U.S. Military Goes Back to the Future

President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex in his "Farewell Address." 

In Power & Market Murray N. Rothbard showed that no publicly-funded enterprise will be profitable because anything you do for political reasons must result in an economic loss. 

Furthermore, economic calculations derive from the relationship between time and money. Therefore, political choices necessarily result in temporal losses. Whereas businesses plan for the future, governments live in the past. 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/07/us-seeks-cheaper-hunter-killer-drones-after-iran-destroys-1b-worth-of-reapers/

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/us-military-sent-explosive-drone-boats-into-combat-for-the-first-time/

As a consequence of entropy, merging the military with corporate industries did not jump the military to a higher quantum state of better actions from better decision-making. Instead, the corporations became more averse to change and less invested in disruptions from entrepreneurs and "intrapreneurs". 

Jane Jacobs differentiated the guardian mode from the commercial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival) by contrasting 15 behaviors in each. Some of those are approximately analogous and others are obvious opposites.

Jacobs herself was a "democratic socialist" and she emigrated to Canada because Pres. Richard Nixon was elected. Therefore, it is significant that she recognized the Guardian Syndrome as a standard for socialist nations. She meant that normatively, not positively: statistically, not ethically. In other words, Jacobs described what she discovered, not what she sought. 

"What comes out of a team or a committee is the most daring idea that the least daring man can accept." John Arnold. "Space, Time and Education," Astounding Science Fiction, May 1953, pp. 9–25. Introductory remarks by John W. Campbell, Jr., editor, pp. 9–10.

Bob Gesking makes remote-controlled model boats: Home Hobbyist (gallery)

• Updated: Dec. 13, 2012, 2:49 p.m.
• |Published: Dec. 13, 2012, 1:49 p.m.

https://www.cleveland.com/insideout/2012/12/bob_gesking_makes_remote-contr.html

Communities of hobbyists have been building radio-controlled vehicles for the air, land, and water since the early 1950s. Brothers Walter and William Good built and flew their Big Guff in 1938. The idea of a radio controlled aeroplane was tested by the UK military during World War I. 

As political entropy decreases the energies of enterprise, the military becomes ever less advanced. And, generally and broadly considered, that is a good thing. However, that only reflects the more basic truth that we are all getting poorer because of political decisions being made in market contexts and markets being subsumed by political operations.

The best society separates power and market for the same reasons that it separates church and state. 

[13 April 2013] "The influential head of Google, Eric Schmidt, has called for civilian drone technology to be regulated, warning about privacy and security concerns. Cheap miniature versions of the unmanned aircraft used by militaries could fall into the wrong hands, he told the UK's Guardian newspaper.  Quarrelling neighbours, he suggested, might end up buzzing each other with private surveillance drones.  He also warned of the risk of terrorists using the new technology.  Mr Schmidt is believed to have close relations with US President Barack Obama, whom he advises on matters of science and technology.” -- BBC Technology News here Touted on Slashdot here

https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/04/drones-are-everywhere.html

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Audacity of Enterprise

Why a Level Playing Field?

Leadership 

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security

The GOP as Pushy Beggars

That Donald Trump is a bully is obvious. His influence on the Republican Party and conservatives is also apparent. Back in late October 2016 when Trump’s election was still in some doubt in the minds of Democrats, at a press conference in Michigan, Michael Moore explained in clear language why Trump would win: Donald Trump brought to the polls millions of disaffected non-voters and other centerists whose personal losses and disappointments opened them up to a Leader making Promises. Now, the Grand Old Party attempts to energize its loyalists by reacting as a victimized bully.

 

Where do these "matching funds" come from?

Back in 2007, I was elected as a Republican precinct delegate from Ann Arbor Township. It was pretty easy. Ann Arbor is heavily Democrat. There were six slots on the GOP side of the ballot and I was one of four people running. Before moving here, I joined the Austin Tech Republicans luncheon club. Since then, I have been registered on both sides depending on the candidates in the local elections. Austin is heavily Democrat, but sometimes it is important to send the GOP leadership a message in a primary. The same is true of the Democrats. In 2016, I voted for Bernie Sanders as a vote against Hillary Clinton. 

 

Because I still have my Ann Arbor cellphone number, I have been getting these text messages from the Republicans. Their strategy reveals their soul. (And, yes, I block each one. They use a different number the next time.)

 

Now, it's my fault.

Aggressive beggars kept us from moving to Portland, Oregon. Back in 2010, after completing an associate’s, a bachelor’s, and a master’s, work was still hard to find in Michigan. So, we looked around. Portland was nice. The beggars were hard to take. They followed us on the street; sometimes they stood in front of us. Austin was different. With four months of 100-degree highs and no rain, brown was the new green. The beggars in the medians were selling ice water. I liked that entrepreneurial spirit. 

 

Despite the political narratives to the contrary, government in Texas follows the Taxachusetts model. Our senior federal senator, John Cornyn, never met a new law he did not like. We got a problem? Make it illegal. The state legislature made it illegal to buy Tesla automobiles by making it illegal to buy a car from a manufacturer who did not have a dealership in the state. It was the Texas automotive dealers association who got that passed in the Republican-controlled state legislature and signed by the Republican governor. That was changed a couple of years ago. Tesla is in orbit now and that plays well in Houston. 

 

Insistent Begging from Trumps Senior and Junior 

Working on a state agency project now, I have been diving into the Texas Compiled Laws, especially the Texas Government Code and the Texas Administrative Code. We have a franchise tax here. If you license your music or your painting or your poetry, you pay a tax on the income. But, if you license mineral rights, you are exempt from the franchise tax. That’s what makes fascism more successful than socialism: they know whose bread to butter.

 

Showing some concern and then blaming others.

The root of the problem is that in essence fascism is just another kind of socialism. Right wing syndicalism and left wing syndicalism are mirror images. Whatever the shades in their rainbows, the radiation is on the same spectrum. 

July 14 -- Bastille Day. I am not going to post all of these as they keep coming in, but this is starting to sound like On the Waterfront.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Tycoon Dough is Democratic 

In Support of Paid Political Advertising 

President Trump and the Military 

Toxic Leadership 

The Wizard of Oz and the Anti-Intellectual Tradition

“Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through the slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning where men go to become great thinkers. They think deep thoughts with no more brains than you have.”

L. Frank Baum was a serial entrepreneur, a newspaper publisher, a playwright, and theater producer. With The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum intended to create for his children and their friends an American fairy tale. That claim is supported by two biographies, The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was by Martin Gardner and Russell B. Nye, and To Please a Child by Frank Joslyn Baum and Russell P. MacFall. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen are archaic and often gruesome. Baum’s story is filled with the stuff of 19^thcentury America: hot air balloons, colored glasses, and intricate mechanisms. The heroes do not take vengeance on the vanquished. In the next Oz book, women rule the kingdom. A trope used by Aristophanes, it surely reflected the drive for women’s suffrage in Baum’s day. But for all of his cleverness, insight, and intelligence, Baum was not an intellectual. And, to the point here, the successful 1939 cinematic presentation of his story speaks from and to the anti-intellectual tradition.

In the book, rather than a grand ceremony, each of the heroes receives their reward privately. The Wizard removes the Scarecrow’s head and stuffs it with bran, pins, and needles. 

“Hereafter you will be a great man, for I have given you a lot of bran-new brains.” The Scarecrow was both pleased and proud at the fulfillment of his greatest wish, and having thanked Oz warmly, he went back to his friends.

Dorothy looked at him curiously. His head was quite bulged out at the top with brains.

“How do you feel,” she asked.

“I feel wise indeed,” he answered earnestly. “When I get used to my brains, I shall know everything.”

“Why are those needles and pins sticking out of your head?” asked the Tin Woodman.

“That is proof that he is sharp,” remarked the Lion.

In the movie, the Scarecrow is handed a diploma for his Th. D. degree and he says, “The sum of the square roots of two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.” That, of course, is nonsense. But that does not matter. It sounds complicated and it came from a Scarecrow who did not even get fresh bran stuffing. The men at the university (there being no women at university in the common view) have no more brains than the Scarecrow. They only have impressive degrees that empower them to recite silliness. 

Numismatists and economists have probably underscored the real meaning of the Scarecrow's brains by reading in allegories about William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech. Baum clearly took many elements from American culture. He was an active politico, speaking to both Democrat and Republican rallies. The truth may be that as myth, The Wizard of Oz allows us to read our own meanings into its symbols. Whether he intended to lean on the Crime of '73 as he did the use of ipecac and sunglasses is an open question. 

My article on the economic allegory within The Wizard of Oz can be found on the ANA Website Blogs here. That presentation was taken from my article in the Central States Numismatic Society Centinel. I previewed that with a letter to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society E-Sylum here. That was from 2009. But the trend continues, demonstrated by this 2016 report about the opinions of retired economics professor David Denslow in the Gainesville Sun. 

  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

What, if Anything did Dorothy Learn?  

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life 

Captain America 

Money as Living History

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Nothing has changed in the fifty years since Richard Hofstadter chronicled the history of anti-intellectualism. The warning bell may seem muted because the names Billy Sunday, Carl McIntire, and J. Frank Norris no longer resonate. The value here is to learn and remember that today’s attacks on education are not momentary news but substantial tradition. Anti-intellectualism is not a quirk of the times; it is an abiding cultural context within which other phenomena can be understood. 

The irony of history is that we cannot see the day after tomorrow. So, publishing in 1962, Hofstadter could not write about the transformative generation that was about to enjoy a long life of broad, deep, and swift intellectual activity. But Hofstadter was prescient in identifying the long train of abuses against education launched by both nominal progressives and self-styled patriots. 

It is the patriots, in particular, who easily deny the Enlightenment that made possible the American Revolution and the political constitution that resulted from it. They did so in the 1800s and the 1900s, and do so today. But they are not alone. Radical progressives use physical force to deny access to campuses by those whose ideas they dislike. It is not just actual “hate speech”- though the Skokie Ruling long ago protected even that – but anything they seem to find worthy of their own hatred. 

Hofstadter examines the foundations of thought (or lack of it) that appear as outbursts in the common space. The newspaper editorials and Congressional hearings of the past exist today as blogs, websites, podcasts, and tweets. They all reflect deep assumptions within our culture. The insistence that university, high school, or elementary education serve “practical” goals of career or employment, community service or family responsibility can be found all along the course of American political history whether you look to the left or the right. 

“This distinction may seem excessively abstract, but it is frequently illustrated in American culture. In our education, for example, it has never been doubted that the selection and development of intelligence is a goal of central importance; but the extent to which education should foster intellect has been a matter of the most heated controversy, and the opponents of intellect in most spheres of public education have exercised preponderant power. But perhaps the most impressive illustration arises from a comparison of the American regard for inventive skill as opposed to skill in pure science. Our greatest inventive genius, Thomas A. Edison, was all but canonized by the American public, and a legend has been built around him. One cannot, I suppose, expect that achievements in pure science would receive the same public applause that came to inventions as spectacular and as directly influential on ordinary life as Edison’s. But one might have expected that our greatest genius in pure science, Josiah Willard Gibbs, who laid the theoretical foundations for modern physical chemistry, would have been a figure of some comparable acclaim among the educated public.”

The equivalents in our time are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. Admirable as their achievements have been, they upstage the work of the geniuses who discovered the general laws of cybernetics, informatics, and electronics by inventing the infrastructure of our civilization. A hundred years ago, classical Greek was ebbing out of high school education, as unnecessary. Fifty years ago, Latin retreated. Their demise may have been a loss only to a few, but they have not been replaced by new languages such as Java and C. The value in learning to program is not to win a lucrative career in computing – though that is predictable and desirable – but to open the mind to new ways of perceiving and creating ideas that can operate in the material world. In that, they are as important as drama, art, and music, which are academic offerings that also have suffered reduced budgets for want of “practical” value.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Economic Value in a Liberal Education 

Another Cheer for American Education

The Pretense of Sociology

Sociology: A Defense and a Call for Reform

After Action Report: Heartbreak Ridge

Heartbreak Ridge is a good action story with few leadership lessons. Dissenting for the sake of the task is one of the ethical standards that makes businesses (and scientists) successful. The guardian ethos rewards conformance to hierarchy and tradition. So, a story about an unorthodox soldier provides a context for thinking about values. In the case of Heartbreak Ridge, the hero’s values are ultra-orthodox. The complexity is delivered in the contrast between his military work and his successful attempt to re-unite with his ex-wife. When not firing an AK-47 at his men to teach them what it sounds like, GySgt Tom Highway is reading women’s magazines in order to eventually ask, “Do you think our relationship failed because of a lack of commitment?” 

As an actor, Clint Eastwood makes a good Marine. He has said that personally he is a libertarian conservative. He stays in great physical condition. He directed and produced the movie. The writer was James Carabatsos who created Hamburger Hill and Heroes. The story was gung-ho and left me feeling happy, but not any smarter. 

GySgt Highway is assigned to a reconnaissance platoon that has been allowed to lapse. This was 1986. The American military was not yet over Vietnam. “We are 0-1-1: no wins, one tie, and one loss.” The previous platoon sergeant was “retired on active duty.” The men are unmotivated. But that assessment and this assignment come from Maj. Malcolm A. Powers, who has been set up as the antithesis of our hero. Maj. Powers is an Annapolis graduate. He transferred to a combat regiment coming from supply and logistics. Although he expects GySgt Highway to get the platoon into shape, he calls the Gunny an anachronism with no role to play in the modern Marine Corps. In contrast to the martinet, we have 2LT Ring. Ring led his ROTC unit. He wears glasses. He excuses himself from an exercise to make a doctor’s appointment. Nonetheless, he supports GySgt Highway’s actions, speaking up to the Major to take responsibility for the Gunny. He tries hard. His heart is in the right place. He leads the men into combat. 

Under direct fire, the Lieutenant makes a bad choice and his radioman is killed. He is crestfallen. “You won’t make the same mistake again,” the Gunny says. We can believe that; and it might be interesting to write a story about Major Ring in Iraq during the Surge. 

Overall, Heartbreak Ridge charges through a barrage of intellectual bullets. The warrior ethos embraces fatalism. When 2LT Ring is floundering over the death of Private Profile the Gunny tells the Elltee that the man’s time was come and no matter how fast you run when it’s your time there’s nothing you can do about it. But that is not entirely true, or no reason would exist for GySgt Highway’s gung-ho training regimen and relentless pursuit of combat readiness. 

And that speaks to the problem of Maj. Powers. The story line denigrates him for coming from supply. He wants every form filled out, every bullet tallied. He is not the hard-charging Bionic Marine that GySgt Highway is. We get that. It is the story. But the fact remains that while good commanders know tactics and great commanders know strategy, winning commanders know logistics: an army moves on its stomach. But we do not get a lot of hero stories about the 4-shop.

Powers and Ring are college graduates whereas Highway “graduated” from Heartbreak Ridge when he and two others were the only survivors of three days of human wave assaults. (Highway was granted a Medal of Honor. That speaks to other problems with the story line, but let that go for now.) Although GySgt Highway is condemned as an anachronism, we see him learning to understand his ex-wife by reading women’s magazines. It is an emotional problem, not an intellectual one. The Gunny does outfox his wargame opponents by setting a better trap but it is range of the moment, concrete, not something you learn from a book. In point of fact, of course, it is exactly one of the many lessons in the books assigned to those who want to become leaders in combat. It is just that we did not sit with young Cpl Highway at the NCO school.

(For more on the differences between the commercial ethos and the guardian ethos see Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics by Jane Jacobs, New York: Random House, 1992, which is cited in several other posts in this blog.)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Advanced Non-Commissioned Officer Training 

The Fourth Star  

President Trump and the Military 

Soldiers of Peace

Why Democracy is Difficult

If you run the Declaration of Independence through a grammar and style checker, you will find that it takes a modern college education to understand.  I would argue that most of today’s graduates do not understand it, but perhaps that is only from the lack of trying.

The founders of our republic were not average.  They were successful merchants and farmers and craftsmen.  George Washington was a surveyor.  (Quick: what is the square root of three?  A surveyor has memorized that as securely as most literate Americans have memorized the letter after R.)  If you drink beer you know the Sam Adams brand. It seems common enough, until you extrapolate from zymurgy to genetic engineering.

Jonathan Trumbull's
Signing of the Declaration of Independence
from the Library of Congress website

Karl Popper’s ringing plea, The Open Society and Its Enemies, was an appeal to ignorance. We do not know everything. Indeed, we cannot. New discoveries reveal that what we know today might not be true tomorrow.  Against that the fascists and communists of Popper’s time and the jihadi of our own offer intransigent commitment to claims of absolute certainty. Thus, the collapse of Arab Spring led to the rise of ISIS.

But an alternative exists.  Reality, reason, egoism, capitalism, and romanticism comprise the parameters of philosophical objectivism.  Ayn Rand’s capital-O Objectivism is just one expression of that. The broader philosophical objectivism, i.e., rational-empiricism, is the foundation of political freedom and social tolerance. 

But it is not easy, and nothing in the stars says that it must be. When Ptolemy I Soter complained to Euclid that geometry was difficult, the latter said that there is no royal road. In other words, there is no way to make this easier. Thinking is hard work.  It is easy to condemn the physically lazy, but no special sin exists for the intellectually slothful—except, of course, sloth itself.  Among the Texas State Guard, my email sigline is “Sapientia ardua est.”

Widespread intelligence and education are the basis for political freedom.  Of axiomatic necessity, most people are average.  Therefore, it might be argued that it takes a committed engagement by an intellectual elite to bring about a better form of government. However, the Flynn Effect posits that we are all smarter now than our ancestors of 100 or 200 years ago.  Maybe we just are not applying our intelligence to the right problems.

 

Created for an article that I wrote:
"Did Thomas Jefferson Wear
Mirrorshades?"
(Loompanics, 1991)

On my Macintosh, I have Word 2008, and its Spelling and Grammar checker seems to have a ceiling of 12^th grade. Nothing scores more difficult.  So, I ran the Declaration of Independence through several readability engines available on a website created by one Brian Scott. (“ReadabilityFormulas.com is a non-commercial ‘passion project’ created by freelance writer Brian Scott. The website offers free information and tools to understand readability formulas.  Visit Brian's other websites, LousyWriter.com and FreelanceWriting.com.”)

  

FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS

Readability Consensus 

Grade Level: 19

Reading Level: difficult to read.

Reader's Age: College graduate

LONG TRAIN OF ABUSES

Readability Consensus

Grade Level: 23

Reading Level: very difficult to read.

Reader's Age: College graduate

LAST THREE PARAGRAPHS

Readability Consensus

Grade Level: 16

Reading Level: difficult to read.

Reader's Age: College graduate

Modernizing the presentation does lower the readability to grade 7.8.  Now it resembles Peter Norvig’s PowerPoint presentation of the Gettysburg Address (here).

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

• All men are created equal.
• They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.
• Among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
• To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.
• Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
• Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.
•  The people may institute new Government.
• The foundation of the new Government rests on such principles as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
• The Government should organize its powers in such form.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Science of Liberty

Liberty’s Kids

Contradictions in the Constitution

The Rational Optimist and the Grand Complication