

That’s one less thing to worry about, although there is some concern about the ivy growing back; a problem that is not a problem now nor likely to be for some time, and which can be dealt with when it emerges. For the moment I’ve got my life back. I did manage some exercises, and new scenes in two of the books I’m working on, and now that the Great Wall incident is coming to a close – they still have to haul off the bricks and take down those props which make sure the new fencepost concrete settings harden so it won’t wiggle – but that shouldn’t take long and with luck I ought not have to think about any of it.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

The braces are down, the sidewalk is clear, and in theory the old bricks will vanish sometime today. The distractions from this fallen wall continue, and used up more time, but today ought to finish this chapter in the Chaotic Times of Chaos Manor. We can hope. I am continuing my campaign to stop turning into a vegetable, principally with the Five Tibetan Rites plus some exercises to rebuild leg and arm strength. I’ve also done some fiction.

This is late, and big. Apologies, but not many.

[Done Saturday]

We continue the discussion of Free Trade. I do not think it an axiom that Free Trade is always the best solution to a problem; in particular, how do you get to be an industrial power if anything you can make can be made and sold cheaper by someone else? I grew up in the Old South, where it was taught from 5^th grade on that the South never had industries because of Northern Tariffs; we might have competed with New England (particularly before railroads), but we could not compete with England – who wouldn’t sell us spinning jennies anyway. There was always a high tariff on manufacturing equipment tools. As I got older I understood that was not strictly true, but it was axiomatic in Tennessee that Democrats were for tariff for revenue only, while Republicans wanted protective tariff; and protective tariffs prevented the formation of competing industries while keeping prices high. When I came of college age, the marvel we saw was that imports were forcing Detroit to make better cars; better being defined mostly as cheaper cars that intellectuals who wrote books like The Insolent Chariots liked.

I didn’t pay a lot of attention at the time. Detroit was a place that could make anything, and make it fast. The US could build Boulder Dam during the Depression, and do it in under three years. The Empire State Building was started after the Crash of ’29 and completed in a year. The United States could do anything. The Depression slowed us down, but after Pearl Harbor united us Detroit was the foundation of the arsenal of democracy, and we turned out ships and planes and tanks and guns.

So we began imports in the 50’s – 60’s, and Detroit became a sinkhole. Suddenly there was no tariff for revenue or for protection. We had Free Trade. Factory equipment was shipped south of the border, then to China and Singapore and anywhere else you could find educable workers, while the jobs vanished in the United States, fewer people learned the new skills demanded by globalization, and a National Commission on Education concluded that we had developed a national system of education indistinguishable from an act of war. Federal Aid to Education – non-existent before the 60’s – was supposed to give us schools for the space age. They succeeded in giving us a third world literacy rate.

We now have a low unemployment rate, but, astonishingly, fewer people who don’t have jobs – aren’t even looking for jobs, so they aren’t counted as unemployed. They just don’t work for a living. They aren’t trying to. The remedy to this, we are told, is more regulations to make work safer, higher minimum wages to make work more attractive, and more welfare benefits for those who aren’t working. This makes investing in new manufacturing enterprises hideously expensive.

My friend David Friedman believes the solution to all our economic problems is less government, and more Free Trade. He once told me “I am in all cases in favor of others dumping products on us.” This specifically included high tech stuff like memory chips. It hardly mattered where it was made: cheaper is better. Perhaps so; but he is almost in all cases in favor of less government, too, and that he doesn’t get with dumping and Free Trade. I would advise Mr. Trump to include Dr. Friedman in his circle of advisors, because David is infuriatingly able to explain his views and they need to be presented; but he needs some other around who aren’t so sure. Free Trade with high compensation for not working, and increased regulations making startup enterprises require high capital has produced this mess. For years the US economy consisted of opening cargo containers filled with Chinese stuff, much of it paid for with borrowed money.

America used to produce many of the world’s goods. Detroit and the industrial plant that city symbolized was the envy of the world, and Pittsburgh produced steel for the world. Neither is a symbol of productivity today. Capitalism requires creative destruction; but I would have thought it also requires good schools, loyal citizens, settled households and neighborhoods, people who are accustomed to self government, and a measure of stability.

Instead, we have an enormous and growing national debt – one we don’t just owe it to ourselves, not any more – an unemployable class which isn’t even officially unemployed, the wreckage of a school system that once was the envy of the world; and we are apparently going to vote for eight more years of Hope and Change.

I don’t know if we can get back to better schools, but I suggest that one way is to read the Constitution: it says nothing about the Federal Government having any power over schools. Neither education nor schools are mentioned among the powers of Congress.

So: what we need is for the courts to rule that the Congress has not the power to make laws about education, save in the one place that it does have sovereignty: the District of Columbia. There it has the power to rule. Abolish all Federal Aid to Education, and leave it to the States. They can’t do worse than Washington has done; left to themselves some might now do better.

Free Trade

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I see you have had an excellent discussion on free trade on your wall.

I would like to argue for it with a historical example:

The English Corn Laws from 1815-1846 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws).

Their grain industry was threatened due to imported wheat from America, so several tariffs were enacted to protect the home industry.

What could possibly go wrong ? This :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre

You see, the immediate impact of these measures was to make food cost more. That fell especially heavy on the bottom layer of society, for whom every shilling counted. It was seen as people in government doing favors for their fat cat friends at the expense of the poor, resulting in revolutionary agitation, , to which the government

responded with blundering force. Things began to spin out of

control.

Then this happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

And suddenly the price of food became a critical political issue. Sir Robert Peel willingly sacrificed his own government to repeal them, and the crisis was averted.

But even then, that didn’t mean all was wine and roses. As discussed in the first article, without the protection of tariffs, the domestic grain industry was indeed destroyed. The UK became totally dependent on imports — which the Germans would then attempt to exploit via blockade in two world wars. That would have been impossible if the UK could feed itself.

But then … it’s possible the UK would have been unable to fight that war if they had made that choice. The collapse of the grain industry was unremarkable in the 1920s-1930s UK, because everyone worked in factories. Even today, in our economy, there are jobs (social media analyst, tablet manufacturer, app developer) which simply did not exist even ten years ago.

So here is my Great Economic Theory (TM):

1) Globalization allows economic innovators to out-compete local industries , delivering various goods more cheaply. When these goods are commodities such as food or automobiles (needed to travel to work), the first beneficiary is the working class. Further, entrepreneurs are always one step ahead of the legislators. This means that all economic legislation is reactive, not pro-active, and is an attempt to ‘roll back the clock’ against the prevalent market forces.

2) Because of this, the impact of any trade tariff falls disproportionately on the lowest classes. Having so little money, they are the readiest market for cheap imported goods, and they are least able to adjust to any increase in price. *You* may be able to tack on 15% to the price of a car without trouble, but to the vast majority of Walmart-shopping Toyota-driving working-class people, it’s the kiss of death.

3) Further, as discussed by correspondent Mark, to the extent the economy is protected by subsidy from market forces, to that extent they are protected from the need to innovate, to reform, to cut costs.

Mark identifies the problems of archaic American automobile manufacturers, but the USSR had the same problem. It was an isolated economy, and it served no one in it well.

4) Against these costs I have yet to see where any industry so protected was able to thrive and remain competitive after being protected from the very effects of competition and the ‘creative

destruction’ that is at the heart of economic innovation. This is a

serious request to you or any of your correspondents: If anyone knows of a counter-example, you will have my full attention.

Thus, I draw the following conclusion:

It is impossible to make the economy stronger by enacting tariffs or

otherwise isolating it from the global marketplace. Ultimately, you

cannot make a noncompetitive industry competitive through government action.

What, then, is to be done?

Ironically, I would say double down on free trade. Encourage entrepreneurship. Encourage new industry. Cut taxes. Provide reasonable intellectual copyright protection, peace, and the rule of law. Yes, old industries will become obsolete and die. The trick, then, is to encourage the growth of new ones. If the new industries grow quickly enough, there will be work for everyone. And no one will notice if there aren’t many factory jobs any more, because as with agriculture, it’s no longer the centerpiece of our economy.

Problem: The new economy forming is based heavily on high technology, and our education system is a disgrace.

Ironically, I think the answer there is less federal money for education. Cut people’s taxes, put money in their pockets so they can buy the education they need. Stop driving up the cost of education by injecting billions of federal dollars into unproductive schools — as I’ve just outlined, protecting an industry from the effects of competition does nothing to improve it; the Iron Law means that, instead, they adapt to absorb as much money for as little work as possible.

Thus my thesis. I submit it for critical feedback and evaluation. What do you think?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Well, if it is impossible to build a thriving economy isolated from everyone, then of course interstellar colonies are impossible; and surely that is not true? The old Technocracy organization once tried to analyze economies and determined that North America could have a thriving high tech economy with no foreign trade. It was part of their pitch. Today there are Rare Earths and other minerals that are very rare in North America that we might have to trade for or invent workarounds, but do you really think that the United States could not survive without foreign trade? Trade is a convenience, but surely self-sufficiency is a goal worth considering? I know England during the Battle of the Atlantic mightily wished they had more working farms. Of course so did Germany…

Russia — not directly Trump related

Mr. Pournelle,
There’s an interesting series of articles in today’s (London) Times, regarding Russian efforts to influence British politics through “news” agencies, centered on Edinburgh. They’ve been somewhat successful in spreading rumors that the “Brexit” referendum was rigged, and that the murder of MP Jo Cox might have been set up by the government to win support for “Remain.” The method is to introduce rumors, conspiracy theories, and outright falsehoods and then wait to see if reputable news outlets pick them up under the “people are saying” category.
Worth keeping an eye on, I think. The Cold War is over (I hope), but KGB influence is not. And in this case, the enemy of your enemy is *not* your friend.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

…another day with no sunspots. If the active sunspots that rotated off about 5 days ago have survived, they would seem to be the only spots on the solar surface. The most recent imagery from the STEREO website (which is NOT on the Solarham website, which has begun updating less and less frequently in recent weeks) indicates that they have indeed survived and are nearing the center of the solar farside disk.

Spot group 2570, which showed up to end the last no-spot run, dissipated on Saturday; another short-lived binary spot group showed up on Sunday but didn’t even stay around long enough to be numbered, and now, officially August 1st, we are back to no spots.

If I count the “dinky” spots as being essentially no spots, then 29 out of the last 62 days have had little to no sunspots visible (46.8%). 21 out of 62 were unequivocally spotless (33.9%).

 

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

Understanding opposing points of view

Jerry,

I have a ton of respect for you and your points of view, even though I find us disagreeing on some points and agreeing on others.  I think you are missing something when you discuss the importance of diversity vs. melting pot for example.   There is room for reasoned discussion.  Most of all, I appreciate yours as a forum where you welcome dissenting opinion. 

I point you to an article that isn’t too academic, but seems to reflect what was taught to me in Sunday School.  

https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-2670c1294063#.mr9waxke4

to quote the author: 

What is emerging is the worst kind of echo chamber, one where those inside are increasingly convinced that everyone shares their world view, that their ranks are growing when they aren’t. It’s like clockwork: an event happens and then your social media circle is shocked when a non-social media peer group public reacts to news in an unexpected way. They then mock the Other Side for being “out of touch” or “dumb.”

Please don’t let Chaos Manor contribute to the echo! 

Bottom line, I am rededicating myself to understanding the other sides – both of them – because neither candidate seems to align to any kind of future that I can support – and despair is a sin! 

–
Dave Hammond

Bully for you. Rational discussion is always best for understanding; and what you are trying to optimize for is less and less discussed. If your goal is more and more cheap stuff, unregulated capitalism and free trade are probably the quickest way to get it. I remind you of the German Economic Miracle. I also note that Germany abandoned many of the practices that made the economic miracle possible.

Some regulations designed to do good and prevent harm have worked out well; but they always require a bureaucracy which creates a New Class which seeks to rule. The Framers wisely internal commerce to the States, giving Congress power only over Interstate Commerce, which soon expanded to federal minimum wages, safety regulations imposed on the states against their will, and eventually leading to federal bunny inspectors.

 

I have never been under the illusion of infallibility, in myself or others, when it comes to the hard real world.  I know that the map is not the territory, and I always seek better maps.

But I repeat myself.

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

One dictum of history as a scholarly avocation is, as a good initial step in studying the past, take the people of that time and place out of The Stupid Box, and believe that they were doing the best they could to not get into the horrible situations that historians love to study.

I also believe that tackling current problems with a similar attitude can be fruitful.

Case in point: What is the simple, obvious out of the box solution to the problem of NATO having expanded into less-defensible areas of eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Baltic?

Expand NATO just a bit more, by bringing in the bear. If Russia is a NATO member, well, the first part of being a NATO member is you don’t go around invading OTHER NATO members.

I know, sounds a bit too easy, a bit too simple, reductionist, etc. The neo-con’s will bitch that Russia ain’t no democracy, though it may be at least as much of one at the moment, as founding NATO member Turkey.

Would the Russians join? I have no idea, but it would certainly set the cat among the pigeons in Russian domestic politics.

By the way, wouldn’t a Russian entrance into NATO lead to a sort of Co-Dominium?

Someone ought to sit down with Trump and make him realize that without NATO, i.e. American involvement in the internal affairs of Europe, the Europeans would be at each others throats within a generation, and we would have to do it all over again. Europe has its’ Balkans, boiling with old disputes, and -we- have Europe, in larger world terms -our- “Balkans”, filled with old disputes that only the USA can sit on and tell the kids to shut up and let us do the driving.

Europeans are good at two things, really good: inventing ways to make stuff, and finding reasons to use some of that stuff to kill each other over something their great-grandfather did to someone else’s grandmother.

So bring the Russians in. They’re already de facto allies in the middle East, anyway.

Petronius

You do understand that I invented the CoDominium as a warning?

DNC Emails Provenance

Jerry,

It occurs to me that if Wikileak’s DNC emails actually resulted from a Russian government espionage effort, it was a damned sloppy one to leave clues all over the hack pointing back to Russia.

If the DNC hack was done by intel pros, the “Russian” clues may well have been misdirection. Nor have I yet seen a convincing explanation of why the Russians would have then leaked the product this way.

To hurt a candidate who as SecState specialized in incompetently creating opportunities for them? To help a candidate who’s said nice things about them, but known for turning on those he was praising a month ago? I don’t buy it.

Leaving me to ponder, “clues” aside, who did have both capability and motive?

One possible answer is, any one of several US-allied countries not looking forward to a continuation of the last eight years of feckless US policy.

Another is, moonlighting US intel pros appalled over the prospect of working for an egregious security violator.

Or, if it in fact was Russians, but freelance types working on spec not government pros, who would have had more motive to buy the product then release it right now than hacked-off Sanders supporters?

This is a bad year to take convenient, gift-wrapped explanations at face value. Just sayin.

Porkypine

And as of Tuesday afternoon Andrew Napolitano on Fox News is reporting that he has a source (an unnamed US official) saying the DNC hack-and-release was actually from within NSA. Alleged motive: Some of the overseas agents whose covers Hillary blew in her unsecure emails have since been killed.

Napolitano also reported that NSA has the 30,000 emails Hillary wiped from her server, that Comey knew but didn’t ask for them, and that one reason may be to hide that NSA has been intercepting and storing domestic US emails all along.

Again, it’s one anonymous source, and the incentives to misdirect remain plentiful. I’m not sure yet I’d give this any more credence than the original “Putin did it” spin. Nor, less.

It’s 2016. Looks gift-horses in the mouth. Thoroughly.

Porkypine

Hillary Armed Daesh and NSA has her Emails and Russians did not hack?

Just in case everyone forgot about the Daesh training camps in Jordan that had mysterious connections to US intelligence and US Special forces. Oh, what am I saying, this article pretty much spells out that US trainers made Daesh possible so they could fight Assad. :

http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/officials-u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan/

Now, we find claims of more evidence of US sponsorship of Daesh in other parts of the world led by Clinton II:

<.>

So, for example, the disastrous, absolutely disastrous intervention in Libya, the destruction of the Gaddafi government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country, weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS, that’s there in those emails.There’s more than 1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection, that we have released, just about Libya alone.

</>

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/julian-assange-hacked-emails-include-info-hillarys-arming-jihadists-including-isis-syria/

Of course, this all contradicts her testimony before Congress but she meant no harm so nothing will happen. Hell, if Congress can hold an Attorney General in criminal contempt with nothing happening, why should anything be different if Clinton II is held in criminal contempt? She’s already gotten a pass from the FBI on her server and apparently with affairs related to the Clinton Foundation, which was also under investigation at one point according to news reports.

And we have more:

<.>

The National Security Agency (NSA) has “all” of Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails and the FBI could gain access to them if they so desired, William Binney, a former highly placed NSA official, declared in a radio interview broadcast on Sunday.

Speaking as an analyst, Binney raised the possibility that the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s server was done not by Russia but by a disgruntled U.S. intelligence worker concerned about Clinton II’s compromise of national security secrets via her personal email use.

</>

http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2016/07/31/exclusive-nsa-architect-agency-clintons-deleted-emails/

Oh did you catch the part where it says “no oversight” when FBI wants to access NSA files? That’s right, we live in an Eastern Bloc state where all our communications are now subject to government inspection.

These creeps are worse than pedophiles.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Vladimir Putin’s backups of the Clintons’ Emails 

Dear Jerry,

“Mrs. Clinton destroyed it after erasing the 33,000 emails. Mr.Trump could hardly be daring the GRU to hack a destroyed server. It is supposedly impolite for him to have asked them for the emails, but I don’t see why not. It would have insulted their competence if Mr. Trump had pretended they did not already have the emails, but he did not so pretend; and does anyone seriously believe that a private emails server, not under any special protection by NSA or other US technical agency, was not hacked? And since she erased all those emails, then destroyed the server, and none of our agencies are going to admit they hacked her server, we’ll never see them unless the Russians show them to us. So please, Mr. Putin, favor us with copies.”

The first question to ask is, how many total emails on the clintonemail.com server(s) were destroyed?  We were given a number for deleted Hillary emails because she volunteered this was how many yoga, wedding invitation and recipe emails she erased.  But what about:

1.  Huma Abedin emails?

2.  Cheryl Mills emails?

3.  Chelsea Clinton emails in her official capacity as an officer of the Clinton “nonprofit” enterprises?

4.  Other Clinton Foundation and private employee emails?

And lastly,

5.  William Jefferson Clinton emails relative to his sudden 5x multiplication in per event speaking fees upon Hillary’s assumption of office as Secretary of State? And other sundry matters.  Unless of course Bill was choosing to use aol.com, comcast.net or even .gov email addresses.  iow foregoing use of the private email server initially located in the basement of his own house? 

We know for a certainty that #’s 1-2 exist.  I’ll stake serious money that all of 3-5 also exist.

Surely it is reasonable to conclude that Vladimir has copies of all these emails, too?  iow the entire email traffic of the Clintons’ pay-to-play operation.  Enough to support impeachment and conviction for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, along with numerous federal felonies.

The second question to ask is, what does Vladimir Putin want more than anything else in the entire world?  Or perhaps want second after his first desire, which is the end of the USA as a superpower and the concurrent demise of NATO?  Higher oil and gas prices, anyone?

Hillary and the entire Democratic Party are now fully committed to this same goal in their platform.  This is nothing less than a declaration of all out war on all forms of domestic USA hydrocarbon production.  It seems to me that the Wilileaks release of DNC emails was a deterrent show of force on Putin’s part.  On the above assumptions the further ‘leaking’ of still more damaging emails seems unlikely.

Donald Trump on the other hand is far too prone to encouraging domestic self sufficiency in all forms, including digging and drilling hydrocarbon energy.  From the point of view of ex-KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin a thoroughly compromised and controlled agent will be the most reliable.

The Saudis will be quite happy with this result too.

Ready for Hillary?

Best Wishes,

Mark

ps Here’s to hoping some eastern European intelligence services or other major oil and gas importers, like the Japanese or South Koreans, also have full sets of clintonemail.com emails.  And can now see more vital self interest in conveying these to Julian Assange and others as soon as possible.

 

US, NATO and entangling alliances.
Donald Trumps comments which brings uncertainty to the US security guarantees to NATO members, is opening a can of worms.
While I can appreciate the futility in stopping the Russian Army in the small Baltic states; making them members of NATO, has the same benefits for the US as the rest of the NATO structure even though it pledges the US to declare war on Russia in case of a Russian attack on the Baltic states.
Additionally the Trump argument, that the allies do not pay their fair share, is incorrect precisely in the case of the Baltic contrives, which is above average in military spending in Europe and above NATO requirements which many bigger NATO members do not fulfill.
So why mention the Baltic countries with a specious argument about not doing their share, when this is not the case?
Trump could have named keeping the US out of “entangling alliances”, which I can perfectly understand, but that was not his argument.
And indeed the US experience of the period leading up to the two world wars is, that even a US trying to avoid fighting other peoples wars, will be drawn in eventually when the conflict has grown much more costly and complicated. So why not try to be proactive?
Another much ignored benefit to the US, is that NATO has limited the nuclear club very much. If US security guarantees to NATO members is drawn into doubt, the logical step for many countries would be to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Even lots of relatively minor European countries would be able to do this, though it would require higher defence budgets than todays.
Is a multiple nuclear armed Europe in US interests?
Hardly, as it would be much more explosive and prone to accidental nuclear exchange, which probably would include the US in the end.
That is an important reality behind the US pledge to NATO, and one that benefits the USA greatly.
Regards
Bo Andersen
Denmark

 

I really don’t worry a lot about Estonia or Denmark firing nukes at the US or Israel or even at Sweden or Poland.  I do worry about what we’d do if Russian “volunteers” went into Estonia.  I recall trying to stop Chinese volunteers in Korea…

 

US, NATO and entangling alliances

A good comparison between the Chinese ”volunteers” in Korea and the ”Little Green Men” in Ukraine…. I know you have experience confronting that kind of mass ”volunteers”….

Anyway, my point was not that Denmark or any other European countries would be firing nukes at each other or the US. That will never happen.

Please consider the following scenario:

After president Donald Trump (or any other with his comparable policies) declares that the US no longer can be counted on to defend other NATO countries, several NATO countries develops their own nuclear weapons.

Denmark considered that in the 1950’s, and Sweden was quite far along with the actual development. The unconditional US security guarantee changed all that, with the US actively discouraging nuclear programs within its allies.

Denmark for example, will never be able to field a conventional force which would be able to hold back Russia.

But it could, with considerable national effort, develop nuclear weapons and get the means to deliver them.

Now that is beyond the means for a country like Estonia. Imagine that Russia tries to rebuild the Soviet Union and sends “little green men” to Estonia. Denmark has quite close bonds to the Baltic states, and there exists a national will to risk its soldiers to defend them.

A Danish battalion is sent to defend Estonia, which results in Russia threatening Denmark, and when seeing that the rest of NATO is not behind Estonia nor Denmark, decides to escalate and invade Estonia outright. In the resulting combat the Estonian army together with the Danish forces are overrun, but Denmark closes the Baltic sea to the Russians, which results in Russia bombing several key points in Denmark. Denmark and the Baltic states being pretty much on their own, sends a ultimatum to the Russians:  We have nuclear weapons, and will use them unless you stop attacking and withdraw.

Russia knows that that is suicidal for Denmark and do not think the treat realistic. The resulting Danish nuclear attack on Kaliningrad, escalates into full scale nuclear exchange between Denmark and Russia.  Denmark is wiped out, but Russia suffers the loss of 50%+ of their population and the loss of the 15 largest cities.

Will Russia stop there, or will they nuke the US and the rest of Europe, as they anyway are finished?

I agree that is not a scenario now, but can you say that it is totally inconceivable that a minor or mayor nuclear armed European country, in the future might get into a situation like that?

Regards

Bo Andersen

 

 

I do not live in Europe.  If I did, I would want the United States to guarantee peace and stable borders.  Since I do not, I find it more reasonable for the Europeans to be more involved in their own affairs.  The Warsaw Treaty Organization ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Neither East German nor Polish nor Czech troops are going to pour through the Fulda Gap to the Rhine; Russia must do that without them. I would not like to see that; but I do not think I want to bankrupt myself preventing it.

One day I may revise The Strategy of Technology to bring the examples up to date.  Of course the European Union is welcome to read it as it is. It is a better comment on your scenario than I have time to give this afternoon.

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, July 28, 2016

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Our Mason arrived at 1801, and now all the bricks are gone, the ivy trimmed back, and they are digging out the old foundation stones. The driveway is filled with building materials, and all is chaos. The new wall will be concrete block with rebar, and I am sure that the ivy will push it over too, but not in my lifetime. That distraction will soon be over, Deo gratia.

I’m not quite up to 21 repetitions of all five of the Five Tibetan Rites, but I do have 21 of three of them and I’m working my way back to 21 for the other two. If you’re interested in the Tibetans, I recommend Hugh Howey and Amber. Hugh does all the talking, but Amber exhibits proper form. Hugh Howey’s expositions should be enough to get you trying.

The goal is to do the rites in the proper form, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to do that even after a year. That’s all right. Hugh doesn’t have much form either, and the exercise still does wonders for him. You should, however, know what proper form you ought to be striving for, and I recommend that after you get started doing a few of these moves, you start watching Ellen Wood. She believes the Five Tibetan Rites make you grow younger, and you may believe it too after you see her in action. At least you’ll know what you’re striving for.

There has been a lot written about the Five Tibetan Rites and I’m not going to add much; but I do recommend them to you. Start now. You’ll live longer and feel better. I started doing them when I had back problems so severe that Niven had to help me put my socks on one morning in a Bremerton, Washington motel. Steve Barnes recommended the book Stretching (by the Andersons) for that, and it got me back towards normal, which was good. Then Steve Barnes recommended The Five Tibetan Rites. I didn’t take them seriously at first, but as time went on I found them more and more helpful. Now I’m an 83 year old cancer survivor with not balance thanks to radiation therapy. I laid off the Tibetan Rites after the stroke. I wish I hadn’t. I’m back at them, and it feels great to be growing younger.

Anyone who had to work against Soviet Intelligence – the State Security Committee or KGB, their equivalent of the CIA, or the GRU, their equivalent of Defense Intelligence Agency – learned to respect both of them as competent and able to call up skills as needed. I forget who said it recently, but it is almost a measure of competence: any so-called intelligence agency that did not hack the Secretary of State’s private server in her basement could hardly call itself an intelligence organization at all. Actually, I suspect there are young hackers, the equivalent of the Legion of Doom back at the beginning of the computer era, who have copies of those 33,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton thinks she deleted before destroying the server.

Certainly both the GRU and the successor to the KGB have them. What they plan to do with them is not known. Mr. Trump asked them to give him a copy. I’ll add myself to the list of supplicants. I won’t offer to buy a copy because if they actually are for sale the price is likely to be high, but there’s a thought: independent ePublishing to all comers, at, say, $25.00 a copy. I bet it would be a runaway best seller, and all in hard currency. I’d order a prepublication copy today!

Of course there’s the question of authenticity, but since the Danes, the British, the Latvians, the Israelis, and probably at least one Arab country, possibly ISIS, have copies there might be a thriving business in verification. Certainly Mr. Trump would like one: say sold by the GRU, authenticated by the KGB and Mossad, with commentary by MI6?

The LA Times, typical of our neutral highly patriotic news media, said this:

Donald Trump dared a foreign government to commit espionage on the U.S. to hurt his rival on Wednesday, smashing yet another taboo in American political discourse and behavior.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’ll be able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said, referring to deleted emails from the private account Hillary Clinton used as secretary of State. “I think you’ll probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-democratic-convention-2016-live-donald-trump-invites-russia-to-hack-1469636224-htmlstory.html

Of course that’s a bit nonsensical: the server can’t be hacked now because Mrs. Clinton destroyed it after erasing the 33,000 emails. Mr.Trump could hardly be daring the GRU to hack a destroyed server. It is supposedly impolite for him to have asked them for the emails, but I don’t see why not. It would have insulted their competence if Mr. Trump had pretended they did not already have the emails, but he did not so pretend; and does anyone seriously believe that a private emails server, not under any special protection by NSA or other US technical agency, was not hacked? And since she erased all those emails, then destroyed the server, and none of our agencies are going to admit they hacked her server, we’ll never see them unless the Russians show them to us. So please, Mr. Putin, favor us with copies. That’s not a dare, it’s a polite request, and I won’t insult you by pretending I think you don’t have them.

Free Trade, International Harvester Scouts and the UAW 

Dear Jerry,

“My second was an International Harvester Scout. I loved that car, and my four boys learned to drive in it….”

You are getting very close to home now.  Most of them were built in my hometown in Fort Wayne, IN.  As were the electric motors my dad built at GE and much else.  IH employed many thousands.  GE employed 10,000 in three plants there in the 1960s.   All of these jobs are history.

“Of course all the International Harvester plants, agencies, distributors, and dealers are long ago closed and dismantled.”

Absolutely. 

“various laws favoring unions and local governments ignoring union “organizing” practices had as much to do with turning Detroit from the industrial heart to a wasteland as ever did free trade – but free trade allowed manufacturers to move to Mexico where wages were much lower.”

And not only or even mainly wages.  In the summer of 1977 during college summer break I worked in a brake parts plant in NW Ohio for two months.  This plant was a UAW shop like all auto parts plants in those days.  My job was loading and unloading heavy steel mandrels holding brake shoe linings into an ancient natural gas furnace for a one hour trip for firing.  All the processes at that plant were piecework with parts in process moved from workstation to work station on push carts.  It featured things like banks of manual drill presses operated by women, bandsaws, etc. 

The work was lousy and labor management relations there were even worse.  Human beings should not be treated as a robot.  That’s what robots are for.  Being a summer vacation hire I wasn’t there long enough to join the UAW.  But I was there long enough to understand how it all worked.

I already knew then and learned later in detail in engineering school that the technology employed in this plant was archaic.  In retrospect I think it represented the industrial technology of 50-80 years previously.  iow circa 1900 – 1920.    The plant was clearly two decades overdue for serious capital investment upgrades.  What this ‘capital’ would have done is contract industrial, mechanical and electrical engineers to redesign processes, design new equipment and then hire foundrymen, machinists and millwrights to build and install this equipment.

In the context of the times this would also have meant replacing people with further automation, then electro-mechanical.  The UAW master agreements of the era effectively prohibited this.  Even as late as 2008 the UAW contract with GM included provisions for a “labor bank” whereby unemployed GM employee UAW members received 90% of their salaries.

As I heard later and unsurprisingly, most of the brake plant’s equipment and all its production was suddenly moved to Mexico beginning one fine holiday weekend a year later in 1978.  From management’s viewpoint they not only got a lower unit labor cost but freedom from numerous and costly OSHA, EPA and EEOC regulations, tort law and highly restrictive UAW contract work rules.

And as is well known now, the UAW hierarchy eventually threw all of its parts plants members under the bus to protect the UAW’s more highly paid assembly plant workers.  Both GM and Ford spun off their parts divisions into separate entities.  These newly independent corporations then entered repeated cycles of bankruptcy, downsizing, plant sales and offshoring.  Wikipedia has plenty of industrial history concerning “AC”, “Delco” and “Delphi” for those interested. 

I do not believe that tariffs alone could have made things better.  Tariffs alone would have frozen everything into stasis.  In a real sense the USSR and the eastern European communist economies all functioned behind insurmountable tariff walls. 

But simply surrendering the entire social and economic battlefield, which is what “Conservatism” really did with its adoption of Free Trade, also did not make things any better.   “Free Trade” was the E-Z money way out for a handful of “elites”.   One of the most insidious effects of so-called “Free Trade” has clearly been to retard technological modernization in the USA.  Instead of “updating” the parts plants those with access to Federal Reserve financing and contemporary control of distribution networks took their antique processes to 3d World destinations in search of cheap labor and regulatory arbitrage.   But even now I rarely encounter people with any awareness of this. 

Donald Trump is the first Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan to show any awareness of all this.  There is plenty he can do, and I have some ideas on this subject myself. 

Best Wishes,

Mark

Tariff alone won’t do it; but the desire to conserve jobs and industrial potential is needed, and no one in power has that.  The neo-conservatives want unrestricted capitalism, and many of them want war.

 

Free Trade, Industrial Mobilization & President Trump: A Proposal

Dear Jerry,

As you noted, when production is outsourced and offshored by “Free Trade” entire economic ecologies and communities are destroyed.  Not only do specific factory jobs vanish but so do jobs and skills in the entire supporting infrastructure.  Eventually a point is reached – and it has already been reached in many places – where the population is just as unskilled as their 19th Century agrarian ancestors.

It becomes impossible to simply reopen a disused factory and put out a “Now Hiring” sign.  Those answering the ad have to be completely trained from scratch.  And there is the problem the equipping the factory with capital equipment.  The former machine tool manufacturers are often gone as well.

We have however faced similar situations in the past.  The World War II industrial mobilization is an example.  The entire aerospace industry had to be built nearly from scratch.  A few companies each formerly producing a few dozen aircraft annually suddenly had to contemplate producing hundreds and thousands of aircraft.  Numerous shipyards had to be built and then populated with trained workers.  This was a long drawn out process that began in the late 1930s.

We therefore have to simultaneously a) train people and b) create entirely new factories and capital equipment starting from a small base.  As a start on this effort:

There is a company in Oxnard California that produces some of the most advanced heavy CNC machine tools in the world.  These are “Made In USA” including its electronic modules.  This company is Haas Automation.  Uniquely among heavy CNC machine tool manufacturers, Haas publishes its sticker prices on its website:  Haas Automation®, Inc. | CNC Machine Tools Made in the USA | Best in CNC Milling and Lathe Value

Haas Automation®, Inc. | CNC Machine Tools Made in the USA | Best in CNC Milling and Lathe Value By Haas Automation, Inc. The largest CNC machine tool builder in the Western World, Haas Automation manufactures a full line of CNC verti…

Haas sticker prices run from $80,000 up to $180,000.  Their current production is approximately 14,000 units per year.  The incoming Trump Administration should obtain an appropriation covering the procurement of 200,000 units, and with contract completion in four years.  This will cost $32 billion, assuming our corrupt and incompetent federal procurement bureaucracy can manage to obtain Haas’ highest off the shelf sticker price.  Haas therefore will have to shift into extremely high gear.  Even 24/7 will not come close to covering this.  Clearly Haas will have to begin cloning its Oxnard factory multiple times.  This is what we want.

These 200,000 heavy military industrial grade units are to be delivered to every vocational technical school in the country.   We’ll need suitable facilities to house this equipment and provide it with three phase power and to purchase the required accessory tooling.  Therefore we’ll double the appropriation to $64 billion.  This equipment can and will do more than train a new generation of modern workers.  It can and will also produce many of the parts and tools required for new domestic factories.

This response is appropriate not only to our domestic but to our international situation.  “Free Trade” is not creating more stable relations with the Chinese Communist dictatorship.  “Free Trade” is instead inspiring increasingly aggressive behavior by the Beijing regime and the People’s Liberation Army.  Therefore it is past time to present this regime with other problems to occupy its primary attention.  One of these is how to cope with a rapidly cratering industrial export economy that is still greatly dependent on antique, labor intensive and low quality industrial practices exported to it from higher wage rate countries.

Best Wishes,

Mark

 

 

 

 

Russian hackers

Mr. Pournelle,
You wrote “It cannot be treason to invite the Russians to give us a copy of whatever they have already stolen.” True. However, it is quite bizarre to see an American presidential candidate publicly invite Russia to aid him against his opponent.
I agree it’s not treason. However, it does seem to be a measure of character and integrity. Or their lack.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

It may be unusual but it is hardly unprecedented, and why would it help Mr. Trump to have thousands of words about weddings, Thanksgiving recipes, shopping news, and the other trivia Mrs., Clinton assures us is the entire content of those emails? I agree we have no business reading other people’s mail, but this is exceptional in that it was the correspondence of a Great Officer of State. We insisted on every second of the recorded conversations of President Nixon.

 

Dr. Pournelle 

“[W]hy would it help Mr. Trump to have thousands of words about weddings, Thanksgiving recipes, shopping news, and the other trivia Mrs., Clinton assures us is the entire content of those emails?” 

My guess is because it is not trivia.
Ms. Clinton turned over State Department emails and knew the contents would create a storm. She figured could weather that storm. (The level of corruption with the Clintons amazes me, and I come from Texas where LBJ’s Uvalde County routinely tops the state voter turnout with 103% of all registered voters.) 

My guess is that Ms. Clinton’s personal emails bear evidence of her pay-for-play scheme with her husband. William Jefferson Clinton’s speaking fee rose from $150,000 per speech to $750,000 per speech during his wife’s incumbency as Secretary of State. 

If you have not seen it, I recommend Clinton Cash: Clinton Cash – Official Movie Premiere

k

I haven’t seen them, so I cannot comment.

Why Doesn’t our Federal Government do Worthwhile Things?

Jerry,

After receiving a robocall this morning with a spoofed caller ID and claiming to be from the IRS, I began to wonder why our Federal Government does nothing about Caller ID Spoofing. My conclusion was that stopping Spoofing might be worthwhile and there is precious little that the Feds are doing that us worthwhile for an individual tax paying citizen or legal resident.

The entire switched voice network needs a complete overhaul. This is an excellent time to do this now that an area code no longer provides reliable geographic location due to Cell Phones and number portability.

I would suggest the following:

A secure system that eliminates the possibility that Caller ID can be spoofed. If a caller ID is shown on the receiving phone it WILL BE the number of the calling phone.

A change to 11 digit dialing for ALL calls.

(Most Land Lines already require dialing a 1 if an area code is required so this would not be a large amount of extra work.)

Instead of a 1 prefix dialing would consist of the area code plus the seven digit phone number followed by the 11th digit that would be a check digit, either modulo 7 or 11 as used in Credit Card numbers. This would have the beneficial effect of eliminating almost all misdialed calls.

(No more middle of the night wrong numbers as some drunk tries to dial a taxi or a friend.)

This would be something useful!

Bob Holmes

Does it require government to do this? I would not think that would be your first choice; nor is it mine. Make certain that regulations allow this innovation, and perhaps let local government authorize damage suits against phone services that allow spoofing. I bet someone would figure out how to avoid the suits and fines.

Eurowar Update

The latest updates on Daesh asymmetrical warfare offer a prelude of what must surely come with our lack of border security and lack of any detailed plan to fix it other than Mister Trump’s wall — though this arguably lacks detail, at least to me.

Knives are replacing guns in attacks; this means gun control looks even more laughable. Better to arm citizens to fight these terrorist killers than to disarm them as lambs for the slaughter.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article92169982.html

Fear not, French citizens! Your country’s media will no longer publish the names or photographs of terrorists! And I’m sure they’ll continue to report about trucks manifesting free will and killing people of their own free will and accord.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/27/french-media-to-stop-publishing-photos-and-names-of-terrorists

I’m not impressed by the French response, or more accurately the lack thereof. It seems to be more talk and more deprivation of citizens’

rights.

The Germans government put on a show with the polzei even as more risky refugees stream in:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3711543/German-armed-police-smash-way-mosque-raid-homes-group-accused-radicalising-Muslims-grooming-jihad.html

None of this looks pleasant.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

solar activity bottomed out again

We are currently beginning our 4th consecutive day of no spots on the solar near side…again.

There are only two sunspot groups on the far side, which just rotated around there four days ago; one of those produced an M7.6 flare, which didn’t miss by that much being an X1 flare. (It did generate a CME, but it wasn’t Earth-directed, being about ready to rotate off the near side anyway; it also produced 2-3 other M-class flares.)

This is the 3rd extended run of spotless days in the last two months, which makes 21 out of 58 days or 36.2%, spotless at least on the nearside, and probably at least 16-18 of those 21 with no spots whatsoever.

The solar flux has dropped; the cosmic ray flux has increased.

There ARE a few coronal holes, but I am not overmuch impressed by them.

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

http://newbostonpost.com/2016/07/28/r-i-lawsuit-seeks-to-expose-political-nature-of-climate-change-prosecutions/

Stephanie

What are we going to do?

You make a good point:

<.>

Enter now free trade. The theory of capitalism leads one inevitably to free trade; but the consequences of free trade can be devastating.

Mills close. Jobs vanish. The means of production are shipped somewhere else, to people who will make more efficient use of them.

What was made at home is now made elsewhere; when you buy it, the money is gone. It no longer remains in your community. That may be a good thing if goods are that much cheaper, but this is not always the case.

</>

In 2016, we’re having trouble making materiel. Our new stealth fighters aren’t working, our big new carrier isn’t working, and we’ve scrapped entire weapons systems. But, we have the railgun and a few other bright spots.

We are losing our manufacturing infrastructure. What wealth do we pay which people with to do what jobs if this continues? (That’s a “rhetorical” question.)

I think we’re in a lot of trouble. What are we to do? What do you think will happen to America in the next 50 years if the present trends continue, generally?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I make no pretense of satisfaction with the current system of government whether by the Democratic wing or the entrenched Republican wing, and I have for the past three decades called attention that we are sowing the wind. We will now reap.

US, NATO and entangling alliances

Subject: US, NATO and entangling alliances.
Donald Trump’s comments which brings uncertainty to the US security guarantees to NATO members, is opening a can of worms.
While I can appreciate the futility in stopping the Russian Army in the small Baltic states; making them members of NATO, has the same benefits for the US as the rest of the NATO structure even though it pledges the US to declare war on Russia in case of a Russian attack on the Baltic states.
Additionally the Trump argument, that the allies do not pay their fair share, is incorrect precisely in the case of the Baltic countries, which is above average in military spending in Europe and above NATO requirements which many bigger NATO members do not fulfill.
So why mention the Baltic countries with a specious argument about not doing their share, when this is not the case?
Trump could have named keeping the US out of “entangling alliances”, which I can perfectly understand, but that was not his argument.
And indeed the US experience of the period leading up to the two worldwars is, that even a US trying to avoid fighting other people’s wars, will be drawn in eventually when the conflict has grown much more costly and complicated. So why not try to be proactive?
Another much ignored benefit to the US, is that NATO has limited the nuclear club very much. If US security guarantees to NATO members is drawn into doubt, the logical step for many countries would be to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Even lots of relatively minor European countries would be able to do this, though it would require higher defense budgets than todays.
Is a multiple nuclear armed Europe in US interests?
Hardly, as it would be much more explosive and prone to accidental nuclear exchange, which probably would include the US in the end.
That is an important reality behind the US pledge to NATO, and one that benefits the USA greatly.
Regards
Bo Andersen
Denmark

I expect if I lived in Europe I would have similar opinions. On the other hand, I don’t think Estonia, say, could possibly contribute much to the alliance, and I say this with some familiarity and considerable respect for Estonia. But in the Cold War our strategy was one of containment, and to execute a containment strategy you must contain; which we did at considerable cost in Korea and in Viet Nam.

I have more sympathy with the Baltics than I have for the Balkans, but both are European problems now. If Britain and France and Germany want to give guarantees to the Baltic Republics, they should do so; or at least explain to the American people the value of that guarantee to farmers in Iowa.

Short of nuclear war I think of nothing we could do; we do not really have the means for massive retaliation at a time and place of our choosing. We have dismantled SAC and we will not spend the money to regenerate it.

Mr. Obama has had not much success from drawing bright red lines in the sand in the Middle East. I doubt Mr. Putin takes much heed of threats made by the United States, at least not since 2008. As is often said, diplomatic threats are a cheque drawn against strategic power; and the lower the power bank balance is, the smaller the cheques must be. That is reality.

The European Union would like for the world to be safe from military aggression – but expects that threat to be dealt with by the United States. That didn’t work out well for us un the Balkans, nor for that matter for those in the Balkans and the lower Danube after we dropped all these bridges. I don’t want our navy sent into the Baltic Sea…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, July 27, 2016

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

It has been a comedy of errors getting my fallen brick wall restored, but I think we’re getting it, and work will start tomorrow.

 

 

The contractor we chose to do it, rewrote their contracts for them (they had been recommended by USAA insurance and their contracts thought USAA was going to pay them), went through several iterations of that, then an inspection by their estimator, then signed a contract and gave them a check which they cashed – they were supposed to start Monday. Then Tuesday, but when they came out Tuesday they decided they had underbid. The job was going to cost more. How much more, we asked. I thought the question reasonable, but they had no answer. They’d get back to us.

So today I asked for my money back, and we’ve found another mason, recommended by the wife of an executive producer friend as very reliable, and he says he’ll start removing old bricks tomorrow and get a new wall up by the weekend. So we’ll see, but I have confidence in the people recommending him. But all of this took time. A lot of time.

I’ve also been generating scenes and characters for the interstellar colonization novel. It’s a sequel to The Legacy of Heorot and Beowulf’s Children, and I’m doing a pass through Mamelukes.

.

            

If you haven’t read these yet, you’ll like them. The first two books haven’t looked so much at the problems facing interstellar colony designers. The first Colony was put together by wealthy private members of the National Geographic Society, and they named the ship Geographic. We told some of the story of unexpected problems they faced in the first two books, but they brought all of those problems with them or found them on the planet they chose. Now another ship is coming from Earth. It wasn’t invited or expected, and it will turn out to have been built by a very different wealthy group. Meanwhile, discoveries of biological marvels continue… I think you’ll like the new book, but anyway working on it has absorbed much of my time that wasn’t taken up by plumbing problems, family weekend guests, and the usual chaos of Chaos Manor..

It’s the silly season.

The Conventions haven’t produced any great surprises. Democrats continue to be plagued by hacked emails, and to fear a November Surprise leak of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s destroyed private server; as more than one intelligence officer has noted, it would be hard to respect any intelligence organization that doesn’t have them…

Mr. Trump asked the Russians to give us the 33,000 (according to Mrs. Clinton) emails that the Secretary of State erased from the private server she kept in the basement.  The media exploded. How dare he invite the Russians to hack us? Treason! Treason! But everyone knows that server has been destroyed.  Mrs. Clinton say so.  Thus it can’t be hacked.  If the Russians have these 33,000 erased emails, they did it long ago – a not unreasonable assumption, of course.  Any intelligence service would have had a go at it.  I’m sure the Brits did. It cannot be treason to invite the Russians to give us a copy of whatever they have already stolen.  The fact that grown people, presumably competent, would think Trumps remarks treason says more about them than him.  Hardly unexpected; more like a confirming instance.

 

Republicans continue to worry about whether Trump can keep the conservative vote. Is he a Conservative? But that question can be answered only if you know the answers to many other questions, because Conservative has become a name for a very large number of competing movements. They have some common goals, but we have no real definition any longer; in particular, we are not at all agreed on what, precisely, is to be conserved.

Capitalism and Conservatism

There seems to be a notion that conservatives must be for capitalism, and anyone not for capitalism cannot be a conservative. Actually, as a few minutes reflection will show nearly anyone, this cannot be true. Capitalism is a tool, and like fire, it is a vital tool but a dangerous master. The purpose of capitalism, and its major effect, is to guide the allocation of resources to produce the stuff the society wants. It does that splendidly; nothing else like it. Socialism tries to allocate resources to produce, if not quality, then at least a “fair” distribution. It succeeds wildly so long as there are plenty of resources. When an army sacks a conquered city, wise officers will try to see that every soldier receives a fair share, and no one hogs all the loot – particularly that the officers do not visibly get a lot more than the men, since the goal is to have an obedient and disciplined army when the looting is finished.

Socialism works fine, but as Lady Thatcher observed, eventually you run out of other people’s money. You have to start taking in taxes, and that increases your costs of government. You try allocating resources through a bureaucracy of experts, and the iron law of bureaucracy soon takes over. If productivity is reasonably high, and the wants of your society are low. It all works like a charm, witness the success of many and many a medieval monastery. Over time the Abbots and Priors and other officials gained appreciable splendors not available to the more common member priests or brothers, but the monasteries were quite stable: the Venetian monastery of San Giorgio Majore endured with the abbots and priors in great splendor for centuries until Napoleon sacked Venice; and even to this day the Monastic buildings and art treasures, while belonging to the commune, are available to the Abbot were he of an inclination to enjoy them – or were when I was last in Venice, although the Monsignor in charge there was also the pastor of a congregation, and spent his time as most pastors do.

But capitalism is not conservative; indeed, to be successful, it must generate creative destruction. Inefficient firms go broke, and their resources are taken over by entrepreneurs who can make better use of them. Conservatives must endure this for the sake of production and efficiency, but the subsequent community destruction can only be deplored. You cannot have a free society without economic freedom, you cannot have economic freedom without a free market, and to that extent Conservatism is wedded to capitalism; but it must always be remembered, unrestricted free capitalism inevitably leads to the sale of human flesh in the market place. If you can’t buy baby parts in the market, someone is restricting your right to sell them. Why? And would it be conservative to end that restriction of your rights?

Enter now free trade. The theory of capitalism leads one inevitably to free trade; but the consequences of free trade can be devastating. Mills close. Jobs vanish. The means of production are shipped somewhere else, to people who will make more efficient use of them. What was made at home is now made elsewhere; when you buy it, the money is gone. It no longer remains in your community. That may be a good thing if goods are that much cheaper, but this is not always the case.

Before overseas competition, Detroit produced some cars that many intellectuals did not like. See The Insolent Chariots as an example. There were domestic competitors, and some of the then many car makers tried the rugged long lasting rather than stylish strategy. My first car was a Barracuda because I bought it for style and performance, but I had only one child at the time. My second was an International Harvester Scout. I loved that car, and my four boys learned to drive in it. I don’t think of a competitor to it: Land Rover from Britain was probably closest. Of course all the International Harvester plants, agencies, distributors, and dealers are long ago closed and dismantled. Eventually Ford made competitors, and I still drive an Explorer. I never bought an insolent chariot with tail fins.

I make no doubt that competition from overseas improved automobiles in the United States, and that various laws favoring unions and local governments ignoring union “organizing” practices had as much to do with turning Detroit from the industrial heart to a wasteland as ever did free trade – but free trade allowed manufacturers to move to Mexico where wages were much lower. Then Walmart pressured them to close their Mexican factories and move the whole mess to China, where wages were even lower, so they could sell stuff in Walmart at lower and lower prices.

Free trade, like capitalism, is a way of getting cheaper stuff; but surely there is more to life than cheaper stuff? Conservatives certainly used to think so.

Capitalism and free trade

Fingleton: ‘For all her alleged smarts and homework, nothing Hillary Clinton has said or done demonstrates that she understands that free-trade theory is based on a model with a highly flawed set of assumptions (full employment, no exchange rate cheating, no cross border investment flows, and so on).’

<http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/clintons-bad-trade/>

I highly recommend Eamonn Fingleton’s book In the Jaws of the Dragon

(<https://www.amazon.com/Jaws-Dragon-Americas-Chinese-Hegemony-ebook/dp/B0017JWLB4/?tag=chaosmanor-20>)

to anyone who wants to understand China’s imperatives, objectives, strategy, and tactics.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Would 15% have saved Detroit?

I had to respond to your query on free trade. You said “Would a 15% tariff on cars have saved Detroit? It would mean that I would have had to pay about $5000 more for my 1988 Ford Eddie Bauer V8 Explorer I bought in 1999. I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I’ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that. Is paying people not to work more Conservative than trying to keep their jobs and manufacturing capabilities and potential here, not dismantling it and leaving its former site to rust away Conservative?”
Free market forces seem to have worked against Detroit as it turned out genuine crap for 20+ years – my opinion and the results of the reliability surveys out there as well. By 1999 the tide was turning but the problem with a protectionist tariff is that it doesn’t incent the industry to get better, do things better or do things cheaper. You want quality you buy Honda or Toyota has been the standard setting groups. You want luxury go German or the luxury brands of the Japanese. I admit that for me I owned a US made car only recently and only recently have begun to lust after another American made car (Tesla). I usually buy quality and some luxury. I’ve done German. I’ve done Japanese. But rarely American.
My point – a 15% tariff will do more long term harm to the US auto industry than letting it be gutted for building crap.

Chris

So we have better cars, and we’re better off now. Perhaps so, although I suspect there are a lot who don’t agree.

Free Trade

Mr. Pournelle,
You wrote: “What was conserved by turning Detroit into a wasteland? How was that conservative?”
A good question. It seems to me that Ricardo’s argument would be most persuasive for people who are confident they themselves won’t be the ones to pay the cost. “We can all bear philosophically with other people’s misfortunes.”
On either side of the argument, I’d want to be alert to unintended consequences. On the one hand, the idea of an island of economic prosperity surrounded by failing states is disturbing; one odd consequence of “free trade” seems to be some transition of other countries out of a pre-industrial economy. Though what they seem to be transitioning *into* seems too much like Dickensian Victorian rapacity. Although, perhaps that’s a necessary stage in growing out of the abject poverty of most of human history. Though on the third hand, how do you keep the profits from being gobbled up by kleptocracies?
In other words, I find myself confused. This is a case in which I am not at all sure what is either just or constructive. I’ll follow your discussion with interest.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnaon

What we did hasn’t worked too well: doubled the debt twice so that it is now over $50,000 per person (man, woman, and child, employed, unemployed, or just not working) while dismantling the “arsenal of democracy” that won WWI and II. Perhaps that’s it, and nothing could be done, but I doubt that. I do not think many predicted it in 1945.

r.e. “Free Trade”

Dear Jerry,

I’m in general agreement with your thoughts on “Free Trade”.  However,

“The advantages of Free Trade are lower prices for stuff.”

This is not at all clear.  My own inquiries on this matter have led me to conclude that “lower prices for stuff” is mainly a diligently promoted myth spread by the cheer leaders of “Free Trade”.   i.e. the various trade agreements struck by the Bushes and Clintons with one party Communist dictatorships and other institutionally corrupt foreign governments.

Let’s take one minor data point, tools.  PDF versions of Sears Tools Catalogs from the late 1950s and early 1960s are available online in various places.  And so are various US Government inflation calculators. Imported tools of equal quality to the US made tools Sears formerly sold appear to cost more, not less.

“That means they are more cheaply produced.”

If we include radically lowered quality in the definition of “more cheaply produced”, I agree.  Entry level Chinese machine tools are far more cheaply made than nominally equivalent Sears Craftsman products in the 1950s and 1960s.  Both material specifications and workmanship are both far below former standards.

“As the economist David Ricardo wrote, there is a principle of comparative advantage that coupled with free trade guarantees maximum profits for when there are no trade restrictions”

I agree this has certainly worked out for the “Free Traders”, meaning those actively engaged in the process of “buy low – sell high”.   And it certainly helps here to have ready access to almost interest free loans from the Federal Reserve System under the current Zero Interest Rate Policy regime.  I think this is self evidently a major cause of the rising domestic income inequality that various commentators denounce.

In any case the modern dominance of “Free Trade” as either a “Conservative” or “Republican” dogma is extremely recent.  The Republican Party was explicitly founded on protectionism in 1860.  “Free Trade” in those days was promoted by the Slave Power as necessary to their 3d World raw cotton commerce with David Ricardo’s already industrialized United Kingdom.

“Free Enterprise” was much more commonly used and praised among most of the American Right as late as the 1950s – 1970s.   The fruits of these enterprises however were held to be the result of individual and family moral virtues, not government policies.

Best Wishes,

Mark

p.s. I also fail to see many – if any –  “Free Market Principles” at work in a “Free Trade” regime that depends on a) a government chartered central bank system and b) stock, financial and commodity exchanges that are functional monopolies thanks to government regulatory protection forming barriers to entry for would be competitors.

= =

As I will comment when I publish this, when I was in 5^th grade we learned that “Democrats believe in tariff for revenue only, Republicans believe in protective tariff to keep the South from industrializing.” (There were huge tariffs on manufacturing and weaving equipment.)  Those were the days when the South always voted Democrat.

= =

We learned something similar in the 5th grade in northern Indiana in the 1960s.  This was that northern manufacturers wanted tariff protection from already established and lower cost British manufacturers.

I am unaware of any industrial economies that established themselves under anything other than mercantilist type tariff protections.  And this specifically includes the original example in England and Scotland in the early 19th Century.  David Ricardo’s work was generated as part of the Liberal political war against the Corn Laws and the Tory landowners in the 1840s.  These tariff laws on agricultural produce weren’t repealed until 1846.  This debate was entirely about the scale of the British manufacturing sector, not its kind or type.

I’ll go so far as to challenge any True Believers in free trade to cite just one example of a 19th Century scientific, technological and industrial advance that depended on “Free Trade”.  The William Shockley of the 19th Century was Henry Maudsley.  He and his apprentices launched the machine tool revolution during the Napoleonic era in a solidly mercantilist England.  His screw cutting metal lathe was working by 1800.  David Ricardo and his program didn’t come along until the 1840s when all the new industries were well established.

The traditional common understanding of the economics of the Victorian British Empire as taught as late as the 1960s was incomplete. The whole “workshop of the world” Free Trade idea of England never really existed.  This was the simple explanation that the United Kingdom imported food and raw materials and sent out finished industrial goods for a profit.

AJP Taylor in his History of England 1914 – 1945 cited a Royal economics commission of the late 1920s.  This showed that the “trading” account had only shown one annual surplus since the 1830s.  This industrial deficit at the ‘national’ level was always made up by profits from City of London financial activities in factoring this huge trade, interest and dividends on foreign investments and shipping services.   And as far as I can see fostering this vast expansion of City of London financial activities was always the intent of bond trader David Ricardo and those who promoted his theories.

Capitalists will always try to get government to regulate and impose compliance costs to keep the cost of entering that kind of business high, and thus cut down on competition.  That goes for conservatives who want to preserve the status quo.

 

Hello Jerry,

This from today’s post on free trade:

I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I’ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that.

You have also paid far more to the people who are paid to pay the people not to work, those who are paid to take your money and give it to the people who in turn give it to the people who don’t work, those who are paid to examine every detail of your financial life to ensure that you actually ‘gave’ what they had unilaterally decided was the proper amount, and those who are paid to capture and punish you should your payments—or the paperwork that accompanied your payments—had in some way been in error.  And don’t forget the vacations, medical coverage, and retirement plans for all the above folks that you are paying to confiscate your money and give it to the non-workers.

And that, rather than paying the non-workers, is the point of the whole exercise.

Bob Ludwick

‘Free’ trade and conservatives

Liked your recent posting on ‘free’ trade and conservatism, well said. (although how is giving big corporations the ‘freedom’ to restrict the ability of private citizens to import legal pharmaceuticals from Canada, so that the corporation can maximize their profits, ‘free’?)
There is another point here that I think people forget. The English economist John Stuart Mills once commented that if low prices are due to efficient production techniques, then this may temporarily hurt people with a vested interest in older, less efficient techniques, but in the long run we all benefit. However, if low prices are due to low wages, then it is impossible for the average person to benefit – people don’t become rich by becoming poor. Most of the US trade deficit is not with Japanese and German companies that produced superior goods – it is with American companies that moved American designs and production processes to low wage countries. In other words, the low prices from modern ‘free’ trade are mostly just due to low wages, not technical innovation. In the long run that’s just a race to the bottom for wages.
It also needs to be pointed out that the old mantra of ‘comparative advantage’ only applies to situations like agricultural and only when demand is higher than supply – which nowadays is mostly not true. Agricultural land is in fixed supply and it’s very hard (if even possible) to increase the supply of it. So if I maximize my profits by growing grapes, I will grow only grapes, and someone else could earn a living growing corn, even if in principle I could grow corn more efficiently. But that won’t work for manufactures. If Outer Nowhere has 50 cents an hour labor, ALL the factories can be moved there leaving me with no business at all. ‘Comparative advantage’ is an interesting intellectual exercise but as a guide to modern economics it should be consigned to the dustbin of economic history.
But then I remember the old joke: microeconomics is wrong about specific things, and macroeconomics is wrong about things in general…

TG

Conserving unemployment

The following from your latest update struck a chord:
Quote: “And if you dropped out of the labor force “ no longer looking for a job “ you are no longer unemployed. The unemployment rate just went down. You stopped looking for a job. Of course you don’t have a job, you are certainly not employed, but you aren’t unemployed and don’t count toward the unemployment rate. I wouldn’t have thought that sort of lying to the people by government officials was a very Conservative thing to do at all.”
This is exactly what has happened under the previous two terms of the Conservative-led Coalition, and then the Conservative government, in the UK.
The mechanism that permitted it was the availability of Working Tax Credits which are available to anyone who goes self-employed (a broad definition that encompasses both the traditional definition of setting up in your own business, or working temporary, part-time, seasonal, zero-hours contracts for an employer).
The motive that drove many thousands to “go self-employed” was the horribly punitive and demeaning unemployment welfare system that worked to infantilise and punish job seekers, and often actively impaired their ability to get a job by interfering in a candidates availability to attend interviews, or mandating that they only apply for a limited range of occupations. As a victim of the recession (losing two jobs in quick succession) I went through this system.
I, too, took the chance to jump out of the unemployment welfare system and onto Working Tax Credits (which is administered by the HMRC, another department with a different budget). My “business”, like so many others, was always doomed to fail, but it was better than staying on the dole and being treated like scum for being there.
And the Tories crowed about how they had reduced unemployment. And how had they done it?
Quote: “Of course you don’t have a job, you are certainly not employed, but you aren’t unemployed and don’t count toward the unemployment rate.”
The UK is rife with unrealistic small-businesses that haven’t a hope of earning a living, while their owners subsist on temporary contracts plus some occasional meagre earnings that their businesses actually do generate, all so that they can stay off the horrible, horrible dole. This allows the government to boast of the lowest unemployment rate since records began, and to use this as an excuse to perpetuate a policy of austerity: of ideologically driven cuts and a lack of investment in infrastructure, while busily selling off all the state’s existing assets for low prices. The only things they throw money at are a few high profile projects like High Speed Rail and Nuclear power: projects that only benefit those already in work in highly specialised roles.
This approach solves nothing. I haven’t been able to plan my life, apply for debt, invest in a large purchase such as a house or a car or even take a single holiday of any description since 2007. I am a member of the silent majority of the British workforce, many of whom displayed their anger by making a protest vote in favour of Brexit. I have lost count of how many of those people have expressed remorse for this because they understand that now, with the economic down-turn that must inevitably result from Brexit as we move from being an economy of 508 million to just 65 million, our situation cannot realistically improve for at least a generation.
I see no prospect of the USA avoiding a similar fate, no matter who wins.

Mike Ranson

What is Conservative

Your recent post brought to mind this essay from several months ago:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/can-the-american-right-renounce-utopianism-15599?page=show

Craig

The models are better than history

Dr. Pournelle,
I am citing the popular article because of the headline: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Historical records miss a fifth of global warming: NASA.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 July 2016. .
The synopsis says pretty much the same thing: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3066.html
“We show that there is no evidence that climate models overestimate TCR [transient climate response] when their output is processed in the same way as the HadCRUT4 observation-based temperature record.”
What I’m getting out of this is an attempt to discredit the historical record by processing it using the model that was created, from the historical record, to show that temperatures are going up. Guess I’ll have to read the study to see if they decided to rewrite history or discredit the model.
My money is on the butler…
-d

“At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”

<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150527103110.htm>

———————————————————————–

Roland Dobbins

So Samuel Johnson should have refuted Berkeley by closing his eyes as he kicked the rock ?

Dr. Pournelle,
Unfortunately I think Dr. Ball is right.  Universities have had a long time for your Iron Law to work.   I wonder why it has got so much worse in recent years.  I loved his quote:
“Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables man to get along without education. Education appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.“
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/24/credibility-loss-in-climate-science-is-part-of-a-wider-malaise-in-science/
You may be interested in this recent summary of Andrea Rossi’s efforts in LENR.  The QuarkX appears to be something very different.  1 mm dia x 30 mm long – produces 100 Watts output for 0.5 W input.  Can produce half the output as electricity and light.  (At above 1300C)    I know he has many critics but the facts continue to build up that he has what he claims.  We should know for sure in about six months.
Regards,
Adrian Ashfield

‘The history of American close air support is a tale of learn, master and forget.’

<http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-problem-killing-americas-10-warthog-17084?page=showje>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

 

I think I agree with something I heard Glenn Loury say a month ago. Totally paraphrased, my own version:

There is a way for Trump to turn this election into a rout. And it’s something that maybe no one could do but him. He should be spending 25% of his time from now till the election talking to black audiences. He should be telling them, “You’ve heard I’m a racist. Well, I’m here to talk to you and listen. And I want to tell you that you’ve been voting for Democrats for more than fifty years now. What have they done for you that actually works? Do you know what they’ve done to your schools? How is going to help to give inner city kids a free college education (isn’t going to happen) when the elementary schools didn’t teach them to read, or do math? Do you know that every school in the country, fifty years ago, spent maybe half as much money per student in today’s dollars, and taught pretty much every kid to read? How long are you going to keep voting for people who don’t care if schools can fire teachers who don’t teach? How long are you going to keep voting for people who have agencies in Washington who give orders to every school in the country how they should arrange their bathrooms?  How long are you going to keep voting for people who don’t care if what they’ve promising will actually help? I’m not that much of a conservative; I don’t mind spending money. But I’m not going to spend it on agencies in DC and state governments; I am going to find ways that work.”

Etc. He could do it; he could turn the black community. They don’t care about his “bigoted views” on immigration; they probably agree with him.

(It would help if he would come out strongly in favor of fixing relationships between the police and the inner city. Doesn’t need to endorse BLM; that too could be presented the way Newt Gingrich seems to do it: There’s a serious problem here in many cities, and we need to find a way to really fix it. Picking sides isn’t going to help; none of us wants police that can’t do their jobs, none of us wants police shooting people who didn’t do anything at all. Let’s find a way that works; that ends the war.)

mkr

I have never understood why the black community sticks with the Democrats, who are the remnants of the slaveholders and then the authors of Jim Crow.  When I grew up in the segregated Old South, Republicans were so rare there were jokes about it. Lyndon Johnson won them over, and they have stayed with the Democrats. And so long as the media make Al Sharpton and his kind their “Leaders” and consult him when they want a quote on how Blacks think I see no change coming. Trump would do more for the blacks because he needs them; Hillary doesn’t have to worry about their vote.

 

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 22, 2016

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

The day was devoured by the business of living. The plumbing stopped yesterday, and Mike Diamond’s efficient $99 drain clearers couldn’t come until today. They came early enough, but that was the first household problem. I couldn’t shower yesterday when I had someone to help, so it was today, alone. Not fun, and I couldn’t start until the drains were free. Meanwhile, the people who are going to get rid of my fallen wall and replace it usually work for an insurance company and all their standard forms are drawn up with the insurance company as the payer; we were referred to them by USAA, whom we have good reason to trust, but that wall falling after trying to fall for fifty years is a good example of normal wear and tear. Why it couldn’t have fallen in one or another earthquake I don’t know; but it didn’t, and there it is. So we’ll pay, which means the contracts need to reflect that, and it took three iterations and Roberta’s skills to get it rewritten, after which we had to wait for the next draft. I needed stuff from the grocer, but there was always some reason I couldn’t go. I had to wait where I could hear the doorbell, which meant I could not get upstairs to the Monk’s Cell to work on the novel; I did some pretty good work on it this week, but I can only work on fiction where I am not interrupted and distracted. For that matter I can’t do decent essays when distractible. I used to write the Chaos Manor column in the Press Room at major shows, but that was before brain cancer and a stroke – now I can only two finger type while staring at the keyboard.

On that score, there’s good news. I’ve found the 15” ASUS ZenBook just what I needed, this after trying all kinds of keyboards. I have the ASUS upstairs in the Monk’s Cell, on a good stand with a 25” LED very high resolution monitor at eye level when I sit back and relax. I type looking at the keyboard, but I can see the laptop’s screen, sort of, as I do. I don’t hit two keys at once so often. I still manage to hit c of v along with the spacebar too often, but I am training myself not to do that; and I can type fast, fast enough to keep up with scenes as I imagine them. I can then sit back and edit on the big screen with mouse and keyboard as I did before the stroke. It’s wonderful. You can recover from a stroke. It’s a bit like learning skills all over again, but that’s fine – you can do it. What you can’t do is give up. Anyway, what with my ADSUS ZenBook and other equipment I’m back in business – when I can get upstairs to use it. Today I couldn’t.

And then about 4 PM my oldest son sent an email, cryptic, saying that our number three son Phillip, the career Navy officer, just landed at Burbank Airport and would be at the house anon. He has a Navy conference in San Diego next week and will spend the weekend here. Of course he was expected but with all the other distractions I had forgotten.

After which things began to get back to normal. The restoration guy showed up and the papers were all in order, and they start next week, and there are no more decisions to make. The plumbers finished their work and the toilets work again. So do the showers. I took one, alone and unassisted, and even treated myself to a real shave with a real razor, no incidents to report. Alex, Phillip, Roberta, and I all went to dinner at a local Italian restaurant that serves gluten free, and it was great. Phillip and I then went to the grocery store and got things urgently needed – I don’t drive at dusk or later – and that pressure is off. It’s quiet, everyone is in bed, and I’m working in my back bedroom, not as good as the Monk’s Cell, but Phillip is sleeping there – it is, after, the bedroom of the oldest boy living with us, which means it was his room at one time. But it’s quiet here, no distractions, and here we are.

So it turned out to be a pretty good day after all.

On Free Trade

One reason Conservatives are advised by Conservative leaders to disagree with Trump is his position on Free Trade. The problem for me is that I do not see Free Trade, particularly laissez faire Free Trade, as necessarily Conservative at all,

The advantages of Free Trade are lower prices for stuff. That means they are more cheaply produced. As the economist David Ricardo wrote, there is a principle of comparative advantage that coupled with free trade guarantees maximum profits for when there are no trade restrictions, and impediments to free trade are supposed to be mutually disadvantageous.

But do understand, what is conserved is lower prices. Nor social stability. Not communities. Not family life. Indeed those are often disrupted; it’s part of the economic model. Under free trade theory, it’s better to have free trade than community preservation, better to have ghost towns of people displaced because their jobs have been shipped overseas; better to have Detroit as a wasteland than a thriving dynamic industrial society turning out tail finned Cadillacs and insolent chariots and supporting workers represented by rapacious unions in conflict with pitiless corporate executives.

The theory of free trade includes liquidity: liquidity in capital flow, and liquidity in labor relocation.

What was conserved by turning Detroit into a wasteland? How was that conservative? Wouldn’t it be more conservative to argue that if everyone pays a little more for stuff made here, by people who work here, we are better off than having it made south of the border and inviting our people to go work there at their prevailing wages?

Go further. You don’t have to move. We’ll pay you for not working and you don’t have to move. Of course we’ll have to raise taxes on those who do work to pay those people no longer working, but that’s life. But after unemployment benefits work out – in my days the government would pay you $26 a week for 26 weeks – you’re in trouble. So much so that welfare benefits kept being raised. Food stamps, which became larger and bought more items. Negative income tax. And if you dropped out of the labor force – no longer looking for a job – you are no longer unemployed. The unemployment rate just went down. You stopped looking for a job. Of course you don’t have a job – you are certainly not employed – but you aren’t unemployed and don’t count toward the unemployment rate. I wouldn’t have thought that sort of lying to the people by government officials was a very Conservative thing to do at all.

Would a 15% tariff on cars have saved Detroit? It would mean that I would have had to pay about $5000 more for my 1988 Ford Eddie Bauer V8 Explorer I bought in 1999. I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I’ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that. Is paying people not to work more Conservative than trying to keep their jobs – and manufacturing capabilities and potential here, bot dismantling it and leaving its former site to rust away – Conservative?

And is encouraging people not to work – at least making it easier and more possible – building a Conservative nation?

What, precisely, is being conserved here?

Some addresses I saved; I intended to comment on them, but things got out of hand, and I have to reduce the number of tabs I have open or Firefox glitches.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-has-officially-inaugurated-post-movement-conservatism/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-speech-is-good/

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8442/sharia-in-denmark-part-ii

http://www.unz.com/freed/ready-new-rossiters-universal-robots-toward-a-most-minimal-wage/

http://www.unz.com/freed/walter-williams-catholics-the-projects-and-schooling-for-blacks-something-is-wrong-somewhere/

While this was written recently in Fred’s current style, most of the column is a reprint of a 1981 article he wrote for Harper’s (and is in a more journalistic style). He could have written it last week, only more so: it’s about DC schools. They’re bad. They were bad in 1981. They were bad in 1983. They are worse in 2016. Interestingly, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to deal with the DC school system: you’d think that if the Federal Government could tell you how to run your local schools. It could show you how to do it in a place where the Congress – i.e. the Federal Government – has all the Constitutional authority it needs. Yet from 1981 to now, under Democratic majorities with Democratic Presidents, Democratic majorities with Republican Presidents, Republican majorities with Democratic Presidents, Republican majorities with Republican President, and in the past few years Republican majorities with Democratic President – under all these combinations the DC schools have got worse and worse, the federal government always had the Constitutional authority to fix it, and did nothing: yet the Department of Education still pretends it knows how you should run your schools.

This is robbing the poor. This is building a caste system. This is seeing to it that the ruling class has an out – a few good public schools in neighborhoods dominated by the governing class can send their kids to public schools, but for those who are governed, the public schools are all they have.

I sent my children to Catholic schools because they learned more there; more than they would have even in the best Los Angeles public schools. But I could – just barely – afford to do so. I don’t live big, and I’m not addicted to conspicuous consumption. I tend to be Conservative even if the formal Conservative Movement had the egregious Frum throw me out .

Oooo!

https://news.brown.edu/articles/2016/07/imbrium

http://infowebbie.com/scienceupdate/asteroid-formed-moons-imbrium-basin-may-protoplanet-sized/

Asteroid that formed Moon’s Imbrium Basin may have been Protoplanet-sized – Science, Astronomy, Medical News & Updates infowebbie.com The asteroid that slammed into the moon 3.8 billion years ago creating the Imbrium Basin may have had a diameter of at least 150 miles, according to a new estimate.

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

‘The scattered, moated complexes like Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom were merely the most enduring features of what we now know was the biggest city on Earth during the 12th and 13th centuries.’

<http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/how-archaeologists-found-the-lost-medieval-megacity-of-angkor/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

: REDUX: Turkey  <.>

Turkish media announced that:

15,200 teachers and other education staff had been sacked

1,577 university deans were ordered to resign

8,777 interior ministry workers were dismissed

1,500 staff in the finance ministry had been fired

257 people working in the prime minister’s office were sacked </>

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36842073

The coup crackdown surpassed 50k today (the media breakdown doesn’t seem to list it all). How can you put together lists like that in a few days? The sheer collections and sorting alone would take longer than that. The Nazis used lists and even they would be astounded by such efficiency.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

It is the final end of the Ataturk secular republic.

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.