118 Comments

1. A Conservative Teacher:

On my blog today I commented on Jonah Goldberg’s most recent story. This is what he wrote- Behind all the talk of unity and bipartisanship and shared sacrifice lies an uglier ambition: power. The audacity of hope behind all this Lincoln-FDR-Obama blather is the dream of riding roughshod over the opposition, of having their way, of total victory.

Months ago I wrote on my blog about how I feel that the language and style of Obama resembles not the communists but the fascists, and I really fear for our state. My fears are not being put to rest with the environmental fascists just seizing power in the Democratic Party this week.

Nov 21, 2008 - 5:09 pm 2. NahnCee:

I think one of the coming crises that has been overlooked is that of water. We have been used, for decades now, that certain parts of the world couldn’t feed themselves — that there’s not enough food for all the people who have bred.

But now we’re running out of water, too. Not only the Middle East where countries like Saudi Arabia have tapped out pretty much their whole aquifer, but here in California it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep water in all the swimming pools.

In order to grow food, you need water. And I can’t see where the research on desalination is progressing to the point of keeping up with demand.

Nov 21, 2008 - 5:20 pm 3. Ron Hardin:

Demand can’t outstrip supply unless you regulate prices. Then you get increasing populations of idle people standing in line instead of selling stuff.

Nov 21, 2008 - 5:25 pm 4. Mark:

It seems that pundits have been predicting America’s demise or castration for decades — some day they may be right, but that would depend upon a series of very unfortunate and improbable events.

1. Prolonged political and/or economic instability (mismanagement) that affects the US severely, but leaves the rest of the world relatively untouched — very unlikely

2. A rapid economic ascension of Russia, China, and/or India despite their own severe internal issues, which outpaces US growth and innovation; China would have the most promise of these three; unlikely

3. A massive intellectual ferment in the US which affects our capacity for innovation and thought leadership adversely; unlikely

4. Global war — the outcome of which is anyone’s guess; possible, but still unlikely

Nov 21, 2008 - 5:36 pm 5. Anonymous Green-Power Engineer:

Three thoughts, and a question:

1) What if the solar dynamicists are right and we get global cooling for the next 30-40 years?

2) The retirement of the Baby Boomers should tend to stop the transfer of wealth from West to East as their consumption tendency ramps down. The adoption of non-oil-based energy systems will stop (and probably reverse) the transfer of wealth to the Gulf States and Russia, as well.

3) The U.S. government will, in fact, have to default on its obligations in some way within the next 30 years–given dynamic considerations, within the next 10. The social contract cannot support a government that is primarily a scheme for taking money from young, relatively poor people and delivering it to old, relatively wealthy people.

Question: If three of the fundamental assumptions of this long-range NIC do not take into account easily forseeable changes, what good is the damn thing? It looks to me as though this NIC represents the reification of the Washington consensus. Not terribly useful.

Nov 21, 2008 - 5:46 pm 6. SpeakEasy:

It seems that, historically, expansion has been a natural pressure relief valve when boundaries no longer have any flex-room. It sounds contradictory but I’m speaking of first long range shipping and then long range flight. I am hopeful that interplanetary colonization can lead to looking to other worlds instead of over our neighbor’s fences. Well, the title did say 2025……

Nov 21, 2008 - 5:53 pm 7. Unsk:

Anonymous Green-Power Engineer-

To your list one could add “unprecedented economic growth’. Up until last year the world was experiencing rapid economic growth. - I’m not so sure given the dire straits of the economies of the US, Europe, Japan, China and Russia that this prediction of unprecedented growth works well anymore.

Nov 21, 2008 - 6:03 pm 8. Mark:

Anonymous Green-Power Engineer:

If global cooling occurs, that would affect the entire world, not just the US, and would not necessarily lead to a relative decline in US power.

The retirement of Baby Boomers and the practical use of green energy may help mitigate the transfer of wealth from West to East to a degree, but the East (particularly China and India) are experiencing their own increases in consumption; increased demand for goods and services due to increased wealth. This is not entirely in the West’s control; their populations have enough mass that they can benefit from their own expats sending money home regardless of where they live in the world, and from global market success of domestically registered businesses.

Nov 21, 2008 - 6:04 pm 9. Gordon:

Increasing influence for Brazil and India could be plausible but I’m not so sure about China and, particularly, Russia. Both have looming demographic problems, the former in an aging population, the latter in a decreasing population; unhealthy, lopsided economy; and a corrupt legal system. Lots of changes needed there to become a world leader in 25 years.

Nov 21, 2008 - 6:36 pm 10. cjm:

if the cia is right on this, that in itself would be a momentous event.

but if the s*** hits the fan, who would you want to trade places with?

i think the real question with regards to the u.s. moving towards fascism, is how would the armed forces react?

also, given that a large aspect of fascism is ethnic cohesiveness, how does that work here?

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:00 pm 11. Kinuachdrach:

We pay taxes and they give us this? It all seems very pedestrian.

Let’s go back about 17 years instead of forward. In 1990, were these people predicting that the USSR was about to break up, or that high-tech items in 2008 would mostly be manufactured in China?

The future may not be a straight line extrapolation of the recent past. By 2025, it is plausible that we might have seen civil war & military take-over in the US; break-up of China into warring states; and the pre-emptive surrender of the entire EU to Russian expansionism.

The important question is not what the future might bring; it is what actions do we take right now?

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:03 pm 12. Scott Pierce:

This is perhaps the only blog where I can stomach reading the comments as they are so thoughtful in comparison to the deranged fluff found on most blogs. What I fear most is that those who are committed to freedom would become as emasculated as the Tories have become in the UK. Love it or no, the United States is/was the greatest experiment in human freedom on such a scale the human species has ever known. I fear it may succumb to the childishness that is the opposition to statism in the UK currently. Throughout the rest of Europe, I consider these men and women compatriots who long for the rights of the individual, but to me, the UK Tories seem Quislings.

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:20 pm 13. Mongoose:

This “report” is a reflection of what all but a few of the elites actually think and want.
It is a projection and a transference of their meager and paltry inner spirits.
They want us to be weak, to pay for some imagined grievances, for they are weak and grieving cowards and dolts. Unfortunately, that does not mean their “vision” does not have its own imaginative power.

Why do they desire this, and why is the nation so prostrate before these ingrates?

If the only Left could be bottled up, there is no end to what the USA could accomplish if it would just get back to the hard work of being the great nation it was meant to be. It is purely self-immolation. Who would we fear? Soros? Syria? Putin? China? Really now, it is our internal enemies that we should fear.

And, Conservative Teacher could well be right. The white heat of the animus behind these people should give us all pause; their lack of capacity for reason is chilling.
Their compulsion to squander our heritage on the most foolish and vile passions is beyond precedent.

I think the turning point of the USA could well be the enactment of Universal Health Care. That just might be the end of us as a great power. It will certainly end our run as a a free self governing people.

The future is in the hands of thirteen yearolds. What is to stop them?

This, obviously is the internal crisis of the West and it is already being exploited by internal and external enemies — and so it has been for quite sometime.

Mark: Do PC idiocies like “Climate Change” which corrupt intellectual life, scientific funding, science itself and governement polcies in general count as debilitating “intellectual ferment”? If so, I would suggest that your #3 is already here.

Moreover, I M not so confident about continued thought or innovation leadership on the USA’s part. These edges have been eroding for quite some time, and Obama and company and their agenda may be the tipping point. Besides, the left would just love to transfer knowledge along with wealth to the “emerging” world. You may underestimate their perverse hatred for the rest of us citizens. Besides, increasingly it is a requirement to undertake knowledge transfer when setting up in the BRIC nations, and FOR LARGE FIRMS this usually means setting up well funded R&D centers which interface with the host nation’s University and National Lab systems.

There ARE no guaranteeS here.

This lead of ours has not been an historical constant: Our commitments to WW2, the Cold War and a vast wave of gifted –and mostly European — immigrants were large factors in this. The WW2/Cold war “wise men” set up some great institutions (i.e., DARPA, NSF, NASA, ONR, a reformed University system, etc.) and also put into place great facilities (i.e., Fermilab, the national laboratories, etc.), But these institutions need reform, perhaps some significant rethinking and certainly some retooling. The national science system/infrastructure is in danger of being outpaced. The EU has spent billions putting in place a fair emulation of our system (this might be the only productive success of the Lisbon Accords). China and India are working this out as well.
Any young American interested in particle physics, for example, will head over to CERN these days, not to an American institution. There is not much magic or mystery to success here; we should not imagine that we have a monopoly at all on this. (And remember, we ponied up about a half a billion for CERN.)

But, as I suggested, what is particularly vexatious it the corruption and the distortions that things like “Climate Science” brings. You should look at the national budgets for Cyberinfrastructure/High Performance Computing initiatives. These are heavily ladened this AGW silliness. This is highly destructive and in more ways then one. It misallocates funds, corrupts scince and distorts the national discourse in the matter of S&T priorities. It could end up permanently damaging the reputation of the scientific community in this nation — just look at the low regard teachers are held in these days.

During the heyday of science and technology in this country we were spending something like four S&T dollars for every dollar of transfer payments to individuals. That is close to being reversed now. A lot of folks imagine that the country is the same as it was during our great periods of post war innovation. This may not be true any more. As we are gradually being hollowed out as a manufacturing power, so we are being diminished at a S&T power.

Our universities are churning out ill-educated, uncultured and barely civilized buffoons, and this curse is not limited to the humanities. The days of the great R & D institutions has pretty much faded. Bell Labs is a mere shadow of what it was, and is now owned by the French (IBM Research, one of the last of these sort of “private” research institutions is now so international now that it can hardly be considered an American asset). Places like Google only touch upon a very small segment of what places like Bell labs once touched upon.

Things might now be as rosy as you think, and an international meltdown may just exacerbate these noxious trends.

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:28 pm 14. sammy small:

I would agree that a CIA report is not a valid barometer of what lies ahead. They seem to have missed the looming spread of nuclear weapons and their increasing odds of being used somewhere in the world. Talk about a crisis that is difficult to prepare for. I predict that fallout shelters should make a comeback in Israel soon.

I don’t think that the US will allow for a fascist head to succeed. Too much of a 50/50 nation. The civilian police funded as well as the military could be a first step towards that goal though. Gun sales are apparently doing a brisk business since the election.

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:29 pm 15. Mongoose:

CJM: LOL about the CIA. Now there would be a REAL advance. too funny.

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:30 pm 16. Eggplant:

NahnCee said:

“here in California it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep water in all the swimming pools.”

In geologically recent times (a couple thousand years ago), California used to go through 30 year droughts. Even in Pre-Columbian times, California’s indians were nothing to write home about (the exception being the sea faring indians who lived off California’s coast, they were interesting). One of my pet theories as to why California’s indians were so uninteresting was they kept being wiped out to near extinction by 30 year droughts. It could be perverse in the extreme that we’ve just gone through a three century “wet period” and are about to revert back to a climate with 30 year droughts.

Mark said:

“It seems that pundits have been predicting America’s demise or castration for decades — some day they may be right, but that would depend upon a series of very unfortunate and improbable events.”

Obama changes all the rules. Obama is arguably the most scary demagogue to ever become President. The only(!) thing that holds him in check is the Democrat Party’s elite. The usual checks against Presidential abuse of power (the Congress and the news media) are in his back pocket. If Obama choses to, he could ruin our nation. This is an incredibly stupid situation to be in.

SpeakEasy said:

“It sounds contradictory but I’m speaking of first long range shipping and then long range flight. I am hopeful that interplanetary colonization can lead to looking to other worlds instead of over our neighbor’s fences. Well, the title did say 2025……”

Oh how I wish this could be true! This is what I do for a living and nothing would please me more. Unfortunately there is NO WAY this can happen (believe me, it pains me deeply to say this). Doing a repeat of what we did with Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969 would push NASA to its very limits. So much vital technology has been lost (much of it went away when engineers retired with no young people to pass their professional knowledge on to). A Mars colonization program IS technically feasible (knowledgable people will sometimes say it isn’t so but they don’t have all the facts). However the cost would be enormous. The Apollo Program cost $25 billion in 1960s dollars (that’s about $250 billion in current dollars). A Mars colonization program would be much more expensive that simply sending a couple genius/athletes to the Moon for 3-4 day stays. An extremely well run program with a team of red-hot aerospace engineers might(?) do it for a little less that a trillion dollars. Where would the money come from?

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:34 pm 17. Lifeofthemind:

The amazing thing about this scenario, indeed about the entire transfer of wealth and power from the West, especially the United States, to the East, especially the Oil Powers, is that it so unnecessary. This is not the result of some devastating plague or terrible defeat in war. This is purely and simply a matter of choice, a failure of will that has allowed wealth and power to drain away. It would still be perfectly possible for the United States to put its collective foot down and say “No.”

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:38 pm 18. wretchard:

Crisis is opportunity, as Chris Matthews argues on his show. The argument is intuitively appealing: extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:55 pm 19. Mongoose:

LOFTM: self-immolation. One day historians will scratch their heads over this one.

It is like lead in the plumbing.

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:59 pm 20. Eggplant:

Lifeofthemind said:

“The amazing thing about this scenario, indeed about the entire transfer of wealth and power from the West, especially the United States, to the East, especially the Oil Powers, is that it so unnecessary… It would still be perfectly possible for the United States to put its collective foot down and say “No.””

I know it is tedious to say so but I believe we have been programmed to fail (the Gramscian thing). We must UN-learn this mental poison that is slowly killing us.

Maybe Obama’s failure will be the beginning?

Nov 21, 2008 - 7:59 pm 21. Thrasymachus:

The current situation started with Clinton. The media was very much in the bag with him. The media always has been liberal, but Clinton was the first big name politician who was one of *them*. (They wished Kennedy was one of them, but he wasn’t, and his rule was very short anyway.) Media investigation of any wrongdoing by Clinton amounted to a cursory dismissal.

Obama is very, very much one of them and they can’t even pretend to be neutral. If most of the media can’t evaluate things, in fact just pushes the spin, and in fact aggressively attacks anybody not with the program, we have a real problem.

The problem isn’t the Ivy League authoritarianism in the media though, it’s the Ivy League authoritarianism in the financial business, and the bankruptcy it has induced. A few trillion here and a few trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Nov 21, 2008 - 8:04 pm 22. Mongoose:

Eggplant: Obama will nix Bush’s Moon/Mars Exploration revamping of NASA, arguambly the most visionary initiative of his tenure.

It will be back to LEO only for us. Watch the Eu-Russian and the Chinese space programs reach parity with ours in a few years. This will be intentional.

The Democrats just hate the idea of the USA having any advantage over anyone.

They truly hate this nation, and are well paid for it.

Nov 21, 2008 - 8:08 pm 23. Mongoose:

It started with FDR. They just get more brazen (and desparate) as time goes on.

Before we just did not have the internet around to commiserate with each other before.

They have always been ruthless.

Nov 21, 2008 - 8:12 pm 24. whiskey:

That is true Wretchard. However, doing what Obama wants to do will only insure his downfall, by impeachment, through his own party, because while he wants to be a combination of a fascistic leader, and Jim Jones, he faces the existential threat of nuclear proliferation and the desire of exile-Army leaders like Zawahari to gain men and money through nuking major Western Cities.

If Obama were to say, intern all Muslims and expel them, and forbid all others to enter, after say NYC were lost and 6-10 million US dead, no one would really argue against that. But to enforce MORE PC dogma is sure to create both a power vacuum (the Leader cannot deliver) and various attempts to remove him. Recall that Hitler narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by his own Army when he had already decisively lost the War. It took a brutal campaign of purges and executions to prevent another.

Crisis creates opportunity, but one that those who attempt it must succeed in. Caesar’s assassination created a crisis and opportunity for Marc Antony and Brutus and Octavian. Only one had the ability to actually win.

Obama seems weak and disorganized, lacking executive experience, he is likely to over-reach and use a crisis to demand unlimited power and then fail to deliver. The media will be in the tank, but they can’t sing the praises of Jonestown while “White Nights” are being conducted and “Revolutionary Suicide” is in the air.

As far as the BRIC countries go, please, let’s have a laugh. China is in the midst of a huge welfare expansion and make-work projects to combat record unemployment (amidst industrial misery). Brazil is a commodities exporter with a mass of seething, racially resentful illiterates. India much the same and Russia depopulating oil exporter and faded industrial power.

Meanwhile, Obama can save Detroit or Go Green. He cannot do both. He can spread welfare around to the White Majority populace or save Affirmative Action but he cannot do both. Obama can defend the country or cut the military but not do both.

Nov 21, 2008 - 8:13 pm 25. Lifeofthemind:

If the US wanted to we could do what we should have done when the Arabs staged the first oil embargo in the ’70s. The true market value of oil, without a cartel and subservient collaboration, would be a fraction of even today’s price. We can convince them that we are ready willing and able to use unlimited violence to defend our interests and then return the control over the energy resources to its lawful owners before they were expropriated. The trillions of dollars that were improperly taken from the West could be extracted over 5 years from the unworthy hands that have proven that they have no legitimate claims because of their addiction to bigotry, theft and violence. Half of that money could be used to retire debt; we do not want to undergo the impoverishing flood of paper wealth that has flowed through the Iranians as gold brought no lasting wealth to the Spanish of the 15th century. The other half should be used on research into the technologies that will ensure continued power and prosperity for America after the flow of cheap oil ends.

Nov 21, 2008 - 8:26 pm 26. programmer:

The future:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww

In the following, ignore shameless marketing by TI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAzN2qnhHHg

Feeling old and in need of a strong right arm?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK1WBA9Xl3c

Kids today, what are we going to do with them.
http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2007-03/popsci-videoteen-builds-basement-nuclear-reactor

I could go on, but this is an area of interest to me that I thought I would share. This is changing the world. All the BS by the CIA, etc. is applying old doctrines to a new world that is moving so frickin’ fast no one can really keep up. There are things being developed right now that make all the prognostication by the usual suspects obsolete even as they say it. Take a look at the latest iPhones and the Blackberry Storm. With existing technology (off the shelf parts), most any geek (and you will be surprised how many there are in America) can build devices that start to make the Star Trek Tricorder look obsolete.

Nov 21, 2008 - 8:27 pm 27. Lifeofthemind:

BTW, everybody saw yesterdays NYT report that the Iranians now have enough weapons grade uranium?

Nov 21, 2008 - 8:30 pm 28. Leo Linbeck III:

So, I haven’t read the entire report, and I doubt I will. Why? I started reading the executive summary, and on the first page, I read this:

In terms of size, speed, and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way—roughly from West to East—is without precedent in modern history.

This sentence betrays, in one sentence, a level of historical and economic ignorance that should cast doubts upon the quality of everything that follows, indeed the 2025 effort itself, and the entire intelligence community. [Ed: to our readers, that's a bit much, but don't stop him, he's on a roll...]

Let’s start with the economic. The idea of “wealth transfer” makes no sense. Let’s say I purchase a new Chinese-made drill press for $500. At the close of this transaction, I have the drill press, and the Chinese manufacturer has my $500. (I’m ignoring retail markups, distribution costs, taxes, etc.) Strictly speaking, there is no transfer of wealth. My personal balance sheet has $500 less cash, and $500 more PPE (property, plant, and equipment). My wealth, measured in either assets or equity, is unchanged.

Now, if the CIA report said that there had been a transfer of currency, that would be correct. But they could have characterized this as a transfer of equipment, and been equally correct. Neither is particularly meaningful in itself.

Wealth is created, not transferred. Strictly speaking, wealth is only transferred through gifts, like inheritances or charity. So the question is: what do we each do with our new asset? The Chinese probably put their $500 in the bank, which turns around and buys US treasury debt. So they get a whopping 0.5% return on their asset.

What about my drill press? Well, there are two things I can do with it: make something with it, or consume it. In the first case, let’s say I use it to make specialized parts for oilfield equipment. To make these parts, I need $10 worth of material, and I can sell the part for $25. Without the press, I can make 1 part per hour. With the press, I can make 2 parts per hour. I can make 5,000 parts before the drill press breaks. So, I’ve increased my hourly pay from $15 to $29.80 ($30 of profit, less 20 cents of drill press cost, or 10c per part times 2 parts in an hour). I have created a lot of wealth in the process: if I work 2,000 hours, I’ve created $29,600 per year of L3 wealth. Nice.

My other choice is to consume the drill press. I do this by smearing it with elephant dung and bolting it onto a picture of the Virgin Mary, and hanging this in my 20-month-old’s room. This way, I can enjoy the profound message radiating from my modern art installation every time I change his diaper.

So, the problem we’ve got is not “wealth transfer.” The problem is that we’ve been consuming our assets at a faster rate than we’ve been creating the wealth that feeds our consumption. The result is a correction, commonly called a recession. For a while, we consumer fewer assets and create more wealth. Eventually, things get back into balance. That’s bad for struggling artists, but it’s good for wealth creators. But if we use the recession as an excuse for taking away the newly created wealth from its creators and give it to artists through a generous NEA grant so that they can “spread it around” in the form of pachyderm poop, well, the recession will last a lot longer. But I digress.

Bottom line: the “wealth transfer from West to East” notion is intellectually sloppy. What they should have said was there there is enormous wealth creation taking place in low-income, highly-populated countries in the developing world. But this probably would sound too positive to make it past the thought police in charge of this document.

I’ll touch on the historical ignorance in my next post.

L3

Nov 21, 2008 - 8:39 pm 29. Lifeofthemind:

@L3,
Wealth is transferred by theft. Which is my argument regarding those who stole it from the original investors in energy production and have since used it to fund further destabilization in the West.

What we have here is not a 5 year episode that can be blamed on Bush because he stirred up a peaceful picturesque backwater. Now to be clear I do not think that we are the victims of a tightly organized conspiracy that was hatched in the Lubyanka. I belief that in their dreams Comrades Beria et al hoped for this and did what they could to lay groundwork for it but this can not be simply ascribed to them anymore than it could be ascribed to the plots dreamed of by Larouche. The efforts of our enemies were like the beating of butterflies’ wings in the winds of history.

What we do have is the culmination of a process that has always been reversible and the affects of which have been accumulating for decades. We tolerated the poison for reasons that seemed prudent at the time and kicked many a can down the road, because we did not want to give cover to an effort by a Demagogue later to restrict civil liberties or because we assumed that the natural superiority of our system would be evident and that the market of ideas, like the markets in capital goods or services, would validate our trust. We forgot that even free markets need to be guarded against fraud and theft. We forgot that the enemies of freedom will feel no urge to respond to restraint in kind and that would instead seek ever more ways to control and restrict speech.

Nov 21, 2008 - 9:00 pm 30. Leo Linbeck III:

Back again.

If we take the CIA report as saying that there has been a huge “currency transfer” instead of a “wealth transfer” (a notion I attacked above), their claim might make some sense. But to claim it is without precedent in human history is ridiculous.

The right way to measure currency transfer is to think about it in terms of the transfer of liquid assets. These are assets that can quickly and easily be converted into other assets. These days, we use national currencies for this purpose, but historically the liquid assets of choice were precious metals like gold.

Over the past 5 years, it has been claimed in the Washington Post that oil-producing countries and companies have received $2 trillion. Let’s use this number, although it does not account for any costs. During that same period, the total global economic production has been more than $250 trillion, so this means the transfer has amounted to less than 1%. This is, well, not a big number.

But maybe they meant a transfer of relative wealth. Sorry, that doesn’t work any better. In terms of relative wealth, from 1970 to 1998, the US share of world GDP fell from 22.0% to 21.9%. By 2007, it had risen to 25.3%. Oops! Wrong direction. It’s getting better!

Still, let’s look at another change in relative wealth from history (from Angus Maddison):

The British Empire, from 1820 to 1870: 5.2% to 24.1%
China, same time period: 32.9% to 17.2%

This is the obvious example. There are probably others.

Unprecedented? I do not think that word means what they think it means.

L3

Nov 21, 2008 - 9:16 pm 31. Leo Linbeck III:

LOTM,

Good point on theft. But how much “transfer” does this really represent? If you steal my drill press, I lose my $500. But that’s it. If you go on to later use it to make yourself $100,000 in profits, the transfer doesn’t grow to $100,000.

How much wealth was stolen? Is it really material? I rather doubt it. Or, let’s just say it’s not enough to justify making it the lead paragraph in a paper about the world in 2025.

This is not to say, of course, that we should condone theft. Unless, of course, it’s in the form of taxation. And I’m President-For-Life. And I really need it. For investment. Then it’s OK.

Cheers.

L3

Nov 21, 2008 - 9:22 pm 32. Charles:

OT:

Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash :: 1969 Sessions

Nov 21, 2008 - 9:25 pm 33. Scooper:

So, in effect, you are declaring Hugo Chavez to be the wave of the future?

Nov 21, 2008 - 9:30 pm 34. Lifeofthemind:

@L3,
But if I steal your drill press and then use it to manufacture tools that enable me to take more from you, say by producing weapons that I give to people who attack you, or by using the wealth it generates to bribe your teachers and retired statesmen to tell everyone, even your children, that you are really a terrible person and that you must not respond to my thefts then it becomes not just an immediate but minor loss but a capital asset that is used against me.

Until recently the people who suffered the most from the depredations of the energy mafia were people in the 3rd World. They lost the fertilizers and pesticides and financial capital that were essential for the growth that happened during the 1950s to 1970s. Since then the people of areas like Sub-Saharan Africa have suffered a severe relative decline.

Nov 21, 2008 - 9:36 pm 35. programmer:

At the risk of beating a dead rhinoceros:

The most interesting part starts at around 1:09.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQLsjbQy7NI&feature=related

Meine Freundinnen, I claim we are on the verge of making magic real. Controlling inanimate objects with our mind (at least to all appearances). How does that fit into the politcal models?

Nov 21, 2008 - 9:37 pm 36. Alexis:

If history teaches anything, it is the futility of predicting events too far into the future. It is particularly unwise to assume that present trends will necessarily continue indefinitely. Intelligence estimates that forecast beyond the next ten years should be regarded as literary opinion analogous to science fiction, and as such should be considered to be yet another periodic eruption of pessimism in American popular culture.

Who would have guessed in 1969 that the United States would cancel the Apollo program and not send men to the Moon for the next forty years? Who would have guessed in 1979 that NASA would have the Challenger and Columbia disasters? Every short term decision has a long term effect. Small decisions amplified through multiple repetitions have big effects. Refusing to make a decision is still a decision. No effect is still an effect.

Just as it would be unwise to predict what the weather will be on November 21, 2033, it would be unwise for American intelligence to estimate the political balance of power on November 21, 2033, unless the United States government actively decides that it would be a good idea to subsidize science fiction.

Nov 21, 2008 - 9:55 pm 37. Charles:

I buy T Boone pickens arguement that it wouldn’t be technologically tough to change american trucks from oil to gas. That this could be done in just a few short years. That doing so would cut US oil consumption by 25%.

Pickens Plan

Nov 21, 2008 - 10:16 pm 38. Charles:

Here’s where water desal research is at.

Nov 21, 2008 - 10:24 pm 39. Jeffrey:

If Obama is to be king, he will mirror Richard II.

Nov 21, 2008 - 10:25 pm 40. Dave:

Does CIA really stand for Completely Inept and Assinine? Should we investigate them?

Have to hire Pinkertons of course. Sure can’t count on the Fumbling, Bumbling, and Incompetent.

L3 has got it right. We have sent excessive quantities of cash abroad and some of that is being used to make mischief. But please do not tell me that oil sheikdoms are wealthier than we. It just ’tain’t so.

And just because a lot of Indians and some Chinese as well are better off than they were before, in no way causes any of us any deprivation. Productive wealth is not a zero-sum game and it is nothing short of insane to treat it as one.

LOTM: I am sure there will be resource wars in our future. Not that we will run out of resources but there will be “spot” shortages,
that is not enough in one place at one time to satisfy all comers. The theft you mentioned will then come into play, often precluding rational compromise, and that is when the shooting starts.

Along with NahnCee, the one resource that is of real concern is Dihydrogem Monoxide. Just because the Earth is 3/5s covered with it does not mean it is cheap, let alone unlimited.

Where I come from we have never had anybody murdered over oil. However, we almost had an old-fashioned range war break out over watering rights in 1952. Governor had to send in TWO Rangers to get things calmed down.

Here in the US, I would like to see a nationwide project to put desalinated water into the headwaters regions and let it flow down from there. Do what Mother Nature does
but do it without the irregular cycles. This will cost money and the water will have to be sold at OUTRAGEOUS prices to pay for it all, but that will provide plenty along with conservation.

With adequate water everywhere, industrial development can take place where it could not before and that takes care of a few other problems. (Do you know what happens when you hit a played-out oil well with acre-feet of high pressure steam?)

Programmer and Eggplant: Start putting facilities in orbit and new capabilities emerge like never before;

To all others: Thanks a jillion for your input.
Sorry I cannot respond to each one—–not that you will be deprived by my lack of attention.
But the quality of the responses to the article is nothing short of remarkable. Indicates we are gonna stay in business well past eh gloom and doom date.

Nov 21, 2008 - 11:02 pm 41. Aristide:

programmer @ 35

Meine Freundinnen, I claim we are on the verge of making magic real. Controlling inanimate objects with our mind (at least to all appearances). How does that fit into the politcal models?

Yes We Can! Yes We Can!

Nov 21, 2008 - 11:21 pm 42. JMH:

…it was not apparent at the time how extremist the new leader would be.

When I was younger, I would look at old footage of Hitler ranting and raving, waving his arms around like a loon with his comb-over flapping up and down on his head and that ridiculous moustace perched atop his lip, and I would think what a clown. People must’ve been pretty stupid back then for such an obvious bufoon to be a serious leader. Glad we’re more sophisticated today. Likewise, watching Il Duce strut around sticking his jaw out and striking asnine poses reminded me of a twelve-year old showing off for the other adolescents while the real adults were busy elsewhere with something important.

What I learned later is that the enlightened, sophisticated people of Hitler’s day thought he was a damn clown too. They had a hard time grasping how such an obvious bufoon could’ve gotten ahold of the levels of power. And most of them clearly assumed a bufoon like that would quickly pull the wrong lever and accidentally, without ceremony, eject himself from the scene. No need to do anything rash, the clown would run himself off the stage.

Well, as it happened, there was quite a bit of “ceremony” before we were rid of the clowns. And I no longer think of my own contemporaries as sophisticated or enlightened. And I no longer think clowns are harmless walking sight-gags. I’d like Whiskey to be correct in his #24, but I’m increasingly feeling like that’s whistling past the graveyard. And for some reason, the whistling comes out sounding like a calliope…

Nov 21, 2008 - 11:59 pm 43. Eggplant:

Mongoose said:

“Obama will nix Bush’s Moon/Mars Exploration revamping of NASA, arguambly the most visionary initiative of his tenure.”

The current story is that Obama will simply ignore NASA (that’s what Bill Clinton did). The 2008 NASA budget in 2007 dollars is $ 17.138 billion. As crazy as it sounds, $ 17.138 billion is insignficant compared to Medicare, Social Security, Defense Dept., etc. NASA’s budget is so small that it’s in the background noise. Obama will simply let NASA run on autopilot, e.g. he won’t even bother to change NASA’s current administrator even though the administrator was a George Bush appointee.

Nov 22, 2008 - 12:05 am 44. Doug:

Beats 72 Raisins
A “Pleasure Brigade” of nubile retainers

A revolving gold statue, pink champagne and a “Pleasure Brigade” of nubile retainers all feature in Times Money’s list of history’s most decadent dictators. While their people suffered, these men - and sometimes their wives and children - agonised over how best to spend their ill-gotten gains…

1. Kim Jong-il, “Dear Leader” of North Korea since 1994. The son of the communist state’s “Great Leader”, Kim Jong-il has super-expensive tastes, with 17 palaces and collections of hundreds of cars and about 20,000 video tapes. On one state visit to Russia, he reportedly had live lobsters airlifted daily to his armoured private train. He is believed to spend around $650,000 a year on Hennessy VSOP cognac and maintains an entourage of young lovelies known as the “Pleasure Brigade”

Car-buying spree for Kim Jong Il

2. Ferdinand Marcos, President of the Philippines, 1965 - 1986. The Second World War freedom-fighter turned kleptocrat secreted billions of dollars in overseas accounts. His wife Imelda, however, was the big spender, leaving 888 handbags and 1060 pairs of shoes in the Malacanang presidential palace when the family fled mob justice after Marcos was deposed. Her pricier purchases included the $51 million Crown Building and $61 million Herald Centre in New York and art by Michelangelo and Botticelli

Marcos: a headache that won’t go away

Nov 22, 2008 - 3:24 am 45. wildernesscalling:

This train is headed one way and it would take a derailment to change the destination, derailment 9 times out of 10 destroys the train, thrown on the breaks and putting the train in reverse ain’t gonna happen (come on folks the government still pays for wool to use in uniforms it quite using decades ago! Baby boomers in the whole will never give up what they think is owed them) there it goes folks the truth all summed up, simply read the bible if you wanted to know how it ends, the closer we get the crazier it will be, there is no stopping it, I for one am sorry to see it happening not because of what’s coming but because of what will happen to so many souls and only a few will actually get thru it.

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:30 am 46. Salt Lick:

I think the turning point of the USA could well be the enactment of Universal Health Care. That just might be the end of us as a great power. It will certainly end our run as a a free self governing people.

I think this is absolutely right, and I think Obama knows it, too. He will move “to the center” on every single issue except this one, and then if he and Daschle get universal health care through, Obama will have transformed America into an entirely new country.

The battle against universal health care will be our side’s Gettysburg.

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:51 am 47. Reloader449:

wildernesscalling:

Bible-based pessimism? End of the human race altogether because it’s prophesied? Does discussing what calibers are useful in the wilderness make any sense? We like .40 Smith & Wesson and traditional .30′06 around here.

Eggplant #20 - the Gramscian Thing

do you really think many understand what you’re referring to? the hidden truth about the dissolution of fundamental culture by a brainwashed bunch of zombies? The difficulty I’m having in putting together my book is the dissemination of leftist planning for America’s destruction in so many American institutions. It’s unbelievable AND hard to document exactly how anti-American-suicide was communicated to so many Americans in so many different areas of life.

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:55 am 48. Mongoose:

Eggplant: True, the budgets could be larger, but there is still much at stake.

Clinton did more than just ignore NASA. 1) He put in place “internationalism” in our national program. This amounted to knowledge transfer to competitors. He placed us in a LEO holding pattern which led to less advancement on our part and thereby allowed other players to get closer to parity. 3) He heatedly ramped up “Diversity Hiring” and all the distortions associated with it. 4) He pushed a wholly inappropriate environmental mission onto NASA. 5) He put financial pressure on DoD/Intel space efforts and discouraged many innovative programs (do not forget that NASA is not the only federal organization with a space S&T budget).

So this resulted in the fiasco of the ISS, hair raising (and deadly) incompetence, economic pressure from the commercial launch platforms of the EU and Russia, scientific and strategic challenges from competitors and a misappropriation of funds.

All these problems still plague our space efforts. These things cannot be turned on a dime.

(BTW, we may never know what assist Clinton gave to Chinese rocketry — and remember those ICBMs are pointed at us. Is this technology finding its way in to Iranian missiles?)

We are at the point now where we have to use Russian engines for some of our lift platforms; we may have to completely rely on Russian systems to get to the ISS if and when they retire the shuttle. How did that happen when Russia was such disarray in the 1990’s? We started out that decade with a commanding lead. What is up with that?)

So Obama and Co. can do much mischief. They certainly have proved that they have the intent and the capacity to do so.

BTW, that “incompetent monkey BusHitler” saw all of this and understood quite well what was going on, had a truly insightful plan to turn it around and adroitly flew it under the radar right through congress. But he is the worse president in history, right? He is stupid, right?

Well it will be all for naught now, and we will pay dearly for it in 15 years.

The Russians, the Europeans and especially the Chinese are just laughing at us — when they are not scrathcing their heads.

Nov 22, 2008 - 6:02 am 49. cjm:

the british had a problem with wealth transfer once (again, west to east), and they solved it pretty tidily. old ways are best ways.

Nov 22, 2008 - 6:18 am 50. cfbleachers:

Fascism and totalitarianism will not come dressed as a lion, but as a lamb.

Prognostications about transfer of wealth are painted with too broad strokes, but transfer of ideology should be a topic on the table.

We are in a Texas Death Cage match for ideological identity and there are plenty of bodies in the ring. The squishy referee looks away at every infraction. Shari’a is in play in Europe, possibly in Canada…as the multicultural angst gives way to the dominant bully pulpit. It’s funny how some think that we all play by the same rulebook and then they try to apply boolean logic to their formulaic modelings of future events.

We don’t play by the same rulebook, therefore, we get beaten to death by our own.

Nov 22, 2008 - 7:18 am 51. Andropov:

The CIA.
Isn’t that a division of the Gong Show?

Nov 22, 2008 - 7:41 am 52. Talnik:

It appears evident that the default position of most of these forecasters is the decline of the U.S. I would posit that, although other powers would continue to grow, the U.S. would retain its dominant position if it does not give it up either deliberately or through neglect. Its systems are more nimble than most to address problems as they arise and its competitors exhibit more serious fundamental flaws.
However, there remains a troubling weakness in the U.S., personified by those who demonize its traditions, military and dominant industries, seek to restrict its access to energy and growth, and continue to politicize its education system. And they were just given control.

Nov 22, 2008 - 7:43 am 53. programmer:

Ok guys, the team optimist here again. I don’t foresee major swings in policy for the USA. There will be a lot of window dressing, etc., but the basic policies will remain the same. Here is why I believe that (those looking for hard evidence can skip the next few lines since they are all opinion on my part):

1) The Democrats/liberals were the “out” team when world shattering events occurred and the “in” team rose to the occasion. It drives them crazy to be in a position where great things are happening and they cannot get credit for the results. The “lesser intelligent” party is in control and doing quite well. So let’s throw a hissy fit and see if we can get back “in” where we can drive the car of state.

2) Now that the “smarter guys” are in charge, at long last, they had better not screw things up. It is one thing to be in the best seats in town heckling the “at bat” team and another to be “at bat”. The problem with telling everybody you are the smartest team around is you now have to actually be the smartest team. The electorate is fickle and they love to take down a “smarty pants”.

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:00 am 54. Andropov:

If a Democrat was going to win I prefered Hillary.
Apparantly from Obama’s appointments she did.
Bill and Hill must have something huge on Barrack.
In a way, this makes me feel better about the election.

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:09 am 55. Storm-Rider:

cjm: “the real question with regards to the u.s. moving towards fascism, is how would the armed forces react? also, given that a large aspect of fascism is ethnic cohesiveness, how does that work here?”

Scott Pierce: “What I fear most is that those who are committed to freedom would become as emasculated as the Tories have become in the UK.”

The problem in Europe and increasingly in the United States is that the political left does not believe in fighting for freedom. They will eventually submit to Islamist tyranny because their Marxist-Socialist world-view fosters an expression of unjust political power which its self will eventually lead to tyranny. The Marxist American left is an outwardly feminized fox, which now sits upon the American guard dog of human liberty, and adjusts her makeup as the Islamist wolf approaches. The only question remaining is whether the American Marxist fox conceals an iron fist beneath her velvet glove, and will she use it against the wolf or against the guard dog, or both? We could end up with totalitarian Marxism under the Leftist-Socialist fox, but more likely Islamist fascism under the wolf, because the masculinized Islamist wolf is more ruthless and suicidal than the Marxist fox. The only hope for survival of sacred human liberty is the survival of the American guard dog.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/the_testosterone_crisis.html

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:10 am 56. Leo Linbeck III:

cfbleachers,

Prognostications about transfer of wealth are painted with too broad strokes, but transfer of ideology should be a topic on the table.

Bingo. Ideas do matter.

Most modern wars have been fought over ideas, identity, or both. The New Cold War is a war between the ideas of the West (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) and Jihadism (death, submission, pursuit of supremacy). It is still relatively “cold” because most of the action is not warfare; even the previous Cold War had it’s hot moment (Korea, Vietnam).

We recognized the importance of message distribution (or, if you prefer, propaganda) in fighting the Soviets. Voice of America is but one example. Today, our delicate sensibilities prevent us from deploying similar weaponry. Remember the hue and cry about the DoD effort to set up media-influence units in Iraq?

So, the problem is not that we have provided financial assistance to our NCW enemies. The problem is that large and influential segments of our society (the academy, the super-wealthy, the press) have decided to unilaterally disarm. Or, worse, give up.

Useful idiots, indeed.

L3

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:11 am 57. Storm-Rider:

cjm: “the real question with regards to the u.s. moving towards fascism, is how would the armed forces react? also, given that a large aspect of fascism is ethnic cohesiveness, how does that work here?”

Scott Pierce: “What I fear most is that those who are committed to freedom would become as emasculated as the Tories have become in the UK.”

The problem in Europe and increasingly in the United States is that the political left does not believe in fighting for freedom. They will eventually submit to Islamist tyranny because their Marxist-Socialist world-view fosters an expression of unjust political power which its self will eventually lead to tyranny. The Marxist American left is an outwardly feminized fox, which now sits upon the American guard dog of human liberty, and adjusts her makeup as the Islamist wolf approaches. The only question remaining is whether the American Marxist fox conceals an iron fist beneath her velvet glove, and will she use it against the wolf or against the guard dog, or both? We could end up with totalitarian Marxism under the Leftist-Socialist fox, but more likely Islamist fascism under the wolf, because the masculinized Islamist wolf is more ruthless and suicidal than the Marxist fox. The only hope for survival of sacred human liberty is the survival of the American guard dog.

americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/the_testosterone_crisis.html

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:14 am 58. feeblemind:

CIA’s long range forecast should be read for entertainment purposes only. Would be interesting to review those prognostications in 10 years or so to see how wildly off base they are. After all, in January 1929, who was predicting the Great Depression and the start of WWII in the next decade?

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:14 am 59. Mike Sylwester:

Leo Linbeck III:
“I started reading the executive summary, and on the first page, I read this: ‘In terms of size, speed, and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way—roughly from West to East—is without precedent in modern history.’

This sentence betrays, in one sentence, a level of historical and economic ignorance that should cast doubts upon the quality of everything that follows …”
============

The Executive Summary summarizes the main text sloppily. The main text does not discuss

“a transfer of global wealth and economic power”

but rather a

“global shift in relative wealth and a transfer of economic power.”

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:19 am 60. Storm-Rider:

cjm: “the real question with regards to the u.s. moving towards fascism, is how would the armed forces react? also, given that a large aspect of fascism is ethnic cohesiveness, how does that work here?”

I believe the United States will never move toward fascism; we have anti-Monarch, anti-dictator and anti-fascist DNA in our national genome. Unfortunately we have been infected by a Marxist virus, and its RNA has taken over much of our available cytoplasmic ribosomes - most notably in the Democratic Party, in academia, mass-media and entertainment; and this has produced an American version of Marxist Socialism. You can read more about it in Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” I do not fear fascism (except for Islamist fascism) in America, I fear Marxism; and they already control much of our nation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEy_ihziQfA&feature=related

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:43 am 61. Leo Linbeck III:

LOTM,

It seems to me that your point about theft has some merit. However, the problem in oil-producing states is not theft from the West, but rather theft from the people of the East. The political systems there allow theft of physical resources from the broad populace by a small group of oilgarchs [sic].

Ownership of Western resources is widely distributed. ExxonMobil has more than 2.5 million individual investors. In adddition, it has more than 2,000 institutional investors, and these investors themselves have thousands of smaller investors. So the benefits are directly shared with millions of people.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabian oil is basically owned by one large family/tribe. Maybe a few hundred people, with a handful who actually control the allocation of the economic rents.

The core problem, then, is not theft. It’s concentration of wealth in the hands of people who fund our ideological opponents. This is a problem whether the wealth comes from theft or through legitimate means.

Cheers.

L3

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:44 am 62. Leo Linbeck III:

Mike,

The Executive Summary summarizes the main text sloppily.

Fair point. This is what happens when a reader (me) relies on competent summarization. I guess I should have learned my lesson from the IPCC Summary for Policymakers.

Even so, my response #30 addresses the relative wealth issue. My sense is that the CIA wrote this “analysis” when oil was at $140/bbl, and the “analysts” were having to pay $4/gal at the local Qwik-E Market, thus impacting their relative wealth. But US relative wealth has not been particularly impacted, mainly because we use the resources we buy from our OPEC friends to create even more wealth. And the wealth we create is greater than the currency we transfer. Our GDP is $13.8T. Our OPEC oil imports in 2007 were about 2.2 billion barrels, with an average price of about $65/bbl, or about $140 billion dollars. Not that big of a deal, methinks.

OTOH, if the issue is wealth relative to China, there is still very little impact, and directionally it is the opposite of what the CIA asserts. In 1998, the US had 21.9% of world GDP, China 11.5% (ratio of 190%). In 2007, those numbers were 21.2% and 10.8% (ratio of 196%).

What needs to happen is that China needs to consume more, and we need to consume less. Essentially, we’ve been spending their surplus: their savings have been loaned to us, and we’ve used the money to increase our consumption. As these habits change, things will get back into balance. It will be painful for us (and much more painful if the government keeps trying to Just Do Something™), but we’ll get there.

But it’s not like the Chinese have any power over us in the mean time. You know the old saying: If you owe the Chinese $1B, you have a problem. If you owe the Chinese $1T, they have a problem.

Or something like that.

Cheers.

L3

Nov 22, 2008 - 9:19 am 63. wildernesscalling:

Reloader449, “It’s unbelievable AND hard to document exactly how anti-American-suicide was communicated to so many Americans in so many different areas of life” Yes it is mind boggling, super natural wouldn’t you say! In fact absolutely impossible for “man” to even pull off…Thanks for helping to make my point!

Nov 22, 2008 - 9:26 am 64. njcommuter:

The core problem, then, is not theft. It’s concentration of wealth in the hands of people who fund our ideological opponents. This is a problem whether the wealth comes from theft or through legitimate means.

It’s not a concentration of wealth but a concentration of ownership. Oil exploration, refining, and delivery requires resources; without concentrating wealth you can’t do that. But to allow all the chance to participate, we spread the ownership. (This creates a new conflict, between the managers and the owners. Institutional investors have at least some power to keep that in check.)

Note that when Margaret Thatcher sold off England’s nationalized industries, she made sure that no one investor could buy more than a few thousand pounds in shares. Thus ownership would not be concentrated in the hands of a few, from which the government could easily confiscate it (concentrating it in the most powerful and least competent hands). Confiscating it now would mean taking from many, and those many vote.

Nov 22, 2008 - 9:36 am 65. Wadeusaf:

Well I suppose it helps to know who the NSA thinks the white swans are. Does that make it easier to spot the black ones? OR just easier to deny they exist?

Nov 22, 2008 - 10:13 am 66. cjm:

1. will there be another civil war here

2. if yes to #1 what will be organizing principle for choosing sides

3. what event would provide an alternative organizing force and head off a civil war

Nov 22, 2008 - 10:20 am 67. Mongoose:

L3: Not that i disagree that much with with your main premise, but as far as wealth transfers with regard to oil, one has to consider: 1) Nationalization of the fields and plant with some really nasty terms to the “renegotiation” of the positions of the Western oil comanpies (e.g., the 1950 grab by the Saudis and the Aramco concession); 2) In light of these nationalizations, even if one accepts the moral validity of the nationalizations, they could still be deemed as theft from “the people” of the nations that chose to nationalize the resources; and 3) It may well be that member of our elites are receiving payments from oil producing nations to frustrate any attempts to develope our own resources. This to is a form of theft (compounded by moral turpitude).

Also, extortion and market manipulation via cartel monopoly (and government fiat) is a kind of theft.

On another note, when a country like China receives technology due to political corruption and thus does not pay fair market value for it, this is theft. This theft may be a direct corrupt transfer of national secrets, it may be via espionage or it may just be copyright infringement that is overlooked by corrupt officials in the USA.
A bit obscure, but it is nonetheless thievery.

In fact, the whole notion of knowledge transfers between nations of knowledge that has been supported by the taxpayer for the expressed purpose of the national interest raises some moral questions, particularly when the taxpayers as a group receive little benefit and those transfers diversely impact their futures.
(We must remember that in the age of high technology the achievements have mostly been reached through a strong public and private “partnership” — it has hardly been pure capitalism. This is especially true of the seminal technologies (e.g. nuclear power, the transistor, etc.) and the infrastructure it took to perform the R&D.

Also, is it really necessarily true that a higher price of energy translates into greater wealth created by the purchaser? Does this stand in all circumstances?

At some point the price of an inout exceeds the wealth that can be created from it. As one apporaches that limit, the wealth be created diminishes either directly or indirectly (e.g., government manipulateion, inflation,etc.). The probelem with oil is that our civilization required it just to survive at all: There is no alternative in the short and mid term but to just bear it, and extra-market pressures are brought to bear on not just the direct economic actors but us all. This is in effect a wealth transfer and is done via extortion (i.e. price gouging in a monopoly system).

Nov 22, 2008 - 10:29 am 68. Mongoose:

inout=input. njcommuter: well said. that is gettingto what i meant.

Nov 22, 2008 - 10:30 am 69. cfbleachers:

Leo #54

Glenn Beck interviewed Jonah Goldberg on the transfer of ideology and how it drifts into something more, I thought you (and others here) might be interested.

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/18484/?ck=1

Nov 22, 2008 - 10:42 am 70. wildernesscalling:

An American civil war would likely lead to necular exchange in several places around the globe, Pak-India would be a front runner and I am sure Rus-US or a Rus/China-US…China owes Rus too so it coud there.

Nov 22, 2008 - 11:26 am 71. Eggplant:

Reloader449 said:

“It’s unbelievable AND hard to document exactly how anti-American-suicide was communicated to so many Americans in so many different areas of life.”

They (Soviet operatives and fellow travellers) used a “boiling frog” strategy over a period of many decades prior to the end of the Cold War. The driving political/social force was natural entropy. Entropy is always produced as an unwanted byproduct from a healthy society (it’s perfectly normal). Social entropy usually manifests itself as criminality, lunatic fring behavior, social misfits, eccentrics, wastrels, etc. Entropy normally dissipates away harmlessly because it is disorganized. The genius behind Gramscian subversion was to channel this naturally occurring entropy into a sustainable political force. The key point was not in creating entropy more quickly but rather to reduce its rate of dissipation such that it slowly accumulated.

Nov 22, 2008 - 11:27 am 72. NahnCee:

Are we all, then, saying that the Catholic Church isn’t as strong (or as rich) as the Muslims? It seems to me that there are quite a few non-governmental entities that have a horse in this civilization race which are being overlooked.

China, to me, is just a non-runner because in the long run — even in the next decade or two — it cannot maintain both its growth and its population on the infrastructure and natural resources it currently has. Sooner rather than later, it will implode and be required to pull back from international politics and economics and deal with its internal difficulties. Ditto Russia.

When people start yammering on about the “decline of America”, I always always look around and look at where America is in comparison with everyone else. And guess what? They are declining, too, and in point of fact the rest of the world was in Washington last week looking for a Federal bailout from America for *their* money woes. Maybe that’s what the CIA was talking about in a transfer of wealth from the West to the East — that the American taxpayer ends up funding every incompetent and rigged country that’s starving to death on the face of the globe.

(P.S. RE: water shortages, in the fires in Los Angeles last weekend, homes were lost in one area because of lack of water in fire hydrants in that area. They were broadcasting urgent messages on the radio and TV for homeowners around the areas that were burning to QUIT USING WATER *NOW*!!!}

Nov 22, 2008 - 11:41 am 73. Eggplant:

Andropov said:

“If a Democrat was going to win I prefered Hillary.
Apparantly from Obama’s appointments she did.
Bill and Hill must have something huge on Barrack.
In a way, this makes me feel better about the election.”

I saw our current economic crisis coming in 2005 (I pulled all my money out of the stock market about a year too early). I knew back then that there would be serious political consequences. Americans ALWAYS vote out the party in power when the economy tanks. However I foresaw the main consequence of this as being Hillary’s rise to power. I never imagined that Hillary would have bungled her election and allow a crypto-marxist to win. That was partially Hillary’s fault but the main blame goes to the MSM for becoming dysfunctional.

Don’t ignore Wretchard’s comment “there were only two Nazis in Hitler’s first cabinet”. Hitler was evil but not stupid. He initially put on a show of being reasonable and his opponents as alarmists. Then after he was entrenched in power, he began his real political agenda. We will have no real guage of how dangerous Obama is until after June 2009.

Nov 22, 2008 - 11:43 am 74. Storm-Rider:

The Marxist social entropy summarized by Eggplant is not a benign force; it is a malignant force which will lead not to ordinary unjust government power, but to tyranny. Marxist doctrine, even that adapted to the United States, violates the Declaration of Independence because in the Marxist-Socialist system there must be an elite governing class, i.e.: all men are not equal before the law. They also come to power through propaganda of their media arms - Izvestia, Pravda, etc. of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union; and the major mass-media of the Democrat Party in the United States today. Mass-media propaganda leads to unjust government power which does not derive from the (informed) consent of the governed. The final chapter of Marxism (The Leninist and Stalinist phases) is the phase of overt human rights suppression, i.e.: the destruction of our sacred rights to life, liberty and creative pursuit of happiness.

Marxism is also the enemy of our Constitution because Karl Marx (and Saul Alinsky) envisions an all-powerful Socialist State which controls the masses (say goodbye to individualism and to small government controlled by the people) by controlling their labor and their property.

“The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property” Karl Marx

“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.” Karl Marx

“You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property” Karl Marx

“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain….The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital. Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.” Karl Marx

“The method of engaging in trifles at public meetings and doing real business on the quiet justified itself brilliantly.” Friedrich Engels

“This is at least the best thing that remains for us to do, while we are compelled to use the pen and cannot bring our ideas into life with the help of our hands or, if necessary, with our fists.” Friedrich Engels

“When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward - or go back. He who now talks about the “freedom of the press” goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.” Vladimir Lenin

“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.” Vladimir Lenin

“Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.” Vladimir Lenin

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted….Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.” Vladimir Lenin

“The goal of socialism is communism.” Vladimir Lenin

“Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.” Joseph Stalin

“The only real power comes out of a long rifle.” Joseph Stalin

“If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.” Joseph Stalin

“We don’t let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?” Joseph Stalin

“The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.” Karl Marx

Nov 22, 2008 - 11:53 am 75. Jay:

I did some computing work for the CIA and I know some analysts who work there. The organization is screwed up and politicized.
Mongoose is correct about the way or research is being directed in a corrupt manner. But the EU is in worse shape with respect to R&D. The EU made all their universities move to a three year first degree. They also pushed the technology universities to lower standards in order to produce cookie cutter cheap engineers and scientists. Some of the better tech schools found ways to keep up standards.
The Italian government is taking funds from their university budgets and giving some of it to the Chinese for their educational system and in return the Chinese promised to buy Italian products. I learned this from a friend at the Milan Politechnico.

Nov 22, 2008 - 12:05 pm 76. Eggplant:

Mongoose said:

“Clinton did more than just ignore NASA. 1) He put in place “internationalism” in our national program. This amounted to knowledge transfer to competitors. He placed us in a LEO holding pattern which led to less advancement on our part and thereby allowed other players to get closer to parity. 3) He heatedly ramped up “Diversity Hiring” and all the distortions associated with it. 4) He pushed a wholly inappropriate environmental mission onto NASA. 5) He put financial pressure on DoD/Intel space efforts and discouraged many innovative programs (do not forget that NASA is not the only federal organization with a space S&T budget).”

The politic process behind Space Exploration is very complicated and would be uninteresting to most Belmont Club members. The people driving Space Policy are almost without exception very intelligent and highly educated. However they almost always approach the Space Program like the Six Blind Men and the Elephant (everyone is focused on their own hobby horse). I’m no exception. My big thing is Martian colonization. That puts me way out there on the tail of the Gaussian distribution.

My own experience has been that any cogent political argument that I could muster was thought about 30 years ago and equally cogent counter arguments were made, discussed over and then forgotten.

The argument behind Mars colonization does have an almost mathematical rigour, i.e.

If human beings are to survive beyond the Earth then they must live somewhere other than the Earth.
The easiest world to colonize beyond the Earth is Mars. Therefore if human beings are to survive beyond the Earth then they must colonize Mars.

One can find holes in the above argument and criticize it to the point that the issue becomes fairly grey. However I believe the basic conclusion is sound.

Nov 22, 2008 - 12:18 pm 77. Charles:

Re:Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash :: 1969 Sessions

There’s a lot of sadness buried in these songs. You have to consciously listen to other stuff. I’ve been listening to Chris Rice: Peace Like A River

And if you can figure out the harmonies–all the better

Nov 22, 2008 - 12:21 pm 78. Alexis:

Eggplant:

I agree with you that Mars colonization is a good idea. For geopolitical, military, and symbolic reasons, I think the Moon must be colonized – and colonized first.

If we put an American colony onto the Moon, it will make a very very big difference in Middle Eastern politics. It is the closest thing we have to a “silver bullet” for defeating al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, et cetera. The Moon is central to a large number of religions, particularly Islam. Control over the Moon is control over a prime source of political legitimacy on Earth, for every time a man looks at the Moon, he is reminded of those who control it. Controlling the Moon may actually be more important than controlling the Kaaba.

So yes, I see Mars colonization as an excellent long term endeavor. If possible, I would like to be buried in Martian ground. I see Moon colonization as essential to defeating our enemies here on Earth.

Nov 22, 2008 - 12:57 pm 79. Mongoose:

Space exploration also give an outlet to that pernicious “socially entropic element” mentioned above. This element as generally been flung to a frontier or the distant colonies of empire. Without frontiers it boils back into the body politic.

Nov 22, 2008 - 1:09 pm 80. Eggplant:

Alexis said:

“I agree with you that Mars colonization is a good idea. For geopolitical, military, and symbolic reasons, I think the Moon must be colonized – and colonized first.”

Lunar colonization is not possible for many technical reasons (remember this topic has been argued over ad nauseum for decades).

Alexis also said:

“If possible, I would like to be buried in Martian ground. I see Moon colonization as essential to defeating our enemies here on Earth.”

Great minds work alike. I would like to die of old age on Mars (not just be buried there). I’m an eigth generation pioneer. My ancestors always went west about 200 miles from where they were born (they tended to be be inept farmers). I was born in California, went west to Australia for seven years, found I couldn’t make a living there and returned to California. I would be willing to go one-way to Mars with my family.

Mongoose said:

“Space exploration also give an outlet to that pernicious “socially entropic element” mentioned above.”

Being biased as an eight generation pioneer, I would argue the opposite. The go-getters tend to go west and leave the entropy behind. England experimented with dumping their social misfits in Australia and America but discontinued the practice (too expensive). The cultures of both countries are dominated by immigrants who chose to immigrate to make better lives for themselves. This represents a step above the bulk of humanity who prefer to hunker down and kiss the prince’s ring.

Nov 22, 2008 - 1:28 pm 81. Leo Linbeck III:

Mongoose,

First of all, I enjoy reading your posts. Nice to be in the Club with you.

Good points all. One thing I’d add is that these behaviors - both Saudi and Chinese - are exhibited by people all over the world, and in every country all throughout history (including the US).

At the end of the day, the question is not whether theft exists. (It does.) The question is how much of Eastern wealth creation is “theft-based” and how much due to productivity, and whether the theft component represents an unprecedented transfer of wealth and economic power. I still think this is overblown at best, and an intentional deception at worst.

Also, is it really necessarily true that a higher price of energy translates into greater wealth created by the purchaser? Does this stand in all circumstances?

I’m sure that higher energy prices don’t always translate into greater wealth for the buyer. People do sometimes make bad decisions. But if the cost to the buyer is greater than the benefit, why do they pay?

WRT oil cartels etc.:

Interesting question. First of all, it’s not clear to me that OPEC is functioning as a true monopolist. It appears to have very little influence over prices - witness the wild swings in oil prices over the past couple of years. Classic monopoly behavior would create a much more stable pricing system - the stability being both maximizing their profits and demonstrating their ability to control prices, thus discouraging competitors.

In addition, a monopolist really needs to control a huge amount of supply to really exercise pricing pressure. Otherwise, other players can expand production and meet demand at a competitive price. In 2007, in round numbers, we imported 2.2 billion bbls from OPEC (800k of that from the Persian Gulf), 2.7 billion bbls from non-OPEC countries, and produced 1.8 billion bbls domestically. With 1/3rd of the supply, OPEC might have some pricing power, but it’s hardly a true monopoly, even if it was controlled by a single country. As a cartel, with its inherent compliance problems, it’s even weaker.

Our biggest supply problem is that we appear unwilling to add supply of our own to the market. This signals that our part of the pie is fixed, and we are not going to add supply if OPEC chooses to decrease supply (which is how a monopolist drives up prices). This unwillingness is just silly.

And finally, I’m not sure I’d agree that we need oil just to survive; there have always been alternative sources of energy. But we do need oil to be rich, and we need to be rich to afford luxury goods. And the most extravagant luxuries we current indulge ourselves with are:

1) that we won’t have to fight to protect ourselves against people who want to kill us, and
2) we can quickly replace oil through top-down, governmental-driven policies, rather than bottom-up, market-driven innovation.

In other words, the belief that we can cut the size of the military to fund green technology development.

I hope P-E Obama has lots of left-over pixie dust. He’s gonna need it.

Cheers.

L3

Nov 22, 2008 - 2:07 pm 82. Charles:

This guy was so expendable he had to be an ISI finger.

So look for a pattern to the hits. I don’t see it yet. The last guy hit was an AQ Taliban go between.

Terror plot mastermind killed by US missile in Pakistan
22/11/2008 16h20
Rashid Rauf after he was arrested in 2006
©AFP/File - Farooq Naeem

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - The alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot was killed in a US missile attack in northwest Pakistan early Saturday, after spending almost a year on the run.

Rashid Rauf died when a missile hit a tribesman’s house in the village of Alikhel, part of a border district that is a known stronghold of Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Also among the five killed in the early morning incident was Egyptian Abu Zubair al-Misri, another wanted Al-Qaeda operative, a senior Pakistani security official said on condition of anonymity.

A Western diplomatic source said the missile was fired from a jet across the border in Afghanistan.

Nov 22, 2008 - 2:14 pm 83. Wadeusaf:

According to Roggio, this guy Rauf was one of three who operated the AQ rollodex, with the tens of thousands of names of operatives (guys who went through AQ Boot camp) listed in their underwear I presume, or on a laptop. He had been arrested before and slipped out of his hand cuffs and out of custody, before the Brits could haul him to England for his involvement in the great train wrath. This makes about seven or eight highly placed AQ ducks in a row. All in NWFT.

Nov 22, 2008 - 2:53 pm 84. Cascajun » A lesson on wealth:

[...] the discussion of the NIC 2025 Project Leo Linbeck III gives a lesson on the creation of wealth in the comments of a post at the Belmont Club. So, I haven’t read the entire report, and I doubt [...]

Nov 22, 2008 - 2:58 pm 85. Alexis:

Eggplant:

In terms of feasibility, how would it be possible to project power onto the Moon in such a manner to show people on Earth that we effectively control the Moon?

My interest is not in having a self-sustaining colony on the Moon per se, but a base that can both plant the American flag and serve as a station for scientific experimentation.

I think Mars has potential to be at least partially self-sustaining. (It would need to be.) Still, I see a lunar station as a means to promote interest in a Mars program. As Americans, we need to get our self-confidence back. Without a presence on the Moon, I greatly doubt there will be much public support for any Mars adventures.

As daunting as the engineering challenges may be, the political challenge of rescuing American self-confidence is even more of an uphill struggle. It’s not easy to look at physical remnants of the old Apollo Program because it feels as though I’m looking at the ruins of an extinct civilization, a civilization that died when I was only a child.

I am well aware of how JFK undermined long term space exploration by pushing NASA’s energies into a narrow tube that doomed the Apollo Program to obsolescence before it ever reached the Moon. Let’s try to make sure any future space exploration (and eventually colonization) is sufficiently redundant and flexible so future technology isn’t forced into the same kind of tube again.

Nov 22, 2008 - 3:04 pm 86. mariner:

Storm-Rider:
“I believe the United States will never move toward fascism; we have anti-Monarch, anti-dictator and anti-fascist DNA in our national genome.”

I want some of what you’re smoking.

What you say was true when I was young, but no longer. Americans no longer have the desire even to learn about liberty, let alone fight for it.

Nov 22, 2008 - 4:01 pm 87. Charles:

A Western diplomatic source said the missile was fired from a jet across the border in Afghanistan.
………
Presumably the CIA/NSA is handling the preditors. I wonder if the use of the jet means that a different agency did the hit. And further, whether you could infer that a different intelligence source was used. That had been a complaint of the ISI in the past. They were ok with the US killing AQ but some of the Taliban they believed should off limits. … I think like Haqqani and his kin. … But that may also have changed recently because of the government bombing.

In any case these are all AQ guys in Pakistan. They’re killing taliban but only when they come up against them in Afghanistan. All these preditor reports are linked to AQ and foreign fighters.

Seems to me too that the pace of the hits is accelerating.

Nov 22, 2008 - 4:08 pm 88. Leo Linbeck III:

njcommuter,

Well said in #62. I was using wealth and ownership somewhat interchangeably.

I sure hope some snarky blogger doesn’t accuse me of being intellectually sloppy.

Cheers.

L3

Nov 22, 2008 - 4:45 pm 89. Mongoose:

Well thanks, L3. I appreciate that, and likewise enjoy your postings. Glad to be aboard the good ship BC, and what a fine ship she be. I marvel at the consistently high quality of commenters’ discussions and find Wretched’s postings to always be deeply thought provoking (and I must say that I get no end of pleasure from his poetics). I just wonder what keeps all the pests away.

Yes, I mostly agree. I guess with Obama’s election I am prepping myself for more formal moral hair-splitting.

Anyway…

1) Certainly it is true that all people indulge in this. America behaved much like China in the 19th century, particularly in the areas of intellectual property, trade barriers, control of external investment, and rent-seeking gatekeepers to the nation’s commercial life.
Closer in time (and a sub-topic in this thread) we grabbed Von Braun and (some) of his crew after WW2. Certainly there was much native brilliance, creativity and elbow grease along the way, but grabbing Von Braun, is people and his work was a transfer of wealth and pushed our space efforts that much ahead. Yes, there was a very real payment for it, just not one of that was of the currency of commerce. Man’s capacity for immorality in universal and our nation is granted no exception. I harbor no illusions or sentimentality here.

I just want to call things by their proper and actual names.

2) The question about wealth production actually needs some further refinement: One key word is “unprecedented”. How is that meant? I think that in the document at least the CIA means something like “it has not occurred at this level” in the locus of the nations, races and civilizations they call forth, and it seems to have a time window of 300 years or so. Surely, they are casting a net so wide that their claims are more dramatic than useful.

Then there is the issue of “wealth creation” vs. ownership, as someone above pointed out.

Of course it is not “unprecedented”, at least not in the China, and perhaps not in the Middle East; Russia may be another story and the Middle East is more complicated. In the ME the jury is out — the verdict depends on how the more visionary regimes manage their oil wealth to transitioning out of commodity based economies (e.g., projects like Dubia, etc.). Traditionally though, wealth in the Islamic Middle East has been through conquest, absorption and trade in markets, not wealth creation in the modern sense (i.e., from the industrial revolution forward in time). This propensity trends towards rent-seeking and transfer rather than wealth creation.
Russia is a whole other topics as we come here to a criminal regime.

I am also obviously ducking the question of India here, a question which the British Raj makes quite problematic, not to mention all those exchange students out at US state universities in the last 50 years.

Then there is the matter of wayward tranzis intentionally pillaging and crippling the West.
(Sorry, my blood pressure will not tolerate a discussion of this topic tonight, but I will say that our tranzis’ cap and trade schemes cry out for a modern Martin Luther to step forward — and not a junior, either. Talk about a transfer of wealth.)

Except for the ME issues, China is a blend of all of these iddues.

So the CIA is exaggerating this transfer business, and to some extent even manufacturing it; and they manage avoid a lot of history. Fancy that.
It is instructive, however, to see the tranzis’ projections and transferences. They are being more honest than they mean to be.

It is an error as well, however, to ascribe it all to productivity and capitalism.

In the end it is a mixture of chicanery, actual wealth transfer, productivity and politics and legal frameworks to secure wealth creation. So it is with most advances. So it is when civilizations provoked by more advanced ones and decadent ones are provoked to reawaken.

3) My point about inputs is broader than economics. Oil is in fact vital to our civilization as it is now, not just to be rich but to survive with its current economic, social, political and spiritual order. Perhaps to survive at all if the disruptions in transitioning to another form were too severe.
There may be alternatives, but I was talking about short and mid term effects. They have us over a barrel (forgive me on that one). The political and social blowback would be swift and severe, putting real pressures on elites, cause real turmoil and place us in a extremely dangerous position in a treacherous world. (This is why we have such a thing as strategic reserves, after all.)
Thus there is some period where it there is wealth transfer (i.e., transfer in the sense that wealth spent on energy is not replaced). Extortion? Well again, non-economic (or extra-market) aspects of the contest come into play and need to be considered. It is certain that we are being taken advantage of.

As you say, the real “bad decisions” are in the area of our energy strategies. I will point out that this is beyond the control of actual energy buyers in the real world. They are, or appear to be, primarily political issues, not economic ones.

3) Perhaps I misspoke about OPEC, or the characterization was crude (again, forgive the inadvertent irony). a) Cartels does not necessarily imply complete monopoly, but they tend (and desire) to move toward it. The fact that they have not arrived at full monopoly does not negate their ability to underhandedly distort commerce. Your point about price stability is well taken though. b) Following from that, No, OPEC is not a monopoly at this point, but they are not the only economic actors. These matters take place on a broader stage with larger influence than just market forces and intent beyond pure commerce. OPEC represents state actors and thus there are extra-economic forces at play, some of them quite corrosive (e.g., Russia poking around in Latin America and presuriing the EU, China screwing around in Pakistan, Iran’s attempt a hegemony in the Middle East, maybe all of them try to influence USA politics, etc.) There are also so called “4th generation warfare” probes and/or attacks in play. Perhaps “gang” would be more apt than “cartel”.

Thus I am suggesting that OPEC has to be seen in a broader geo-political perspective — there is more involved than wealth creation. There is the real contest of civilizations for world power.

I certainly agree with your point abut our lack of resolve against our enemies. I would call it cowardice.

I also agree with your approach to solving the energy issue, but would point out that to start that one needs to get the internal enemies of our nation — the enemies of the future, really — out of power before any true advance is to be made at all.

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:02 pm 90. Mongoose:

iddues=issues

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:06 pm 91. rab:

Charles you are right. It is a push by President Bush. After Jan 20th things will quiet down.

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:16 pm 92. Wadeusaf:

I don’t know about the pace, as they’ve been striking every day or two since the polls closed, ( I’ll concede they were getting revved up before that).

Something like head, shoulders, knees and toes now too, of AQ. That will keep the new admin from having to face anything serious for a little bit,(and Canada, France and England as well) we can hope.

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:18 pm 93. Eggplant:

Alexis said:

“In terms of feasibility, how would it be possible to project power onto the Moon in such a manner to show people on Earth that we effectively control the Moon?”

We projected power on the Moon when Neil Armstrong stepped on it. We withdrew that power when we abandoned the Apollo Program. The Moon is a bare rock. A lunar base can not be sustained only upon in-situ lunar resources (there are almost no volatiles on the Moon). The requirement for a continued terrestrial lifeline means a moonbase dies as soon as the political will goes away. Again, this sort of discussion was hashed over thirty years ago and then forgotten.

Alexis also said:

“I think Mars has potential to be at least partially self-sustaining. (It would need to be.)”

We already know that Mars has the all necessary resources for a fully self-sustaining colony. Unfortunately getting people there is expensive.

Alexis said:

“Without a presence on the Moon, I greatly doubt there will be much public support for any Mars adventures.”

As of right now, it is illegal for NASA to conduct manned Mars studies. I kid you not! Congress mandated that no government funds could be spent of manned Mars studies. We were doing the Design Reference Mission (DRM) 5.0 study and on the verge of writing up our final report when Congress issued the stop order (our work went into the trash).

Alexis said:

“It’s not easy to look at physical remnants of the old Apollo Program because it feels as though I’m looking at the ruins of an extinct civilization, a civilization that died when I was only a child.”

Tell me about it. We call it “aerospace archeology”. It’s worse than you can imagine. Whenever I come up with a really hot idea, I can go to the library and usually find out that someone came up with the exact same idea in 1965. The only real difference is the old guy took 3 months to work out the details with a slide rule while I can do the same thing in a few hours with a modern computer.

Alexis also said:

“I am well aware of how JFK undermined long term space exploration by pushing NASA’s energies into a narrow tube that doomed the Apollo Program to obsolescence before it ever reached the Moon.”

At least we had the Apollo Program. Prior to JFK, aerospace technology was mostly fighter planes and ICBMs. Yeah, there was a more rational path but was there the political will?

Charles said:

“They’re killing taliban but only when they come up against them in Afghanistan. All these preditor reports are linked to AQ and foreign fighters. Seems to me too that the pace of the hits is accelerating.”

President Bush wants to kill off as many bad guys as he can before handing off to Obama. After Obama takes over, the bad guys start regrouping and growing stronger again. Unfortunately, four years is probably more than enough time for another 9/11. At least Obama and the moonbats will get the blame for the next one (fat lot of good that will do you if you’re one of the thousands who get blown away).

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:23 pm 94. Storm-Rider:

Mariner,
I don’t think rightist/fascist tyranny can work in the United States because it is so obvious and in-your-face. Marxism is much more subtle and difficult for most to figure out, particularly if you are in one of the chosen minority groups to suckle on a government teat. That’s the Marxist ticket - an alliance between an elite minority ruling class who support and are supported by chosen classes of recipients - social engineering on a grand scale by a giant government Robin Hood; and this Robin Hood clings to its Marxist religion and it’s government-controlled guns.

Most of those with fascist tendencies in the United States have long ago moved into the Marxist category where the chances of gaining unjust government power is more likely.

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism,” they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” - Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948

Nov 22, 2008 - 5:27 pm 95. NahnCee:

“President Bush wants to kill off as many bad guys as he can before handing off to Obama.”

nuke iran

nuke iran

nuke iran

nuke iran…

Nov 22, 2008 - 6:11 pm 96. Leo Linbeck III:

Mongoose,

Great post.

I also agree with your approach to solving the energy issue, but would point out that to start that one needs to get the internal enemies of our nation — the enemies of the future, really — out of power before any true advance is to be made at all.

Actually, I’m beginning to wonder what the “internal enemies” are really going to be able to accomplish given the context. Energy prices are plummeting, and are likely to stabilize at a level that will make alternative energy uneconomic without massive government subsidies. At the same time, the ability of the government to give massive subsidies is severely impaired - between the shrinking economy and the support of the financial system, there’s not much dry powder left. And if the social security deficit is ignored and federal support of the health care system expanded, the fiscal situation will deteriorate further. Finally, even a small-scale attack on US interests will arrest any attempt to scale back military expenditures.

The effect of all this will be to offer Obama a stark choice: follow through on his promises for change and hope we all can rebuild it before he’s up for re-election in 2012, or play it safe and defer anything bold that will put the economy at risk.

Think of it as hope and change vs. voting present. My guess is the latter.

In the mean time, I’m gonna hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Cheers.

L3

Nov 22, 2008 - 7:27 pm 97. Mongoose:

L3: Hope your are right.

And I adopted your notion about hoping for the best and plannng for the worst as a motto sometime around mid-august.

Nov 22, 2008 - 7:51 pm 98. Charles:

In order for space exploration to work people are going to have to learn to live off the land.

I’ve read about four or five technologies that will be needed in order to do that.

I blogged about one of them in its nascent form. Basically you need to be able to take a pile of stuff and turn it into something on the fly. We can do that easily with 2d faxing 2d emailing 2d instant messaging or what have you.

The trick is to turn that into 3d.

So you would need to be able to mine xxx easiily

So you would have a pile of xxx. You would need to easily turn that pile of xxx into whatever it was that need to be built or replaced.

Here’s where I blog about that in a blog on 3d faxing called Faxing Pipelines (for purposes of carrying water inland from the ocean for 1000 miles)

This technology I think is about a decade away from being mature.

Nov 22, 2008 - 7:55 pm 99. Bart Hall (Kansas, USA):

Most people believe — erroneously — that “democracy” is the opposite of “totalitarianism.” It is not, for they answer two entirely different questions: *who* has power, and *how much* power.

Totalitarian democracy is not an oxymoron, especially when the parasites hold an electoral majority over the producers.

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:06 pm 100. Alexis:

Eggplant:

Ouch.

I think it all boils down to politics. When I was a child, I didn’t dream of becoming an engineer who would work at NASA. I figured we had lots of bright intelligent people who could do the engineering. Instead, I dreamed of becoming a “Prince Henry the Navigator” of space exploration. That hasn’t happened yet, but one can still hope.

As for Mars exploration, there ought to be some way to outsource the planning so that when Congress eventually decides to do the right thing again, the plans will be there “off the shelf”. There’s got to be some Silicon Valley trekkie CEO out there who would be willing to fund such planning. (I do hope the trash bin for the DRM 5.0 study could be put into a handy location for scholars interested in studying the history of space exploration. Even draft information can be important.)

I think one problem the space program has had is a lack of outside thinktanks for doing the strategic planning on both engineering and political levels, as well as promoting space exploration and colonization to the public (hopefully without the mindnumbing jargon). For example, we ought to see professionally produced third party television advertisements promoting space exploration during presidential elections.

I’m nowhere near as good as William Ayers at setting up private foundations, but I’m pretty sure there are powerful men with lots of money and plenty of technology-savvy who see a future for humanity in space. Something can be done.

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:19 pm 101. weSwinger:

A late parachute into a terrific thread, thanks all of you, but especially L3 all the way through - thank you for correcting the ivy league nincompoops at the CIA’s static view of economics. I know our host spent time in the ivied halls and doesn’t seem much the worse for it, but the excrescence of the CIA highlights the ivy leaguers’ failure as a leadership group. Sorry for spending time on this hobbyhorse again, but a housecleaning is in order.

I believe that it comes back to industries and society generally being able to protect and develop R&D, to nurture creative people (meaning creating things other people will happily buy) without getting them on the gov’t teat. Re-reading Ayn Rand is especially timely just now.

Yo-Mama’s time has come and it will pass, the key is not to panic. That’s what the demagogue would feed on.

Regards,
weSwinger

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:31 pm 102. A Conservative Teacher:

What the heck are all you morons talking about? The post was about how there is a prediction for a lot of stuff to go bad- but the worse will be the US’s inability to face it due to our own internal situation. So you are all on here posting about nothings and emptys, all while before your own eyes political power is consolidated in a party that is getting awfully fascist.

Nov 22, 2008 - 8:37 pm 103. Alexis:

Conservative Teacher:

Pick your battles, slow down O’s momentum, and buy time to let some alternative show up in the next few years. Presently, O is in a stronger position than his opponents, so now is a not a time to waste our strength by fighting at every opportunity. Instead, we need to find some way to break O’s winning streak. Most of all, Obama’s myth must be broken. This can be done, but this requires cunning, patience, and skill.

Each side of the power struggle that will be the Obama administration will need to avoid making mistakes. Dice throwers don’t seem to win against Obama, so caution may be wise.

Nov 22, 2008 - 9:47 pm 104. NahnCee:

Conservative Teacher throws the term “morons” about with the ease of a liberal progressive. Either Conservative Teacher is a misnomer or the teaching profession as a whole is now composed of rabid name-callers.

Nov 22, 2008 - 11:47 pm 105. Charles:

Justice Thomas distributes Obama case for conference

The hearing is Dec 5.

An interesting story here.

Nov 22, 2008 - 11:52 pm 106. Eggplant:

Alexi said:

“I dreamed of becoming a “Prince Henry the Navigator” of space exploration.”

I had similiar dreams (still have them to be perfectly honest).

Alexi also said:

“There’s got to be some Silicon Valley trekkie CEO out there who would be willing to fund such planning.”

His name is Elon Musk. He made a huge fortune during the Dot Com when he founded PayPal. He got out before the Dot Com imploded and used his money to form his own aerospace corporation called SpaceX. SpaceX then built its own launch vehicle from scratch and succesfully launched a small payload into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). His company is now working on developing a man-rated entry vehicle and geosynchronous capable launch vehicle. That’s the good news (and it is good news). The bad news is that Elon Musk founded SpaceX saying he would provide ***cheap*** access to space, e.g. $1000/kg. Unfortunately as his firm got into the nitty gritties of actually building a practical launch vehicle, his launch costs grew to about the same as everyone else’s (approximately $10000/kg to LEO). Musk also believes in getting people to Mars. I presume that Mars is on his long term agenda.

Alexi said:

“(I do hope the trash bin for the DRM 5.0 study could be put into a handy location for scholars interested in studying the history of space exploration.”

The trash bin is nice and full. DRM versions 1 - 4 are on the library shelf along with von Braun’s original Mars Plan made in 1953 and the 1965 TRW / NASA Ames manned Mars study (the first serious manned Mars study). Much of that early work was published on sulfite paper and getting quite brittle from old age. However it’s all slowly being scanned into PDFs. That’s a mixed blessing because as they scan the old hard copy, they let the originals rot and then find out the scans were of such poor resolution that they’re almost useless.

Alexi said:

“I think one problem the space program has had is a lack of outside thinktanks for doing the strategic planning on both engineering and political levels, as well as promoting space exploration and colonization to the public (hopefully without the mindnumbing jargon). For example, we ought to see professionally produced third party television advertisements promoting space exploration during presidential elections.”

The mind numbing jargon is an unavoidable part of the business (rocket science really is hard to do). Space exploration is a tough sell if people are unemployed, not getting enough to eat or don’t have access to decent medical care. I personally think that getting people off this planet while we still have the technological/economic capability should be our number one goal. However as I mentioned before, I’m way off to one side of the Bell Curve and generally regarded as a wacko-fanatic on this topic. People with more moderate views tend to be more successful in promoting Space Exploration.

Nov 22, 2008 - 11:57 pm 107. Dave:

Well folks, I found a poster who thinks the CIA report is spot on.

He is over on the Phyllis Chesler thread.

Dr Chesler herself retains appropriate skepticism, I hasten to add.

In case anybody else logs on over there, I have referrred them to the BC and told them to check out L3 to start with and then read through what LOTM, Mongoose and others had to add. My good deed for the day.

BTW; Who is it that believes the CIA?
c4

Nov 23, 2008 - 12:07 am 108. Bob Murphy:

23. Mongoose
You can go back further than Roosevelt Mk II.

Try Woodrow Wilson for an incredible dose of US style fascism.

And FDR retreaded a lot of Wilson’s fascists.

And each one of them maneuvered us into a World War.

Nov 23, 2008 - 12:40 am 109. 3Case:

How can one believe a report from an agency that has been so consistently wrong?…while it is predicting global warming will disrupt Chinese agriculture when the most recent news is that global warming has been on hiatus for 9+ years and may not return for 20?

I’ll say again, it fascinates me that evolutionists can be such staticists. What it says to me is that they are stupid; of which there is plenty of evidence.

Nov 23, 2008 - 3:32 am 110. Bob Murphy:

21. Thrasymachus:
Re your Ivy League comments.

I bought a second hand copy of God and Man at Yale by William F Buckley for $4 in Sausalito and started reading it a few days ago.

The book was written about 1950 and the socialist/Marxists and rabid secularists already had the place by the curlies then from what he says (rather elegantly).

Great, thoguht provoking book. And a lot of ammo for challenging the left effectively.

Nov 23, 2008 - 4:16 am 111. Lifeofthemind:

@Dave,
Dr Chesler has an excellent blog, thank you for pointing it out. I see that Cfud is now spreading his charm there. He tries hard to hold back and contribute at a level that will let him keep a seat at the table but he just can’t help letting the hate slip out. There he was pushing about overpopulation by Black Africans. For the Fud the world would be fine except for all those pesky Blacks and Joooos.

Nov 23, 2008 - 7:26 am 112. Mongoose:

Bob Murphy: True, I was just talking about leftist domination of the media for political ends, not the history of “progressives” in power in the WH (BTW, though the aims and animus were different, and the goals quite limited, Teddy Roosevelt might mark the beginning of “progressive politics” in America — ironically the mess may have started in the GOP).

It was FDR implemented in the USA the media techniques of mass manipulation perfected by the collectivists in Europe. JFK merely moved it over to TV; JFK is not the first “media president”. as many historians have claimed, he was just the first “TV president”; FDR was the first “media president”, and the media was an amalgam of print, cinema and radio.

This was one of the main foundations of his and his parties power during his “reign”. True, Wilson censored quite a bit during WW!, misled the public and arrest quite a few folks, but the media had not yet reach the technological level for the sort of mass manipulation i am talking about. The print medium was not an actual arm of the progressives and radio and film was not yet a real factors. This type of propaganda to requires broadcast media to be effective as it relies so much on irrational emotional associations. Also, one could argue that there was not yet developed the sort of homogeneous “popular culture” that these kinds of manipulations seems to require: “Mass Man” may be an artifact of the outcome of the war.

It is true that the roots of the 1920’s and 1930’s mass manipulation tactics has its roots in the print propaganda campaigns by the great powers at the onset of WW1 — particularly efforts by the UK to defame “The Hun” — but the technique were not yet perfected; they were mostly used by established political actors to push the war effort (Lenin being the exception here in the middle of the war).

It really had to wait for Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin to reach perfection and critical mass. Hitler once said something to the effect of “I want a loud speaker on every corner in every town in Germany”. Ted Turner had nothing on him.

That FDR had to be much more circumspect in his tactics goes without saying, but he played a ruthless, subtle game here, and probably went one better then the Europeans in his manipulation of popular culture for political ends (it is not much of a stretch to say that he and his media minions created 20th century popular culture and did do mostly for political ends).

It is interesting to note that the pinnacle position of the Big 3 broadcasters dates from this time. FDR effectively used public licensing of the airwaves to get compliance from the media.

The resistance in the USA to these sort of games has traditionally been the common sense of the general public.

Here we have the paradox of the last election. More Americans than ever detest the media yet they were extremely crucial in this election and their support for the Marxists was the most blatant in history.

We seem to have found some basic fault line or trip wire of imbecility in the American electorate.
Once across it anything goes.

Nov 23, 2008 - 9:17 am 113. Mongoose:

It was FDR WHO implemented…

Nov 23, 2008 - 9:18 am 114. weSwinger:

@Mongoose #112 - One of the revelations of Amity Schlaes’ “The Forgotten Man” for me was the insinuating demagoguery of FDR’s fireside chats - stirring up class hatred, yet making his listeners feel he was in their sitting room, talking with them.

Another is to wonder at the continuing support of Jewish-American voters for FDR and the Democrats. One of the first cases that went to court over one of the New Deal chicken marketing rules was against a Kosher wholesale butcher. The anti-semitism of the gov’t and media was appalling, but apparently Jewish voters did not feel like connecting the dots back to their beloved Democrats. Just between you me and the wall here, and not to sound like c4, but methinks they had more in common as Marxists than they had differences as Jews.

Nov 23, 2008 - 10:35 am 115. Behind Blue Lines » The World in 2025:

[...] Fernandez at Belmont Club and Westhawk note the resigned tone that permeates the report - I tend to agree that the report [...]

Nov 23, 2008 - 4:07 pm 116. veracious:

I like some of what L3 says on other subjects, but on this one, he bit on the promotional line. The relative transfer amounts are not fully stated and are misleading. The transfered wealth didn’t sat in a cave, hasn’t been largely spent but has muliplied, via investments here-there-an-everywhere.

Wretchard is on the right path, per my view…

America, meet your new, soon to be masters. You’ve allowed your government and monied interests to transfer many trillons of dollars, to your enemies and _friends_ around the world. This wasn’t reciprocal, those dollars, representing your wealth, are now theirs.

You’ve allowed those same dollars to return and influence your government, institutions, news services and corporations, to increase the outpouring of wealth. Those foreign dollars now own large, often controlling shares of said organizations. What used to be your institutions, now make decisions in the best interests of their new owners, not we the peoples.

The new owners refused to allow USA to use its own oil or keep its own manufacturing, preffering to move these essential and profitable items to their homelands. This was done under hundreds of different disguises and proxies agents.

The outpouring of wealth is so vast that now foreigners subtly fund the President and congressional campaigns and there isn’t anything that can be done about it. As a matter of fact there nary a word of honest journalism regarding it; new owners hired new editors and journalists.

Now the US Treasury vault, has been thrown open to protect the financial losses of foreign capital invested in USA. Of course there is plenty of plunder for all of those who’ve been aiding and abetting the transfer of wealth.

Now, since a large portion of the new owners are Muslims, they will bring Sharia law or any other change, regardless of whether any one of we the people, likes it… Did I mention the new masters expect USA to make illegal immigration, legal and not make a big hassle about it. Essential for ending the dwindling patriotic, majority.

Nov 24, 2008 - 12:35 pm 117. Roderick Reilly:

Every decade or so, the decline of the West is predicted.

I guess we’re about due for another round of this silliness..

Nov 24, 2008 - 1:45 pm 118. Storm-Rider:

According to our Declaration of Independence when government becomes destructive of our God-given rights to life, liberty and (creative)pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government.

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.” Abraham Lincoln

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln

Nov 24, 2008 - 5:18 pm

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