A New Angle on "National Security"
I think one part of the debate about "national security" as an issue should be about how much of our economy (and of the wealth of the wealthiest) depends on military expenditures. Holding up the taxpayer for the money to pay for all sorts of weapons systems, new technology, and innovative equipment seems to be the drug of choice for the military industrial complex. Can or will the Congress, under the Democrats, staunch the flood? Given how lopsided our economy is, I don't really think so. I think that the MIC has been the engine driving the economy for several decades now, and the effect has been "if we've got the weapons, let's use them (and make more)." As a result, everyone loses except the equipment manufacturers.
At the same time, it is always a sign of decadence when a nation or an empire begins seeing its "national security" as solely dependent on weapons and aggression, but if the weapons manufacturers are siphoning off all the funds, then other essential contributors to national security--healthcare, infrastructure building and maintenance, education, agricultural productivity, etc--fall by the wayside, and all we've got is weapons. Oh, and fear. Military aggression becomes a self-perpetuating operation--the more countries you attack, then the more insecure you are, and so the more countries you attack, and so the wealthier the weapons manufacturing corporations are, and the more insecure you are.
In this regard, I think we have to see the technological response to global warming as an opportunity to develop other sectors of the economy. The military is heavily dependent on oil and vehicles--in fact, it is a kind of exaggerated version of the pre-global-warming way of doing things. It is not so clear how the empire can monopolize solar power, wind power, trash power, and composted manure as easily as they have oil. Pushing green technology IS a national security issue, and it belongs to the people.
Returning to sticks and stones would certainly be a lot cheaper...and egalitarian. I think you've hit on something.
June 11, 2008 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
What on earth is Jane Smiley talking about and why am I supposed to care about her opinion? This is exactly what I can't stand about ill informed ramblings from random pundits.
This notion that green energy and solar has something to do with the military, is so tangential, so totally out there vague random association, one has to wonder if she's taking bong rips between paragraphs.
First of all, obviously solar isn't going to power jets anytime soon, civilian or military. They'll continue flying by combustion petroleum or bio based liquid fuel, for decades, at least.
But the military is entirely beside the point.
The vast majority of our oil consumption is civilian. What little is required for the military could easily be produced domestically.
Furthermore, transitioning the civilian market to electric cars or hydrogen or whatever will also transform military vehicles similarly. Fundamentally the drive train of a truck, helicopter, and tank are very similar. Once civilian green infrastructure is in place, the military will adjust and piggy back on it, as it always has since the days of horseback.
In fact, the military already has some experimental hybrid gas/electric vehicles because they're more fuel efficient and can operate stealthily.
Besides, our largest military platforms, like carriers and subs, are already nuclear. Hypothetically, if hydrogen was adopted as a fuel source, nuclear platforms could generate hydrogen fuel from any water source.
So aside from random association between the military and petroleum, I have no idea what the hell Smiley is babbling about, and neither does she.
June 11, 2008 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another example of how muddled Smiley's thinking is, she has the cause and effect of oil dependence and imperialism completely backwards.
Long before there was oil, when military vehicles ran on oats, there was imperialism for commodities like land, spices, metals, textiles, etc.
FP to secure oil in the Middle East and elsewhere has always been primarily for civilian consumption in the industrialized world. Of course military vehicles running on the same technology essentially as our civilian fleet, also run primarily on oil.
However, oil is only a small fraction of imperialism which exists to secure a wide array of resources for civilian consumption, along with metals, lumber, agriculture, luxuries, etc. We didn't help overthrow Allende and install Pinochet for oil, it was primarily for copper. Companies like ALCOA the aluminum maker have been some of the biggest advocates of imperialism and free markets at gunpoint.
Long after our economy is transitioned to green energy, the potential for imperialism for other resources, and the military vehicles to wage war, will still exist. We'll have hybrid hummers, perhaps even running on hydrogen.
June 11, 2008 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
To Kozmik and others who have leapt all over Jane Smiley's post. Why do you have to be so cruel?
She has two arguments that can be separated and one of them is not stupid at all. She's basically restating Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall thesis - that Great Powers always contain with themselves the seeds of their own destruction: that economic power leads to military power and then they undermine the initial reasons for their success in consolidating and further trying to build on, project that military power.
For example, other affluent advanced industrial nations look on and marvel at the inability of the world's super power to provide basic healthcare for all its citizens: America's international security complex is in total contradiction with its lack of equal preoccupation with the most fundamental question of domestic safety.
So it's hardly surprising that Ms Smiley would want to make a link with how the preoccupation with defense security also contrasts with the abysmal neglect of - and fundamentally neanderthal reactions of the conservatives to - grappling with international global warming.
So maybe she could have expressed her argument better: she got part of it economically wrong. But she most certainly didn't get the political/social idea behind it wrong and when some economists leap on her in such a vicious way they just confirm to all of us why it is we want Obama elected: we need more people in America to listen to people and take the best of their ideas without trampling all over them, leaving them feeling publicly eviscerated and humiliated.
June 11, 2008 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not cruel to complain about the deluge of crappy writing and ignorant punditry that passes as the norm.
Her first point, that energy independence is good, is too obvious. The second, conflating anti-militarism with pro-energy independence, is stupid. I score an obvious argument 0. Stupid is counterproductive. That's a net negative.
People who write for a living have a responsibility to write intelligently. I'm sick to death of the amount of fluff and crap that's written by people who clearly have become accustomed to navel gazing and phoning in nonsense. We need to stop accepting this crap.
Either the pundit industry needs to get a lot smarter, or a lot smaller.
June 11, 2008 9:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't convince reactionaries of the benefits of a new way or technology by offering to slaughter two of their sacred cows, gasoline and the military, at the same time.
Especially when it's not even a reasonable outcome of green technology that it will adversely effect the military. If anything it will strengthen the military. That's obvious to anyone bothering to think about it. What military commander wouldn't like a self sustaining base? A mobile fuel production plant turning water into hydrogen? The whole reason aircraft carriers and subs are nuclear is so the don't require petroleum based fuel!
Conflating anti-militarism and environemtnalism is not a rational argument since the one doesn't follow from the other. It's just hippy BS and totally counter productive. It takes what should be a universally supported non-partisan issue and makes it into a cultural wedge and partisan issue.
How fucking stupid is that?
Could some people please try and get past the 60's? It's only been four decades.
June 11, 2008 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
First of all, obviously solar isn't going to power jets anytime soon
You obviously don't understand the first thing about energy. Solar can very easily provide jet fuel by powering the plant that synthesizes it from, say CO2, for example. The simple physics of energy is that it can be converted from one form to another: From Kinetic to potential. From radiation, to hydrocarbon fuel synthesis.
You are obviously a charlatan with a mouth.
June 12, 2008 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, it's just "simple physics!" lol. Like I said, Strat is a twit.
CO2 conversion to liquid fuel is so hypothetical and experimental, and so uneconomic, it makes a hydrogen economy seem easy by comparison.
The physics are simple, but the doing requires tremendous amounts of energy and resources to generate even small quantities of liquid fuel such as butanol. All the methods to convert CO2 to liquid fuel are extremely uneconomic. They're energy intensive and require a great deal of expensive machinery such as turbines to refine even small fuel yields. Most require hydrogen to react with CO2 and the fuel yield for energy invested is very small.
Oh, and where is concentrated CO2 available? Mostly as the waste stream of fossil fuel production. :rolleyes:
So, in other words, we're going to be running jets on petroleum (or perhaps bio based fuel) for a long time.
We wouldn't produce liquid fuel from "CO2 for example" as opposed to bio-ethanol or bio-butanol, until we have more cheap renewable energy than we know what to do with, AND until it made more sense than simply letting nature do most of the work in making bio-fuels, or just burning petroleum based fuel in limited applications like planes, i.e. probably never.
Strat, let me know when you get those replicators from Star Trek working too, since it's just "simple physics" and all.
:rolleyes:
June 12, 2008 3:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I cannot speak for Ms. Smiley, but I remain optimistic that this society can find a way to increase our capacity for self-determination, specifically with respect to an input necessary for nearly all industrial as well as military strength: Energy.
My mother related stories to me of her youth: When she watched the skies blackened with B-17's flying over to assist the war effort. I remember examining the gas rationing coupons my grandparents still had in drawers around the house. (I also remember that my grandfather, a well-respected surgeon in New York City, still drove a VW beetle in 1970; I believe he internalized efficient living through the depression and war efforts.) This nation helped win WW2 with flat-out logistical strength, and outproduced the Soviet Union during the cold war. A nation not dependent on foreign sources for large fraction of the energy necessary to power its industrial capacity is much more likely to be seen as an honest broker in international affairs.
In my opinion, national security can and should be measured as the aggregate not only of advanced weaponry, but of the ability to exemplify and project genuine productive power. Sticks and stones, my ass! Nobody is saying we should give up military superiority. There is value in being able to implement policies to protect our sovereign interests with minimum dependency on outside influences.
June 11, 2008 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well of course, that's the whole point of energy independence, to become energy independent. Duh! Of course it has relevance to FP in that we'll be independent of oil producing regimes.
But Smiley is conflating a bunch of issues and muddying the waters with this random association nonsense. Her post is filled with fallacies, not only about military technology, but also about green energy, and it;s clear she doesn;t understand either.
For example, she questions whether the military can exploit solar to run vehicles. Which is just goofy on a number of levels. Solar will never run cars directly. Solar, or win, or whatever, is used to generate energy which is then stored in batteries, or converted to hydrogen, which THEN powers vehicles.
A military vehicle, from a HMMWV to tank, would run on hydrogen or batteries just the same as a civilian car, truck, or bus. The initial electricity to fill batteries or hydorgen fuel tanks would be generated via mobile solar, nuclear, or whatever, in much the same manner as civilian infrastructure. For example the military could have fuel ships for hydrogen, or biofuel, or floating nuclear plants, same as they presently have for petroleum based fuel or nuclear carriers and subs.
She's premised her post on a fallacy: that military energy needs are somehow different from civilian needs. Nonsense.
There's no difference between military and civilian energy needs. They're one and the same.
Jets, military or civilian, will continue flying by combustion of liquid fuel, petroleum or bio based, into the foreseeable future. Convert one and you convert the other.
Buildings, military or civilian, require electricity that can be produced by various means. Convert the civilian energy economy to solar or hydrogen and the military will follow.
Ground vehicles, cars, trucks or tanks, require dense energy storage, commonly in the form of liquid fuel. The engineering difficulties of running a car or truck on a biofuel, or hydrogen, or batteries, is fundamentally the same as running a tank. Convert passenger vehicles and trucks, and tanks will follow.
***
Conflating the issues of the military or militarism, and green technology, is exactly the kind of hippie dippy bullshit we don't need. It's a non sequitur and manages to misunderstand both green energy and the military, doubly ignorant and obnoxious.
Energy independence compliments both the military and civillian technologies which are fundamentally the same. The idea that green energy will end militarism, whether you're for or against it, is simply false.
Energy independence and renewable energy should be supported entirely on it's own merits.
June 11, 2008 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
For example, if we had invested more heavily in renewable energy like thin film solar:
Every soldier in Iraq would have thin film solar panels on their equipment for powering communications, water purification, and so on. Identical technology would be used in the civilian market for outdoor enthusiasts and naturalists, for nearly weightless solar powered GPS, tents, packs, UV water purification and micro filters, etc.
Military logistics would include solar power. Bases would become energy producers, capable of powering themselves and even perhaps producing hydrogen fuel. The same technology to self sufficiently power an airdropped mobile military base, would be used to power mobile homes and emergency stations, such as post Katrina NOLA, or Burning Man, or whatever.
That could even be expanded to power refugee camps in humanitarian crisis, as there will certainly be many of in the coming decades due to global warming. Sadly, we're going to see many tens of millions made refugees by rising sea levels and freak weather, over the coming decades.
June 11, 2008 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
@lenski
Resource independence? Are you living in a time-warp? We are utterly and completely dependent on many resources which can be obtained only from the third world and our dependence grows as our population grows.
You want to be independent? Kill off 2/3rds of the population.
June 11, 2008 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well to be fair, decentralized energy production would be a considerable step towards "resource independence." Energy and intelligence, human or artificial, are the most important resources of the 21st century.
We're gradually transitioning to a polymer based society, the raw materials for which are virtually limitless and can even be biologically and sustainably synthesized. Given the ability to convert renewable energy into useful work, AI, and a polymer based economy, it's not exactly a post scarcity society, but certainly a step in that direction.
Resource poor countries like Japan have much more robust recycling programs to preserve and monetize resources, which we should also adopt towards increased resource independence. Presently much of the world's recycling is exported to China or India to be picked over by hand, and then sold back to developed countries.
Eventually you have a country like Japan processing its own recycling with intelligent robotics, made largely from renewable polymers, and the production of robotics themselves being highly automated.
As a side effect of automation and robotic manufacturing we should also be able to more quickly respond to humanitarian crisis and promote development of the 3rd world. For example, having highly automated plants increase production of goods needed in famine and drought ridden regions suffering from environmental collapse, such as solar panels, water purification, basic power tools and equipment, etc.
The old saying goes: "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish and he eats forever."
The early 21st century version includes computers and access to information, solar arrays and power tools.
June 11, 2008 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
btw, I don't want too get too "Star Trek" in discussing these issues.
The first thing we need to do is promote energy independence and green technology for purely self serving and nationalistic reasons.
Domestically we need to provide energy, education, and mobility to more Americans, reduce crime and social ills, and elevate society to be more prosperous and egalitarian. If we accomplish that first, we can be more charitable and have a greater positive impact globally. If we don't, we'll never be healthy enough economically or spiritually to be our best abroad. It's no coincidence that the peak of US international influence was also the peak of American domestic prosperity and egalitarianism.
We need to stop exporting our wealth and propping up tyrants in oil producing regions who are ultimately security risks in the long term by association. We need to disentangle ourselves from imperial wars for resources by encouraging fair trade and leveraging our technology and expertise exports towards promoting good allies and stability. We need to stop and reverse the trend of anti-Americanism which is having real consequences for us such as the Korean protests against US beef due to general feelings of mistrust.
We need to develop a military that follows our civilian economy to become largely energy independent so it may act in good conscience to defend our interests and resources, those that truly belong to us and not merely those which we wish to secure, as well as promote charity and disaster relief. Certainly the military has a long tradition of representing America proactivly by providing assistance to troubled regions, which ultimately yields dividends in trade and good will.
Energy independence is a major part of all of that.
June 11, 2008 9:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, fish stocks are collapsing.
June 11, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
True, but that's beside the point. There are plenty of sustainable fish farming practices and fish population could be almost limitless given sufficient energy.
For example, there are robotic deep sea fish farms and inland fish farming techniques that are sustainable, and the main cost of operation being energy, feedstock, and labor. Automation reduces labor, and production of feedstock can also be increasingly automated. That leaves energy. Renewable energy made abundant ends global hunger.
Sustainable farming in poor climates requires energy and machinery, to till soil, pump and purify water, to produce fertilizers, etc.
Even algae farming, a great source of protein and the most nutrient dense cultivatable crop per sq km, by something like an order of magnitude, still requires energy to pump nutrient rich waters into algae ponds, and then more energy to process and distribute the food products.
Global hunger is ultimately an energy problem.
June 11, 2008 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
And the point is that because we depend on lots of resources from other places, we shouldn't even bother to try to minimize it? I disagree.
The goal is to be less egregiously dependent on others who don't like US policy much these days. I believe it would be "cheaper" than doing nothing at all. Some producers pricing oil in Euros instead of the dollar has the effect of allowing the dollar-denominated economies to experience effective price increases that do not necessarily affect the Eurozone equally. This is likely to place us at a competitive disadvantage. In fact, as more producers move toward the Euro, the ability of the U.S. to affect its position in the world economy becomes diminished.
I stand by the argument that finding maximum "green opportunities" makes a real contribution to our security, both "national security" and the security of the people of this nation. I admit that recent political discussions make a distinction between those two forms of security, which I think is an intentional and ultimately unwise abuse of language.
The idea of managing our approach to resources competently is not a complicated position. There's also plenty of economic benefit to be derived from exercising all of our options including solar, switchgrass, improved efficiency, et cetera et cetera. I agree with Kosmik here: I very much want to see decentralized energy production for many reasons, ranging from reduced risk of national effects from disabling of centralized energy resources, to a reduction of control of society's energy use policy by a few centralized producers.
I hope it's worth explaining... Notice the words "large fraction" in that quote. As the situation stands right now, it is way too easy to manipulate the U.S. economy through oil pricing tricks. I would prefer "small fraction". The idea is that the U.S. would be much better perceived, and more likely to achieve its strategic goals, if we were not perceived correctly or not as doing whatever we felt like doing around the world to preserve what is perceived, correctly or not our status as a profligate resource consumer.
Actually, I think this country doesn't do too badly in converting resources into economic production. But I believe we would be very well served by being a strongly competitive force for efficiency and productivity such that it's obvious to the casual (world) observer.
June 11, 2008 9:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who are you disagreeing with? I agree energy independence is a good thing and said why. You're repeating what I've already said to a large extent.
But again, conflating that with militarism more broadly, as Smiley has done, remains factually false and counterproductive.
Energy independence may presumably end militarism for oil. There is no reason to presume it will somehow weaken the "military industrial complex" as Smiley suggests, or otherwise end imperialism for other resources. Furthermore a military based in renewable energy will actually be superior for many obvious reasons if a person bothers to think about it.
Conflating those issues is just hippy dippy sloppy associative thinking.
June 11, 2008 11:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was replying to "offensivetoyou".
OtY misinterpreted a relative statement that we would be better off managing our energy economy competently (as opposed to the miserably mismanaged approach of the current regime), as implying a more absolute, black-and-white total independence on all things external.
As muddled as you think Jane Smiley's points are, I think she has has something useful to add to the conversation about policy: This nation is demonstrably willing to spend billions on "national security" while simultaneously refusing to bother with basics such as research and development of "green" technologies, that would contribute the the security of the population of this nation through local investment (and therefore jobs, onshore economic growth, etc.). Being more efficient would also reduce the need for pissing off a whole lot of people in other places who seem to be constantly looking for an excuse to be pissed off.
I cannot really address the question of modern American militarism very well, since it's a complex multidimensional problem. However, in support of her argument, Kevin Phillips' 2006 book, American Theocracy reaches into recent history for explanation. He writes that among other issues, America's mastery of, and dependence on, oil and related petroleum-based technologies, while being so successful during the last century, is leading us down a path of likely decay in this century. This path of decay includes the militarism Jane Smiley's original post complains about.
However harshly you express it, your point that advancements in civilian energy generation, storage and transfer technologies would also flow into military, and does not by itself reduce militarism, is well taken.
June 12, 2008 9:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Eh, I don't think Smiley has anything to add that isn't hopelessly muddled. Or if she does, she hasn't demonstrated it yet. Anyways, why set the bar so low?
I'm of the opinion the bar is far too low already, and it's a vicious cycle of lowered expectations and disinformation.
I recently met a Libertarian clown who in 15 minutes managed to regurgitate most of the stupidest things Reagan ever said, decades ago, and are still being repeated by a host of conservative morons. From claiming volcanoes are responsible for climate change, to claiming the New Deal is fascism. Of course both are 180' from reality.
It's the environment of continual spin and disinformation which creates that. An environment where people pick their scientific facts along cultural lines.
It's not just the rt wingnuts. It's also lefties who can't discuss even a scientific matter straight without hanging some cultural mumbo jumbo on it, and that tends to drive lots of people rightwards.
Which is why I get PO'ed when I see yet another clueless PC pundit on the left prognosticating on a subject she clearly knows little to nothing about, and hanging a bunch of cultural wedge issues on what is ultimately a very dry technical matter.
Do you ever read science journals? An oasis of reason and well considered arguments by comparison. Not perfect, by far. But at least it's a community of qualified peers with the sense to generally check each other and stick to fields where they're qualified to render an opinion.
The pundit industry is like the old adage regarding assholes and opinions, how everybody has one. Enough already.
June 12, 2008 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Most of my reading relates to the tools of software development: Device drivers, communications, controls, basic hardware architecture, soft real time techniques, some O-O architecture and design where applicable, a little webbishness for reporting and HMI, etc. I've been driven recently to try the occasional political book (Phillips being the most recent example, Hernando DeSoto, John Perkins) by recent political events.
In general I try to address discussions about getting things done, and the forces in society that either encourage or discourage productivity, and how broadly the benefits of this productivity are shared. In these areas I am neither an expert, nor to I claim to be.
This is an open discussion site, and discussing is what we are all doing here. It would seem that there are likely better places to find the erudition that you seem to prefer. In the meantime: you or anyone else is welcome to inform we the great unwashed masses with your brilliance, but be aware that many people are looking for a place where they can get together and discuss the issues that affect us daily, without necessarily being the creme de la creme, each participating only in discussions in which he is the expert.
Expert or no, I stand ready to argue that this society is better served by behaving competently, using the creativity and productivity of its people to engage in and benefit from honest exchange, in preference to blowing resources on what I believe is an unnecessarily aggressive way of life.
June 12, 2008 10:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fine post. I'd disagree about some of your ideology and presumptions though. I think it's a bit superficial valuing style over substance.
Identity politics have gone too far since the 60's. Both sides blame each other and yet are in many ways mirror images. So, I point out whenever I can how hypocritical it is, on both sides. How ignorant, irrational, and self referential both sides tend to be. Usually it's just picking apart all the bogus assumptions they never challenge, fact checking, etc.
Some quickly get offended by that. Usually I'll start just posting facts and then some true believer goes nuts.
A lot of people, a majority of people, are sick of the identity politics and those spouting dogmatic bumper sticker stuff which never gets anywhere except to make matters worse. Sick of hippies and hicks.
It's about four decades overdue imo.
June 13, 2008 5:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
btw, what was really so obtuse about Smiley's post is the zero-sum, cultural divide, moronic wedginess of it.
This notion that environmentalism and national defense are mutually exclusive, a zero sum game; it stems back to the 60s radicals vs the reactionaries.
The reality is that energy independence is a win/win all around. It's a tech boom. It's strategically beneficial. It extricates us from various petrol dictatorships. It's beneficial to civilian and military technology. Can lead to small cars or large cars, but either way they'll be better. It's good for the environment. Good for the economy. Stimulates investment. Will be an exportable technology. Improves quality of life. Improves our notional image. Can help end global famine and help educate and develop the 3rd world. And on and on.
One has to be totally f'ing clueless to take such a beautifully bipartisan oppurtunity for America and humanity, and reduce it to the political divides of the 60s and perpetual log jams.
And literally, people are dying for the stupidity of it. I just can't stand people on the left or right driving these f'ing wedge issues and identity politics anymore.
June 13, 2008 5:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously, Kosmik, the book cafe concerning Arianna's book was languishing, and so when I was contacted and told to send something in, I made time to do so (which no one else did). Certainly the result has been that you have been given the occasion to refute my last sentence and deny my right to an opinion. You've expounded on these things quite clearly and good for you. I don't have to be told a second time to stop posting, and so I will. Bye.
June 11, 2008 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
You make a good point.
It takes courage and energy to write and submit an article on a politically contentious subject. My hat is off to everyone who does so...and even more to politicians who actually find the time, guts and money to subject themselves to the elective process.
But there's no way to avoid the criticism, much of it well-deserved. That's been tried many times with utterly disastrous results.
June 11, 2008 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry to be mean and I'm not saying don't post. But it does piss me off that someone as accomplished as you certainly are, feels the need to conflate issues that way and muddy the waters.
And the reason conversations languish is because people aren't contributing anything good or useful. Contributing more poorly reasoned gunk doesn't help.
That is exactly the frustration and insult I feel from the MSM every day.
You're obviously an accomplished person. Why the hell not write something better?
June 11, 2008 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
@smiley
Let me try reversing out positions...with me offering an assessment of the same subject.
It's not just the military industrial complex which is dependent on growth and taxes. Most of our economy works that way.
Look at the machines which are used to construct our highways, for example. They cost billions and tens or hundreds of thousands of people are dependent on the work they provide. It's the same with boat and airplane and auto manufacturers.
If we were to try to run our economy strictly on maintenance - without growth - unemployment would be somewhere around 80 or 90%.
But obviously something must be done. We can't keep growing in the way we have been for thousands of years. Not on a finite planet with finite resources.
So far, there is no political will to address the tangle of issues surrounding this idea. But the realities exist anyway...and are addressed in the usual way; with military force.
June 11, 2008 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
See my post above about steps towards a partially post scarcity economy.
June 11, 2008 9:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
btw, I'd also criticize either the editorial decision to mug you for a piece on a slow day if that's the way it actually happened. the net result of which is quantity not quality, and merely creates the illusion of content leading to this irritated response.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the way these things were supposed to work is that people who are capable and willing to contribute to a meaningful discussion are invited to do so.
Fluff, I hoped, was a problem exclusive to the quota driven MSM, that blogs would avoid.
Arianna's site, while I sometimes apprecitate it and certainly apprecited her support of Obama, certainly approaches MSM levels of noise to signal ratio. In fairness she has some better editorial contributors you won't hear in the MSM. But she also has a lot of fluff and tabloid to draw the hits and ad revenue, and it's deliberately mixed so readers can't easily sort one from the other, which would generate less hits.
Which begs the question of whether BLOGs need to start generating more of their own investigative journalism, such as TPM does. A site like Arianna's HuffPo is simply absorbing a lot of the fluff revenue while generating almost no news content. I don't see how that's a sustainable information economy for the long term.
June 11, 2008 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm afraid you have a utopian idea of the economics of blogs like this. It takes a lot of money to keep it going and those who supply the money keep careful tabs on visitor count.
June 11, 2008 9:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think the notion of selling quality, as opposed to crap, is "utopian." If you think sites have to sling crap to survive, I believe the word for that is cynical, or maybe uninspired, or perhaps just stupid.
Take a look at the ever diminishing MSM. Take a look at GM. Look at O'Reilly's plummeting ratings. Look at Korea's response to US beef and low quality control.
That's where a lack of integrity and short term thinking gets us.
June 11, 2008 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
@kozmik
If you think you can do better why don't you start your own site?
For starters it costs more than a quarter million a year to run something like this. If you don't have it yourself you have to raise it via subscription or advertising.
Let's see you supply quality on a consistant basis faced with that kind of overhead.
June 11, 2008 11:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, it's just "simple physics!" lol. Like I said, Strat is a twit.
CO2 conversion to liquid fuel is so hypothetical and experimental, and so uneconomic, it makes a hydrogen economy seem easy by comparison.
The physics are simple, but the doing requires tremendous amounts of energy and resources to generate even small quantities of liquid fuel such as butanol. All the methods to convert CO2 to liquid fuel are extremely uneconomic. They're energy intensive and require a great deal of expensive machinery such as turbines to refine even small fuel yields. Most require hydrogen to react with CO2 and the fuel yield for energy invested is very small.
Oh, and where is concentrated CO2 available? Mostly as the waste stream of fossil fuel production. :rolleyes:
So, in other words, we're going to be running jets on petroleum (or perhaps bio based fuel) for a long time.
We wouldn't produce liquid fuel from "CO2 for example" as opposed to bio-ethanol or bio-butanol, until we have more cheap renewable energy than we know what to do with, AND until it made more sense than simply letting nature do most of the work in making bio-fuels, i.e. probably never.
Strat, let me know when you get those replicators from Star Trek working too, since it's just "simple physics" and all.
:rolleyes:
June 12, 2008 3:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
whoops, that was a response to Andrew Strat's simpleton comments on "simple physics."
June 12, 2008 3:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
For the same reason I don't start cattle ranching every time it's revealed they're slaughtering fallen cows and taking foolish risks with the food supply. As was revealed just a month or so ago, under an administration known to be dismantling regulatory agencies, after repeated and ongoing food supply problems due to poor quality control.
But hey, if you want to eat mad cow burgers and read brain melting punditry without complaining, go ahead. Throw a salmonella tomato on top and drive your GM quality automobile into a flood plain while you're at it.
June 12, 2008 3:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ms Smiley
Perhaps I'm not the best person to say this but you have to take some of these commenters with a grain of salt. Without mentioning names some people are constitutionally prone to attack other people even if they have little to zero reason to do so.
I have been known to lose my temper but I like to think that in my case it is usually justified.
To me your argument makes perfect sense. That details were not spelled out is not a shortcoming of yours but of your detractors.
There is no question that we are in a unique situation today. One way or another our military does exhibit all the signs of a self perpetuating (and self destructive I might add) phenomenon.
We need smarter and more powerful weapons to secure the remaining carbon based energy that is out there on the planet.
Saying that we also need copper and aluminum or what not is besides the point. I doubt very much that your critic has any understanding of the centrality of fossil fuel (oil in particular) to the existence of the modern western world.
You also make a fair point that rather than making us more secure (in both a physical sense and in a resource sense), the militarism that we have been engaged in has made us less secure.
Nobody thought that those who possess the energy resources would have so many tools at their disposal to thwart out designs on them.
So your argument is a good one.
This stuff about polymers and intelligence (especially of the artificial kind which is only intelligence in a metaphorical sense) is rather sophomoric and again totally beside the point you are making.
Some people you will have to discount on this site.
June 11, 2008 10:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're sloppily conflating issues making the same mistake as Smiley.
There will always be something in demand which is scarce and whether people find militarism an appealing means to acquire it; depends on psychology, not electricity.
Whether it's a hydrogen powered jeep, tank or gunship, or a petroleum powered jeep, tank or gunship, is entirely beside the point.
Yes, energy independence will allow us to largely extricate ourselves from the ME and petrol-dictatorships. (duh!) And hopefully that will allow us to avoid some of the realist FP equations of the 20th century.
But still, conflating that with an overall end to militarism, is very sloppy hippy dippy thinking.
Wars have been waged for spices and incense. We still support enormous violence and expend enormous energy for glittery stones. Energy independence won't fundamentally change that.
June 11, 2008 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps if you inform yourself of the physics of energy and the central role it plays in the construction and maintenance of a civilization you would not make yourself look like a fool so much.
June 12, 2008 12:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
@ strat
One of the funiest lines I've ever seen on a political blog.
June 11, 2008 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Strat is a goof ball and been told so before by those including myself.
June 11, 2008 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
And you offensive are the singularly unique individual who is a perfect judge of himself?
June 12, 2008 12:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
BTW it was meant as a funny line if that has escaped you.
June 12, 2008 12:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
In the future of the Military Literary Complex, everyone has a book to promote. Relentlessly, and mercilessly.
Large wars will be waged to secure more readers. Publishing houses will themselves become as nations, maintaining vast armies of mindless, illiterate cyborgs whose only purpose is to secure more readers, by force if necessary.
Even the most remote cultures in the depths of the Amazon rain forest will be carpet bombed with media often disguised as favorite foods and colorful feathers, or even more deviously: useful information.
To their dismay, upon contact they'll discover these editorial bomblets leap several feet into the air before exploding with inane comments of various pundits, produced in a chemical reaction of variable ideologies, chilled cocktails, and caustic banter.
Though society will otherwise be a post scarcity utopia, there will be no place to hide from relentless self promotion and inane celebrity culture, dah'ling.
June 12, 2008 12:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
No love for Smiley on this board -- and rightfully so. This may be the most nonsensical article TPM has posted.
While the military budget could conceivably be used for other purposes, so could about 25% of the other things we spend federal dollars on in this country that do nothing to advance our social or security interests.
Her knowledge of technology is rudimentary. China has looked at all the alternatives out there, and they have a mountain of cash to spend, yet they've opted to build 1200 coal-fired energy plants in the next 20 years. If solar and wind could make up the difference, they would much prefer to be using those alternatives.
June 12, 2008 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your technical knowledge is what's lacking. Terribly lacking.
In fact, China is investing in solar and renewable energy on a very large scale. China is the world's largest producer of micro hydroelectric for example, which is a very environmentally sound and renewable energy source.
Even the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river, otherwise an ecological disaster, is still the world's largest hydroelectric plant and going to produce 22,500 megawatts at capacity. Roughly 10x the Hoover dam, and 10x - 20x of a typical nuclear power plant.
China is also investing in coal because China has lots of coal and it's a known quantity which can be quickly brought on line. Also, it's possible to retrofit coal plants to be cleaner burning later as that technology becomes widespread. But make no mistake, China is pressing for and investing in renewable energy in a big way. China absolutely realizes they're on the brink of ecological disaster and they need to find cleaner energy sources.
Western Europe is also investing enormously in renewable energy and is continually raising goals and deployment of renewable energy. Everything from solar to tidal hydroelectric.
It's really us in the US that's lagging on renewable energy. And I think both sides are to blame for making it a cultural issue rather than a technical and scientific issue. Hippies, hicks, corporate crooks, and pandering pols, are all to blame for our energy crisis. That, and a lazy public that doesn't bother to inform itself, and a lazy media that doesn't bother either. It's a major cultural and moral failing.
June 12, 2008 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a cogent, powerful analysis of the reason why the US is hated around the world as it sinks in national power.
It is an excellent description of the wrong position the US has taken. Our children attend sub-standard schools, US medical care ranks low, mass transportation is poor, with too much money going to the least productive and most destructive factions in society who are heavily involved in the state murder of foreigners.
The author is also correct in highlighting the issue of global warming as an issue that should instead be receiving the attention and funds now being wasted on the military.
National security is directly related to national power. If we have considerable weaknesses in health care, education, transportation, and agriculture, which we do, and if we're wasting hundreds of billions on the military, which we do, and if we're not preparing for peak oil and global warming then it won't matter how many troops we have in Baghdad or how many nuclear aircraft carriers we have floating around the world.
June 12, 2008 9:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jane is absolutely right that the MIC has been driving the US economy for several decades.
You want proof?
What are the 5 biggest industries in your local region, which companies dominate them, and how many of those companies do NOT have a military/defense division which is a major profit center?
Need more?
Is the amount of money the Pentagon can't account over the last 20 years for measured in Billions, or Trillions? Do you know of any other economic sector that can say "I dunno where it went" for anything resembling that amount of money? Even reduced by an order of magnitude?
kozmik,
Have you read The Prize by Daniel Yergin?
Any thoughts on Churchill's desire/concern to transition the British navy from coal to petroleum, and the need to secure the resources that would make that possible?
First of all, obviously solar isn't going to power jets anytime soon, civilian or military. They'll continue flying by combustion petroleum or bio based liquid fuel, for decades, at least.
Your stupid is showing, you may want to tuck it in. /cheap shot
Example: expeditionary forces (cough*Iraq*cough) have to transport enormous quantities of fuel for operations - vehicles are a significant portion of that, but power for electronics, communications, cooling, basic infrastructure(water, sewerage) is a large portion also. Lots of gas turbine and other generators are needed to provide it.
So, knowing that - if the power to operate the infrastructure is NOT generated with petroleum based fuels, must the forces transport more, less, or the same amount of fuels across hostile territories?
Does that have an impact on operations?
Think of it as a sort of opportunity cost - if you use fuel for purpose A, you can't use it for purpose B; if you must achieve both purposes A & B, you have to have more fuel than if you don't use any to achieve purpose A.
Get it? Any idea why it's called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? Personally, I think it's so we can keep moving HMMVs and F22s around the board - and the less fuel we need for HMMVs and land and sea transport, the longer we can keep using the C5s and F16s we've come to rely on.
BrookD, put your thinking cap on fer chrissakes.
Do you have any idea how much coal China has available? And how cheap miners lives are?
Would you be surprised if Virginia needed to build a new electric plant, and decided that solar, wind, and nuclear were either too inconsistent or cost-prohibitive in both time and money, and so they decided to use coal?
June 12, 2008 9:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Military expenditure hasn't been "driving the economy" any more than tractor factories in the Soviet Union kept the USSR solvent. It's an expense not an investment.
What's been "driving the economy" is our universities, technology innovation, business practices, and historically the manufacturing base. Also that we've been the preferred source for many cultural exports for half a century and a global leader. We're selling a lot more software, chips, entertainments and ipods, than tanks and fighters.
If we want to build the best fighter jets we need to start building wind turbines and other energy producers. And much of the technology involved in creating those turbines have benefited from military technology as well, such as modeling fluid dynamics and airfoils.
So long as we're energy dependent and the major contributor to climate change, we're going to remain economically depressed and our global reputation harmed. Then we won't be able to build, export, or import, much of anything.
Look at the Korean boycott of US beef. A hundred thousand protesters and the entire Korean government offering to resign over what is basically an issue of cultural distrust due to US optics. What happens to our economy if that spreads to other US exports? And China pulls the rug out from under the dollar?
We're playing a very foolish game. Goof balls on both sides squabbling over nonsense.
June 12, 2008 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Once again, you guys are trying so hard to prove how smart you are that you are missing the point.
First, it IS a good thing for the military to go as green as possible. Only one good example is given by kenga. It's good for the military, and good for the environment to not use fossil fuels as much as possible.
Second, the main thrust of Jane's post was that fear will kill us all. More military leads to more fear leads to need for more military. The cycle sucks the country dry (see Soviet Union). And the fear we have right now is that (despite all this talk of terrorists hating our freedoms) we fear being without oil. Anything that changes the equation that American society=need for oil will by definition decrease this fear and allow us to spend our time, money and brain power on things that will REALLY help extend the last American Century in to a new one.
Third, you guys are all very smart. You don't have to work so hard to prove it.
June 12, 2008 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
@mardam
Why don't you go live somewhere else if you think fear is ruining this country...or, better yet, try thinking for yourself instead of mindlessly repeating partisan talking points.
Start here; The Soviet Union was not ruined by unreasoning fear of the United States. It's fear was quite reasonable. What ruined it was a social and economic system which was dysfunctional.
June 12, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I created this account just to say this.
Jane Smiley has been one of the most insightful bloggers at HuffPost for years. She's one of the few must-reads there; many great-reads, but just a few must-reads. And as a writer, I can say her ability to slice through to the nut in few words is remarkable.
She's dead right here, connecting the dots too obvious for most to see. Most people, even smart ones, don't see first principles. Of course, the MIC drives the American economy and policy. It has done for decades. (Thanks, Mr Truman, for that hard right turn in 1947. We're ever so grateful.)
And the ego-heads here (including one who persisted in tooting his barroom horn beyond belief) have driven her off. Nice work.
And sad intro to TMP Café. [EOM]
June 12, 2008 10:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
@ gaius publius
You're not God, you know. Despite your credentials you're just another puffed up bloviator, so full of himself that he thinks mere assertion is all that's required, not substantiating facts or reasoned argument.Except for the Civil War we were able to avoid a large standing army while maintaining an expansionist policy because our enemies were so weak. That all changed in the period 1880-1920 when the first truly global economy emerged.
It would be nice if military solutions weren't so much a part of human affairs...but they are, left-wing loonies notwithstanding. So we do what we have to - mistakes and all.
You also completely fail to understand the constructive part our MIC plays in human affairs. It's one way smart people are able to fund really interesting research and development despite the complaints of various boobs, ignoramouses, and "progressive" reformers (who never met a loser they didn't think deserved more of someone else's money).
June 12, 2008 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're a rt wing idiot just as some of the people you're arguing with are left wing idiots.
Obviously the military is a vital part of our social infrastructure and national interest.
But it also has problems with enormous waste due to spending initiatives with highly questionable utility and which are hampered by conflicting goals.
Funding R&D through the military is not the most efficient way to develop new technology. It often leads to boondoggles and failures to commercialize technologies, reduced by the need to find narrow military application for broad technologies.
June 12, 2008 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
@kozmik
Did I claim the military did not generate waste, or that it was the most efficient way to develop new technology? To paraphrase Churchill; it's the best of a bad lot - at best. Put another way, virtually all human social and economic systems are terribly inefficient - especially when their purpose is to find new and better ways of doing things.
As for the motivations of various left-wing idiots, I stand by my assessment. People who can't see the good points and achievements of their own culture, society, country, who believe that it is the source of all evil in the world, are traitors. You feel it is ignorance which governs them. I believe it is envy. And, sorry, but I'm not taken in by the fig leaves they offer up when pressed.
It's a generalization, of course, with all the weaknesses inherent in that type of conception, but it has served me well.
June 12, 2008 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
What are you even babbling about? I can see why you'd like smiley, as you also can't seem to make a coherent point and insist on "connecting dots" by which you mean conflating issues very sloppily.
Yes, many people would agree the "MIC" has disproportionate influence in terms of concentrated lobbying power in Washington and at the state level as well. I completely agree. That's one issue.
But no, it's not "driving the economy" at all. That's idiotic. Yes US military expenditure is disproportionate to the anywhere else in the world and the return on that expenditure is highly questionable vs other means to create jobs and grow the economy. But, the vast majority of our economy is still civilian. Get that through your head. That's another separate issue.
Smiley claimed that: "The military is heavily dependent on oil and vehicles--in fact, it is a kind of exaggerated version of the pre-global-warming way of doing things." Which is just hippy babble. In fact, the military uses the same fuel and drive technology essentially as civilian jets, helicopters, and cars. We also have the national petroleum reserve, in large part to power our military in case of a supply crisis, for long enough to hopefully secure a supply. It couldn't sustain our civilian economy at all.
Smiley also claims "It is not so clear how the empire can monopolize solar power, wind power, trash power, and composted manure as easily as they have oil." We've monopolized oil? Since when? Smiley has her imperial cart before her horse. In fact, it was the growing civilian demand for oil, electricity, cars, appliances, etc in the early 20th century which led to the formation of large mechanized armies to control resources like oil. Prior to that our military ran on oats.
Historically, militarism has been used to grab everything from spices to incense to slaves to bananas to diamonds to metals to chemicals. The idea that removing oil from the equation solves everything, as though oil is the root of all evil, is just hippy nonsense.
It will remove one imperial objective, oil, that's all.
June 12, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
KOSMicky,
Not that you would bother to look...
http://www.greens.org/s-r/42/42-06.html
These guys do have footnotes I did not notice yours.
I do not say they are accurate but they seem to be trying while you just rant about all kinds of crap.
Militarism and Global Warming
by Steve Martinot
US militarism has to be considered under three headings: First, the US military is the largest single consumer of fossil fuel in the world. Second, the US economy, the largest national consumer of fossil fuel in the world, has shown that its primary mode of maintaining a supply of fossil fuel for itself is through military action (assault, intervention, occupation of other oil producing nations). Third, the US military operates in the interest of a corporate economy of which it (the military) is the foremost sector in the US.
US military control of the global economy has shifted political definitions to the point where, at both the national and international levels, the corporations have become the primary citizenry, relegating humans to a second-class citizenship where their existence as humans has been reduced to a structural and political irrelevance. Ultimately, as the largest user of fossil fuel in the world, the US military must increase both itself and its petroleum use in order to guarantee that it will have increased access to fossil fuel for itself and the corporations whose interests and its own are interwoven.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
… the US military is the largest single consumer of fossil fuel in the world...[and] uses roughly 100 million barrels a year for its aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have a nice day sweety
:D
June 12, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
@d_Toad
I haven't had time (and may not be able to make time) to review your notes and contexts but let's put things in perspective.
The world produces about 85 million bpd of which we use 20 million bpd (7300 million barrels per year). The U.S. military uses 100 million of those barrels or about 1 1/3% of our total consumption.
That's assuming your figures are correct - which I doubt since you have no sense of perspective and are clearly motivated by hatred of your own country and society.
June 12, 2008 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're also a complete goofball.
Toad doesn't necessarily "hate his country" he's just some twit who can't differentiate between complex issues or is too intellectually lazy to bother.
You're equally offensive by presuming ignorance is a lack of patriotism.
There are plenty of people on both sides who love their country, but are just too ignorant and intellectually lazy to do it any good. It's not a deficiency of patriotism, but a deficiency of education and reason, on both sides.
June 12, 2008 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
d_Toad is clearly the sort of goofball who can't make sense of data even when citing it.
As pointed out above, the military uses only a small fraction of US oil consumption, which is itself only a small fraction of global consumption. The vast majority of oil consumption is civilian. As I said.
As I also said already, yes all oil consuming nations use warfare and imperialism to obtain oil. However, oil itself is only a fraction of the resources which are obtained via militarism.
June 12, 2008 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
We don't need to go to war to obtain oil, since we've got plenty here to use. If oil shale pans out we've got more reserves than Iran in Western states, but as you say we've got political gridlock. The oil companies are not all-powerful of they would have opened ANWR. Conversely the green movement runs into solid opposition that is hard to overcome. Doing nothing is always the least resistance.
You do need to recognize the drawbacks to some green technology -- like the fact that wind requires a lot more transmission lines to be built. My prediction is wind is going to run into a solid wall of opposition, once the public finds out the lines will run through their neighborhood. NIMBY will take hold, and a lot of these wind projects will be killed off. We saw that in MA, where the Kennedy's even fought wind turbines off the Cape.
China actually has an advantage here, because they can throw people off their land at will to build a huge dam and nobody can stop them.
June 22, 2008 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink