| Friday,
March 13, 2009 Subject: Interesting, but vaguely worrisome
Came across this article today in the WSJ
http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB123681860305802821.html , by Daniel Henniger.
I think the editorialist is right that this is as
explicit a statement by the left of its concept of wealth distribution
(although buried in a "popular" version of the budget that few of the
populace will ever bother to read or would even know of its existence). It
does quite explicitly demonstrate the administrations real position on the
political spectrum as being well to the left of center on economic and
social policy. I've always had a certain sense of ironic wonder (amusement)
at the idea of the left's elites and their apparent self-loathing (note that
few of them actually "redistribute" their own wealth in anything but
rhetoric).
I do, however, admit to being somewhat conflicted
about the subject. While I have no qualms about people having the right to
enjoy the fruits of their labor and investments, the Piketty & Saez premise
does leave me wondering - is there an inherent structural problem in
unchecked accumulation and concentration of a society's resources?
If their analysis (regardless of their agenda or
sociological premise) is correct, does it raise the possibility that we are
evolving a new form of aristocracy? Resource control, historically, has been
the instigating factor in the emergence of elites in stratified societies.
While feudal aristocracies were in part based on force of arms they were
also a matter of control of the land and its resources. Control was not
always acquired by force initially , but also through successful
accumulation of key resources (force often being required to retain the
resources obviously). We can already see how the financial prerequisite of
high political office is increasingly out of reach of any candidate from the
middle-classes. There is an ever growing disparity in the affluence and
income potentials of the different income and production brackets.
Meanwhile the basic conservative market premise is
that accumulation of wealth in those upper economic echelons fuels
industries and allows entrepreneurial innovations that in turn create new
job opportunities and economic mobility for the lower economic groups. In
essence, although the upper few take larger slices of the pie - they
ultimately make the pie big enough for everyone to have a healthy share
also.
I can see both points, and do tend to lean towards the
latter as a more equitable and sustainable form.
The question then becomes - to what extent is that, in
fact, occurring and is there a systemic equilibrium point between healthy
accumulation, redistribution, and reinvestment? If so, where are we in
relation to that point? What really is the economic mobility available to
the populace? The mobility between lower and middle economic classes is
generally quite fluid, but what about the middle and upper? Is such a
crystalized pseudo-aristocracy necessarily a problem or does it allow too
much concentration of economic and political power of the unrestrained sort
contradictory to the premise of a representative democratic republic?
The various mismanagement, unintended (one would
charitably hope) consequences of meddling, occasional but substantial
frauds, and "black box" market mentalities on risk and investment creating
an almost "Vegas" attitude towards the stock markets that have put us in the
current economic conundrum seems to suggest that we can't overly rely on the
"noblesse oblige" of those in control of our financial institutions. Clearly
many people dropped the ball, were ignorant of the consequences (some
willfully so), and put faith in experts who may or may not have been such.
Rhetorical questions all to some extent, but ones that
I think bear some serious thought at some point. Times like these I really
wish there were a lot less voodoo in the social sciences, since the
"technology" of constructing and maintaining a viable society really are
matters of long-term importance to those that don't wish to go the way of so
many failed systems. I'd be curious to hear what you and your readers think.
Regards, J. Scott Cardinal
(reluctant voodoo scientist, archaeology branch)
===========
Note from AFA President -- The Budget
Thursday, March 12, 2009
AFA Members, Congressional staffers, Civic Leaders,
and DOCA members, I remain concerned about the overall level of government
spending . and about the amount given to Defense. Last week a Senator
released some very interesting numbers on the growth of budgets from 2008 to
2009. He cited the numbers based on the sub-committee which was responsible
for the appropriation. We have put his numbers on a slide on our website.
You can find it here:
http://www.afa.org/Professional
Development/IssueBriefs/budgetstats.pdf
<http://r.listpilot.net/c/afa/3o3s710/1r3yb>
The major point to take away from this slide is that
most appropriations have grown by an average of 80 percent. So . how much is
Defense spending expected to grow. The article at this link [as well as
others]
http://www.afa.org/EdOp/
2009/edop_3-10-09.asp <http://r.listpilot.net/c/
afa/3o3s710/1r3zc>
) says it will increase by only 4%. This, when the economy needs help . and
production lines of aircraft are preparing to shut down - which will
eliminate key, high-paying manufacturing jobs. It is obvious to most that
having been in constant combat for over 18 years . and with the average age
of the fleet approaching one-quarter of a century, the Air Force . much like
the Navy . needs to recapitalize. It will need funds and our support to do
it.
For your consideration.
Mike
Michael M. Dunn, Lt Gen (Ret) President
Of course the Air Force Association will have that
view, but I do wonder.
===========
Re. President Obama’s speech on education:
Dr Pornelle,
I read through the president’s speech, keeping in mind
your insights on education that you’ve posted.
Everything you’ve said about jobs training for the
lower 50–60%? Here’s what Obama said:
“That’s why workers without a four-year degree
have borne the brunt of recent layoffs (…). That’s why, of the 30
fastest growing occupations in America, half require a Bachelor’s degree
or more. By 2016, four out of every 10 new jobs will require at least
some advanced education or training.So let there be no doubt: The future
belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens .”
Let’s see: four jobs in ten will require advanced
education. So let’s prepare all ten students (badly) for the four jobs. And
let the other six jobs go to China, I suppose.
(By the way, I’m an engineering student, working on my
Master’s degree in one of the best schools in the country, and have found
the job market nearly dead for the last six months. My wife’s been
encouraging me to find a temporary unskilled job. Those do exist.)
—Joel Salomon
Most people neither want nor need nor even can use
a four year liberal arts education; the traditional "college education."
Most people need training in specific skills. Those are taught quite
differently from the Socratic process used in liberal arts education. The
goal of the liberal arts education is to sharpen the question asking
tendencies and abilities of the brightest; perhaps 20%, perhaps fewer,
certainly no more than 30%. It is true enough that the education of the
brightest is terribly important because much -- not all, but much -- of the
innovation and new discovery will come from them. We do need people who can
unravel highly complex ideas and come up with policies. In The Caine Mutiny
the Navy was described as an organization designed by geniuses to be run by
idiots. While that's not entirely true, it is one picture of how society
works: a small number conceive of the new discoveries while others apply
them -- or maintain the society so that it will exist to allow the
discoveries. Someone has to grow the food. Someone has to take out the
garbage. Someone has to fill the potholes. It used to be that someone had to
clean up the horse manure left by all the horses used for transportation,
but we've replaced horse manure with smog; we don't need so many manure
collectors, and we'd starve if we had to depend on animal power for growing
food (as we more or less did when I was young; I recall growing cotton and
corn on farms plowed and sown by mule power).
Creeping credentialism, imposed largely by those
who profit from the education industry, has changed things enormously, but
rather than facilitating this trend we ought to be dismantling it.
Unrestricted free trade enriches those who find
ways to profit from exporting jobs; and it makes goods a little cheaper for
everyone. It doesn't worry a lot about how those goods are to be paid for.
The exported job pays no taxes; the overseas worker isn't likely to buy
anything from the US, and thus isn't going to do much to support the US
economy. The money borrowed to buy the imported goods will have to be paid
for. Hugh tariff walls make for lousy goods; competition is good for
everyone; but unrestricted free trade, coupled with numerous regulations
meant to protect the worker's welfare, and coupled with an education system
designed to issue credentials and turn out a lot of sociology majors,
women's studies majors, art history majors -- that is a formula for
disaster. The results are predictable and were predicted, and we reap the
whirlwind.
Teaching American to be productive is terribly
important; but our school system doesn't seem to have that goal. Give the
people a decent set of skills and keep energy costs low and you'll see the
economy soar; but I fear that this is either unknown to those to run things.
or it is so counter to the interests of certain groups, that it's not very
likely. Yet who doubts it?
Half the children are below average, but that does
not mean they cannot be useful and productive. They may never read and
understand Rilke and Shakespeare and Balzac, but that does not mean they
cannot learn and use skills.
==========
Re. Rod Wittler's news pointer on the nation’s nuclear
stock:
For a less dispiriting view, see “What About The
Nukes?” in this month’s IEEE Spectrum magazine, at <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar09/7827>
. The authors seem of the opinion that maintaining the weapons is a feasible
option, even if some old parts are no longer being made and need modern
replacements (e.g., vacuum tubes).
Defense Secretary Robert Gates disagrees, and thinks
we need to replace the old weapons entirely with new designs. I do not know
how he intends to do this given the moratorium on testing.
—Joel Salomon
===========
Spin Battery: Physicist Develops Battery Using New
Source Of Energy
Researchers at the University of Miami and at the
Universities of Tokyo and Tohoku, Japan, have been able to prove the
existence of a "spin battery," a battery that is "charged" by applying a
large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel
junction (MTJ).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
releases/2009/03/090311162807.htm
Bill Shields
===========
Jerry,
Regarding your correspondent R. Rose who wants a new
computer but does not wish to be saddled with Vista: one may simply buy a
machine from Dell running XP. The trick is to purchase from Dell's small
business division, but I bought a new machine running XP Pro last week. The
other advantage of buying from the small business division is that they most
kindly do NOT load up the computer with a bunch of "trial software" aka
crapware.
As for Win 7, several of my comp sci buddies have
downloaded it, and have found it to be faster, more responsive, and more
stable than Vista. So far the issues have been the minor ones you would
expect with a pre-release OS, namely a lack of drivers for some high end
hardware, such as the latest generation of bleeding edge video cards.
The USAF is still using XP. Vista is not considered
reliable enough.
Best regards as always,
Mark E. Horning, Physicist,
Alternatively, get a Mac (pricey but darned good
and the package with iWorks may be all the software needed). And Ubuntu
Linux for the more daring. Stay tuned for more on all this.
===========
Dear Doctor Pournelle,
Your correspondent "J", writing in "Mail" for
03/12/09, made "light: (no pun intended) of the likelihood of lasers being
some sort of "Final Weapon" by arguing that since mirrors are used to form
and guide the laser beam, a simple mirror on the intended target will either
diffuse the beam, or in his homey example, a shaving mirror in an
infantryman's hand will deflect the bean to the shooter, blinding him
I am not sure to what extent the latest laser weapons
in development use mirrors, but to whatever extent they do, I would bet
these mirrors are formed with computer controlled polishing systems that
result in "astronomical" grade reflecting surfaces. Such mirros would have
to reflect well above one part in a thousand (million?) of the beams energy
if they were to avoid a catastrophic meltdown of the reflecting surface.
Simple math shows that if you have a One Megawatt beam, and if your mirror
reflects 99.9 per cent of the beams energy, then it also absorbs 0.01
percent. With that one Megawatt beam, 0.01 per cent absorbed comes to one
kilowatt. That's probably acceptable in a system with active cooling, and if
it is fired in very short (i.e. microsecond or shorter) bursts.
The laser "shooter" can always turn off their laser
and recalibrate, or replace their mirror. His system might have redundant
mirrors. A defensive mirroring system would not have these choices when
under attack.
Not to mention that any man portable mirror, i.e. that
homey example of the wily trooper flicking his shaving mirror and blinding
the perfidious laser wielding enemy, just won't fly. Hauling about an
astronomical grade mirror, and subjecting it to all sorts of rude shocks and
casual bumps/nicks/oops moments? Imagine your average trooper with such a
device?
We had enough trouble with troops using the old M1
steel pot helmet as a cookpot, thus ruining the metal's temper, making it
much less effective as armor. Soldiers will always be thus.
That shaving mirror will absorb about ten percent or
more of the incident energy. If it is a one megawatt beam, the whole trooper
is a puff of smoke, no matter how good that mirror is. If it is a hundred
kilowatt beam, the mirror melts, the trooper is blinded with third degree
burns, and out of the fight. If it were "only" a ten kilowatt beam, the
trooper has the mirror explode in a few thousand pieces. Since my old
"military" shaving mirror, with the sighting hole for using it as an
emergency heliotelegraph, is made of a rather high quality and thick gauge
of stainless steel, this is a prospect I would not care to consider as
happening in mine own hand. There are better ways to commit "seppuku" on the
battlefield.
This is not to say that lasers are a final weapon. I
say they are not, with total confidence, because humans excel exceedingly at
two things military: Creating "Final Weapons", and finding ways around those
"final" weapons.
Think of all the "Final Weapons" we have had: The
crossbow, Greek Fire, the first firearms, the quick-firing bolt action
rifle, the machine gun, the quick-firing light artillery piece (the French
thought their seventy-five was such a war winner that they kept every detail
of its' advanced recoil system top secret for half a century. It was largely
what saved them in two Battles of the Marne. So the Germans went home,
thought about it for a decade, and came up with the modern tank and
"blitzkrieg" as solution as well as new "Final Weapon".)
Perhaps the closest to a Final Weapon deserving of the
name is the nuclear device. If you can get it to the target, there is no
real defense. This is, though, why they are not really usable weapons. They
are just large scale exterminating machines. Humans like to have someone
left to talk to and settle matters after they fight. I predict nuclear
weapons will never be used in significant numbers for intra-human conflict
(leaving aside the occasional one-off rogue state or terrorist sort of use,
which is always possible), but if we ever become involved in some sort of
"war of the worlds" scenario, all bets are off. A wolf will back off when
its wolf opponent bares its throat and submits. When a rabbit rolls over,
the wolf eats it.
Unless, of course, our opponent were to be baby
elephants! (FOOTFALL is such a great story!)
Petronius
Laser weapons need power sources and cooling
systems. They're pretty good at what they do. but of course there are
limits.
I 10 terawatt laser 9ground based with rocket
lofted mirrors) has seriously been proposed for strategic defense. As Lowell
Wood put it, you would need one per war.
==========
"We were watching it with bated breath. We didn't know
what was going to happen."
<http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96SPETG0&show_article=1>
-- Roland Dobbins
=============
Refusing to see
Hi, Jerry.
It's been a while since I visited your site, but
looking around helped clarify something for me: so many things in this world
are obvious, but actively ignored. I get tired of pointing out that water is
wet, fire is hot, and gravity attracts, especially when the reply is 'That
can't possibly be true, because if it was true, it would be too horrible.'
Some examples from military history in the last
century and a half:
I wondered how people could believe that bayonet and
saber assaults could suceed against defenders with magazine rifles and
machine guns, so I read some of the military literature of the late
nineteenth century, and found that the question of the impact of new weapons
was hotly debated in the armies of the developed world. Nor were the
arguments taking place without emperical evidence. For instance, in the
Franco-Prussian and Russo-Japanese Wars, frontal attacks almost always
failed, except as an expensive means of freezing the enemy in place while
the flank attack developed. Erskine Childers noted that British cavalry in
the Boer War almost always were repulsed when they attempted saber and lance
charges (see his War and the Arme Blanche, passim). And before WWI, pop-up
targets had been invented, like the ones sometimes used to train police
today. One officer reported that, in a simulated response to a surprise
attack (they were required to follow a set course with no scouting, the
notional enemy being aware of the course and 'attacking unexpectedly' at a
place of their choosing), his horse-cavalry machine gun unit managed to
dismount and get firing in less than twenty seconds, and get hits on eighty
percent of the pop-up targets, life-size representations of charging cavalry
at unknown ranges.
So, with range evidence like this available, plus the
results of actual combat, what was the response of the "professionals"? They
decided that the new weapons would indeed lead to massive casualties, and
that they had a tremendous problem on their hands, one they immediately set
out to solve -- not the problem of lowering casualties in attacks, but the
problem of getting the troops to attack in ways certain to lead to heavy
casualties. I find it obvious that either seeing their soldiers die was a
matter of indifference to the most of the WWI and pre-WWI high commanders,
or was even looked on as a positive benefit. Everyone tells me I must be
wrong about this, because no one would do such a thing, but no ever advances
an alternative theory that explains the evidence I found.
At Neuve Chapelle, the first British offensive of WWI,
the parts that worked were the surprise massing of troops, the hurricane
bombardment to break the German fortifications, and the fast assault on the
shaken defenders. The parts that failed were the frontal assaults on two
positions that weren't bombarded, the insistence on sticking to a rigid plan
rather than adapting to the unexpected, the repeated halts of those Brits
who'd broken through while conferring with Comanders far in the rear via
runners (this allowed the Germans to bring up reinforcements and plug the
hole in their line), and continuing the attacks for without adequate
artillery support against positions the enemy knew would be assaulted,
attacks continued for days on end. That parts that succeeded were
immediately abandoned, while the parts that failed were became standard
practice through the Somme Battles and the first half of the Paschendaele
Offensive. I find it obvious that the Haig and his staff thought that
winning battles was either undesirable in itself, or a bad idea if it
involved fighting in certain ways (and I could extend this with examples
from the French and German High Commands). Again, everyone tells me I must
be wrong, because the idea that horrendous casualties of WWI were
deliberately chosen by the commanders is too horrible to contemplate, but no
one meets the evidence.
During the Civil War in Russia between the Reds and
the Whites, I noticed that the Whites kept trying to get their British and
French "allies" to coordinate the attacks, so that the Reds would be pressed
from several directions at once. Instead, the British and French pulled the
supply and support plug on any advance that got too successful, allowing the
Bolsheviks to use their central position and railway net to concentrate
their forces and defeat the Whites. I find it obvious that the British and
French wanted the Bolsheviks to win the Civil War, but only after they'd
prolonged it as long as possible. Again, I'm told that couldn't be the case.
I've been reading a lot about Hitler and WWII
recently, and I keep coming across references to the "unique evil" of the
Nazi regime, said evil being demonstrated by their mass murders. Nazi mass
murder is treated as something one of a kind in history, even though
Communist mass murder proceeded it, accompanied it, followed it, and
accounted for something like four to eight times as many deaths. I can see
no conclusion except that the people who talk this way don't actually care
about murder, they care about why the murders happened.
And concerning your comments about McNamara and
attacking air fields, I'd say it's obvious that since 1950, it has been U.S.
policy that we must NOT win any shooting war we get into. Everyone denies
that one, too.
And so we come to the debate on fighters and air
superiority on your site currently. I notice "M" says <http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q1/mail558.html#air2>
first: "The Boyd/Sprey theory of the numerous light weight cheap dogfighter
never got much of an operational test. . . The USAF itself chose not to test
the Boyd/Sprey theory . . ." He then says: "The USAF's own experience from
1972 to 2008 says the light fighter theory hasn't worked for it in
practice." Together, those two statements come down to 'We don't need to
test no stinkin' theories, we already have THE TRUTH, and we ain't gonna try
numerous, inexpensive fighters, ever.'
Now, I don't claim to know enough about aircraft to
decide the issue of the F-22 vs. F-35. But I do know that the superior
performance of the Me-262 Swallow didn't help it much against the more
numerous, cheaper P-51s. I know that Erich Hartmann obtained the all-time
high score for air combat kills in the somewhat obsolescent Bf-109. I've
repeatedly read of fighter pilots saying that something like 67 - 80% of all
their victories were scored against pilots that had no idea they were about
to be attacked until the pilot who downed them opened fire. And I know that
Boyd and others swore that the F-16 was not the fighter they wanted, but one
deliberately bitched up by the Air Force development people, to keep it from
outperforming the F-15. All this makes it obvious to me that "M" and people
like him want the F-22 instead of the F-35 regardless of whether the F-22 is
the best choice for air superiority. (I'm certain he'll tell you I'm wrong,
too. What I don't expect him to do is lay out a research strategy to settle
the question.)
Increasingly, debate about public "issues" reminds me
of the 'Nigerian Banker' e-mails. It's insulting that people think I won't
see through such obvious fraud and resolute self-deception.
On more interesting subjects, Amazon delivered
Escape From Hell today, so I have a treat in store. In return, I commend
to you and all your readers the novels of A. Lee Martinez, which feature
such delights as zombie cows, vampires who've become real nuisances to their
friends since reading Dianetics, killer ducks, and "Empire City", where a
combat robot that developed the Free-Will Glitch and became a taxi driver is
annoyed that his therapist sees through him when he tries to lie to her.
Hilarious. On TV, try Joss Whedon's new series Dollhouse.
Best,
Stephen M. St. Onge Minneapolis, MN
Good to hear from you again. Thanks
Regarding Hitler and Stalin: as an undergraduate in
the 50's I was told by nearly every faculty member I met that Hitler was
worse because National Socialism was not in the Western Tradition, while
Marxism was. At the time I was sympathetic to that view; but it was obvious
to me that many of those academics were old lefties who needed self
justification for following The Line during the Hitler-Stalin pact ere.
Mosse had an entirely different picture, but then
Mosse was one of the great historical teachers of his generation. Perhaps of
all time.
============
Hoffman
Jerry,
A couple of quick thoughts in response to Hoffman:
1. I forget who said "the most expensive thing in the
world is an Army that can't do the job." Comparison of direct US spending
to, say, China, does not consider that American soldiers -- and the
industrial base that supplies them -- are paid more per month than most
equivalent Chinese make in a year.
2. Do not assume that if a large, initially planned
procurement, of a resource is cut, the savings is linear in proportion to
the reduction in procurement; instead, average unit prices increase
dramatically. It's often been noted here that per-unit production costs
don't stabilize until between 100 and 1000 units are produced. If a
procurement is budgeted at, for example, $25 billion for 1000 units (average
cost per unit $25 million), and the procurement is halved to 500 units, the
savings is not 500 x $25 million, but it's 500 x the marginal cost per unit,
which might be, say, $10 million. In this example, the actual savings is $5
billion, and the cost per unit grows to $20 billion / 500 = $40 million per
unit.
Procurement reform on both the government and the
contractor side is necessary. For one example, the annual uncertainty in the
budget, by itself, probably reduces productivity on the order of 10%: on
large procurements, that much time may be spent in replanning exercises as
the annual budget changes. Congressional aversion to paying the real costs
of a program up front also results in half-engineered systems which require
constant marginal improvements which double the time required for
development and quadruple the marginal costs of the up-front savings.
Conversely, cost-plus contracting rewards contractor inefficiency, which has
a similar effect on per-dollar purchased inefficiency. With intelligent
reforms, we could easily buy 30% more defense for the same budget.
Unfortunately, to do that, Congress would have to give up it's ability to
"pee in the soup" through annual redistribution of priorities, and Defense
contractors would give up a lot of the spare income they normally use to pay
lobbyists.
Jim
The $500 toilet seat for the B-52 happened this
way: when USAF ordered the B-52 force we -- I was at Boeing at the time, in
human factors -- told them to order spare parts, particularly stuff that
would be used a lot. The toilet station was one of those: in order to fit it
into the system it had to be a fairly unusual shape. USAF didn't get enough
money to order very many of those. Of course they wore out, but not before
the production line had been dismantled. To get another thousand toilet
seats required about $450,000 in setup costs, which was still cheaper than
machining them one at a time. The marginal cost of the seats was about ten
bucks. The average cost had to include the setup costs. They still use that
as an example of defense spending waste, but the waste came from not
ordering another thousand of the darned things when they were cheap.
This happens a lot in defense work. If some
speculator had ordered a bunch of those seats, warehoused them, and waited
for USAF to need them, he could have made a decent profit, but of course
he'd have been accused of profiteering and gouging and some excess profit
tax would have been imposed unless he had the good sense to have been
engaged in proper lobbying.
Thus be it ever when...
==========
laser mirrors
Jerry,
In response to Petronius and his comment to "J" on the
subject of laser weapons, Petronius has it right up to a point.
A "megawatt" laser firing in microsecond pulses
reaches (at say 1000 pulses per second) gigawatt peak power levels in each
pulse. This is more than enough power to trigger ionization and plasma
formation, accelerating the breakdown of the targeting mirror; thermal
cooling does not have time to work by orders of magnitude. It is also
necessary to consider the beam spread (even for a laser, not negligible over
tactical distances); the beam divergence out of the laser reduces the power
density in the beam when it hits the targeting mirror, which is then focused
back to a higher power density on target. The target would have to be
covered with mirrors having optical-grade reflectance, and no joints, to
completely protect itself from the effects of the laser.
(Of course, both performance and defense in any
laser-weapons scenario would have to consider beam pulsing (pulsed of given
frequency and pulse shape vs. continuous), beam average power, beam peak
power for pulsed lasers, power density (beamwidth), atmospheric propagation
(with enough beam power density, ionization occurs in the atmosphere and
quickly saps the beam), mirror characteristics, target characteristics
including absorption/reflection in the laser band, and lastly accuracy in
pointing at all stages of the propagation process, geometric limitations of
the optical path (e.g. ray tracing), focusing by the targeting mirror, and
relative motions (if any) of the laser, intermediate (if any) and targeting
mirrors, and target.
Jim
============
inherent structural problem?
Dear Jerry,
A purely free-market system tends to monopoly - that's
well known, and the limited role of government should be to restrain this
tendency. In that sense, capitalism requires a bit of external
stabilization.
This applies just as well on an individual basis. J.
Scott Cardinal asks "...is there an inherent structural problem in unchecked
accumulation and concentration of a society's resources?" The answer is yes:
in a free-market system, it is possible for a few people to become wealthy
beyond reason. Again, this is where limited government intervention is the
answer.
But the answer is not: tax the devil out of the rich
guy. That results in a loss of incentive, or the simple emigration of talent
and assets abroad. Let creative, talented, lucky people become
multi-billionaires. The place to intervene is with inheritance and gift
taxes. The next generation should create their own wealth, not begin with an
intact fortune they did not earn.
The usual argument raised against this is: what if the
family fortune consists of the ownership of a company, or a family farm?
Should that be broken up? This is disingenuous. If the family business is
truly sound, the younger generation can get external financing, either by
selling shares or by taking out a loan. If the family business is so
marginal that no financing is possible, then the best answer probably is
liquidation.
Cheers,
Brad
This was essentially the argument of the
distributists like Belloc and to a lesser extent Chesterton. Making the
government more powerful is not the answer. Preventing undue concentration
of power -- including government power -- is important.
Some continuity is also important. Inheritance
taxes ought not touch family farms and small businesses. It is the transfer
of enormous wealth that can harm society, not passing along a restaurant
(especially if the restaurant only survives because much of the staff is
family).
If we're going to spend billions on trying to fix
the education system, I'd rather see Bill and Melinda Gates in charge of the
spending than Pelosi and Reid.
============
More on the 2009 International Conference on Climate
Change
/ /Bob Carter's reports on the/ '2009/ International
Conference on Climate Change' can be found here.
https://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet
/2009/03/bob-carter-at-heartland-2
**Dr. Tim Ball, an environmental consultant and former
climatology professor at the U. of Winnipeg, piece on 'Controlling Carbon a
Bureaucrat's Dream' can be found here.
http://www.pvbr.com/Issue_1/cvsty.htm The quote "Controlling
carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life" is
from Lindzen. It made me remember what Wittfogel said about the hydraulic
state. (Karl A. Wittfogel, 'Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total
Power", First Vintage Books Edition, Feb 1981, 556 pp., ISBN 0-394-74701-1)
-Joe
I knew Karl Wittfogel. A former Marxist, he took
Marxism seriously, and found contradictions within Ds Kapital; in particular
the hydraulic state, in which the ruling bureaucracy controlled irrigation
and water supplies -- and that state did not evolve. It was essentially
eternal, and could only be overthrown by an external force. Such states
never fell from within.
State ownership of all the means of production...
============
Irrational Intelligence; Get Smarter
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i21/21b01801.htm The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 9.1.30 By KACIE GLENN
Ever bought a 12-foot Christmas tree for a
10-foot-high apartment? Picked up a hitchhiker in a nasty part of town? Or,
perhaps, taken out a mortgage you couldn't afford? The good news is that
poor decision-making skills may have little effect on your IQ score,
according to Keith E. Stanovich, author of What Intelligence Tests Miss: The
Psychology of Rational Thought (Yale University Press). The bad news? He
thinks you'd lose a few points on a more-accurate gauge of intelligence.
Stanovich, an adjunct professor of human development
and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, believes that the
concept of intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, fails to capture key
aspects of mental ability. But that doesn't mean he discounts the tests'
credibility: "Readers might well expect me to say that IQ tests do not
measure anything important, or that there are many kinds of intelligence, or
that all people are intelligent in their own way," he writes. After all,
theories about emotional and social intelligence--which weigh interpersonal
skills, the ability to empathize, and other "supracognitive"
characteristics--have gained popularity in recent years, in part by
de-emphasizing the importance of IQ.
Instead, Stanovich suggests that IQ tests focus on
valuable qualities and capacities that are highly relevant to our daily
lives. But he believes the tests would be far more effective if they took
into account not only mental "brightness" but also rationality--including
such abilities as "judicious decision making, efficient behavioral
regulation, sensible goal prioritization ... [and] the proper calibration of
evidence."
Our understanding of intelligence, he writes, has been
muddled by the discrepancy between the vague, comprehensive vernacular term,
which encompasses all the functions and manifestations of "smarts," and the
narrower theories that "confine the concept of intelligence to the set of
mental abilities actually tested on extant IQ tests." The latter
conceptualization allows intelligence to coexist with foolishness because IQ
tests do not measure the rationality required to abstain from dumb
decisions, according to the author. Casual observers, however, usually
define intelligence broadly and are confused by inconsistencies: "Blatantly
irrational acts committed by people of obvious intelligence ... shock and
surprise us and call out for explanation."
The author notes that because most people--even
educators and psychologists--accept test-defined intelligence as a fair
assessment of mental faculties, we tend to dismiss inconsistencies between a
person's IQ scores and rationality as indicators of a disorder or learning
disability. So persistent is that faulty logic that "we are almost obligated
to create a new disability category when an important skill domain is found
to be somewhat dissociated from intelligence." As long as we continue to
worship IQ tests that do not assess rational thought processes, we will
continue to misjudge our own and others' cognitive abilities, warns the
scholar.
In an earlier work, Stanovich coined his own term--dysrationalia--for
"the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate
intelligence." That "disorder," he suggests, might afflict some of the
smartest people you know.
***
In an age of Baby Einstein DVD's and French lessons
for 5-year-olds, it may seem passé to suggest that a child's IQ is
determined primarily by genetics. But until recently, writes Richard E.
Nisbett in Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count
(Norton), most scientists who studied intelligence believed "that the
overwhelming importance of heritability meant that the environment could do
little and that social programs intended to improve intelligence were doomed
to failure." Nisbett argues that a variety of social, cultural, and economic
factors can significantly affect a child's IQ, and suggests ways to improve
intelligence scores, as well as grades, by manipulating those factors.
Often-cited studies have shown that the difference in
IQ between identical twins raised apart is only slightly less than the
difference between twins raised together, whereas the correlation between
the intelligence scores of a parent who adopts a child and that child is
slim. Yet, Nisbett reminds us, even separated twins are likelier to grow up
under similar economic and social conditions than two people chosen at
random, and they might even be treated similarly because of shared looks and
other characteristics in common. At the same time, most adoptive families
are well-off and nurturing. The consistency of those environmental factors
makes their impact on a child's intelligence seem smaller than it really is.
Opinions have changed over the last few years, and
many scientists would now agree, "If you were to average the contribution of
genetics to IQ over different social classes, you would probably find 50
percent to be the maximum contribution of genetics," says Nisbett, a
professor of psychology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Class is
a crucial determinant of intelligence; adoption studies, for example, have
indicated that "raising someone in an upper-middle-class environment versus
a lower-class environment is worth 12 to 18 points of IQ--a truly massive
effect," he says. Children of middle-class parents are read to, spoken to,
and encouraged more than children of working-class parents, all experiences
that influence intellectual development.
Intelligence and How to Get It also examines how
better schooling boosts IQ scores and how school systems can improve.
Nisbett cautions that more money does not always equate to higher-quality
education, and that parents who take advantage of vouchers to move their
children to better schools are a self-selecting group of people who are
motivated to help their children excel academically, which leads some
researchers to overestimate the vouchers' effectiveness. On the other hand,
he finds that class size and teachers' experience and skills can make a big
difference, especially for poor and minority children. He notes, too, that
children who are exposed to "instructional technologies" in the classroom
benefit intellectually; working with word-processing programs, for example,
can help students learn to read faster, which leads to further advantages.
The psychologist maintains that there are myriad ways
to enhance a child's intelligence by changing his or her learning
environment. Young kids who emulate their parents' self-control go on to
achieve better grades and higher SAT scores than those who don't. They also
learn better, and therefore are more successful in school and have a higher
IQ, when they are praised for working hard but not offered incentives to do
activities they already show interest in: The danger is turning play and
learning into work. It couldn't hurt to angle for access to the best schools
and most-experienced teachers, either, Nesbitt suggests.
"Intellectual capital"--which more fully captures
academic potential than IQ, he says--"is the result of stimulation and
support for exploration and achievement in the home, the neighborhood, and
the schools." Nurturing young people's minds might not override their DNA,
the author admits, but it does help them achieve their intellectual
potential.
I would have thought it obvious that intelligence
can only determine potential. An uncut diamond is more attractive than a
lump of coal, but not by much, and the coal lumps tend to be larger. It
takes cutting and polishing to make a diamond into something desirable. You
can cut and polish coal all you like, but it won't be anything you'd give as
an engagement present.
I realize all this is more than obvious, but it
appears that many act as if it is not. No Child Left Behind stipulates that
it is a better investment to spend resources developing the left side of the
bell curve while leaving the right side on its own, and that raising the
median is better than raising an average. This isn't immediately obvious
when actually stated.
>>adoption studies, for example, have indicated
that "raising someone in an upper-middle-class environment versus a
lower-class environment is worth 12 to 18 points of IQ--a truly massive
effect," he says. Children of middle-class parents are read to, spoken
to, and encouraged more than children of working-class parents, all
experiences that influence intellectual development.<<
This may well be true: which raises the question,
why is "diversity" prized so highly? If the goal is to raise intelligence
then would it not be better to encourage, in schools, behavior similar to
what takes place in middle class homes? Rather than to postulate that all
cultures are equally deserving and should be preserved even if that means
encouraging disorderly activities?
I understand why those in charge of such matters
want to keep things as they are, but why in the world do people pretend that
their intellectual defense of their self serving policies make sense?
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