"Today’s marginalized protest movement will eventually become incorporated into the [Democratic] party’s mainstream. Think about what that means for what we can expect regarding the protest movement that is most prominent today."
On the Republican side, the implication is that Trump-Vance's election will have a much greater influence on the future of the Republican Party than would Kamala Harris's. As Tanner Greer says, "A Republican Party that won in 2012 or lost in 2016 would look fundamentally different—much more fundamentally different than a Democratic Party helmed by Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders instead Obama or Biden." Essentially, each (general) election is really two elections: (1) a choice between Democrat and Republican for that term and (2) a vote for the direction of the future Republican Party far beyond that term. Maybe, that's why MAGA found it so crucial to deny that Trump lost in 2020. They (at least implicitly) understood that admitting a 2020 loss would affect MAGA's intra-party standing vs. the traditional Reaganite GOP beyond 2020.
Of course, my first sentence should read, "On the Republican side, the implication is that Trump-Vance's election will have a much greater influence on the future of the Republican Party than would Kamala Harris's **on the future of the Democratic Party**."
A $ 600 russian 155mm shell is a dumb piece of steel of which dozens must be fired at a target. A $ 5000 NATO shell is essentially a guided propelled missile that use a gun as a launching pad and only one is usually needed to do the job.
In the 2nd half of the 1950s, one of the initial seeds of what became known as Silicon Valley was planted when SoCal-based Lockheed Aircraft moved its Missiles and Space Division up north to Sunnyvale. That was the reason my family was transplanted from SoCal to the Bay Area. If the City Journal and Vanity Fair articles are to be believed, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, who have been the beneficiaries of the shift from 'atoms to bytes,' are returning the favor by funding defense startups in SoCal, specifically El Segundo, where Lockheed and other defense contractors began. Whereas what is now Lockheed Martin virtue signals by funding and participating in 'gay pride' parades and other aspects of the 'woke culture,' the two articles portray the El Segundo defense startup culture as a throwback to the non-feminized male-dominated culture of the early SoCal defense industry. As a doomer, I'm a bit skeptical about these efforts, but it seems pretty clear to me that something is fundamentally wrong with the existing MIC in this country, and it would be nice to think that somebody is trying to do something about it.
For any young, conservative, family-oriented men considering a move to El Segundo for work I would advise against it. I lived in Manhattan Beach for two years after grad school working at The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo. Those beach communities are locked in there between the 405 freeway and the beach. Take a look at the crime statistics east of the 405. Try escaping LA by car for the weekends. Think down the road a few years. Where might you buy a first home for your family? Near the power plant? Near the refinery? Where will your kids go to school? Living there as a bachelor isn’t horrible, but there isn’t a conservative woman in sight. If you love beach volleyball, you might enjoy it for a while. You’ll get some good work experience and make a lot of money, but is it worth it? Why not build a business in a red county anywhere else in the county? You’ll be able to enjoy your weekends and raise a family.
Upon reading your quotes of Gibson my only question was would you care about this but I misunderstood the quotes. Maybe that's on me, maybe they are misleading quotes. IDK. The article is worth reading. Thanks for sharing it.
"out of touch with their bodies and without a strong sense of identity with their wider society."
I don't personally know trans and non-binaries as well as gays but out-of-touch-with-their-bodies seems a perfect description for non-binaries and probably trans too, though surely they would argue they are more in touch. Either way, it seems for some percent of them it is more of a learned position than inherent. Either way on that question too, I just wish it made them happier but the evidence leans against this. In my opinion, that's the most unfortunate part.
Battlefield costs - I've thought about this a few times. It's probably classified info but how much time and money do you think dod is putting into addressing this? I fear it's not much. Anyone familiar with anything from dod on this topic?
I work as a contractor for DoD branches. Not directly in anything directly battle related, but I'd point you to milbloggers like https://cdrsalamander.substack.com
My sense is that DoD is putting enormous amounts of time and money into this just like they do everything. And just like everything else, they get almost nothing out of it.
The amount of dysfunction and rent seeking pervasive at almost every level of DoD shocking, even to me who's been in "the industry" for over 20 years.
With respect to the specific question, I'll give an example. The article mentions that we're using million dollar missiles to shoot down thousand dollar drones in the Red Sea.
One "solution" I've heard eagerly espoused is this is finally a reason for the Navy to get a "directed energy weapon". That is, a laser. Of course, the cost of development and power requirements of a laser are outlandish.
Meanwhile, relatively cheap, radar directed 40mm AA cannons firing proximity fused HE are cheap and effective. It's be relatively easy to load up ships with these, a la World War II, to shoot down the cheap/slow drones and save the expensive high-end missiles for the hypersonic ASBMs the Houthis occasionally launch.
Also cheaper would be sinking the freighters the Iranians are delivering those ASBMs on.
I think the big problem is that deregulating the defense industry would not at the same time solve the problems that lead to deindustrialization in all of the other sectors. That makes it a hard lobbying problem to solve. Who is the client for the lobbying project that deregulating the defense industry would require? The defense industry does not want to be deregulated (that's their moat) and also cannot bear the costs of solving the other issues that lead other industrial sectors to go to Asia.
The 19th century solution of developing industry from a non-industrial country is not available to the post-industrial 21st century US.
The big problem is that there are a lot of overlapping big problems. Each, by itself, would be extraordinarily hard to address, but they reinforce each other so that a piecemeal approach would obviously fail and tackling everything at once is almost beyond the human mind to comprehend.
High labor costs, high environmental and regulatory costs, low industrial skilled labor force, no economies of scale because of the distance both physical and cultural to suppliers, high costs of construction. The standard laundry list of issues with "made in the USA."
Thx but that seems like looking for a needle in a haystack. I'm hoping for something more specific.
I don't know about enormous but I expect you are correct it's been studied with dod funds. It's worth explicitly noting that doesn't mean it is on the radar of anyone with any power to move it towards implementation.
What kind of specific are you looking for? How much money DoD is spending trying to wage war more cost effectively? Or what the true ($) costs of waging war are?
"The Houthis are launching unsophisticated drones to attack commercial vessels in the Red Sea; the missiles that our navy fires to take out those drones cost $2.1 million apiece. ... Even the U.S. is not rich enough to protect itself and its interests at these prices."
I was curious about info on attacks to drain money from the US and our allies.
I would say that fundamentally the problem is not that we aren't rich enough, it's that we have chosen to invest only in gold-plated defense technologies.
To draw an analogy, suppose we set out to combat homelessness by building and giving them homes. Our current policy essentially to build every homeless person a 4000sf single family home. For every one we build, we could probably build 10 400SF studio apartments that would get the job of housing people done.
Whether we aren't rich enough or the tech is gold-plated doesn't change my point. Someone spending ~&2,000 to force us the spend $2mil is a vulnerability.
"Think about what that means for what we can expect regarding the protest movement that is most prominent today."
So ... how do we organize a Neo-Social Democracy protest? I have the slogan:
We demand more mutually beneficial market transactions between consenting adults that do not create any untaxed/unsubsidized negative/positive externalities (with some exceptions for transactions in addictive substances and services) and for some of the income generated from those mutually beneficial transactions taxed with a progressive consumption taxes and revenues used for redistribution and for purchase of public goods whose expenditures pass an NPV>0 test when inputs and outputs are valued at Pigou tax/subsidy inclusive prices.
"Today’s marginalized protest movement will eventually become incorporated into the [Democratic] party’s mainstream. Think about what that means for what we can expect regarding the protest movement that is most prominent today."
On the Republican side, the implication is that Trump-Vance's election will have a much greater influence on the future of the Republican Party than would Kamala Harris's. As Tanner Greer says, "A Republican Party that won in 2012 or lost in 2016 would look fundamentally different—much more fundamentally different than a Democratic Party helmed by Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders instead Obama or Biden." Essentially, each (general) election is really two elections: (1) a choice between Democrat and Republican for that term and (2) a vote for the direction of the future Republican Party far beyond that term. Maybe, that's why MAGA found it so crucial to deny that Trump lost in 2020. They (at least implicitly) understood that admitting a 2020 loss would affect MAGA's intra-party standing vs. the traditional Reaganite GOP beyond 2020.
Of course, my first sentence should read, "On the Republican side, the implication is that Trump-Vance's election will have a much greater influence on the future of the Republican Party than would Kamala Harris's **on the future of the Democratic Party**."
A $ 600 russian 155mm shell is a dumb piece of steel of which dozens must be fired at a target. A $ 5000 NATO shell is essentially a guided propelled missile that use a gun as a launching pad and only one is usually needed to do the job.
In the 2nd half of the 1950s, one of the initial seeds of what became known as Silicon Valley was planted when SoCal-based Lockheed Aircraft moved its Missiles and Space Division up north to Sunnyvale. That was the reason my family was transplanted from SoCal to the Bay Area. If the City Journal and Vanity Fair articles are to be believed, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, who have been the beneficiaries of the shift from 'atoms to bytes,' are returning the favor by funding defense startups in SoCal, specifically El Segundo, where Lockheed and other defense contractors began. Whereas what is now Lockheed Martin virtue signals by funding and participating in 'gay pride' parades and other aspects of the 'woke culture,' the two articles portray the El Segundo defense startup culture as a throwback to the non-feminized male-dominated culture of the early SoCal defense industry. As a doomer, I'm a bit skeptical about these efforts, but it seems pretty clear to me that something is fundamentally wrong with the existing MIC in this country, and it would be nice to think that somebody is trying to do something about it.
For any young, conservative, family-oriented men considering a move to El Segundo for work I would advise against it. I lived in Manhattan Beach for two years after grad school working at The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo. Those beach communities are locked in there between the 405 freeway and the beach. Take a look at the crime statistics east of the 405. Try escaping LA by car for the weekends. Think down the road a few years. Where might you buy a first home for your family? Near the power plant? Near the refinery? Where will your kids go to school? Living there as a bachelor isn’t horrible, but there isn’t a conservative woman in sight. If you love beach volleyball, you might enjoy it for a while. You’ll get some good work experience and make a lot of money, but is it worth it? Why not build a business in a red county anywhere else in the county? You’ll be able to enjoy your weekends and raise a family.
Upon reading your quotes of Gibson my only question was would you care about this but I misunderstood the quotes. Maybe that's on me, maybe they are misleading quotes. IDK. The article is worth reading. Thanks for sharing it.
"out of touch with their bodies and without a strong sense of identity with their wider society."
I don't personally know trans and non-binaries as well as gays but out-of-touch-with-their-bodies seems a perfect description for non-binaries and probably trans too, though surely they would argue they are more in touch. Either way, it seems for some percent of them it is more of a learned position than inherent. Either way on that question too, I just wish it made them happier but the evidence leans against this. In my opinion, that's the most unfortunate part.
Battlefield costs - I've thought about this a few times. It's probably classified info but how much time and money do you think dod is putting into addressing this? I fear it's not much. Anyone familiar with anything from dod on this topic?
I work as a contractor for DoD branches. Not directly in anything directly battle related, but I'd point you to milbloggers like https://cdrsalamander.substack.com
My sense is that DoD is putting enormous amounts of time and money into this just like they do everything. And just like everything else, they get almost nothing out of it.
The amount of dysfunction and rent seeking pervasive at almost every level of DoD shocking, even to me who's been in "the industry" for over 20 years.
With respect to the specific question, I'll give an example. The article mentions that we're using million dollar missiles to shoot down thousand dollar drones in the Red Sea.
One "solution" I've heard eagerly espoused is this is finally a reason for the Navy to get a "directed energy weapon". That is, a laser. Of course, the cost of development and power requirements of a laser are outlandish.
Meanwhile, relatively cheap, radar directed 40mm AA cannons firing proximity fused HE are cheap and effective. It's be relatively easy to load up ships with these, a la World War II, to shoot down the cheap/slow drones and save the expensive high-end missiles for the hypersonic ASBMs the Houthis occasionally launch.
Also cheaper would be sinking the freighters the Iranians are delivering those ASBMs on.
I think the big problem is that deregulating the defense industry would not at the same time solve the problems that lead to deindustrialization in all of the other sectors. That makes it a hard lobbying problem to solve. Who is the client for the lobbying project that deregulating the defense industry would require? The defense industry does not want to be deregulated (that's their moat) and also cannot bear the costs of solving the other issues that lead other industrial sectors to go to Asia.
The 19th century solution of developing industry from a non-industrial country is not available to the post-industrial 21st century US.
The big problem is that there are a lot of overlapping big problems. Each, by itself, would be extraordinarily hard to address, but they reinforce each other so that a piecemeal approach would obviously fail and tackling everything at once is almost beyond the human mind to comprehend.
I'm not following. What problem do you think the defense industry shares with "all of the other sectors"?
High labor costs, high environmental and regulatory costs, low industrial skilled labor force, no economies of scale because of the distance both physical and cultural to suppliers, high costs of construction. The standard laundry list of issues with "made in the USA."
Thx but that seems like looking for a needle in a haystack. I'm hoping for something more specific.
I don't know about enormous but I expect you are correct it's been studied with dod funds. It's worth explicitly noting that doesn't mean it is on the radar of anyone with any power to move it towards implementation.
What kind of specific are you looking for? How much money DoD is spending trying to wage war more cost effectively? Or what the true ($) costs of waging war are?
One thing to note (and again, I'd point you here)
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/national-defense-strategy-what-national
is that in the general sense, US defense spending has fallen in relative terms and remains quite low.
"The Houthis are launching unsophisticated drones to attack commercial vessels in the Red Sea; the missiles that our navy fires to take out those drones cost $2.1 million apiece. ... Even the U.S. is not rich enough to protect itself and its interests at these prices."
I was curious about info on attacks to drain money from the US and our allies.
I would say that fundamentally the problem is not that we aren't rich enough, it's that we have chosen to invest only in gold-plated defense technologies.
To draw an analogy, suppose we set out to combat homelessness by building and giving them homes. Our current policy essentially to build every homeless person a 4000sf single family home. For every one we build, we could probably build 10 400SF studio apartments that would get the job of housing people done.
Whether we aren't rich enough or the tech is gold-plated doesn't change my point. Someone spending ~&2,000 to force us the spend $2mil is a vulnerability.
"Think about what that means for what we can expect regarding the protest movement that is most prominent today."
So ... how do we organize a Neo-Social Democracy protest? I have the slogan:
We demand more mutually beneficial market transactions between consenting adults that do not create any untaxed/unsubsidized negative/positive externalities (with some exceptions for transactions in addictive substances and services) and for some of the income generated from those mutually beneficial transactions taxed with a progressive consumption taxes and revenues used for redistribution and for purchase of public goods whose expenditures pass an NPV>0 test when inputs and outputs are valued at Pigou tax/subsidy inclusive prices.