Hard to believe we are on the edge of Holy Week this early in the year, but the traditions of an ancient Church guide us even now. I’ve gotten in the habit of bookmarking pieces I read in my browser or in the Pocket app for deeper consideration or a second pass later on. Herewith this week’s offerings from my vault:
I have argued elsewhere in these pages that our military needs a complete overhaul, rethinking and restructuring to address our position in the world and how to best position our assets in a rapidly evolving battlefield.
Our force structure is guided by careerists that spent their lives doing the thing they now advocate for. Former carrier pilots who become wearers of 3 and 4 stars believe we need more carrier battle groups, tank battalion commanders that make into the upper halls of the Pentagon believe we need more Abrams battle tanks, etc etc. These men (and women) graduated from West Point, Annapolis and the various NROTC/ROTC programs in the mid to late 1980’s before Google, the iPhone or drones even existed. And these upper echelons are completely ossified and embedded like barnacles on a hull. The U.S. Code caps the number of active duty flag rank officers at 219 for the Army, 150 for the Navy, 171 for the Air Force, 64 for the Marine Corps and 21 for the Space force. We are very close to maximum capacity of those numbers right now. There are 44 four-star ranked officers on active duty right now - in World War II we had 7, and our force was over 12 million men compared to 1.3 million active duty personnel right now. In short, our military is bloated, out of date and out of touch with the needs of the world right now. Unless we dramatically course correct soon, a very ugly situation is doomed to occur. Here’s one way that could happen:
Drone Swarms Are About to Change the Balance of Military Power
I majored in Economics and History back in the dark ages and was weaned on Chicago School Economics, Hayek and the Austrians. I still am staunchly free trade, but admit that I have been revisiting a lot of my old assumptions and feel that my thinking is changing. One dynamic economists overlook is community impact. Sure, it’s great for the shareholders to move production to China and be able to reduce widget manufacturing costs by 40%, but what about that hollowed out town back in Wisconsin that was left behind. The older I get, the more I seek a more humane economics away from the destructive creation of Schumpeter. And there is a strategic aspect to economics that we have obviously missed and learned during the COVID panic: we don’t make the things we need in this country anymore and if bad actors wanted to hurt us, it would not be very difficult to simply withhold our meds and batteries. I’ve been writing a lot of notes about this with an eye to an essay on the subject in the future, but stumbled on this piece by the Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton and it hit home:
Related to this last piece, this next one goes into some detail on how we have evolved away from a truly free economy to one where government, big business and the media collude to pick the winners from their friends. The growing chasm of wealth between a small uber-class and everybody else will have very serious consequences for the future of our Republic. Hopefully by shining the light on this issue, we can start to refine our choices in the political class to those who truly want to see fairness and opportunity brought back to the middle class of this country that is certain to be the engine of our future if we can get the ruling class out of the way.
The Total State’s Assault on the Middle Class
Turning the Canterbury Cathedral into a rave hall seems like a really bad idea…OK it IS a really bad idea. But in the nihilistic post-Christian progressive world, that’s exactly what was done Auguste Meryat wrote about it - you should read and ponder this piece: A Night at the Canterbury
This last one caught my eye after a meditative walk where I was challenging myself to come up with more ways to reduce screen time. Thought is was a good piece to finish this week’s offerings: We Are More Than Our Data
Lastly, I suffered through President Biden’s State of the Union speech…that was painful and identical in it’s content to the last three years. We all know the state of our union is not well. Colonel Douglas MacGregor summed it up extremely well in his response - well worth 10-minutes of your time:
Things that make you say hmmm:
Sound like anyone you know?
Going out with a laugh:
Have a great weekend!
Excellent!