How long can we live with an unsustainable way of making war?

It's been a while since I've posted in this journal, but I finally have something important to say.

Our special military operation against (read: war) Iran has been going on for several months now, and what do we have gotten for it?  As I write this, we got 18 service members coming home in body bags, a depleted munitions stock, an aircraft carrier coming to port due to an under-supplied, emotionally exhausted crew, and hundreds of billions of dollars deeper in dept.  We did not get regime change in Iran.  We did not eliminate the potential nuclear threat Iran poses.  And we did not vanquish our "enemy".  Instead, we have shown that the US is a paper tiger, and that Iran has the power to shut off 20% of the world's oil supply.

Our president is known for taking action based on the voice of the last person who spoke to him.  In this case, he was suckered into starting a war by the leader of Israel, a fellow crook in his own right.  Previous presidents knew that a war with Iran could not be won, at least, not with the effort Americans were willing to put into the war.  But, by starting this war, we have already lost it.   But, if you ask our president, he'll say we're winning the war, and that the Strait of Hormuz is open for shipping.  Yet, he'll act like a little child when someone asks him a question which holds him to account for his mistakes.  His ego is so fragile, that by not admitting any of his failings, he is unable to learn from his mistakes.  As a result, he keeps doubling down on his lies, and no one trusts him anymore.  Yet, people are afraid of him due to his ability to rally members of his cult to attack his enemies.

America is now $40,000,000,000 in debt.  For the first time in history, we are now paying more in debt service than we pay for defense.  This can not last for long.  This president would cut social spending in order to preserve our war machine.  But what good would that do?  We can't even defeat an enemy like Iran.  Our military is not nimble.  We still act as if we need to fight the wars of the 20th century, instead of those we need to fight now.  Instead of retreating into 1940's military technology, as our president would do with our aircraft carriers, we should be at the forefront of 2020's military technology, as Ukraine has exhibited with its use of drone technology.  I ask the question: why haven't we planned for the use of drones in warfare, given Ukraine's success of holding its own against Russia.

Unmanned vehicles (air, land, and sea) are the future of warfare, as they can enable militaries to fight wars while keeping their service members well behind the scenes in relative safety.  For those near the front lines of battle, they can provide the tools for defense that older, more expensive military tools and weapons can not provide.  Unmanned vehicles are cheaper and more effective than older military technology.  They have allowed Ukraine, a nation without a navy, to defeat the Russian navy and make it an almost useless asset.  Ukraine has developed a new way to fight wars, and all our president did was to say that Ukraine didn't hold any cards.  And Ukraine has proven that it has a stronger hand than our president would admit by being able to attack Moscow with its drones.  If anything, our war with Iran has shown that we hold a weaker hand than our current regime wants to admit.

Given the cost of proven drone technology vs. the cost of our overpriced military technology, I see a potential to kill several birds with one stone.  First, we can no longer afford to enforce a "Pax Americana" as we did for the second half of the 20th century.  So, let's wind it down to areas we can defend, and have other nations form healthy regional alliances for defense.  Second, let's take she savings from winding down the "Pax Americana" and do three things with it: (a) develop drone technology with Ukraine and build up stockpiles which both countries can use, (b) plug up holes in our social safety net (especially in healthcare, and (c) pay down our national debt.

Iran has tactics which it is using that we are not matching.  If propaganda is meant to modify public opinion, it is a cheap weapon in this internet age.  While our president is posting AI Slop on his social media accounts, the Iranians are posting entertaining "Lego Stories" on their feeds.  What's worse, as they are much more factual than the garbage our president is presenting as "Truth".  Truth Social is anything but truth.  Yet, Iran's videos cost almost nothing, spread further than our president's Truth Social posts, and contain more truth.  Who do you think should be believed?  Iran, a country who has said "Death to America" in the past, is no longer saying that (for now).  They are directing their anger (rightfully) towards our President and his regime.  What does this say for the legitimacy of the two contries' ruling elites?

The British empire fell because Britain couldn't afford to maintain it. As a result, it had to deal with decades of national decline. America is well on the same path to a similar national failure that could cripple us for generations.  And yet, our president's incompetency has given us an opportunity if we are wise enough to seize it.  Things are so FUBAR (F'd up beyond all recognition) that radical change may just be possible.  Licensing Ukrainian drone technology might help our military become more nimble and cost effective.  It may help America rebuild its industrial logistics, so that we can again build civilian products in the US, as we did with the aircraft and space industries.  We can learn from the past, and choose to take a different path than those who preceded us.

The big question is:  Will we learn the lessons of the past and make good choices.  I'm hoping that America will follow the lead of a wise woman (Mae West) who said: "Whenever given the choice between two evils, I'll choose the one I haven't chosen before."  It's time for something new, and even a bad choice of something new is better than the continued choices of something old we have been making as of late. 

Brexit - and what it may mean for America

Nobody really believed it would happen.  But the "Brexit" vote proved eveyone on Wall Street wrong. Once the vote count was announced, the stock market dropped over 600 points.  Wall Street hates uncertainty, and the "Brexit" creates great uncertainty for all of us.

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The initial analysis of Britain's vote found that older people tended to vote to leave the EU, while the younger set voted to stay in the EU.  The old folks will not have to live with the results of their decision as long as their children and grandchildren.  But this is the last gasp of a generation who has been betrayed by its political elites, and who doesn't much care what happens after they cast their vote of "No Confidence" in the system.

Will Brexit really happen?  Although it looks like it will, this was a non-binding referendum. Once the costs for leaving the EU are known, I'm not sure if the Brits won't be given a second chance to vote on this issue - as a way of asking: "Do you really want this divorce? Your husband may have had an outside lover, but he has always been there for you when you needed him - and you needed him a lot."

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The same forces that have affected Britain are affecting the United States (and many other Western countries).  Old folk are feeling betrayed by their elites, and no one is addressing structural unemployment.  The West is being tasked to absorb millions of immigrants from failed countries, and are facing serious challenges in preserving its cultures in the face of poorly educated people who have different cultural values, and who are not easily absorbed into the work force.

Donald Trump is using this issue as a springboard to gain power.  However, he is not a trustworthy person.  When the Brexit vote result was announced, Trump took this to be an opportunity to promote one of his golf courses there.  Do you think he wouldn't use the presidency to line his pickets?  I wouldn't trust him to give me the correct time!

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To beat Trump, Hillary has to play to her strengths.  But she has to pay attention to Bernie Sanders' platform.  Why?  She needs the votes of America's youth.  She may have to lie to them (as she has done to many people in the past), but she has to get their votes, lest they get totally screwed by a Trump presidency.

There is one problem with the above approach - No one trusts Hillary. So she will need to pick someone who can be believed.  But she can't pick Bernie - it would destroy his reputation and not help hers.  But Elizabeth Warren may be a good choice, if she feels she should risk Wall Street's wrath to get elected.

Is Hillary able to work with Bernie for the greater good?  Can Bernie accept that his base must be lied to convincingly to get them to choose the lesser of evils and vote for Hillary? Does Bernie have enough smarts to be a smart loser, and extract as much from Hillary as possible for him to be a leader in one of the opposition wings against Trump? One thing I know.  I don't want my dad's generation making decisions that will harm my children's generation - and a vote for Trump will harm my children and grandchildren's generations, and maybe more after that....

The fear of markets, and the disciplines they enforce.

It's hard to believe that the New York Stock Exchange once looked like this.  The stock market was less regulated then, but never a place for a timid person to risk his/her money.

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One of the things I've said for years is that I believe in open, fair, and transparent markets. In an ideal world, these markets would be self regulating. However, powerful players love to distort markets via the use of rules, and via a lack of transparency.  In the case of the stock market, most disputes are settled via arbitration - which is often rigged in favor of the large firm by the nature of familiarity.  Precedents from one settlement are not applicable in the next case, so the large firms have an edge which is almost impossible overcome.

However, the lack of transparency affects more markets, and has an even greater effect. For example, the current practice of "Non-Standard" sizing makes it much harder for a person to "compare apples to apples" when determining the price of goods. In the case of a carton of Orange Juice, the standard 64 oz. size was shrunk by all players to 59.5 oz. - making it much harder for people to determine what the real price was.  Also, the shrunken size went less far, so the customer had to buy more containers to sate their needs for Orange Juice.  Something similar happened in the size of Tuna cans - a few years ago, the standard size was 6 oz. - now it's 5 oz.!  No one asked the consumer (in these terms) whether we wanted to pay the same money for smaller size packages, or more money for the same size packages.  If they did, the marketplace would have chastised the sellers of these goods - something they avoided by obfuscating their price hikes with package size changes.

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Right now, people are starting to see a crisis with student loans.  This is another example of marketplace interference creating disastrous effects.  A little over 150 years ago, it was "easy" for a person to attend some of the nation's most prestigious universities.  All they had to do was learn the "basics" - which included Latin, and other skills no longer needed in the real world - and then pay the bills for school - which weren't that expensive.  However, after World War 2, the GI Bill made it easier for students to afford college - and a college education was seen as the ticket to middle class success.  Years later, our nation's policies changed to provide poor people with grants to go to college, trying to create a more diverse student base in these schools. And then came the age of college loans - which I see as a total disaster.  Instead of increasing the supply of college seats (which would have reduced prices and increased availability), policy simply increased demand for college seats by making student loans cheap, easy to get, and with no demand that a student comes out with a salable skill.  The only effect here was to raise the price for seats in a good school.

What happened to the students?  Many got saddled by debt, studying in majors that would not prepare them for jobs in the outside world.  When a student owes money on a student loan, it is almost impossible for it to be discharged in bankruptcy.  As a result, the interest on the debt makes the student loan virtually impossible to pay off.  

But what would happen if we eliminated the Federal guarantee of payment?  What if these loans could be discharged in bankruptcy?  Well, many of the private lenders would cease lending money, marginal students would stop going to college, and colleges might be forced to lower their prices for study.  The powers that be don't want that.  The banks making a lot of these student loans would cease making loans - and making guaranteed profits.

I posed a question to a couple of people and got the same negative response - therefore I know I'm on to something....  What if (1) there were no guarantees of student loan repayment by any level of government, and (2) a student loan lender could insist that a student loan borrower major in a field likely to result in a job?  Both people said that this would be wrong - the student has a right to study what he/she wants to study.  But at whose expense?  The student is usually way too immature to make many decisions which will impact the rest of his/her life. Part of college's function in society should be more than that of a trade school - it should teach a person how to think, and how to look at life with a long term perspective.  One of these people said that if he were to take out a bank loan for a car, that the bank has no right to tell him what car to buy.  Yet, one could counter - that if a car manufacturer's finance arm offers you the loan on the car, it should have the right to tie you into buying one of their cars.

In short, the lack of a efficient market (with rules for proper debt discharging) for funding higher education has caused a crisis in higher education that also affects non-students. If a former student is saddled with too much student debt, that same person may not be able to afford getting married and having children. And if this person has children, he/she may not be able to pay enough in school taxes to educate the children - a long term risk for society.

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Not all problems in society can be resolved by market forces.  Other methods must be used to limit consumption of resources.  Great Britain spends about 35% of what America does on health care, and has a roughly equivalent standard of national health.  Canada spends about 50% of what America spends.  And other developed nations are in the same league. What is different?  They all recognize that health care doesn't work with a marketplace model. So, instead, they ration care in ways that Americans would consider unacceptable. Britain uses results based medicine, and when in doubt, chooses the cheapest alternative. There is a waiting line for almost everything except acute emergency care - and even then, there are rules and regulations that apply - as if one were part of a giant HMO.

I do not advocate the British or Canadian models, because they err in ways Americans would not accept.  But the German and French models have a lot to offer - if only we would examine them more closely.

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Americans like the idea of free express roads that take them from town to town, and city to city.  There is one big problem - the price - FREE.  This has encouraged the growth of the trucking industry over that of the railroads who pay for the upkeep of their track.  One might say that truckers pay gas taxes that should maintain the roads. But in many states, especially in the South, these gas taxes have not been raised in years, nor have they been indexed to inflation.  As a result, we're seeing part of our transportation infrastructure neglected by lack of proper funding, and now at great risk - as many structures are at the end of their life spans.

What happens when people have to pay to use a road?  People actually think - do they need to make this trip?  And this is an important question, as it reflects a market helping to shape a behavior. There is a discipline that takes place in a well functioning market.  The trick is to design a market well, regulate that market well (but minimally), and make sure that only the right things are governed by that market.... This, as I see it, is the big challenge of the 21st century.