Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Interesting factoid.  Due to recent budget increases, including expenditures on the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the US now spends more on the military than all the other nations of the world combined.  Question:  is this sustainable?  Or more importantly, is it being spent in the right way? [John Robb's Weblog] My answers: No, it's not sustainable. The Feds can't afford everything they spend money on just from what they steal from us directly. They also depend on other major nations such China, Japan, and various European countries to loan them the money for their deficit spending, and on the place of the Dollar as the international reserve and trade currency, which allows them to spread inflation out over a population of 6 billion instead of only 250 million, making it much less noticable to Americans. The other nations of the world could, at any time, simply refuse to subsidize the US Federal government any more. All they'd have to do is stop buying US bonds and switch to something else for trade and banking reserves--Euros, Yuan, Yen, gold, it doesn't matter. Mind you, the chances of them actually doing that are not very high--doing so would be a serious upset to the status quo, and politicians just don't do that sort of thing. Another reason is that if any one country went first, the Feds would attack that country. Many countries would have to coordinate their actions without the Feds catching on, and I doubt anyone could pull it off. The other reason it's not sustainable is somewhat simpler: the entire world economy is build on a house of card. All fiat money systems eventually collapse, taking the economy of whatever country was stupid enough to set them up down as well. For the first time in history there is not a single country anywhere in the world still using real money, which means that when the current fiat money system collapses (and it's getting very creaky) there will be a total global economic collapse--which will naturally destroy the Feds' (and everyone else's) ability to pay for their military adventures. As to the second question, my answer is no, it's not being spent the right way. The right way to spend money on the military is don't. The Feds' huge standing army is useless for protecting the United States (in fairness, it's not intended to), all it's good for is giving vicious thugs the power to blow people up anywhere in the world, while holding it like a club over the heads of their subjects. We should just sell off all that hardware to the highest bidder, and revert to the Swiss model of defense, as our Founding Fathers intended. 11:33:10 PM    comment () Science turns monkeys into drones. Scientists have discovered a way of manipulating a gene that turns animals into drones that do not become bored with repetitive tasks. The experiments, conducted on monkeys, are the first to demonstrate that animal behaviour can be permanently changed, turning the subjects from aggressive to "compliant" creatures. The genes are identical in humans and although the discovery could help to treat depression and other types of mental illness, it will raise images of the Epsilon caste from Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel Brave New World. [Ottawa Citizen] I bet the Feds at the Department of Education are drooling with anticipation. It's bound to be far cheaper, simpler, and more reliable than thirteen years of public schools and a lifetime supply of Prozac or Ritalin. 6:43:09 PM    comment () But How Do You Shake The Machine If It Gets Stuck?. An offshoot of Mercedes, Smart GMBH is developing what might be the anti-Mercedes: a tiny, plastic-bodied car designed (mostly) for urban commutes. Wired has an article describing the company, the vehicle, and their designs on the US market. Abigail's Smart Fortwo, which she has been tooling around Washington, DC, as part of a focus group, is engineered by Mercedes; an early model already sits in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art. But behind Smart's quirky design hides a radically sensible car. The Fortwo can park practically anywhere, even sideways in a compact garage spot. A diesel model, like Abigail's, gets nearly 70 miles to the gallon, making supergreen hybrids such as the 55-mpg Toyota Prius look like gas-guzzlers. And this year, a major study ranked the Fortwo's tailpipe the least polluting in the world, ahead of more than 1,200 cars. Other features include snap-on replacement body panels (like cellphone faceplates), braking and traction control borrowed from Mercedes, and a miniscule price tag. Apparently, these are hot items in Europe, and are being sold out of giant glass 'vending machines'; You can just buy one and drive off. They're getting ready for a US release, but it will (of course) be an SUV model to compete with the CRV and the Rav4. After years of progressively bigger gas-guzzlers, could the US be ready for the opposite end of the spectrum? (I dig the little roadster.) [Gadgetopia] Here's one for the "it's amazing what people will pay for" category. According to the Wired article, this thing "starts" at $13,000, which is more than the most expensive racing motorcycles offered by companies like Honda and Suzuki. A racing bike would be able to carry about as much, and would be just as dangerous in an accident, but you'd stand a better chance of not getting into an accident in the first place on a bike that could actually get out of the way. 5:55:33 PM    comment () NYTimes.  Huddling in a drawing room with his top commanders, General Franks told them it was time to make plans to leave. Combat forces should be prepared to start pulling out within 60 days if all went as expected, he said. By September, the more than 140,000 troops in Iraq could be down to little more than a division, about 30,000 troops. If the United States and its allies wanted to maintain the same ratio of peacekeepers to population as it had in Kosovo, the briefing said, they would have to station 480,000 troops in Iraq. If Bosnia was used as benchmark, 364,000 troops would be needed. If Afghanistan served as the model, only 13,900 would be needed in Iraq. [John Robb's Weblog] There are a couple of interesting things here. First, note Franks' Orwellian definition of "leave." If troops leave a country, they have to actually be gone. A division of troops (with four more divisions from other countries) is not gone, it's just a reduced garrison. Second, note how the Feds were holding up Afghanistan as their model for deciding how many troops to garrison Iraq with. However, there's no mention of the differences in what those troops were expected to do. In Afghanistan Federal soldiers only occupy Kabul, protecting the puppet government there, and basically leave the rest of the country alone except for sporadic search-and-destroy missions. I've seen nothing to suggest that the Feds ever intended anything less than full control of the entirety of Iraq, not just Baghdad. 9:09:53 AM    comment () President Bush in...: "President Bush in Florida: "I know there are some here who are worried about the flu season. I want to assure them that our government is doing everything possible to help older Americans and children get their shots despite the..." (Via Talking Points Memo.) Of course the government has no power to do anything of the sort under the Constitution, so Bush is effectively saying, "I want to assure them that our government is breaking the law." I think that goes without saying. 8:59:58 AM    comment ()

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