Jun 06 2009

Combat Power, Capitalism and the real enemy

Category: capitalism,economy,government,liberty,socialism — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

To win battles, you have to achieve adequate combat power in relation to your enemy:

… Combat power is created by combining the elements of maneuver, firepower, protection, and leadership. Overwhelming combat power is the ability to focus sufficient force to ensure success and deny the enemy any chance of escape or effective retaliation. … Overwhelming combat power is achieved when all combat elements are violently brought to bear quickly, giving the enemy no opportunity to respond with coordinated or effective opposition. …

Commanders seek to apply overwhelming combat power to achieve victory at minimal cost. … They attempt to defeat the enemy’s combat power by interfering with his ability to maneuver, apply firepower, or provide protection.

Four primary elements – maneuver, firepower, protection, and leadership – combine to create combat power – the ability to fight. Their effective application and sustainment, in concert with one another, will decide the outcome of campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements. Leaders integrate maneuver, firepower, and protection capabilities in a variety of combinations appropriate to the situation. …

The idea of combat power may seem a bit abstract, so a few examples may help.

If you have a combat force of 100 soldiers, how should you distribute weapons?   How should you distribute ammunition?   How should you distribute the soldiers in the battle space?  The answer can be stated generally this way:  you want the best, most powerful weapons to be gathered at the point where they will be most effective, with the most available ammunition, supported by as many soldiers as necessary to use the weapons, protect the weapons, and protect the soldiers who are USING the main weapons until those weapons have been effectively employed and the enemy is destroyed or neutralized.

Here is what you don’t do.  You don’t automatically distribute the ammunition evenly to each soldier.  You don’t just spread the soldiers out and hope that one of them runs into the enemy.  You don’t hold a lottery to decide who gets the biggest guns, or the ones with the highest rate of fire.  You don’t give all the soldiers identical training, and you don’t place soldiers in particular roles without primary regard for their achievement and acquired skills.

Combat power is the idea of focusing energy and resources where they will do the most good in defeating the enemy.  Somebody has to be in command, to make the decisions that will lead to that timely concentration of power.  It won’t happen by accident.  Ideally, an officer moves up through the ranks by demonstrated success against the enemy, although in this imperfect world, other criteria will sometimes be applied.

There is a strong relation between the concepts of combat power and capitalism.  Capitalism gets its name from the fact that it involves building up sufficient resources to accomplish economic tasks that are beyond the “average resources” of individuals.  An important point:  although “capital” is analogous to “combat power,” the enemy for capitalists is poverty.   This fact is not obvious, on the surface, to anti-capitalists, including socialists, who also claim that their enemy is poverty.  But consider: there is an upper limit (and it’s pretty low) to how rich a person can be in a poor society.

The richest man in a third world country may still have to spend a lot of time in considerably less luxurious circumstances that most American inner cities, where no one spends much time bouncing over dirt roads, rarely has to smell open sewage, can safely drink water from pretty much any tap, and so on.  You know all those rich people you read about in third world countries?  They are often rich only because they have managed to sell a product into a developed middle-class economy (think Saudis selling oil to the USA), or because they just plain stole it by means of military force, or maybe both.  Would you rather be the richest guy in Zimbabwe, or comfortably middle-class in Topeka?  The richest guy in Zimbabwe has to watch his back….  In any case, the best way to STAY rich (and alive) is to be rich in a middle-class economy.  Globalization has masked the fact that the rich in third-world countries are often dependent on the middle-class of developed nations, again proof that capitalists need markets with disposable income, while statists/socialists need a lower class to justify themselves.

It took capital to build the first railroads, the first airlines, the first automobile factories, and the first computer businesses, not to mention electronics factories, farm equipment factories, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, clothing factories, retail outlets for all of these, and more. In each case, poverty was the enemy of the capitalists who funded these things, who took risks to make them happen.  If your society is poor, its members don’t have the resources to buy whatever you’re selling.  It really is that simple.  (A secondary enemy of capitalists is people whose power is threatened by them, mostly statists/socialists/royalists/entrenched privilege…  but even then, the major enemy is still poverty, which limits the ability to market what you make or do.)

John D. Rockefeller ruthlessly suppressed his competition by the simple expedient of finding every possible way to deliver his product at a lower price than his competitors.  But he depended on a technological infrastructure that created a need for the product he wanted to sell.  That is, if people hadn’t needed kerosene and oil, Rockefeller couldn’t have sold it to them.  They needed oil because they lived in a society that was rich enough to afford devices that required oil.

The enemy of capitalists is poverty, not other capitalists.

Let’s make this a little clearer this way:  the enemy of professional baseball team owners is not other baseball teams; it is an apathetic public that no longer cares to watch baseball.  Of course, there is competition, with “winners” and “losers,” but even the losers win if the public keeps coming to watch them lose.

No capitalist is required to stay a “loser,” because in a free system they are allowed to adjust their activities until they are winners.  That is the original meaning of “win-win.”  If I can’t make a particular widget that you want to buy at the price I can sell it, then I’ll find something you DO want enough to pay me for it, and we’ll both “win.”

The enemy of capitalists is poverty, not other capitalists, because it is only poverty that makes it unlikely for captalists to be able to sell anything at all.

Committed egalitarians would have us believe that the real enemy is the “gap between rich and poor.”  This is ludicrous on historical grounds.  Would these people prefer us to live in a society where everyone is equally poor?  The very, very exciting thing about a free, capitalist society is that no one has to STAY poor.  And there is no capitalist who WANTS the poor to stay poor, for the simple reason that it’s impossible to sell much to poor people, unless the government has required lending institutions to make loans to them that can’t be repaid.   And we all know how that ends.

Just as you don’t win battles or wars by equal distribution of troops, weapons and bullets, you don’t win the struggle against poverty by equal distribution of income or goods.  Instead, you let natural forces and markets encourage the concentration of those resources in the hands of the most productive among us, to the betterment of us all, as they produce goods and services we would never have had otherwise, and offer us choices we would never have had without them.  Successful capitalists are those whose products and services make the lives of the rest of us much better than they would have been without them.  It makes no more sense to resent fabulously successful capitalists than it makes to resent the success of Alexander the Great, or General Eisenhower.  Would you rather have fought on the side of Darius?  Or Hitler?  Would you rather be equally poor with everyone else, everywhere else?

Capitalism WAS the original war on poverty, and it is a war that was being won, pretty much on all fronts, right up until the government decided to hogtie its best commanders, divert resources used in weapons production to planting daisies in the park, send half the army on furlough, sound the retreat and sue for peace.  Peace with poverty, that is.  It is one of the great achievements of the Left that the only war that can go on forever, without a significant change in strategy or tactics, and with no strategy for withdrawal, is the publicly funded “war on poverty.”  Call it The Forever War.  It is the war that socialists/statists can never allow to be won.

Conjecture:  if there had never been anti-monolopy laws, but if the rule of law was scrupulously enforced, if corporations were not penalized for success, if government did not try to pick winners and losers, if government did not allow itself to be bought BY capitalists (no one said capitalists were angels), if government did not see the success of capitalists as a source of unearned income for itself (the only reason capitalists CAN try to buy government), if bad personal behavior wasn’t rewarded by government largess, if people were not conditioned to see “the safety net” as a hammock, if government did not promise things it can’t deliver forever, and in particular, if the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson hadn’t happened (and their allied Left political constituencies), we would be richer now than most folks can possibly believe.  We would not now be just getting around to returning to the moon in 15 years or so, we would have permanent colonies there.  The standard of living of virtually all Americans would be higher, much higher.  We would have even more medical and pharmaceutical innovation, and it would cost us less.  Fuel would be cheaper, energy in general would be cheaper, and we would have more leisure time.  And paradoxically, the air and water would probably be cleaner.  We would be profiting, all of us, from economic expansion that would dwarf what actually happened.

The reason is simple: the diversion of resources away from focused, productive use, by the programs of anti-capitalist government, has made us all poorer, because those resources did not produce greater “capital power,” and diverted many, many people away from being productive themselves.  To put it simply, we ate our seed corn, instead of planting it.

We are now hip deep in another presidency that has the ambition to make as permanent a mark on America as those of FDR and LBJ.  I have no doubt that it will be possible to reduce the average gap between “rich” and “poor,” but it will not be done by making the poor any richer, and the price will make it even harder for the poor to change their circumstances.

It’s very, very simple.  Capitalists need a middle class into which to sell their goods.  Socialists need a lower class in order to justify their existence and political power.  Socialists, if they ever succeeded in eliminating poverty, would immediately lose power.  Who would need them anymore?  Capitalists can win forever, as we all just keep getting richer, and richer.  Statists/socialists see the resources generated by a period of successful capitalism, and they lust after them.

Capitalists need middle classes, and capitalist activity tends to promote the growth of them.  Socialists/statists need lower classes, and socialist/statist activity tends to promote the growth of them.  The fact that socialists/statists seem always to manage to take over, just as capitalism starts to succeed, is all the proof anyone should require of original sin.

It is as if socialists/statists went to the front line of battle, just as their own general’s brilliant strategy is about to win a great victory, and insisted on unloading the weapons of some of their own soldiers, just to make it fair.

Jun 05 2009

Judicial “empathy”?

Category: affirmative action,diversity,Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:49 am

The issue here is that of the empathy of Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor for a firefighter named Ricci, whose case against the New Haven Fire Department she overturned.  He had sued the city for  failing to promote him when he had met all qualifications, purely on the grounds that no black candidates had similarly qualified.  Apparently taking that fact as proof that the qualifications were racist, Sotomayor concurred that the city had done the right thing in promoting no one.  So we have a very hardworking firefighter, who went far above and beyond expectations to prepare for the examination to determine his qualifications for promotion, for whom the good judge appears to have no empathy whatsover.  Charles Krauthammer makes it very clear that this should be a teaching moment.

Empathy is a vital virtue to be exercised in private life — through charity, respect and lovingkindness — and in the legislative life of a society where the consequences of any law matter greatly, which is why income taxes are progressive and safety nets built for the poor and disadvantaged.

But all that stops at the courthouse door. Figuratively and literally, justice wears a blindfold. It cannot be a respecter of persons. Everyone must stand equally before the law, black or white, rich or poor, advantaged or not.

Obama and Sotomayor draw on the “richness of her experiences” and concern for judicial results to favor one American story, one disadvantaged background, over another. The refutation lies in the very oath Sotomayor must take when she ascends to the Supreme Court: “I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich. … So help me God.”

When the hearings begin, Republicans should call Frank Ricci as their first witness. Democrats want justice rooted in empathy? Let Ricci tell his story and let the American people judge whether his promotion should have been denied because of his skin color in a procedure Sotomayor joined in calling “facially race-neutral.”

When judges are to be evaluated based on their “empathy,” inevitably the question is, “Empathy for whom?”  It is clear that judicial empathy will pretty much never be exercised in favor of the currently most despised class, namely white males, who are presumed to have “white male privilege,” even if they are dyslexic, or come from a poor family or broken home, or were abused as children, or had to work extra hard, etc.

In any case, judicial empathy, to the extent that it is appropriate (which isn’t much, in my opinion) should be reserved for prescribing punishments after triers of fact have demonstrated guilt in criminal cases, or perhaps limiting damages in civil cases, after the facts have been determined.  It is certainly inappropriate in an appeals judge (which is all the Supreme Court is), who is normally NOT there to determine or review facts of cases, but rather whether the law was correctly applied TO those facts.

Will Judge Sotomayor find it acceptable if no fire-fighter in New Haven is ever promoted again?  Would she find that “fair”?

We are supposed to be a government of laws, not of persons.   Lady Justice is supposed to be “blind.”  She certainly isn’t supposed to be opening one eye to check for the level of skin pigment.

Jun 04 2009

Seeking identity in the USA

Category: affirmative action,diversity,left,race,racism — harmonicminer @ 9:29 am

Lost in the Labyrinth of Race  (much more at the link)

One of the unexpected results of the Sotomayor nomination is a refocusing on the politics of racial identity and the fossilized institutions of affirmative action-or the belief that the U.S. government should use its vast power to ensure an equality of result rather than a fairness of opportunity.

In the last fifty years, United States has evolved into a complex multiracial state. Race no longer is necessarily an indicator of income or material success-as the record of, say, Japanese-Americans or, indeed Asians in general, attests.

And what criterion constitutes race itself nowadays, when almost every family has someone who is half-Hispanic, a quarter-Asian, one-half black, or part Pakistani? What percentage of one’s lineage ensures purity of race, or qualifies for minority status? Are California Hispanics minorities, or so-called whites that are now a smaller percentage of the state population?

And what constitutes racial authenticity? Lack of income? An absence of success in the American rat race? Is the fourth generation upper-class Cuban an “Hispanic” who should qualify for affirmative action because his name is Hillario Gonzalez? Does the one-quarter aristocratic Jamaican qualify for American redress on account of his partial blackness?

And how does affirmative action-or even the fuzzy notion of “diversity”- adjudicate all this without mirror-imaging the statisticians of the Old Confederacy who could precisely calibrate the 1/16 drop of black blood? The university where I taught was full of South Americans and Europeans with Spanish surnames that allowed their various departments to be considered “ethnically diverse,” while others, having Russian émigrés, or the foreign born from New Delhi, Israel, and Egypt, struggled to satisfy the dictates of diversity czars.

In other words, affirmative action, and the racial identity politics that fuel it, are swamped by their inherent racialist contradictions-and made irrelevant by the dynamism of popular culture of the last three decades in which intermarriage, assimilation, and integration have challenged the notion of racial fides itself.

So begins an article from Victor Davis Hanson on the state of race in the USA, including affirmative action, “diversity,” racial preferences, racial identity, the nature of privilege in modern USA, the whole nine yards in the current race discussion and its political and social implications.  It’s all worth reading and difficult to summarize, a sign of pithy, concise writing.  Suffice to say that it highlights all the inner contradictions of the race conscious, and the futility of policies that were designed to redress grievances and correct imbalances, but cannot even identify who should qualify in any rational way.

Here is what’s clear to me: the election of a president of African ancestry has done nothing to satisfy the Left.  It has not convinced the Left that America is no longer significantly racist in its average viewpoint.  Instead, it appears simply to have placed the Left in the driver’s seat for every race-based preference and accommodation that it can construct.

We’re a long, long way from the “content of his character” vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., and getting farther away every day.

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Jun 03 2009

Sadly, this won’t be the last American Jihadist

Category: Islam,media,military,sharia,society — harmonicminer @ 9:55 am

ARKANSAS’ LONE JIHADIST: HOW ALONE IS HE? (much more at the link)

Here we have a new case of an individual U.S. citizen who committed an act of terror in the name of his ideology (Government officials have called it inaccurately a “political and religious motive”) against U.S. military targets. Do we see a pattern here? Are we witnessing a repeat and copycats? In fact, as we review several previous cases, from the Miami cell case, to the Fort Dix Six, the Georgia two, the New York Four, the Virginia Paintball network, and many other cases, we’re witnessing the surge of a phenomenon we have been warning about. I have repeatedly coined it Mutant Jihad, including in my book Future Jihad. Two important elements are to be taken into consideration: One is the fact that in many of these cases, U.S. military personnel and targets have been on the short list of these “homegrown terrorists.” If you study the repeated targeting process of these urban Jihadists, they systematically focus on military deployment inside the United States. In a sense, even as the perpetrators are separate, dispersed, and not connected, their targeting seems war-like: attacking the enemy’s forces on the homeland. The second element to be taken into consideration is the clear fact that in all these cases, without exception, we’re seeing one ideology: Jihadism. Despite various levels of understanding and sophistication, the cells and lone wolves who were involved in the terror acts, legitimized their action under the label of “Jihad.”

When relatively perfunctory Christians are re-energized, they tend to give more money, act nicer towards their families, and maybe volunteer more. New converts to Christianity simply do not become violent. The exact opposite is true.  The comparison of Christian fundamentalism to Muslim fundamentalism is one of the most dishonest things done in our Left media.

But too many American and British mosques and imams preach ways of thinking and feeling about what it means to be a good Muslim that boil down to jihad. I wish it wasn’t true. But it has been pretty well documented, though not well covered in the major media.

A question: how many Muslim groups immediately issued unconditional condemnation of the murder of the soldier at the recruiting office, and denied that such actions are any part of being a good Muslim?  Google it.  See if you can find even one.

In contrast, pro-life groups around the USA immediately and unconditionally condemned the murder of Tiller the Kansas abortionist.

Maybe the imams will save their statements of condemnation of the murder for the mosque attendees.   Yeah, that’s it.

In the meantime, I guess our military recruiters had better start showing up for work in full battle-rattle.

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Jun 03 2009

Draw Your Own Conclusions

Category: Obama — amuzikman @ 12:01 am

Yahoo News:

Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher.

President Barak Obama:

I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

CBS  News:

Police in Arkansas say a military recruiter has been killed in a shooting at an Army-Navy recruiting office in Little Rock and a second recruiter has been wounded.

President Barak Obama:

…………………………………………….. (still waiting)

Jun 02 2009

A bigger, better gun

Category: national security,North Korea — harmonicminer @ 12:23 pm

Gates: More missile defense spending possible

Defense Secretary Robert Gates isn’t ruling out spending more on missile defense than what he’s asked for in next year’s budget if North Korea or other nations increase threats against the United States.

Gates said the missile tests by North Korea over the past week appear to have attracted more support on Capitol Hill for missile interceptors.

Translation:
If the neighborhood continues to deteriorate, I might consider buying a higher caliber, more accurate gun, and then practice using it more, but I’m going to wait for a few more murders and muggings in the neighborhood first.

What does he mean, IF “North Korea or other nations increase threats”?  What do Obama and Gates need?  An announcement of a launch date on Honolulu?  Or San Francisco?

Jun 02 2009

And Now, For Something Completely Different….

Category: humor — amuzikman @ 8:00 am

WARNING – HUMOROUS TREATMENT OF ADULT TOPIC: Continue reading “And Now, For Something Completely Different….”

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Jun 01 2009

Compassion test

Category: media,society — harmonicminer @ 11:51 am

Military recruiter killed in Ark shooting

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., A new soldier helping to attract others to the military was shot and killed outside an Army recruiting office Monday and a second soldier was wounded, and a suspect was arrested, police said.

For all those who are especially horrified by the murder of the abortionist in Kansas, how do you feel about the murder of this soldier? He seems to have been murdered “on the job.” We don’t know why, for sure, just yet… but he is as dead as the abortionist.

Suggested line of research: do a Lexis-Nexis search to find out how many editorials are written about the need to protect military recruiters. Compare to similar editorials on the need to protect abortionists. Then notice how many news stories and columns suggest a “pro-life group” connection to the murderer of the abortionist, compared to the number that suggest a “far Left peace-at-any-price group” connection to the murderer of the recruiter.

I wonder if there has been a “string of violent acts” against recruiters since, oh, 1980 or so.

Jun 01 2009

Violence against abortionists: incredibly rare

Category: abortion,media,society — harmonicminer @ 9:24 am

An abortionist who specializes in late-term abortion has been murdered in church.

Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher.

It was, of course, morally wrong to kill the abortionist. However, if there are so “few providers of late-term abortions,” they must be awfully busy to do the 10,000 or so abortions that are done each year after 21 weeks development in the womb.

Survival Rates

* Babies born at 23 weeks have a 17% chance of survival
* Babies born at 24 weeks have a 39% chance of survival
* Babies born at 25 weeks have a 50% chance of survival
* From 32 weeks onwards, most babies are able to survive with the help of medical Technology [EPICure data]

Continuing with the report:

……..

Police did not release a motive for the shooting. But the doctor’s violent death was the latest in a string of shootings and bombings over two decades directed against abortion clinics, doctors and staff.

I always thought a “string” meant something that happened often enough to have a pattern with some kind of frequency.  Can you remember the last time something like this happened?  Be honest now…  what year was it?  What happened?  Did you have to look it up on Wikipedia to remember?  I thought so.

Stolz said all indications were that the gunman acted alone, although authorities were investigating whether he had any connection to anti-abortion groups.

Well, of course.  Anti-abortion groups are full of well-known killers, aren’t they?

Tiller’s Women’s Health Care Services clinic is one of just three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.

This is a flat lie.  Open your telephone book.  Look up abortion providers in the Yellow Pages, in any reasonably large city.  You’ll find “clinics” advertising “procedures to 24 weeks” and some to 28 weeks.  In any case, most hospitals will do late abortions that are truly required to save the life of the mother.   These specialized late term clinics serve women who have some “reason” other than saving their lives.  And this glaring error alone should create doubt in your mind about the accuracy of the rest of the reporting.

“We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down,” Troy Newman, Operation Rescue’s president, said in a statement. “Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning.”

And you can be pretty sure they mean it, since these people tend to take the ten commandments reasonably seriously.
……..

The last killing of an abortion doctor was in October 1998 when Dr. Barnett Slepian was fatally shot in his home in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. A militant abortion opponent was convicted of the murder.

Wait… didn’t someone say there was a “string” of this sort of thing? From where I sit, it seems to be safer to be an abortionist than a university professor. Several have been murdered on campus in pretty recent times.  And it’s LOTS more dangerous to do research on animal subjects than to do abortions….  those animal rights people are SERIOUS.

……
Federal marshals protected Tiller during the 1991 Summer of Mercy protests, and he was protected again between 1994 and 1998 after another abortion provider was assassinated and federal authorities reported finding Tiller’s name on an assassination list.

Another flat lie. The “assassination list” was merely a list of late-term abortion providers, and the text accompanying the list specifically “accused them of ‘crimes against humanity’ and offered a $5,000 reward for the ‘arrest, conviction and revocation of license to practice medicine’ of these physicians.”   If it was an “assassination” list, why have there been no murders of abortionists since 1998?  If abortion foes have ANY significant percentage of people in their ranks who are capable of doing an act like this, how is it that the last one was 1998?  Calling that list an “assassination list” is a capitulation  to the PR strategy of the abortionists…  of course, that’s exactly what the media have done, isn’t it?

So don’t look for reason or balance in the coverage of this murder.  Look for over-heated rhetoric, fulminating with barely concealed hatred for anyone who simply wants to save the lives of the most innocent and vulnerable among us.  Look for an attempt to connect pro-life groups to incitement to murder, without any factual predicate.

While you’re at it, consider this: because of the confluence of political issues, and the fact that anti-abortion people tend to hold traditional values on a range of issues, a larger percentage of them than the general population are also gun owners.  Does anyone think, if any measurable percentage of pro-lifers were willing to kill abortionists, that there would be very many abortionists left?

I am guessing that more abortionists and abortion mill employees have died in car accidents driving to work, since 1998, than this single murder.  There are a LOT of them (abortion providers, that is).   I don’t expect any news coverage of that fact, however.

But that’s the measure of the actual risk of what they do (risk to themselves, that is).  They’re in more danger from tailgaters than rabid pro-lifers.

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