Mail 681 Sunday July 3, 2011 – 1
Balancing the Budget
Canadian Defense Spending
Twitter Post on DSK
A twitter post 10 minutes AFTER an arrest isn’t remarkable in the modern world. It was incorrect anyway as he was arrested at the airport and not at the hotel. How many people on the Air France flight 23 would have seen police remove him from the plane?
"Jonathan Pinet, a youth activist in President Sarkozy’s UMP party, wrote "a mate in the US just told me that DSK’s been arrested in a hotel in NYC an hour ago". A second, three minutes later, read: "I got it from a friend of his who works at the hotel".
A blogger on Le Post, a news website, pointed out that the tweet was posted at 4.59pm New York Time, just 10 minutes after Mr Strauss-Kahn was seized on an Air France plane. Mr Pinet had said he had been arrested an hour previously in his hotel, raising questions on how he had obtained the information so fast."
LTM
I would presume that the NY DI’s office is a fairly leaky affair. And given that DSK was the leading opposition candidate to the President of France, and given some of the antics of the 12th Bureau – who knows? An interesting mystery.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Hello Jerry,
"I would still doubt the accuracy of an average annual Earth temperature to a tenth of a degree even for the present year, and I know no evidence at all that we have 1/10 degree accuracy for the year 1800 or even 1890; but at least it will be interesting to see the data."
And wisely so.
A thought experiment: If you, for whatever purpose, needed to know the ‘annual temperature’ of the county you live in, to an ACCURACY of
0.1 degree (C or F), can you think of a data acquisition system that would provide an answer in which you were confident?
I guess another way of thinking about the problem is: Can you DEFINE the ‘surface temperature of the Earth’ in such a way that it can with confidence be measured with a precision of 0.1 degree, and have we now or have we ever had a data acquisition system in place that is capable of making that measurement?
My opinion is that the answer to both questions is ‘No’.
Bob Ludwick
I have often asked that question of people who are supposed to know. The answers I get boil down to variants of "I don’t know but I have confidence in those who are doing it," and "Oh, you wouldn’t understand, it’s too complicated." That latter usually comes from someone I have already found inarticulate on the subject (of course many science people are) and who usually doesn’t impress me with his easy familiarity with differential equations (I no longer am either: that’s something that takes a lot of use and practice). I have poked through many references to explanations as to how data points and their weights in the global averages are selected, but I have yet to find one very satisfactory. It may be that I just can’t understand because it’s too complicated – which raises the interesting question of how do we know those who are spending our money understand it if they can’t explain? They usually get unhappy when questioned closely, too.
But with the release of the primary data we may find some answers. I sure don’t know how they know to 1/10th degree the average temperature of the Earth in 1776 or 1888 or for that matter in 1940. I know how to guess it within a degree or so, and I can find enough data on frozen rivers and growing seasons to get a feel for whether it was colder or hotter (seems reasonable to suppose that it was colder in 1776 than in 1888, and colder in 1888 than in 1940) but as to finding a reliable way to know how much colder, even to a degree, I don’t have the foggiest.
Balancing the budget
Hello Jerry,
You were right on about the silliness of the whole idea that the budget can be ‘balanced’, given the size of government. I particularly liked your suggestion that an income line item, ‘lots of money from the Easter Bunny’ is just as realistic as a large number of budget income line items that were put forward with a straight face.
Government always justifies the retention of a favored program (and its associated bureaucracy) by saying ‘It only costs a few dollars/ cents’ per citizen, it does a lot of good (always debatable), and everyone can surely afford such a pittance for so much good.’. Well, there are a LOT of government programs. And a lot of government employees and civilian contractors working on them. As a matter of fact, it is now to the point where the population is divided roughly in half: those who work for civilian purposes and those who are supported either directly by government or who work for a ‘civilian’
contractor which never pays a dime to one of its employees that didn’t come from a government contract. Of course in my case it is even worse, as in addition to drawing a salary from a wholly owned subsidiary of the government for 15 years I am also drawing a retirement from the government, plus social security and medicare. I am not unique.
While the programs are justified by citing their miniscule individual cost, it would be just as valid, given our current 50/50 government/ civilian split, to view the situation as one in which each individual civilian is responsible, completely, for supplying the salary and benefits for a specific government employee. Since for equivalent jobs the government employee typically makes more than his civilian sponsor, what are the chances of ‘balancing the budget’ by confiscating ever more of the civilian’s resources?
The ONLY way to EVER balance the budget is the make the government smaller. DRASTICALLY smaller. Remember: Government size, power, control over its citizens, and command of resources increase monotonically with time. All governments. Smaller, at least enough smaller to matter, ain’t happenin’. Default and/or Weimar style inflation are. So are SWAT Teams for every department of government (IRS and Park Service come to mind), to ensure that objection to government stupidity doesn’t get out of hand (from the government’s perspective).
Bob Ludwick
The Canadian example comes to mind. Remember when Canadian coinage was a nuisance and the Canadian dollar was a joke? They aren’t laughing so much now. Of course Canada has one enormous advantage over the US, as does most of Europe: no need for a defense budget. The Americans will, at need, still be overpaid, oversexed, and over there.
= = = = = == = =
Canadian Defense Spending
Dr. Pournelle:
On Sunday 3 July 2011 you said in your daybook: "Of course Canada has one enormous advantage over the US, as does most of Europe: no need for a defense budget."
With respect, I beg to differ. Canada does indeed have a defence budget, and we always have. Granted, sometimes we spend more and sometimes we spend less, dependent entirely upon which party happens to be in power at the time. But Canada has always had a standing army of brave men and women ready to serve wherever the need arises.
We may not be as active in policing the world as the American armed forces, but our soldiers, sailors, and airmen have served with distinction in peacekeeping missions all across this globe for more years than I’ve been alive, and continue to do so to this day. Currently our soldiers are actively participating in missions in Afghanistan and Libya, as well as participating in anti-piracy missions in the Horn of Africa. Indeed, Robert Gates himself has praised Canada’s contributions to NATO missions for years.
Would we rather fight with you than against you? Hell yes. That’s just good sense, I think. We’d rather be your ally than your friend. But don’t underestimate Canada. We’re not above taking up arms if it comes down to it. I invite you to remember your own comments about how when you were serving in Korea you and your fellows were mighty happy that the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was on your side.
Or, perhaps I’m simply feeling a tad more patriotic than usual. We did just, after all, celebrate Canada Day.
I wish you the best of health, Doctor.
Very best regards,
Michael J A Tyzuk, CDOSB
Thank you. I meant no denigration of Canada, more a comment on the endless commitments the US has undertaken since the end of the Cold War. I see no need for a continuation of NATO, as an example. I believe the US would be better of with bilateral defense pacts, beginning of course with Canada. The need for mutual defense with Canada is fairly obvious, with positive results for both sides. In contrast, although I have many friends in Estonia and the old Estonian government in exile that operated during the Cold War awarded me an Estonian medal for my work in the Captive Nations program prior to the Treaty of Leningrad, I do not see why the United States wants or needs a mutual defense treaty with Estonia; I could make the same inquiries regarding most other European nations.
It is still the case that Canada has a much smaller defense establishment than would be needed by most wealthy nations with enormous coastlines (we will stipulate that for over a century there has been no need to defend Canada’s southern border). That helped in Canada’s economic miracle. Of course no one in Washington seems aware that Canada had an economic miracle.
Canada spends about the same percentage of GDP on defense as Brazil and Norway. I’m not saying that’s unreasonable. It’s in fact fairly normal (as opposed to Mexico which spends about a third of that). The US spends about three times that percentage. That’s a heavy burden.
