Category Archives: Mail

Mail 706 Friday, December 23, 2011

· Social Security Trust

· Mad Max and the Melting Pot

· Inventing the future

· Paying people not to work

· Reactionless Drive

·Starswarm by Jerry Pournelle available on Kindle and Nook. Compares favorably to Heinlein juveniles according to many reviewers.

“Apparently we’re a tasty, terrorist threat. I guess we were also amazed at what can pass through security in one airport, but not in another.”

<http://www.thebostonchannel.com/r/30062442/detail.html>

Roland Dobbins

The TSA Security Theater continues. It’s the most expensive show on Earth, and likely to remain so. The costs are enormous, and the benefits hard to ascertain. If the TSA budget were cut in half, is it likely that the costs due to terrorist incidents would go up by $2 billion a year?

Jerry Pournelle says that unrestrained capitalism would lead to sale of human flesh in the marketplace.

But I thought he meant slaves, not cuisine.

Jim w.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45767456/ns/today-entertainment/#.TvVvqvJ-eIB

Words fail me.

Texas schools: first to reach the Accountability Plateau?

An addendum to the previous discussion of the comparison between education results in Texas and Wisconsin:

Obama Administration Education Secretary Duncan is dissatisfied with the performance of Texas schools:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-18/obama-s-education-secretary-says-perry-s-schools-left-behind.html

But it seems that the recent stagnation of test results in Texas may simply be the result of Texas having been an early adopter of the kind of accountability standards that other States are now adopting. When first adopted, those standards produced substantial gains in performance, but recently performance in Texas has leveled off. Maybe that will happen in other States, too.

http://www.edexcellence.net/news-commentary/education-gadfly.html

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

The first reform of schools should be the realization that the vast majority of children with intelligence of dull normal up can be taught to read in first grade. Those who don’t learn to read should be held back until they do so; the presence of illiterates in classes from second grade up is disruptive and absorbs far too much of the teacher resources which ought to be dedicated to the education of the children who already can read.

When I was in grade school up through 7^th grade there were two grades per room with one teacher and no teacher aides. There were about 20 students per grade. My first three grades were in Catholic schools in Memphis in a middle class parish school. After that I was at Capleville, where the pupils were farm kids collected by school bus from a radius of about eight miles. There was no teacher time to be devoted to illiterates, but in fact all the children at Capleville could read, including a girl about 14 in the 5^th Grade. She was of course somewhat retarded and known to be, but she was pleasant, wasn’t expected to learn much, and married a farmer at age seventeen having reached 7^th Grade.

Our attempts at equality have resulted in a disproportionate percentage of educational resources being devoted to the below average students. This is dangerous to a republic that must compete globally: Steve Jobs famously said he didn’t make Apple Computers in the United States because there weren’t enough quality control engineers and technicians; the schools weren’t turning out people who could make elegant products. This is worth thinking about.

We need excellence. We also need Good Enough.

Social Security Trust Fund Redux

Dear Jerry,

I am unsure of your view of Social Security when you write that Congress

"set it up so that the money that goes into the Trust Fund is replaced by

Treasury Bonds so that government spending can continue to rise

monotonically". I can understand arguing against having any government-run

pension system, but here you seem to be objecting to the Trust Fund being

invested in treasuries. What else would the fund administrator invest in?

Would you prefer that the federal government hold trillions of dollars of

corporate securities? Talk about government control of the economy! What

exactly should the Trust Fund be invested in?

Gordon Sollars

The problem is that the income from Social Security is spent on current expenses. This means nothing has been saved, and the deficit grows exponentially. The Trust Fund trick allows ever growing federal spending, with the result that sometime in the past week or two the debt exceeds annual production. That means that the US owes an entire year’s productivity. This is an enormous sum.

Investment of a Trust Fund of compulsory savings has to be done very carefully; and of course if we had a balanced budget or anything like one there might in fact be a big pot of cash burning a hole in the government’s pockets; but we do not seem to have to worry about that problem. If the Trust Fund were being used to pay off the debt — but then that’s but a dream, isn’t it?

Is it really this bad?

Jerry,

I’m happy to be living NOT in California for a variety of reasons. The article below reinforces how bad it is getting, and I appreciate the references to historical barbarism. Is it really this bad?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/286354/vandalized-valley-victor-davis-hanson?pg=1

r/Sub.spike

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

As a native of Modesto, I found the following article especially interesting. In it, Dr. Hansen chronicles the central valley’s descent into barbarism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/286354/vandalized-valley-victor-davis-hanson

I know that the knee-jerk reaction by many conservatives will be to demand tighter immigration controls, and that can’t hurt. But it’s not the full solution. When I lived there (until 1994) I had few problems either with illegal aliens or their children whom I taught in schools. The real problems were the welfare recipient descendants of Europeans in places like Keyes and Waterford, living in trailers and in houses absolutely crawling with roaches.

You live only 200 miles or so south of Fresno, do you not? Do your observations match those of Dr. Hansen?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Hanson lives in the Central Valley and describes what he sees. He is to the best of my knowledge a truthful man. In Los Angeles the Mayor is instructing the police not to impound the automobiles of illegal aliens caught driving without a license, and there are areas of the city that are in essence “abandoned areas” for some law enforcement purposes. And of course in Arizona there are official abandoned areas posted with warning signs.

Most illegal aliens in Los Angeles are looking for jobs and stability, and many have been quite successful at total assimilation. The US Melting Pot works – if it is not overwhelmed. It’s not a matter of immigration, legal or illegal; it’s a matter of quantity. The Melting Pot can assimilate only so many in a given time. If there is a saturation, or worse, a rejection of the whole notion of assimilation and a turn to “diversity” as a goal, the result may not be what you expect. America has always been very nearly unique in that you could learn to be an American. You can’t learn to be French, or Swiss, or German; but anyone could learn to be American, and people from everywhere have done so.

But that assumes that there is an American culture.

California meets Road Warrior

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/286354/vandalized-valley-victor-davis-hanson

I guess you guys in California need to learn how to deal with Reveneurs.

When the government abrogates responsibility for its citizens, then the citizens have a right to abrogate the government.

What would happen if every customs agents’ car was destroyed after a ticket was written, and no witnesses came forward?

David March

The short answer is Civil War.

Economist on the economics of future planning wrt climate change and other..

Jerry,

The author of this Economist ‘Free exchange’ column seems to be right

up your alley in taking the long view.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/12/future-0

Jon

Jonathan Abbey

I have never believed that I can predict the future, but I have long believed that Dandridge Cole was correct when he said you can’t predict the future but you can invent it. There is also prudence: some actions have quite predictable consequences.

My notion of inventing the future is to work on developing more efficient and plentiful sources of energy and raw materials. That was the theme of A Step Farther Out, which is still worth reading.

Michelle Obama’s Unsavory School Lunch Flop [Plus: Watch Gaza Terrorist’s Reaction…]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/track/trackurl.asp?q=spu11fp6du48

The Los Angeles papers and talk shows have been having a field day with this: the kids won’t eat the ‘healthy’ food, and now that there is neither strawberry nor chocolate milk, they don’t drink milk either. This is compounded by the entitlement meals: some kids have no choice but to take the school lunch, but often they won’t eat the ‘healthy’ parts.

I have considerable sympathy for the school authorities in their dilemma, but political correctness gets in the way of everything. I intend to deal with some of this in my next novel.

Pakistan: Man cuts off teenage wife’s lips and nose; police refuse to register a case against him

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/12/pakistan-man-cuts-off-teenage-wifes-lips-and-nose-police-refuse-to-register-a-case-against-him.html

And from the women’s rights organizations we hear – dead silence. From the majority of the mainstream media we hear nothing. At least AFP, normally rather apologetic, did mention it. The real problem is that this is normal rather than the exception.

{^_^}

The French Army under Napoleon thought they were carrying Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity across Europe on the points of their bayonets.

Comet Lovejoy Plunges into the Sun and Survives – NASA Science,

Jerry

Comet Lovejoy Plunges into the Sun and Survives:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/16dec_cometlovejoy/

The NASA site even has a little video, which actually shows a surprising sight.

Ed

Subject: Atheist messages displace CA park nativity scenes

Excerpt from the article:

http://my.bresnan.net/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CD9RJQNC80%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=931

…atheists got all but three of the spaces this year because of a new lottery system…

…Two individuals got 18 spaces. One person can request a maximum of nine…

Yes…everyone has 1st Amendment rights…but when two people win 18 of 21 spaces, and you are only allowed to bid on 9, I think the odds are pretty high that the process was subverted.

A nation that works at destroying its own culture probably will not survive as a nation. Why should it?

Paying people to be unemployed, and penalising employers

You occasionally remind readers that unemployment benefits work out as paying people to be unemployed, and that regulating firms’ working conditions and pay levels works out as penalising employers for employing workers. You usually summarise this by pointing out that if you subsidise something (the former) you get more of it, and if you tax it (the latter) you get less of it. It’s like making a horse pull a cart through a noose around its neck instead of a proper harness.

Pretty obviously, things would improve if we simply stopped doing these wrong things. It’s not so obvious that that’s not enough. Unemployment benefits started out from things like the Elizabethan Poor Laws and Bismarck’s Welfare State, not simply out of charity but from a hard headed realism that wanted to buy off the social unrest that was already around and growing from people without work or personal subsistence resources (the technical name for that is "Vagrancy Costs").

It worked, sort of, in the short term, but at the cost of growing the underlying problems for the future – our present. The spread external cost of having the poor around had just been switched for the spread external cost of funding unemployment benefits – even if the accounting in some countries makes it look as if the unemployed are paying for it themselves out of previously accrued payments. But that also means that just getting rid of the things that make things worse, that already grew the underlying problems, would just switch back to the external cost of having the poor around – only now at the higher levels that have been allowed to grow. That means something structural that favours unemployment even when the rest of the economy has been stimulated, so that you have to over-stimulate beyond the optimum for employment to pick up or get a jobless recovery because of an underlying mechanism that is growing all the time.

Economists have actually been looking into this general class of problems – externalities – for about a century, and they have learned a few things. Pigou worked out one approach, and later Coase worked out another. Pigou’s approach was to use subsidies or taxes precisely in order to get more of what you want and less of what you don’t, but in a careful way that actually reduced overall costs. Common sense tells us that taxes and subsidies always make a net burden, whether directly or from the need for funding elsewhere. But the net actually comes from the excess of the cost over the benefit, an excess which comes about because there is a distortion away from the optimum you would have been nearer without intervention. Pigou’s insight was that, if there was already a distortion anyway and you pushed the other way with subsidies or taxes instead, you could get nearer the optimum and maybe even hit it if you had enough information (a near miss didn’t matter much, because the amount of sub-optimality is a second or higher order function of the "distance" from the optimum – "close enough for government work"). Of course, there is still the cost of churning everything through the government, so Coase’s approach of engineering out the externality with property rights is often better, but it may have the hidden catch of yet another material external cost from having to police the property rights. Either way, getting nearer the optimum is always a change from the status quo, and not only does change itself have a cost but also someone’s ox is almost bound to get gored – the optimality is an aggregate, not always an improvement for everyone involved.

What has all that got to do with the price of fish, i.e. unemployment? Simply that there are both Pigovian and Coasian solutions to it. Since unemployment benefits etc. are already handled through governments, and wages are what Keynes called "sticky", Pigovian wage subsidies – that is, wage subsidies that get nearer optimality rather than overshooting it – are faster acting than the Coasian solutions (which include Distributism to make the resources needed for work the workers’ property and slavery to make the workers into property, so they raise other issues). That means subsidy levels have to be set similarly to unemployment benefits or somewhat below, so that people still need paid work but they can afford to work for a wage lower than they need to survive that is low enough to price everybody into work (and to compete with overseas workers, among other things) – a top up wage, not a living wage, whatever that is. After I had done some work of my own in the area (in Australia), I looked around and found that two professional economists had independently come up with something broadly similar: Professor Kim Swales of the University of Strathclyde, along with his colleagues (in the UK), and Nobel winner Professor Edmund S. Phelps, McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University (in the USA). So I wasn’t simply kidding myself that I knew better than professional economists, since some of those had come to the same thing, albeit using different analysis and pathways to get there.

The big problems with ordinary wage subsidies are that they need huge amounts of funds and – particularly if they go directly to actual and potential employees, as in a Negative Income Tax – that means huge net outgoings while wages slowly and stickily adjust downward enough to price everybody into work. The three of us found the same way around the problem: integrate the wage subsidies with the taxes paid by employers as a tax break per worker, so that actual wages paid out don’t have to fall even though their net cost to employers does, and so that no funds actually have to be paid out by the government but rather the pre-tax break gross tax goes up – something I term virtual wage subsidies. This bigger gross tax does not mean any short term changes to net tax, apart from oxen getting gored in industries that have already paid for equipment to replace labour, say (the system is revenue neutral in the short term and at least budget neutral after that, since tax revenue only falls in lock step with falls in unemployment benefits as employment improves – which raises other taxes). However, it does mean some big numbers in the intermediate calculations, which might frighten some people even though they don’t correspond to anything real any more than the displacement of a ship nearly fitting a dry dock means you need that much water in the dry dock to float the ship. Professor Phelps’s version uses the kind of taxes the U.S.A. already has and applies the tax break using a sliding scale, which keeps the numbers small at the expense of needing more administration and policing. Professor Swales’s and my version uses the broad based VAT/GST we already have in our countries, though I wouldn’t recommend introducing one just to use as a carrying tax – it hurts a lot of other things too.

Well, if this is so clever, why isn’t everybody rich? All three of us researchers have tried to get the message across to our respective political establishments, only to be repeatedly listened to politely and then sidelined without being given sound reasons, or indeed any. It’s almost enough to make you think there are vested interests in keeping people dependent on a drip feed only they can provide…

Anyhow, readers might be interested in this for its own sake, and who knows, some aide to Newt Gingrich or someone might pick up on it and pass it on to him. If anybody wants to know more, when I last checked some of Professor Kim Swales’s and his colleagues’ work was at http://www.faxfn.org/feedback/03_jobs/jobs_tax.htm#23feb98a , some of Professor Edmund S. Phelps’s work was at http://www.columbia.edu/~esp2/taxcomm.pdf (see also his book "Rewarding Work"), and I have some at http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#NWKART1 , at http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN (a Liberal Party Resolution) and following, and at http://alsblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/pml-on-tax-reform (a Henry Tax Review submission) – but my numbers are a bit out of date by now. Professor Kim Swales’s modelling indicates that, as my work suggested, there is no overall cost as both GDP and employment levels increase – GDP about half as much as employment levels in percentage terms.

There are some other issues to do with one country’s economy and tax/subsidy system interfacing with those of others, but that’s a whole other story for another email. Suffice it to say that other externalities are at work there, too, so that when a company outsources, that’s the economic equivalent of a wealth transfer – a giveaway – when one country gets some of another’s tax base.

Yours sincerely,

P.M.Lawrence

I would like to believe that we understand the principles of managing an economy, but I don’t believe it. That’s why my ‘solution’ to most of these matters is to get out of the way, and in particular, allow the States to do as they want but be very careful about Federal regulations, labor laws, even child labor laws; let the states have minimum wages, but do not impose such federally; and in general, let the Federal government do what it was formed to do, and stop trying to run the country from Washington.

I don’t think we really understand economic engines. To the extent that we do, Pareto seems closest to me, but he is not much studied now. If we could make every Congressman and Senator read The Road to Serfdom at least once every term it might help, but better would be to keep them from trying to do too much.

The biggest danger is the federal education system. The only way to be sure that no child is left behind is to make certain no child gets ahead. Fortunately the rich don’t believe that nonsense and send their children to places that try to get them ahead. A nation with no kids getting ahead is doomed. Of course as Galton observed in Genetic Studies of Genius , although families of great men are more likely to produce great men, most great men do not come from the families of great men; which was why his “Eugenics Society” tried to find bright people and encourage them to marry early by making early marriage affordable. That would be politically incorrect now.

A society that does not value the smart kids regardless of social origins handicaps itself enormously. We have chosen that primary hamper. Leaving this to the states would at least give some states a chance at setting up systems that favor the bright and able and disciplined over the stupid, disabled, and undisciplined. Insistence on equality of education will result in an economy incapable of sustaining itself.

It does seem to me obvious that paying people to be unemployed will produce as much unemployment as you will pay for.

Thanks.

Rocket Reaction and the Dean Drive

Hi Jerry,

Here’s an article I’ve written about the Dean Drive, from the perspective of what makes a rocket work. I’m a long term researcher in this area, and I have a short video demonstration which proves that Inertial Propulsion does exist. I’m sending this article to you, to publish as you see fit, due to your association with individuals who actually witnessed the Dean Drive in operation. – JV PS: As you advise, I’ve written my million words. ; )

Rocket Reaction and the Dean Drive

A lot of well educated people will say that the Dean Drive isn’t possible, or that it violates the known principles of physics. But this belief isn’t actually true, as can be seen by comparing the operation of mechanical thrusters in general to a rocket’s reaction.

When someone sees a rocket, they will often know that the exhaust is the reaction mass, and that Newton’s Law states that every action has an equal but opposite reaction. When the fuel burns, it releases energy, and this energy is carried by the products of combustion, which is the exhaust. So it is the exhaust which applies force to the rocket. This means the exhaust is the action mass, under Newton’s Law. And the exhaust is also the reaction mass, as we all know, rebounding in the opposite direction to the force it applies. However, the rocket’s movement is NOT a reaction. It’s actually the result of the fuel’s energy being applied to the rocket, with or without an engine and nozzle. (Remember Project Jason.)

Newton’s Second Law of Motion states:

When an external unbalanced force is applied to an object, the change in the object’s momentum is directly proportional to, and in the same direction as the resultant force.

So a rocket’s movement is the RESULT of the applied force. It’s obviously not the reaction, since the rocket can’t move in the direction which is opposite to the applied force. Therefore, the exhaust is the action/reaction mass and the rocket is the responding mass. The same mass which applies a force also experiences the reaction force, and the mass which responds to the applied force experiences Newton’s resultant force. And these same three Newtonian forces are also involved with centrifugal force machines, including the Dean Drive.

The most common argument against mechanical thrusters such as the Dean Drive is that they violate Newton’s First Law, which requires an external force. (Everything has inertia and an external force is required to change speed or direction.) But if you tie a rock onto the end of a string and whirl it around, the First Law proves that your hand IS external to the rock, or it couldn’t apply a force which changes the rock’s direction, from a straight line inertial path to a circlular movement. The force your hand applies, through the string, is referred to as centripetal force. The action of applying this force produces a reaction, in the form of centrifugal force, and this reaction is felt by your hand, as an outwards pull. The reaction is not felt by the rock, which does not experience any outwardly directed force. Instead, the rock experiences Newton’s resultant force.

With a machine, the central shaft which is turning a weighted spoke is the source of the force which acts to pull the weight’s mass into a curved path. But it isn’t only this shaft which feels the reaction force. It’s also the entire mass of the device which is connected to the shaft, through the bearing supports, and the entire mass of the ship which is connected to the device. Only the mass of the revolving weight feels the resultant force. Unlike the resultant movement of a rocket propelled by a reverse stream of exhaust, the movement of a ship propelled by a Space Drive is in the same direction as the reaction force. Reaction mass does not have to be expelled, because it moves in the desired direction of travel. This makes the Dean Drive a Reaction Machine, rather than a ‘reactionless drive’. Unlike a rocket’s Reaction Engine, which quickly runs out of fuel, a Reaction Machine can continue cycling indefinitely, producing an essentially unlimited number of DeltaV maneuvers, as long as it has a power source such as solar energy.

All of this is within the accepted constraints of the known laws of physics. Which, of course includes the Conservation of Momentum tenets. The Conservation Law states: Angular Momentum is conserved, in the absence ot external torque input. The driving motor is external to the revolving mass and can in fact input additional torque when needed.

Here’s a link to a video which shows a simplistic Reaction Machine in operation:

http://youtu.be/yzaJuyPpBcs

This device produces a variety of reactions during the first jump sequence. The last of these reactions causes an extraordinary downwards hop from a point in mid air, where there is nothing to push against. The video includes a second prototype, as a control experiment, whose motor does not tip backwards, relative to the base frame, and this device does not produce an airborne thrust impulse. To my knowledge, this Reaction Machine is the first device shown to produce a thrust impulse in free fall, so it is the first publicly demonstrated working Space Drive. The momentum responsible for the downwards hop does seem to carry over to the next jump. Unfortunately, one weight slipped out of synch, so the subsequent operation became erratic. But one unsupported hop proves the principle.

We are now in the Age of the Space Drive. Commercial Space is wide open. Reaction Machines can get us there, and do so economically. I predict this will include the advent of the Self Launching Satellite (SLS).

Jerry Volland

Remarkable

Thank you.

Mail 705 Wednesday, December 14, 2011 — 2

Catching up with interesting mail.

· Methane and planetary engineering

· On Newt

· On the Iran Drone

Interesting interactive map showing Republican candidates and their standing in various states.

http://www.economist.com/content/republican-candidates-president?fsrc=nlw%7Cnewe%7C12-14-2011%7Cnew_on_the_economist

Tracy

Giant methane plumes from the sea bed hitting the atmosphere

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/giant-plumes-methane-bubbling-surface-arctic-ocean-163804179.html

OK, so, here comes the next Irwin Allen blockbuster movie. Send in purpose-built submarines, and pitch a giant tent, a couple of miles across, over the plume source. Run a pipe from the peak of the tent to the surface, and into a compressor, and Voila! Natural gas and NO DRILLING!!!

I seem to recall a guy named Jerry Pournelle wrote several short stories that touched on doing things sorta like that, like sailing an iceberg from the Antarctic and running it aground someplace in Africa that *REALLY* needed fresh water…

–John R. Strohm

Stories, and articles in Galaxy Science Fiction, and in a book called A STEP FARTHER OUT. All of which is still true and possible. The only limit we have is nerve, but we seem to have lost a lot of that.

The proper solution to global warming is to go forward. But with the schools we have now and that attitudes that we are developing, that will not happen. But not all of our leaders have lost the dream. We have a few left who understand the challenge of man’s future.

Methane ‘fountains’ and sea ice

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Given how much dishonesty there appears to be in the climate debate right now, I am not sure how much weight to attach to this — it may prove to be as alarmist as the other notes. But I still present it for your perusal as a datum point. Evidently the Russians have discovered methane ‘fountains’ up north, seemingly actuated by the retreat of permafrost.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html

Respectfully,

Brian P.

What some see as problems others see as opportunities. There has always been methane emission in Siberia. Burning methane produces energy.

spooky! – Two Diamonds Linked by Strange Quantum Entanglement

Hi Jerry,

http://www.livescience.com/17264-quantum-entanglement-macroscopic-diamonds.html

What’s interesting is not just how deep the rabbit hole goes, but that

we are able to explore it at all. Interesting times ahead.

– Paul

Indeed. And who knows where that can lead.

Spengler :: The fifth horseman of the apocalypse

Jerry

An important note from Spengler on the decline of populations worldwide:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ML13Dj05.html

Ed

SUBJ: What comes after gun control?

The brits have effectively had gun prohibition for a generation. Now . . .

This picture taken in downtown London.

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/945/ukknife1.jpg

I wonder if there will ever again be an England?

Cordially,

John

Roger L. Simon makes the case for Newt.

http://paulinhouston.blogspot.com/2011/12/case-for-newt.html

—

Paul Gordon

I never thought of Newt Gingrich as my first choice for President, but he is nearly always the smartest man in any room he is in, and he has not lost the spirit that caused him to read A STEP FARTHER OUT and call me to talk about it. And he does not want to be surrounded by people less bright than he is. That has to count for something. He spent years as a public intellectual after he was Speaker, and he seems to have learned a lot from being outside government in those years.

Regarding the UAV in Iran situation…

Jerry,

I’ll keep the snide “I told ya so” comments to a minimum, however I will point out that as early as world war 1, pilots would generally carry a grenade or flare with them to aid in the destruction of their aircraft, if forced down behind enemy lines. Not only that, the fighter aircraft arms race during in WWI surged when an aircraft fitted with a revolutionary through-the-propeller machine gun system crashed and was not sufficiently destroyed to hide the presence of the system (deflection wedges attached to the propeller blades). This compromise of cutting-edge military technology led directly to the rapid development of the machine gun interrupter system, making possible the first truly effective air to air machine guns.

This is why Generals pride themselves on being military historians, and is an example of why those arrogant Air Force fighter pilots freak out when non-pilots set policy for air operations without the knowledge or experience gained only through both operational flying and an interest in aviation history.

Or in other words… DUH, any fighter pilot could have seen this coming. It was only a matter of time, no matter what the engineers said. Sometimes the automation goes stupid and then your UAV (or cruise missile or smart bomb or…) goes walkabout. Assuming operational necessity leads to this sort of system employment, the ONLY true mitigating factor is to have a plan ready to use for when (not if, but when) your fancy UAV ends up in the worst possible location and once there, does the worst possible thing. I suppose flying into Pakistan and shacking a mosque would have been worse, but landing intact in Iran is almost pegged on the good-bad scale.

S

Thanks.

We missed a Scandal?

I think we missed an important scandal; with so many happening these days I guess it’s easy to do.  I suspected this was happening — or something like it — and I’m pretty sure you did too. 

<.>

In 2011, Forbes’ 23rd ‘Most Powerful Woman In The World’, HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius was caught double-counting in the ObamaCare budget. Since then, the scandal has been ‘forgotten‘ – deep sixed.

‘What? Kathleen Sebelius?? ObamaCare??? Double-Counting???? No one told me about it!’ Bull crap. I told you HERE and HERE.

Long shot, I know… but it’s as if Kathleen Sebelius, Goldman Sachs, GE, GM, Solyndra, Verizon,Toyota, National Association of Realtors and so many others knew all along there would be zero penalty for cooking the books.

Try double-counting your tax write-off’s…

</>

http://sadhillnews.com/2011/12/14/bailout-payback-realtors-double-counted-home-sales-for-last-five-years

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Federal Expenditures <> government spending

I read Brendan’s email, in which he said:

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)….

Federal Expenditures = government spending So, Federal Expenditures per capita per GDP is …

Federal Expenditures/Capita/(private consumption + gross investment + Federal Expenditures + (exports − imports))

He made a major simplifying factor that needs to be addressed. Government Spending is NOT limited to the Federal Government. There are lots and lots of local governments, all of whom (for a very long time) increased their spending at an even faster rate than the Federal Government. But because the national media has no incentive to cover local stories and the local media doesn’t have the time and money to hire people who can dig into local spending, the growth was largely under the radar.

This is a pity because it is far easier to made a difference at the local level than the federal level. Heck, you could even run for office and possibly win.

As a local government employee, I urge all your readers to pay attention to their local governments. Get involved. Read the budget. Read the Board Meeting Agendas. For most localities, that information is posted on the governmental web site. If it isn’t, go to the next meeting and ask — no, DEMAND — them to post the information.

There are even national standards as to what a published budget document should include. These are published by the Government Finance Officers Association (gfoa.org). If your local government budget documents are not vetted by the GFOA, again, ask why. The cost is relatively low, but the information required is useful to taxpayers. (No, the GFOA doesn’t say what your budget should include, just how it should be disclosed.)

The most depressing thing about my job is going to the public budget hearings to present (and defend?) the budget, and no one from the community has bothered to show up.

—

Fredrik V Coulter

Good advice. Really good advice. Thanks

Mail 705 Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Sad state of energy in Oregon

This is just sad to me. Living in a state with such abundant Hydro electric power and our utilities now are forced to pay for more expensive Wind energy "because it’s green."

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/12/regulators_tell_bonneville_to.html

The even sadder part is that they ignore the reasons why BPA was pulling the plug on the wind farms to begin with. I’d rather have Salmon in the waters then energy from windmills.

Erik

One reason for leaving most regulations to the states, not Washington.

U.N. Climate Court

Ah, now we get into the life tax and the New World Order with all the unelected technocrats — just like in Europe.

<.>

Bureaucrats at the UN Climate Summit in Durban have outlined plans for the most draconian, harebrained and madcap climate change treaty ever produced, under which the west would be mandated to respect “the rights of Mother Earth” by paying a “climate debt” which would act as a slush fund for bankrolling an all-powerful world government.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/un-calls-for-eco-fascist-world-government-at-durban-summit/

So, now some city even further away and more alienated from real life than Washington is going to tell us how much money we owe them to fund their political projects and idealistic quests?

At what point do we stop participating in this madness?

I want my country back.

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

I doubt that the Congress will have much to do with that. Even England is backing away from the EU bureaucrats. And certainly none of the Republican candidates would consider this more than a joke.

Click here: A Place to Stand: Prizes – In Other Areas – They Work To <http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2011/12/prizes-in-other-areas-they-work-to.html>

A blog article I have done on government and other use of prizes more generally than technologically. I hope it interests you.

My Regards

Neil Craig

"a lone wolf howling in despair in the intellectual wilderness of Scots politics"

You may be interested in my political blog http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/

I have been advocating prizes for a long time, and when my son was a Congressional staffer he did some memos on prizes for Mr. Gengrich at the Speaker’s request. Newt has long been in favor of prizes.

Subject: As California mandate looms, some LGBT curriculum already in place <http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/10/lgbt-curriculum-already-in-place-in-some-california-classrooms-as-state-mandate-looms/>

Jerry,

It seems the PC police are firmly in charge…it isn’t enough for people’s accomplishments to stand on their own, we have to call special attention to them because they are gay.

For me, force feeding to our kids just causes me to be angry, accomplishing the opposite of what they intended.

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/10/lgbt-curriculum-already-in-place-in-some-california-classrooms-as-state-mandate-looms/?hpt=hp_c1

Tracy

You wrote about Radio Shack. Do they still have real Radio Shacks where you live? Up here they all look like strip mall kiosks or sub-compact shoppettes full of cell phones, related accessories, and a few useful objects here and there. When I was a child, going to radioshack was fun. They had stuff that was radioshack brand and it was decent. You could get metal detectors, walkie talkies, and anything you needed for electronic hobbies. You can’t get any of that now. Is this happening in your neck of the woods?

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Our local Radio Shack hasn’t changed for 20 years. It’s in the same location on Ventura Boulevard, and it apparently gets enough business that it stays open. Being that it’s walking distance I generally go there when I need something. I bought more stuff there before Fry’s opened in Burbank, and I got my Tandy computer there many years ago when they first came out. I remember the old Allied Radio Shack days just after WW II. This isn’t like that, but it’s still a fairly cool place.

INSS MacArthur

Dr. Pournelle;

It was inevitable — and gladly so — that some 3D modelling wizards out there would build images of the MacArthur [although they misidentify it as the Leif Ericson].

Here are the links:

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port09.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port10.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port11.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port18.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port19.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port20.html

The last one could be a Motie copy just before its destruction inside of Murcheson’s Eye.

Pete Nofel

My pictures of my model of INSS Macarthur are here http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosreports/macarthur.html

I liked the model enough that I came up with reasons for its shape and design. And see http://www.angelfire.com/trek/deangelisium/inssmac.html which is gorgeous. Thanks.

Who to admit, follow up

Hello Jerry,

I forgot to add, in the frantic race to save the world’s GLBT’s from

the stigma of being ridiculed, there was NO suggestion that Coptic

Christians in Egypt, or for that matter, Christians in general,

should be given preferential immigration status just because they

were, as Christians, being murdered in wholesale quantities by their

governments, friends, and neighbors.

Of course, given the all out war against Christianity being waged by

the US Government inside the US, we should be grateful that the State

Department isn’t ARMING the Egyptian Muslims who are murdering

the……….

Oh wait, never mind.

Bob Ludwick

several comments

Jerry:

Several comments on yesterday’s posts.

I spent two semesters as a visiting professor at the Marmara University School of Engineering in Istanbul. Every one of my Turkish faculty colleagues had received his/her PhD at a university in either Europe or the US. They were reaching the point where Turkey could begin to produce engineering PhDs domestically, with quality comparable to those from Europe or the US. The Dean of Engineering was later picked to head TUBITAK, the Turkish equivalent of the National Science Foundation. Her major contribution there was to break up the "old boy" network that kept younger researchers from getting grants. While she was still at Marmara, I had provided her with samples of the materials we used at my home base, University of Dayton Research Institute. She got a lot of bad press for upsetting a lot of rice bowls, but she had the backing of the government, and succeeded in opening up Turkish science. She recently retired. I don’t know if her reforms will be continued.

Regarding the effects of Federal funding on science, in my 1992 book SCIENCE FUNDING: POLITICS AND PORKBARREL, I examined the extent to which Federal money had corrupted the scientific enterprise in the US. I’m sure it has gotten worse since then, but I’ve retired from the grant-hustling game, and no longer keep track.

I was surprised but pleased to find that Herman Kahn’s books are still in print. With nuclear weapon proliferation continuing, Kahn’s thinking remains relevant. In my 1988 book A FIGHTING CHANCE: THE MORAL USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, I applied Just War Doctrine to the use of nuclear weapons for war-fighting, not just for deterrence. I’m afraid that, too, may become relevant again.

Joseph P. Martino

So am I, and there isn’t so much debate as there used to be. I find that STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY and my old USAF study of stability are in use in some graduate classes at major universities and war colleges, so at least there’s some discussion of these matters or importance.

This article makes a good point of the rise in government spending. It’s not gone down since 1954

With those numbers in mind, some cynics might assume that government spending has grown over the past 55 years just to keep pace with inflation. Others might point out that there are a lot more Americans for government to serve today than there were back in 1954.

But the truth is that adjusting for population growth and inflation doesn’t even begin to account for the explosion of government spending. Since 1965, the year the Beatles played Shea Stadium and the miniskirt came to America, government spending has grown faster than the combined total of inflation plus population growth every year but one.

If government spending in America had just held pace with population growth and inflation since 1954, government spending today would total $1.3 trillion. Instead, spending this year will top $5.4 trillion.

http://takimag.com/article/the_roots_of_voter_anger_go_back_to_1954

Dave Krecklow

GDP

In reference to Steve’s email….

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)….

Federal Expenditures = government spending So, Federal Expenditures per capita per GDP is …

Federal Expenditures/Capita/(private consumption + gross investment + Federal Expenditures + (exports − imports))

So, of course its close to constant! You’ve just eliminated something that makes up a huge percentage. The news media likes to talk about GDP, but we really need a new metric. GDP assumes that government spending has no negative impacts on the private sector. It also means that if I am Obama and want to pump up GDP artificially, I can borrow a bunch of money from China, spend it here, and tell everyone GDP looks better…

Has Larry Niven found the new term to describe the President, "Lead from Behind" to be amusing? I laughed when I heard it, because I really do think our current administration is filled with controlling bullies and cowards….

Love your work!

Best,

Brendan

"The relevant statistic is not raw dollars spent, but instead is Federal Expenditures per capita per GDP"

political sleight of hand – counting population growth twice since population growth affects GDP.

By this formula he is admitting the Federal proportion has grown with the square of population growth and such trends are clearly unsustainable.

The formula he should be using is

Federal Expenditure per capita per GDP PER CAPITA

or simplifying Federal expenditure as a proportion of GDP

—————————-

"Hansen’s Bulldog", according to the Register article, says that warming has been "between 0.014C and 0.018C a year" which (A) looks to be well inside any margin of error and (B) not remotely catastrophic or even outside historical experience. And this is the worst "Bulldog" can claim.

Neil Craig

Government attempts at micromanagement create perverse incentives as universities game the system.

"Students whose A-level grades fall just short of AAB next year could be at risk of missing out on a university place altogether, a number of institutions have warned." <http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=418369&c=1>

"A pre-1992 university has cut almost £1 million in planned cash support for poorer students while offering tuition-fee discounts for high-achieving applicants so that it can bid for extra places on two fronts." <http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=418367&c=1>

Cheating in the examination system: <http://preview.tinyurl.com/clyv6oh> <http://preview.tinyurl.com/7csm8el> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16076471> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16067541>

I’m beginning to have second thoughts about staying around to watch the train wreck.

—

Harry Erwin, PhD

"If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

A school board member in Florida doesn’t know any of the answers to the 10th grade Florida math test. The test is helpfully included.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/12/sandbagging/

Oh dear.

A couple of the questions used notation I don’t know, and a friend noticed that question #2 is a bit ill-defined, but I fail to see how someone with a BS was unable to do any of the questions. The board member in question said that no one in his circle of friends has to do problems like this at work. Is the purpose of the math curriculum to teach people how to do specific problems they will have to do some day or teach them how to address and solve what questions may arise. Note that in many of the algebra story problems, the test actually sets up the equations for the test taker.

I must admit that I wasn’t expecting to see A Clockwork Orange and Apocalypse Now show up in a 10th grade math test.

Mike Johns

Mail 703 Wednesday, December 07, 2011

· Exponential spending

· Sources and sinks for CO2

· Lunar Eclipse

· Herman Kahn books available

Federal Expenditures per capita per GDP

Hi Jerry-

Your assertion that Federal Spending is growing exponentially is false, or at least is misleading.

The relevant statistic is not raw dollars spent, but instead is Federal Expenditures per capita per GDP, which has been almost exactly constant over the past century.

The real problem is that the private sector is collapsing. This collapse is in part due to poor governance at the Federal, State, and Municipal level.

Lets get the facts right. Only then will we get the solution right.

Best,

-Steve=

Federal expenditures rise essentially monotonically (with the exception of the two years when Newt Gingrich was Speaker and William Clinton was President). The doubling time has come down dramatically. I can recall when it was considered a crisis because the Federal budget was $100 Billion; that was in Lyndon Johnson’s day and the financing of the Great Society.

Meanwhile the federal debt has risen and rises monotonically. When we speak of “cuts” we talk of reducing the rate of growth of spending and the deficit. I fail to see how it is misleading to call this exponential rise of spending. We continue to spend more money than we have, and we pay it out to obtain services we do not need, or at least do not prefer. We continue to find new ways to take money out of the private sector in order to pay for government including exponentially growing pensions.

Of course the private sector is collapsing. All those who earn money must allocate that money, not to profitable investments, but to paying interest on mounting debts, paying pensions to retired bunny inspectors, paying for whatever whim the command economy is good for us: what else would you expect?

The facts are that we spend too darned much money on things we don’t need and often don’t want, and that trend continues upward monotonically; and if that isn’t ‘exponential growth’ then I do not think it is particularly misleading either. If we don’t get spending under control we will regret it. In fact we already do.

The Red Green Show

I’m afraid this recent Chaos Manor posting :

http://jerrypournelle.com/jerrypournelle.c/chaosmanor/#irony

exemplifies how Industrial strength bogosity is often substituted for

science in the climate wars.

The simple fact is that a computer glitch transposed red and green in the

Ibuku climate satellite graphics seen on Japanese TV . Industrial nations

continue to be CO2 sources and agrarian nations sinks.

Only constant vigilance can deliver your readers from the hacks who have

predictably tried to transform this simple error into a Fatal Flaw In The

Warmist Hoax.

Lord knows I’ve tried to put their shenanigans in perspective:

http://takimag.com/article/climate_of_here#axzz1Y2nc8fO1.html

—

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics

Harvard University

I had my doubts about all that. Thanks for setting the record straight. One thing about this place, we manage to get the facts right.

NSA Career

Jerry,

Came across this when I was helping my grandson research scholarships. Having worked for the NSA for 12 years, and one of it’s companion organizations for 9 years, I can tell you this is a pretty amazing deal. Perhaps your readers would be interested.

Stokes Educational Scholarship Program

Paid tuition ,Year-round salary, Work experience, Guaranteed employment

Major in computer science or computer/electrical engineering

Eligible to be granted a security clearance

GPA 3.0 or above; SAT 1600 or ACT 25

Work during summer for the National Security Agency

Agree to work for NSA for at least 1 ½ times the length of study upon graduation

www.NSA.gov/Careers http://www.NSA.gov/Careers

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Steve jobs said that he did not make Apple computers and electronics in general in the United States because the education system did not produce enough competent engineers to allow good design, manufacturing, and quality control. I do agree that a career in government service may be a good choice given the way our economy is going. Whether it is good for the nation to have more and more of the quality people we do have go into government jobs is something else again. At some point we have to start producing things. Creating wealth. And yes, I know, protecting the nation is important.

Lunar Eclipse

http://whoknew.news.yahoo.com/who-knew/lunar-eclipse-27509751.html#crsl=%252Fwho-knew%252Flunar-eclipse-27509751.html

Here it Central US we might be able to catch a glimpse, but those west of here have a better chance.

Harrah. I probably will not get up to see it, but some may want to.

Oath of Fealty

Dr Pournelle,

The business-as-city model you and Larry Niven proposed in Oath of Fealty may become reality: Honduras has passed and amendment to their Constitution enabling the government to create REDs, special development regions with their own legal personality and jurisdiction, their own administrative systems and laws, and the ability to negotiate treaties (subject to approval by a majority in Congress); see <http://chartercities.org/blog/191/a-new-city-in-honduras> for details.

—Joel Salomon

Oath of Fealty was begun in the 1970’s just after we wrote MOTE in GOD’s EYE. It was put off because Niven became obsessed with doing INFERNO, and became the out third best-seller. When we wrote it small computers had not been fully developed and the Internet had not appeared at all, but we managed to project enough high technology in the right directions to keep the story reasonably current; and the social problems addressed in Oath are going to be quite real. OATH offers a different way of high quality life, and I would not be surprised to see something of the sort evolve over time, On the gripping hand, I would have expected to see Todos Santos built and occupied by 2015.

: You can probably appreciate this

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/06/cancer-patients-welfare-work-tests

—

Harry Erwin

harry.erwin@btinternet.com

Indeed I can, Thanks,

Jerry

US military pays SETI to check Kepler-22b for aliens:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/06/seti_checks_out_kepler_habitable_exoplanets/

Quite prudent.

Ed

APOD: 2011 December 6 – Jupiter Rotation Movie from Pic du Midi,

Jerry

A movie of Jupiter – one full rotation, in all of its majesty:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111206.html

Ed

Subject: Globe slowly warming, insists ‘Hansen’s Bulldog’

From the article:

"It’s a case of making statistics show what you want it to prove in the first place," physicist and science author Dr David Whitehouse told us. "I don’t believe you can take away three big effects, and be sure the little effects you’ve got left are due to man."

"Statistics can be useful as a tool to discover things you couldn’t otherwise find. Or they can be used to prove things you want to prove. This looks like the latter."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/06/ramsdorf_foster_still_warming_no_really/

I would have thought that it is self evident that (1) the Earth began to cool around 1325 after the long Viking Warm period, and (2) it began to warm about 1800, and has continued to warm at about a degree a century ever since. There is a ripple variance caused by the solar cycle, and there is a larger warming/cooling cycle of about a 40 year period. We’re at the end of the cooling part of that, and we ought to see warming begin again. We’re watching. And we’re refining our methods for watching.

We know we are in an Interglacial Period. And I would presume that most people would rather see it warm than have the Ice come back.

Subject: Boffins: Japan was hit by ‘double-wave’ tsunami

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/06/merging_tsunami_japan_nasa/

It sure was

Gave Up Looking

Your comment on the email from "George" is correct; "given up looking for work" has nothing to do with the exhaustion of unemployment benefits. (AFAIK, the government does not even use any words like "given up looking for work," but I might be wrong on this point.) The reason I’m writing to you is to say that countless people who speak out on unemployment make George’s error, and this is "interesting" (massively annoying) because the government has been using a poll called the "Current Population Survey," or "Households Survey," to estimate the number of unemployed since the 1940s.

I find it hard not to think of errors like that one as deliberate, lying propaganda. Yes, I know, people don’t check the claims that they circulate, but I’m cantankerous, and besides, for all I know, this particular error may actually have originated as left-wing propaganda at some time in the past 70 years. I don’t know that it did, but it strikes me that way. I’ve heard people who really ought to know better make the error. Why would a person arbitrarily dream up a link between unemployment benefits and government estimation of the number of unemployed? Years ago, before I knew the answer, I didn’t do that. I *wondered* how the government came up with its figures.

The CPS (Current Population Survey) polls about 60,000 households in total, but only something like 40,000 in any given month. Once they call you, they ask you if you’d be willing to be polled for 18 months. If you say no, you’re not part of the survey. If you say yes, then you’ll be polled during something like 10 of the 18 months. (My figures might be a little bit off.)

The poll contains quite a number of questions. If I recall correctly, none of them has anything to do with unemployment benefits. With a little work, you can find it online at either the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the Census Bureau. (The CPS is a collaborative project of those two.)

If you publish this, please don’t use my last name. Just identify me as "Bill M."

Bill M

How unemployment is measured

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a fairly nice website that documents how their data is collected — http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed — and you are correct that George was mistaken. Unemployment claims are not factored into the numbers. But it is something of a distinction without a difference. Until unemployed persons’ unemployment insurance runs out the government will continue to pay them to be unemployed. They will go through the motions of "actively looking for work" even if they are absolutely sure they are pumping a dry hole. Once the unemployment benefit runs out their answers to the BLS unemployment interviewers are likely to move them to the "discouraged workers" (non-unemployed) category. So unemployment insurance claims aren’t used to calculate the unemployment rate, but they might as well be.

Lee Haslup

I would be very doubtful of the information I got from interviews on subjects like this, and it would be expensive to verify it. What we do know is that we are paying people not to work, and it is proposed that we continue paying them not to work out of compassion. Those who do work are invited to spread the wealth around. In other times and places this has had certain effects on incentives.

If you pay people to be unemployed, you will find a steadily growing number of people applying for that job. The theory of unemployment  compensation was to be a means for making the transition easier. It was not to create the job of being unemployed. The demand for a free good has not real limits; pay someone enough not to work at a job he doesn’t want, and he will certainly prefer to be unemployed. From the view of compassion and fair play this may be the right result; but someone must pay for that compassion, and that person will question whence came the obligation to continue working in order to pay someone else not to work. That has an effect on the economy. For more details, study the command economies of the Soviet Union and the satellites. Eventually “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”  I recall on my visit to Moscow all the bottled water was bought up at the hotel almost instantly; but the manager of the hard currency store had no real incentive to get more brought in even though the sale was assured; and there was no bottled water, leaving us to drink tea or tapwater, or something stronger for the rest  of the week. So it goes.

Taxes and US debt

I make no claims of economic expertise, and I understand that our primary problem now is much too large a government, but restricting myself to taxes alone, I note that corporate tax is something of a sales tax. That means that we already have a tax in place that extracts payment from everyone (but many do not realize that), and that is only semi-progressive. I’m not really in favor of corporate taxes, just see the very small silver lining behind the corporate tax cloud. I’d rather have the economic growth we’d get if corporate taxes were eliminated.

As for the gargantuan debt the US is piling up, I suspect that in the end we’ll inflate our way through it. The politicians will not muster the courage, or risk the loss of their offices, to enact what it takes to pay off the debt. Instead, they’ll sidle into a solution by allowing inflation to reduce the debt. Inflation amounts to a tax on wealth, as opposed to a tax on income, and here, too, the rate is not progressive. Damned small silver lining, but still… Also there is no way to solve the problem of government extraction of too much of the GDP except by reducing the amount of government.

My hope is that I might be nimble enough with my investments to surf the inflation wave without wiping out. Meanwhile I’m heavily into gold.

Michael D. Biggs

Corporate taxes are not quite sales taxes, in that they fall on all corporate profits, not just goods to be sold to the public, but clearly if the corporation is to survive, it must collect what it pays as taxes from those to whom it sells goods or services. Thus a corporation tax is in a sense a sales tax, but it is not always seen as one. A direct consumption tax has a more direct effect. Rome tried sumptuary laws to limit conspicuous consumption. That sometimes worked. Often it did not.

  As to inflation, controlling it Is difficult. I have a German First Class postage stamp; it was issued at 3 pfennigs, and twice overprinted. The second overprint is for 3 mird millionen Marks. That is certainly inflation.

I also have a million Real note from Brazil. I think I got a little change when I used one to buy a newspaper. That, too, is inflation. Brazil now has that under control. We have not yet started to inflate; not real inflation of that kind. We may see it yet.

The decline of science

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I direct your attention to this article at RealClearMarkets discussing the decline of science, noting especially the modern problem of irreproducible results :

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/12/05/the_financially_driven_erosion_of_scientific_integrity_99401.html

"

While outright data fabrication does occur, it is rare. The bigger threat to scientific integrity is the temptation to cherry pick results as they are produced by a Darwinian horde of apprentices clamoring for admission into the guild. Failed experiments never get reported, the definition of failure sometimes including results that call a PI’s pet theories into question. Confirmation bias pervades the process much more so than in industry since the consequences of spending billions drilling a dry hole are severe.

But what are the consequences for publishing a paper with irreproducible results? What becomes of tenured PIs whose junk science leads us down blind alleys, polluting the literature while precipitating hundreds of millions of dollars in someone else’s losses?

They write another grant application."

Reading this, I am struck by an observation made by the comic strip "Clockwork comics", which despite it’s status as a fictional comic strip does an excellent job researching it’s historical material.

http://www.clockwork-comics.com/2011/05/05/more_genuine_pursuits/

Note the commentary at bottom — why did the Ottoman Empire’s science decline? While the standard explanation is that the Mongols destroyed their libraries, the modern interpretation is different; instead, it is believed that the Ottomans developed a scientific orthodoxy more concerned with protecting its own position and power than with objectivity. Result? It’s been almost a hundred years since the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and there is still very little original science of note anywhere in the Middle East. Outside of Israel, such scientists and engineers as do exist seem primarily used to copy cookbook recipes — much like your Codominium scientists.

Wahhabism is certainly no aid. But it turns out you don’t need religion as an excuse for imposing a mind-deadening orthodoxy. The desire of those who have already arrived to protect their rice bowl from young competitors is reason enough.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Science objectivity follow up

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Following up on my last missive regarding scientific objectivity, here is the issue of Science which the original article had referenced.

http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/data-rep/index.xhtml

As you can see, there is great concern over the fact that reams and reams of papers are being churned out and *none of it is reproducible*. I’m not quite sure how to fix it. After all, it’s not like money corrupting the process is anything new, but for some reason the machine seems to be breaking down when it wasn’t before.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

And to enter as a scientist you must generally incur lifelong debt. That can’t be good. Those with enormous debts have enormous incentives to find the results that produce more funding. Political funding follows. It is difficult to be independent if one is a bondsman. We are busily converting the entire educated class into bondsmen. Certain consequences are predictable.

Just right?

<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepscicon-briefing.html>

—–

Roland Dobbins

Herman Kahn Books

Jerry,

Much to my surprise Mr. Kahn’s "Cold War" books remain in print. I found them on Amazon.com in paperback: "On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios", "Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s" and "On Thermonuclear War"

I was unaware of "On Escalation." I will be adding it to my library.

His "Coming Boom" and "The Next 200 Years" are out of print.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

As we reenter the world of deterrence and potential nuclear death, Herman is well worth reading again. One must think about the unthinkable, and paying bureaucrats to do it may not be the optimum way to keep the republic.