Armies Without Weapons

Not all military units engage in combat.  Chaplains and medics are easy examples. Twenty-two Thirteen American states states and territories have home defense forces, and they generally do not carry weapons, but provide evacuation, sheltering, and other services in times of emergency and disaster.  Two federal agencies have their own unarmed commissioned officer corps with equivalent navy ranks: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Public Health Service. 

EXCEPTIONS

Some chaplains have carried small arms in combat. They stand out as exceptions.  More often, armed assistants accompanied chaplains.  Similarly, modern medics do carry sidearms to defend the wounded and supplies.  However, engaging in offensive combat removes the protection of the rules of war which otherwise cover medics.  If captured by an enemy who respects the Geneva Convention, medics can be held as prisoners of war, but must be allowed to carry out their duties as necessary.  By the Geneva Convention, chaplains who are captured cannot be held and must be repatriated.

 

Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic chaplains.Place de Strasbourg June 2013
(Photo by Claude Truong-Ngoc licensed under Creative Commons,Wikimedia Commons).   

The Inspector General of the US Department of Defense (DODIG), surveyed 22 state defense forces in 2014.  Nineteen responded to the questionnaire.  Only four states authorize their home guards to bear weapons. The report provided aggregate data only.  Therefore, some ambiguities were unresolved. Evaluation of Department of Defense Interaction with State Defense Forces, Department of Defense Inspector General, April 30, 2014. http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2014-065.pdf

State laws in California, Indiana, Mississippi, and Virginia allow the governor to issue weapons to the state defense force.  “The Code of Virginia states that members of the Virginia State Defense Force shall not be armed with firearms during the performance of training duty or state active duty, except under circumstances and in instances authorized by the Governor." (Virginia § 44.54.12. See also California Military and Veterans Code Section 554.) The Alaska State Defense Force did carry weapons when acting as law enforcement in 2004. However, that changed in 2008. 

Maj. Liendo Alvaro, Texas State Guard Medical Rangers.
In recurring deployments of Operation Lone Star,
the Medical Rangers provide free clinical care
to populations not well-served by other agencies.
(Soldiers Media Center. Licensed under Creative Commons
Wikimedia Commons.) 

Here in Texas, the TXSG does provide training for those who want to earn a concealed handgun license (CHL).  However, guard members pay for the training, which is contracted.  The state CHL fee itself is waived for active TXSG members.  Nevertheless, TXSG members are absolutely forbidden from carrying firearms while on duty. That applies to those who are also commissioned (sworn) police and other law enforcement officers.  Whether on state guard active duty or at drills or just visiting on base, weapons must be secured in a locked compartment of the privately-owned vehicle. [24 Feb. 2016. Following the Chattanooga shootings of 16 July 2015, on 17 Dec. 2015, the Adjutant General of the Texas Military Department issued new orders to allow the carrying of concealed firearms. This order applies to the National Guard, the Air National Guard, and the State Guard. It also addresses the new "open carry" law in Texas. No guard member may display any weapon not issued by the appropriate command.]

US FEDERAL SERVICES

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grew out of a survey of the coastline that was authorized by Congress and signed by President Jefferson in 1807.  Seventy years later, its mission was expanded into a geodetic survey of the continent.  In 1917, the corps became commissioned so that surveyors on the battlefield could not be shot as spies.   Today the NOAA maintains strict standards of achievement with an “up or out” policy: If you cannot be promoted, you will be retired. 

“The NOAA Corps today provides a cadre of professionals
trained in engineering, earth sciences, oceanography,
meteorology, fisheries science, and other related disciplines.
Officers operate ships, fly aircraft, manage research projects,
conduct diving operations,
and serve in staff positions throughout NOAA.”
http://www.noaacorps.noaa.gov

You can view their official recruitment videos for both officers and line mariners on YouTube.  They also have their own marching song, “Forward with NOAA.”

 The US Public Health Service Commissioned Officer Corp includes professionals in 16 specialties from physicians, nurses, and dentists to veterinarians, pharmacists, and engineers.

“The Commissioned Corps traces its beginnings
back to the U.S. Marine Hospital Service
protecting against the spread of disease from sailors returning
from foreign ports and maintaining the health of immigrants
entering the country.
Currently, Commissioned Corps officers are involved in
health care delivery to ... vulnerable populations,
disease control and prevention, biomedical research,
food and drug regulation,
mental health and drug abuse services,
and response efforts for natural and man-made disasters
as an essential component of
the largest public health program in the world.”  
http://www.usphs.gov/aboutus/history.aspx

NATIONS WITHOUT ARMIES

Several small nations have no armed forces because they maintain special treaties with larger neighbors.   Andorra has treaties with Spain and France. Australia defends Nauru, and the US defends Palau and several other Pacific micro-nations.  However, among those, several have impressively large police forces.  In the Caribbean, a Regional Security System serves Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.  Liechtenstein abolished its standing army in 1868.  Costa Rica has had no standing army since 1949. 

Military organization has its strengths.  Every job is defined, regardless of who performs it.  Grade and rank place everyone within a known hierarchy.  Also, military organization is common.  You could pluck someone off the street in Buenos Aires, and insert them in a job in police precinct in Beijing, and they would figure it all out pretty quickly.  So, the military model serves a purpose.  But armies are not necessarily synonymous with warfare.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security

The Science of Liberty

Financing a Revolution

Liberty's Kids

THE GIRL WHO OWNED A CITY

This is Atlas Shrugged for children. Instead of a given world collapsing for lack of reality, reason, and rights, we have an established chaos coming to order as one girl uses her reason to deal with reality and even come to understand rights.

A plague kills all the adults, leaving children to fend for themselves. This is the story of how Lisa figures it all out, usually by trial and error. She has good insights, but does not anticipate the reactions of others.  So, she works again for each new solution. She attacks each problem in turn and ultimately ensures the survival of the group that clusters around her.

Lisa finds inspiration reading Atlas Shrugged, a book alluded to, but never mentioned. (Later republications of the book have the reference to Atlas Shrugged removed.) On the Rebirth of Reason website, Barbara Branden wrote (March 23, 2005): “I've read it, and it's a beautiful book which I would recommend for any child. It has to be inspiring for a child, because it focuses on how much he or she can accomplish. The writer is an Objectivist.”

This book contrasts well against Lord of the Flies and other presentations.  What happens to children without adults is an artificial problem, not much different than a book about robots or aliens.  With science fiction and related genres, the author can create a new test environment to explore questions of human nature.  The author engages the reader to ask and answer wider questions about good and evil.  In this book, human nature is essentially a potential. (These are, after all, children whose natures are not set by habit.)   These  people are good or bad according to the choices they make.


After 35 years, The Girl Who Owned a City remains popular with kids for obvious reasons. 
• 1977 Dell Paperback (Laurel leaf science fiction)
• 1995 Runestone Press Books
• 2003 Rebound by Sagebrush
An audio book was produced in 2009. (Johanna Parker reading for Recorded Books, LLC. ) Graphic Universe published a new version in 2012, drawn by Dan Jolley, Joëlle Jones and Jenn Manley Lee. 

If you search YouTube you can find many trailers based on it, some of them recent.  
These are passable fan videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-pFXwKwiS0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hsKy2b8Y3M
This is a  fan skit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8d0BJkD4ck
For being a Lego cast, this one is read well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbM-FGtbc7s

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Where All the Children are Above Average

Modes of Survival

Be an Engineer Day

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security

 Private security is fundamentally a business service. If the sign says “No Smoking” I do not care what you are smoking, just, please take it over there. This is different from public policing. Still, the intersecting set of guardian duties continues to drag into private security a large army of “cop wannabes” – those who never could be police officers because they cannot make the metrics; and those who having been police officers do not want to retire from work. Both groups are problematic. The permanent solution is to build a rational model based on empirical evidence that brings private security completely into the markets of business services and out of the public arena.

 Jane Jacobs delineated two modes of human action in Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (Random House, 1992). The commercial mode of the merchant and trader shares some intentions of the political mode of the guardian and warrior. Honesty and honor are easy analogues, as are the sanctity of contract and the duty of loyalty. Other standards are diametrically opposed. Merchants are open to strangers; guardians are closed. Traders seek voluntary agreements; warriors use force.

According to Jacobs, the political mode is common to the police and army, to charities, as well as to the Mafia, and socialist political systems. Alternately, scientists and farmers share the moral code of the merchant. When the modes cross or mix, then corruption results, as when police officers accept bribes or when businesses get laws passed for themselves.

In her book, Jacobs developed the two lists from their inherent hierarchies. To the trader collaboration with strangers is most important. For the guardian, loyalty is the primary virtue. The list can be re-arranged by similes and opposites. Some have no direct corollaries.

Consider the array of comparative virtues:

From Systems of Survival: by Jane Jacobs.

What could be changed in private security to make it more entrepreneurial and less political without risking the fundamental responsibility for the safety and security of our clients and their property? 

As businesses whose profits come from the difference between the cost of production and the market price of our services, the commercial virtues of thrift, efficiency, and productive investment speak against the rich use of leisure, distribution of largess, and ostentatious displays.

Vengeance is not appropriate to private guard companies. Although warriors and guardians engage in it, the ultimate value is putative, at best. Vengeance is not justice; it is not even retribution. It certainly has no place in the business world where competitors become partners.

Jacobs stressed the innovative and inventive nature of enterprise. The guardian virtues of obedience, hierarchy, and tradition are less salient in business. A certain level of expected obedience defines some of the relationship between the CEO and the Board, as between the line worker and the manager. But those are defined by contract. In warrior groups, any implied “contract” is secondary to the need for obedience. Military units are sacrificed and cowardice is punished. Troops are expected to fight without pay and even without food.

Choose Your Virtues

Virtue is contextual. It is easy to claim that honesty is the best policy.  That would contradict the fact that no dress ever made any woman look fat.  

Jane Jacobs compared and contrasted the Commercial and Guardian modes of survival.  The Guardian is the traditional one, common also to animal packs.  The Commercial was invented with cities.  Both, however, ignore the moral context.  Guardians may be good guys or bad.  Commerical enterprises can be benefactors or swindlers.  For Jacobs, the key consideration was that these arrays were syndromes. Literally, they run together to define a complex system. 

Deirdre McCloskey contrasted bourgeois virtues against those of the aristocrat and peasant.  But it can be a challenge to cull wit from jocularity from humor.  McCloskey's goal was not to elevate the middle class merchant above the aristocrat and peasant.  Rather, she sought only an open dialectic space in which trustworthiness, thrift, and integrity are recognized as being hallmarks of the entrepreneur and the sales clerk.  It is who we are today.

TWO CATALOGS OF VIRTUES
From Jane Jacobs' Systems of Survival: Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics.

From "The Bourgeois Virtues" (1994) by Deirdre McCloskey.

















"The point is not to elevate bourgeois virtue over the others in some universal sense. The point is to sidestep universal senses. In some personal and social circumstances, courage is a virtue. ... So is humility.....  But when the class left out by the virtue-talk is half the population, on its way to all the population, the vocabulary of the virtues is not doing its job." -- McCloskey

Private Security in the 21st Century

In J. Neil Schulman’s libertarian utopia Alongside Night, our hero, the son of a free market Nobel laureate economist, is on the run when he falls in love with the daughter of the director of the FBI.  He discovers an underground, both literal and figurative, and as the stormtroopers attack, the Boy and the Girl are separated.  He needs to find her, but the private security guards are directing people to safety.  He wants to argue, but they will have none of that. Rather than ordering him to obey the klaxon call to evacuate – which is what he expects – the guard asks him to stand aside for a moment until they can help him find his girlfriend. So it is with private security: we are not cops… at least, not ideally. 

Today, supervisors in private security generally come from the world of public policing.  They follow the Guardian ethos.  However, as security services are increasingly for-profit enterprises, the future of market-driven security will evolve along a different line. 

In Systems of Survival, (see here on this blog) Jane Jacobs outlined two moral syndromes: the Guardian, and the Trader.  They are often different expressions of the same virtues, but, also, often contrary in motives or opposite in goals.  The future of private security lies with eliminating as many of the "power" modes as possible and replacing them with "market" modes.

It is true that Guardians should not trade favors.  That way lies corruption.  However, many of the elements of the warrior path can be replaced with the merchant's course – and to the benefit and profit of the security provider, as well as to their clients and to their clients' communities of customers, who in retail are known as the ultimate consumers.  

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security
Employee Theft
Locksporting
Redshirts

AVAILABLE ON SLIDESHARE:
Physical Security for Data Centers

Modes of Survival

Jane Jacobs was a brilliant, self-educated advocate for community.  Although she considered herself a socialist, she was a deep thinker.  She is best known for her urbanist books: The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Economy of Cities, Cities and the Wealth of Nations.  She also created a cogent and provocative analysis of the ways that we organize: Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics.  She perceived politics and commerce as adhering to two mutually exclusive codes of ethics. 

Systems of Survival was in the form of the Dialogues of Plato: guests at dinner parties discussed the topic at hand.  The leader of the chat presented current newspaper clippings to illustrate her points.  As they argued the pros and cons, the symposiasts created two tallies: the Guardian Syndrome and the Commercial Syndrome.  As the treatise developed these were presented as hierarchies. 

The Guardian Moral Syndrome

A.                 Be loyal

B.                 Be obedient and disciplined

C.                 Treasure honor

D.                 Adhere to tradition

E.                 Respect hierarchy

F.                 Show fortitude

G.                 Exert prowess

H.                 Be exclusive

I.                   Take vengeance

J.                  Make rich use of leisure

K.                 Be ostentatious

L.                 Dispense largess

M.               Deceive for the sake of the task

N.                Shun trading

O.                Be fatalistic

Loyalty is the primary virtue of the guardian.  A thousand years ago, when I was a Cub Scout, the pledge was to “obey the law of the pack” and to “follow Aquila.”  The United States Armed Forces offer a grown-up version: “I, [Your Name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” 

The Merchant or Trader follows a different ethos.  Nominally, the virtues often seem analogous, but at root, the Commercial ethic involves different values.  For the trader, meeting strangers is the essence of their calling.  The Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa by dumb barter. They dropped off goods.  The natives took the stuff, and left other items in exchange.  If what was offered was not enough, the traders waited, visible but distant, until more was brought.

The Commercial Moral Syndrome

1. Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens
2. Be honest
3. Shun force
4. Come to voluntary agreements
5. Respect contracts
6. Use initiative and enterprise
7. Be open to inventiveness and novelty
8. Be efficient
9. Invest for productive purposes
10. Be industrious
11. Be thrifty
12. Promote comfort and convenience
13. Dissent for the sake of the task
14. Compete
15. Be optimistic

Honesty for the Merchant is analogous to Honor for the Warrior… but not quite the same thing.  The Guardian will deceive for the sake of the task.  (Cops lie to suspects in interrogations as a matter of routine.)  On the other hand, the Merchant will dissent to achieve the task at hand.  In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, all the capitalists run away to avoid coercion.  Ragnar Danneskjold becomes a pirate, saying, in effect, “Sorry, guys, but I have to do this for the higher good.”  If that is too mythic, consider the formation of dozens to hundreds of Silicon Valley firms by “traitors” who left one firm to create another.  The “task” was always to create the better system: if your employer would not, then form your own firm to serve the needs of the customers. 

Jacobs pointed out that we get corruption and moral failures when the two modes are confused and intermingled.  Cops must not sell favors.  Businesses must not start wars. 

The Commercial versus The Guardian

• Shun force versus Shun trading 
• Come to voluntary agreements versus Exert prowess
• Be honest versus Be obedient and disciplined
•  Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens versus Be exclusive
•  Compete versus Respect hierarchy
•  Respect contracts versus Be loyal
•  Use initiative and enterprise versus Take vengeance
•  Be open to inventiveness and novelty versus Adhere to tradition
•  Be efficient versus Make rich use of leisure
•  Promote comfort and convenience versus Treasure honor
•  Dissent for the sake of the task versus Deceive for the sake of the task
•  Invest for productive purposes versus Dispense largess
•  Be industrious versus Show fortitude
•  Be thrifty versus Be ostentatious 

• Be optimistic versus Be fatalistic

Some of these express similar virtues: “Be honest” and “Be obedient and disciplined”’ and “Respect contracts” and “Be loyal.”  But others are clearly opposites or contraries: “Use initiative and enterprise” versus “Take vengeance” and “Be efficient” versus “Make rich use of leisure.”

The harsh truth is that the Guardian syndrome is the animal mode; and the Trader syndrome is the human mode.  The Cub Scouts (and the Marines) are modeled on a wolf pack.  Since at least the last Ice Age – if not the one before that – we humans invented a different way to get along.  Trade and commerce evolved from ritual gift exchange.  Now we harness lightning and enjoy flying carpets.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Open Secrets
Money As Speech and Peacemaking
Texas State Guard Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Training
Who Guards the Guardians?
Counter-Insurgency

Capitalist Culture

Instead of vilifying him for being an idiot, we should be praising Michael Moore for being a millionaire.

 The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times (Princeton University Press, 2010) is an anthology that gives an high level view of the broad history of trade and commerce.  (My full review published by Libertarian Papers here.)  In separate chapters, David Landes and Michael Hudson identify the difference between creative and corrosive capitalism. The latter dominates in societies that deny the former.  The editors generally point out that in any society, some people will take the best advantage of whatever modes are offered for personal advancement.

In Rome, glory came from looting provinces.  Making money was not honorable.  So the wealthy left the management of their businesses to their freemen and slaves.  In America today, we allow both the marketing of technology and gaining government subsidies.  It is not just that both are legal, but that culturally, we do not distinguish between them.  Instead of vilifying him for being an idiot, we should be praising Michael Moore for being a millionaire.  He should get a hero's medal for selling large volumes of what people want to buy voluntarily.  

Instead of praising clever children who memorize the Presidents in order, we should be teaching them that "LinkedIn started out in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in the fall of 2002. The five original founders were Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Eric Ly, and Konstantin Guericke." (Company "About" here. )  I am not sure how to commemorate the chic restaurants in Rep. Nancy Pelosi's district that won exemptions to opt out of Obamacare.  The avoidance of regulation should not be taken lightly. 

BOURGEOIS VIRTUE

Deirdre McCloskey developed her theories on "Bourgeois Virtue" over the past two decades.  She now has two books out, with a third on the way.  She investigates the topic from many standpoints.  Generally, she finds that the things we are taught to dislike about being middle class include the social graces that benefit and profit us all. 

A potent source of bourgeois virtue and a check on bourgeois vice is the premium that a bourgeois society puts on discourse. The bourgeois must talk. The aristocrat gives a speech, the peasant tells a tale. But the bourgeois must in the bulk of his transactions talk to an equal. It is wrong to imagine, as modern economics does, that the market is a field of silence. "I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following. . . . What news on the Rialto?"
For one thing, talk defines business reputation, as at the Iowa City cocktail party. A market economy looks forward and therefore depends on trust. The persuasive talk that establishes trust is necessary for doing much business.  "Bourgeois Virtue" by Deirdre McCloskey, American Scholar vol. 63, no. 2, Spring 1994, page 249,  here.

Today we have social media. Corporations hire people or not, and fire them, based on what is revealed on Facebook and Twitter.  Reputational gossip has become all the more intense.  In a global culture, other people in other places grew up with different expectations entirely.  Rather than forcing conformity and avoiding risk, hiring managers who want their firms to profit should have the mechanisms in place analogous to those engaged by entrepreneurs. 
Market theorist Henry Girard Manne suggests that insider trading is one of those. 

In the anthology cited above, the chapter on the Middle East by Timur Kuran pointed to a biography of a Cairo merchant.  Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Isma'il Ibn Taqiyya by Nellie Hanna is a detailed account of one merchant in one place.  It so happened that he had his choice of courts, four of them, from different schools of law, in which he could register contracts.  Abu Taqiyya flexibly extended his trade network by crafting the clauses in his agreements.  Benjamin Franklin would have called it "prudence."

A MAN'S HOME IS HIS MARKET

We see the "castle" as a paradigm, not just because we are at war with our neighbors - Hobbes' war of all against all being the reason for government. For us, the home is primary protection against the elements. In a society of open courtyards, verandas (a Hindi word, likely borrowed from Portuguese), decks, roofs with hanging gardens, patios, arcades and colonades, concepts of safety, security, and ultimately, property rights, must have other paradigms. As he became wealthy, Isma'il Abu Taqiyya extended and expanded his personal space until his large home dominated his street.  He shared that street with a partner who made the same arrangements. They also did this with their warehouses (wikalat), which served as storage, emporia, and guest lodgings.  Public life was gradually excluded from private contexts as the visitor moved inward from the business into the home.

The piazza is a public space, but among urban Americans in the 19th century, it came to be a somewhat pretentious word for the front porch.  For Americans, the front porch became the margin between the public street and the privacy of the interior home.  Adults could sit and rock while children played games.  Friends and neighbors could stroll pass and bid hello and good day.  An industry arose to create special furniture for this special space.  Europeans assigned to work in Detroit visit  Ann Arbor because our restaurants extend to the street, using the sidewalks for table spaces.  The margins between public and private spaces are blurred.  It would be difficult to discuss anything illegal or immoral in such a context.  Business and social life become transparent when conducted on the street.  In such a context, you grant privacy by minding your own business.

Therefore, rather than the castle which holds against the storm, a commercial society of productive traders, offering values in voluntary exchange, is better served by a theoretical model of ready communication.  Jane Jacobs made the same point in Systems of Survival.  It is the Trader's Ethic to be open and available to deals with strangers.  Thus, capitalism is inherently globalist and democratic. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
A Man's Home is His Market
Thank-you Notes
City Air Makes You Free
Knowledge Maps