The Battle For Economic Primacy

For ten or twenty years the existence of a battle for economic primacy between established nation-states and the corporate world has been apparent to me. It seemed quite obvious but that's about as far as my thinking went. What a surprise to find out that it has formal, academic foundations and that relative to "economic freedom" democracy and the notion of decent lives for the masses are not only nakedly expendable but impediments to be pushed aside as needed. A dystopian world for most, in support of maximum "economic freedom" for the grotesquely wealthy, is totally acceptable in this universe! This short introduction was quite the eye opener, should be required reading everywhere, and I will definitely get the book. This is about as fundamentally profound to the arc of civilization and democracy as germ theory was to medicine and public health.

Democracy doesn’t matter to the defenders of ‘economic freedom’ | Quinn Slobodian | Opinion | The Guardian

My oldest brother called me this morning. Aside from just being seriously, organically smart he is vastly more educated and avocationally knowledgable than I am in matters of this sort; I mentioned the article. Twenty minutes later he stopped talking and I felt an odd combination of anger and depression. I can't possibly recount the threads but suffice it to say that the increasing disparity of wealth, hollowing out of regulations beneficial to our citizenry and such as that isn't an accident or the casual product of random conservative folks. It is the result of 50 years of coordinated and well funded effort. Download a copy of the Powell Memo and go from there after your blood pressure normalizes, said he.

Thankfully, the underdogs still win once in a while.

https://youtu.be/UN8bJb8biZU?t=250

It does rather seem we are moving towards a tipping point. The rich are getting richer, the planet is burning (literally) and the democratic process appears to have been corrupted, or at least populated by politicians who say one thing to get elected, and yet pursue agendas that may work against the masses that voted for them in the first place.

Either these issues are rectified by the normal democratic process by electing people who argue the case for genuine change and the people are willing to accept the status quo being changed, or change is forced on us by calamity (which all the predictions for global warming seem to point to) or there is violence that forces change.

fascinating premise. its a shame philosophy is dead.

You can just read Stiglitz. He has been discussing this for a long time.



For 40 years, elites in rich and poor countries alike promised that neoliberal policies would lead to faster economic growth, and that the benefits would trickle down so that everyone, including the poorest, would be better off. Now that the evidence is in, is it any wonder that trust in elites and confidence in democracy have plummeted?

NEW YORK – At the end of the Cold War, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a celebrated essay called “The End of History?” Communism’s collapse, he argued, would clear the last obstacle separating the entire world from its destiny of liberal democracy and market economies. Many people agreed.

Today, as we face a retreat from the rules-based, liberal global order, with autocratic rulers and demagogues leading countries that contain well over half the world’s population, Fukuyama’s idea seems quaint and naive. But it reinforced the neoliberal economic doctrine that has prevailed for the last 40 years.The credibility of neoliberalism’s faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on life-support these days. And well it should be. The simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence or mere correlation. Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years.The form of globalization prescribed by neoliberalism left individuals and entire societies unable to control an important part of their own destiny, as Dani Rodrik of Harvard University has explained so clearly, and as I argue in my recent books Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited and People, Power, and Profits. The effects of capital-market liberalization were particularly odious: If a leading presidential candidate in an emerging market lost favor with Wall Street, the banks would pull their money out of the country. Voters then faced a stark choice: Give in to Wall Street or face a severe financial crisis. It was as if Wall Street had more political power than the country’s citizens.Even in rich countries, ordinary citizens were told, “You can’t pursue the policies you want” – whether adequate social protection, decent wages, progressive taxation, or a well-regulated financial system – “because the country will lose competitiveness, jobs will disappear, and you will suffer.”In rich and poor countries alike, elites promised that neoliberal policies would lead to faster economic growth, and that the benefits would trickle down so that everyone, including the poorest, would be better off. To get there, though, workers would have to accept lower wages, and all citizens would have to accept cutbacks in important government programs.

The elites claimed that their promises were based on scientific economic models and “evidence-based research.” Well, after 40 years, the numbers are in: growth has slowed, and the fruits of that growth went overwhelmingly to a very few at the top. As wages stagnated and the stock market soared, income and wealth flowed up, rather than trickling down.
How can wage restraint – to attain or maintain competitiveness – and reduced government programs possibly add up to higher standards of living? Ordinary citizens felt like they had been sold a bill of goods. They were right to feel conned.We are now experiencing the political consequences of this grand deception: distrust of the elites, of the economic “science” on which neoliberalism was based, and of the money-corrupted political system that made it all possible.The reality is that, despite its name, the era of neoliberalism was far from liberal. It imposed an intellectual orthodoxy whose guardians were utterly intolerant of dissent. Economists with heterodox views were treated as heretics to be shunned, or at best shunted off to a few isolated institutions. Neoliberalism bore little resemblance to the “open society” that Karl Popper had advocated. As George Soros has emphasized, Popper recognized that our society is a complex, ever-evolving system in which the more we learn, the more our knowledge changes the behavior of the system.Nowhere was this intolerance greater than in macroeconomics, where the prevailing models ruled out the possibility of a crisis like the one we experienced in 2008. When the impossible happened, it was treated as if it were a 500-year flood – a freak occurrence that no model could have predicted. Even today, advocates of these theories refuse to accept that their belief in self-regulating markets and their dismissal of externalities as either nonexistent or unimportant led to the deregulation that was pivotal in fueling the crisis. The theory continues to survive, with Ptolemaic attempts to make it fit the facts, which attests to the reality that bad ideas, once established, often have a slow death.If the 2008 financial crisis failed to make us realize that unfettered markets don’t work, the climate crisis certainly should: neoliberalism will literally bring an end to our civilization. But it is also clear that demagogues who would have us turn our back on science and tolerance will only make matters worse.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/co...iglitz-2019-11

Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University, is the co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and former Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book is People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.

For a one-liner, and for a way too large percentage of our population, this pretty well encapsulates the results of the last 40 or 50 years:

"While you were worried about socialism taking your freedoms, de-regulated capitalism stole your pension, took your savings, sent your jobs overseas, robbed you of health care, dismantled the educational system, and helped put you in debt, leaving only your racism, xenophobia, hate and guns."

Of course broad spectrum socialism has never been on offer, merely things like a national health care system, improved worker, environmental and public health protections, more robust protection related to the financial industry, vigorous anti-trust actions, combating monopolies/oligopolies, and that sort of thing. Bernie's been calling it right for pretty much the entire time. We certianly don't need any more neo-liberal Republicans or Democrats never mind an active, organically destructive personality and crew at the helm of our country.

No thanks on the socialism thing. Gulags are not my style. I will stick with freedom and capitalism.

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Originally Posted by Blue Jays

No thanks on the socialism thing. Gulags are not my style. I will stick with freedom and capitalism.

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I think you are confusing socialism with fascism and communism. Gulags were a result of political repression not economic. Capitalism does not necessarily guarantee freedom or if you really want to define it civil liberties.

I remember seeing Free to Choose on PBS. The documentary had a profound impact on me. I've seen it since and Friedman starts out with a visit to Hong Kong and his making the point that 1970's Hong Kong was the closest example of Adam Smith type Free Market capitalism. Seems a shame that China is messing with that 'secret sauce' -Mike G

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Originally Posted by Blue Jays

No thanks on the socialism thing. Gulags are not my style. I will stick with freedom and capitalism.

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Socialism isn't on offer and never has been and the gulag comment is utter nonsense. We are a hybrid economy composed of capitalistic and socialistic components as is just about every other first world country. I hope you'll decide to read a lot more widely and a lot more critically. This is a good place to start: naked capitalism: Finance, economics, politics, power as is this: TomDispatch

There are many others.

Medicare for All won't turn the US into a socialistic economy any more than Medicare or Social Security did.
Support for unions and working class folks, and well regulated capitalism won't do it either; deregulated capitalism can be a problem as should be pretty obvious by now.

I'll tell you what will though; continuing our neo-liberal economic trajectory and sitting idly by while wealth is ever more concentrated in an astonishingly smaller and smaller population. That's also a good way for you to lose your freedoms.

I think the optimum time to have been born was about 1940. Too young for WWII or Korea; too old for Vietnam but riding the economic wave of industrial primacy and a broad distribution of wealth coming from unions and the ashes of WWII before it closed out, like shore pound, in 2008. Electing Reagan was the public codification of the beginning of the end, something my middle brother predicted at the time; of course the seeds were planted earlier and certainly included the efforts of economist James Buchanan and his pals.

Similarly, acquitting Trump, and all that it implies, places us near the end zone of the end. It could take a while to unfold, but I fear the USA is likely toast. Steady general decline evidenced by increasing wealth concentration juxtaposed to a growing impoverished class, reduced relative social status of of whites and increasing civil unrest; all exacerbated by global existential challenges and sins of the long past never fully rectified. It seems to me, and history, that a country either corrects that sort of trajectory before punching a hole in the end of the runway or ends up in a civil war. You cannot maintain a civil society when base facts facts are being disputed, economic instability/concentration of wealth continues towards the excessive, the dominant racial demographic used to top social status and privilege feel they are losing it, and there’s no accountability such as the recent vote to acquit Trump; that and those on the losing end being ill informed, desperate, and easily manipulated by wedge issues.

Maybe "the greatest country ever" was another case of being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple.

Good luck to us.

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Originally Posted by jclay

I think the optimum time to have been born was about 1940. Too young for WWII or Korea; too old for Vietnam but riding the economic wave of industrial primacy and a broad distribution of wealth coming from unions and the ashes of WWII before it closed out, like shore pound, in 2008. Electing Reagan was the public codification of the beginning of the end, something my middle brother predicted at the time; of course the seeds were planted earlier and certainly included the efforts of economist James Buchanan and his pals.

Similarly, acquitting Trump, and all that it implies, places us near the end zone of the end. It could take a while to unfold, but I fear the USA is likely toast. Steady general decline evidenced by increasing wealth concentration juxtaposed to a growing impoverished class, reduced relative social status of of whites and increasing civil unrest; all exacerbated by global existential challenges and sins of the long past never fully rectified. It seems to me, and history, that a country either corrects that sort of trajectory before punching a hole in the end of the runway or ends up in a civil war. You cannot maintain a civil society when base facts facts are being disputed, economic instability/concentration of wealth continues towards the excessive, the dominant racial demographic used to top social status and privilege feel they are losing it, and there’s no accountability such as the recent vote to acquit Trump; that and those on the losing end being ill informed, desperate, and easily manipulated by wedge issues.

Maybe "the greatest country ever" was another case of being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple.

Good luck to us.

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We're going to be OK.

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Originally Posted by vertical_doug

You can just read Stiglitz. He has been discussing this for a long time.

“The simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence or mere correlation. Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years.”

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This is very odd. Stiglitz seems to be using the word neoliberal with a meaning opposite of reality. “Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.” - Wikipedia

“Free market” in Amercian economic parlance used to mean a level playing field. What has undermined democracy over the past 40 years isn’t deregulation, but state influence in the economy through regulation that legalizes acts done by a few that were previously considered bad for society. Examples:

- Some of the most profitable fields in America are those the most regulated: retail banking, stock market, pharma, oil, etc. The big players have used bribery to create the opposite of a free market. The rules are written to favor these mega-companies over the consumer.

- The health care industry is a great example of regulatory capture. In no other field does the law enforce a transaction that says one party agrees to pay whatever the other party chooses to charge later, with an undisclosed price schedule that can vary 500% depending on who the customer is. That sort of agreement is called an “illusory contract” and was unenforceable for 200 years in all 50 states until the last 40 years. The government has legalized predatory dealing.

- Since the Great Depression it was orthodoxy that banks should remain small and not interconnected. This principle was thrown out over the past 40 years to result in banks with enough money and clout to control governments. The retail banks and stockbroker industry routinely defraud people and it’s now effectively legal.

- It is an open secret that certain big players front-run stock trades to skim money from retail stock transactions. The biggest player might be Citadel. Currently we have a new Treasury Secretary who received $7,500,000 in bags of cash from the people she is now regulating. $1,000,000 came from Citadel. What are the odds front-running will be reduced?

- Until 1980 or so it was orthodoxy that loan sharking was bad for society. It was illegal in all 50 states. There were limits on interest rates. Now laws permit and protect loan sharking. The bankruptcy laws were even changed in the 2000s to assist loan sharking. What has changed is that loan sharking is now done by big players. Anytime you hear the word "Fintech," think "loan sharking." Note how often the Democrats talk about income inequality and yet how seldom they mention 200% interest rate loan sharking.

- There was once bipartisan support for campaign finance reform to keep big money out of politics. In 2016 we had a presidential candidate who received $240,000,000 in personal payments from big money. And the winner in that election was worse. The 2020 federal election cycle spent $14 billion, twice the 2016 record.

This isn’t neoliberalism. It’s not a free market. It’s a playing field designed by government laws that is strongly tipped to favor a few. And both political parties support and nurture it. It is the fascist form of economic planning. Not the Nazi kind (that’s the political side of fascism), but the merging of state power with economic power as Mussolini once said.

The optimum time to have been born was after the polio vaccine.

1956 worked for me.

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Originally Posted by Blue Jays

No thanks on the socialism thing. Gulags are not my style. I will stick with freedom and capitalism.

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Amusing to see this pre-Covid and pre-Trump letting the mob loose quote.

No thanks to socialism...well how about governments of all stripes stepping in and making life easier for people during Covid? You've had cheques (signed by Trump) in your country and we had government payments to businesses to keep people employed and to keep them afloat. How about the vaccines? Tax payer funded here. Yep socialism is terrible.

Freedom and capitalism (as opposed to Gulags). Yeah well, don't like the result of an election so you throw a tantrum and set the dogs loose. Fortunately dictatorship was avoided. The Gulags were apparently for Clinton ('lock her up' etc).

9tubes, your comment leaves much for me to digest, and for that reason I appreciate it. I will leave you with a quick initial response in the form of rhetorical question, though: is it not possible deregulation has contributed to democracy's decline alongside what you say has undermined democracy in its stead?

Will Neide: Do you completely believe we will be okay, and if so, why?

Neoliberal action harmful to the broader public interest doesn't prevent the existence of regulatory actions that are similarly harmful to the public interest and the proponents of one are generally proponents of the other, at least from my vantage point.

Glass Steagal was regulation in the public interest; was it's repeal neoliberal deregulation or simply corporate crony regulation not in the public interest? Whichever label best suits it was clearly action that wasn't in the best interests of society.

At the root of all this is, at a minimum, is the battle for power and economic primacy between state and corporate interests. Under the general category of influence peddling we have politicians who will employ either as it suits.

Must dash.

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Originally Posted by Caleb Evenson

9tubes, your comment leaves much for me to digest, and for that reason I appreciate it. I will leave you with a quick initial response in the form of rhetorical question, though: is it not possible deregulation has contributed to democracy's decline alongside what you say has undermined democracy in its stead?

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Yes. We have three categories and Stiglitz and the economists must be careful when using terms like "neoliberalism." Also, I've never met anyone who truly advocates for a completely regulation-free market. Milton Freedman's views were an extreme outlier. The notion of a free market has meant level playing field. The three categories:

- Deregulation of the previously regulated. E.g., medical pricing.

- Failure to regulate new innovations and technologies. E.g., derivatives market, which is 20 times the size of the world's stock market and gets nearly zero attention by Congress. This also falls into category 1 above, as this was previously illegal gambling.

- Government action in new ways against the public interest. E.g., the government giving research money to big pharma, pharma then patents (a government-granted monopoly), and only big pharma gets the profits. Or mandating that landlords cannot evict tenants for a year, knowing that some landlords will have to sell, and simultaneously giving 0% rate loans to megaplayers to enable them to buy those apartments.

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Originally Posted by jclay

Neoliberal action harmful to the broader public interest doesn't prevent the existence of regulatory actions that are similarly harmful to the public interest and the proponents of one are generally proponents of the other, at least from my vantage point.

Glass Steagal was regulation in the public interest; was its repeal neoliberal deregulation or simply corporate crony regulation not in the public interest? Whichever label best suits it was clearly action that wasn't in the best interests of society.

At the root of all this is, at a minimum, is the battle for power and economic primacy between state and corporate interests. Under the general category of influence peddling we have politicians who will employ either as it suits.

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I'll suggest that it is a battle for power and primacy not between state and corporate interests, but with state and mega-corporate interests joined on one side, and the rest of business and consumers on the other.

I'm feeling very tired and dumb. When you said, "Yes." in response to my question, did you mean that deregulation has not contributed to democracy's decline? I should have stated that previous question in a simpler way...

Q: is it not possible deregulation has contributed to democracy's decline alongside what you say has undermined democracy in its stead?

A: I think deregulation has contributed to democracy's decline, but we need to be careful about what we call deregulation, and I think it's not deregulation per se that affects democracy. Democracy is damaged in my view by whatever economic policies tilt the playing field to concentrate power and money, as concentrated power and money have a way of corrupting democratic officials.

To me, it's a waste of time talking about whether regulation is high or low, or more or less (whatever those mean). We have to look deeper. Any change in regulation assists someone relative to someone else.

I did not know this (though not terribly surprised); intro to the article linked at bottom:

Between 1993 and 2011 the Department of Justice Antitrust Division issued a trio of policy statements (two during the Clinton administration and one under Obama) regarding the sharing of information in the healthcare industry. These rules provided wiggle room around the Sherman Antitrust Act, which “sets forth the basic antitrust prohibition against contracts, combinations, and conspiracies in restraint of trade or commerce.”

And it wasn’t just in healthcare. The rules were interpreted to apply to all industries. To say it has been a disaster would be an understatement. Companies increasingly turned to data firms offering software that “exchanges information” at lightning speed with competitors in order to keep wages low and prices high – effectively creating national cartels.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023...k-through.html

And to close the loop I can go along with the general notion of #21 though definitions become critically important at this magnification. "Nation State", as I used it, was idealized; corporate $$ in politics and revolving doors into lucrative corporate second acts for politicians significantly (at least) meld the corporate and Nation State pot.

This Titanic is a nice boat; but what are all those big white thingies in the water...and when do we get to New York? Fire up the band maestro!

I haven't looked at Naked Capitalism in a while. Ivfound the 2pm watercooler discussions to be thought provoking. The discussion about Biden's What does “you will not outlast us” even mean
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023...2-22-2023.html Russia is fighting a war of attrition, burning though people and equipment at an unsustainable level. Russia won't be able to rebuild their army and supply them with equipment for maybe a decade. They aren't set up to mass produce tanks, artillery, or aircraft, so their losses greatly exceed their capacity to replace.

But,... the US is not much better off. We can't continue to send arms to Ukraine and still be able to make war. Unless we ramp up production of artillery munitions, bombs, and equipment for the field, we will continue to weaken. Our opponents know this. What keeps our potential enemies at bay is the threat of overwhelming retaliation from the US. But, any retaliation starts the clock running on a quick victory or a drawn out conflict that we may not be able to support. Economically, the US would be hard pressed to increase military spending to rebuild our stockpiles while giving away weapons paid for in past budgets. The only way to rebuild is to spend tax dollars in the MIC while our infrastructure continues to lag well behind our goals to move away from fossil fuels. It's a big mess.

I taught a Cold War class last night at the Community College. We spent an insane amount of money to counter the Soviets, when much of the Communist Hoard's threat was hollow. I focused on submarines and how we were made to fear the threat of a commie missile sub off the US coast. The reality; Soviets were never able to have more than a handful of subs at sea at any one time. Congress hears about advanced Russian subs and approves funding to build new subs to counter the threat. The reality; the Russians might have 2-3 of their "advanced subs" which were already countered by 60-70 US subs of equal or superior technology.

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Originally Posted by bigbill

We spent an insane amount of money to counter the Soviets, when much of the Communist Hoard's threat was hollow.

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Still are (spending way too much on the MIC); country decades older; not a day wiser.

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Originally Posted by bigbill

I taught a Cold War class last night at the Community College. We spent an insane amount of money to counter the Soviets, when much of the Communist Hoard's threat was hollow. I focused on submarines and how we were made to fear the threat of a commie missile sub off the US coast. The reality; Soviets were never able to have more than a handful of subs at sea at any one time. Congress hears about advanced Russian subs and approves funding to build new subs to counter the threat. The reality; the Russians might have 2-3 of their "advanced subs" which were already countered by 60-70 US subs of equal or superior technology.

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I’d love to take one of your classes. Hope your students are enjoying it.

And if you ever find your way out here I’d offer a tour of some wild (and predictably expensive) Cold War infrastructure. Our mountain bike trails go by two similar examples to yours, only it’s Air Force and not Navy.

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Originally Posted by thollandpe

I’d love to take one of your classes. Hope your students are enjoying it.

And if you ever find your way out here I’d offer a tour of some wild (and predictably expensive) Cold War infrastructure. Our mountain bike trails go by two similar examples to yours, only it’s Air Force and not Navy.

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I'm somewhat of a guest lecturer for specific topics. My next topic is the Beale Wagon Road across northern Arizona. The railroad followed the wagon road, and Route 66 followed the railroad. I'm teaching a specific section (Ash Fork to Needles) because I only have two hours. I'm building a topic for the Northern Great Plains History Conference in September. I'm researching Black pioneers, specifically in western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. Thriving communities in the early part of the Twentieth Century have vanished, unless you know where to look. For Empire, Wyoming, which is in Goshen County, there's no mention of the community, just the Mormons who settled the area. I'm still shopping for an online history Ph.D. that's not Liberty.

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Originally Posted by bigbill

I'm somewhat of a guest lecturer for specific topics. My next topic is the Beale Wagon Road across northern Arizona. The railroad followed the wagon road, and Route 66 followed the railroad. I'm teaching a specific section (Ash Fork to Needles) because I only have two hours. I'm building a topic for the Northern Great Plains History Conference in September. I'm researching Black pioneers, specifically in western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. Thriving communities in the early part of the Twentieth Century have vanished, unless you know where to look. For Empire, Wyoming, which is in Goshen County, there's no mention of the community, just the Mormons who settled the area. I'm still shopping for an online history Ph.D. that's not Liberty.

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There's a movie from the 70's called Buck and the Preacher that is about the westward expansion of black settlers post-Civil War. I think it is based on a book of fiction that was based on some historical fact.

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Originally Posted by j44ke

There's a movie from the 70's called Buck and the Preacher that is about the westward expansion of black settlers post-Civil War. I think it is based on a book of fiction that was based on some historical fact.

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The problem with much of US History is who wrote it and why. The historiography is what I work on unraveling. On my "to do" list is the studying of Western art (Remington, Russell, and the Hudson Valley School) to compare the depicted versus actual event, and determine why the artist painted it. Much is Manifest Destiny and some is racist based. Hollywood depicted the west as it never existed and that is what people know.

Bill since you are here: I recently heard that there was a major report on unaccountable money lost in the US military system amounting to staggering sums, literally trillions of dollars. The report had the great misfortune to be delivered to the then Secretary of Defence on the 10th of September 2001.

Does this ring a bell? Is it a thing or a conspiracy theory?

I have no knowledge of any report. On 9/10, I was stationed on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt and we deployed a week later. The only issue that impacted me in my career is the Fat Leonard scandal. In 2010, I was stationed on the carrier NIMITZ and we were on our way to Australia. I had hotel reservations and even a bike rental set up. Then, we were rerouted to Malaysia, which is nothing like Australia, but Leonard Marine had the port services contracts worth many millions. Fat Leonard had bribed US Naval officials to reroute ships to his ports in exchange for cash, hookers, concert tickets, and penthouse hotel rooms.

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Originally Posted by 9tubes

To me, it's a waste of time talking about whether regulation is high or low, or more or less (whatever those mean). We have to look deeper. Any change in regulation assists someone relative to someone else.

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I agree. Compiling every instance of enacting or removing a regulation would give us an objective balance between the two actions, but without tying specific people and groups with agency to each instance, that would still tell us nothing of the utility and consequences of any instance or that balance, and given the complexity in our society and governance across time, an overwhelming trend between those with agency, beneficiaries, and victims seems unlikely.

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Originally Posted by bigbill

They aren't set up to mass produce tanks, artillery, or aircraft, so their losses greatly exceed their capacity to replace.

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Even if they were, that might not much help if what I've heard is true. By now I forget if I heard it from the American Prestige podcast or the What a Hell of a Way to Die podcast, but they mentioned corruption in Russian arms manufacturing affecting the quality of their arms. One example they gave is a tank design placing ammo inside the turret's pivot, creating an explosive weak spot the Ukrainians have exploited. Any light to shed on that element of their manufacturing?

The whole 2016 presidential campaign had me feeling like everyone was going insane as my social media feeds were full of people leaning both left and right to varying degrees falling for all sorts of things I thought were obvious malicious propaganda. Despite expecting Trump to win, the day after the 2016 election had me depressed and barely able to speak. To ease my bewilderment I decided to revise my understanding of US history, starting from the country's founding, through the lenses of propaganda, militarism, and and covert operations. For over a year I frequently spent anywhere from 4-8 hours after work at that endeavor.

What I learned of the Cold War was among the most depressing for the disproportionate nature of the US effort in that long and global conflict. The success by which some US people convinced the world of a nonexistent monolithic communist plot to take over the globe while they themselves made every effort to ensure capitalism would win out everywhere no matter the cost (empowering dictators, accepting civilian deaths, etc) is still hard to accept. But maybe I've not carefully enough scrutinized some things. Have you learned much of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird, and if so, do you have any reason to believe it didn't happen or that any particular account(s) of it are inaccurate?

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Originally Posted by bigbill

The historiography is what I work on unraveling.

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For the first time tonight I listened to the podcast "Tech Won't Save Us", particularly an episode featuring Malcom Harris, an author who wrote a book on the history of Silicon Valley called "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World". At least twice he said "historiography", and he did a great job tearing up the glossy narratives Silicon Valley has peddled. For example, I learned that Xerox was an early investor in Apple, since Apple could make personal machines at a cheaper price...thanks largely to immigrants, some refugees, building those machines in home basements throughout the Bay Area. Just thought you might be interested given your penchant for unraveling historiography.

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Originally Posted by Mark Kelly

Does this ring a bell? Is it a thing or a conspiracy theory?

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Your comment reminds me of various stories I've come across in recent years thanks to the Pentagon finally facing and failing audits, but I too have yet to feel confident in any claiming trillions unaccounted for (though if evidence comes out, I won't be surprised). Would love for anyone else in the know to chime in on this.

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Originally Posted by Caleb Evenson

I agree. Compiling every instance of enacting or removing a regulation would give us an objective balance between the two actions, but without tying specific people and groups with agency to each instance, that would still tell us nothing of the utility and consequences of any instance or that balance, and given the complexity in our society and governance across time, an overwhelming trend between those with agency, beneficiaries, and victims seems unlikely.



Even if they were, that might not much help if what I've heard is true. By now I forget if I heard it from the American Prestige podcast or the What a Hell of a Way to Die podcast, but they mentioned corruption in Russian arms manufacturing affecting the quality of their arms. One example they gave is a tank design placing ammo inside the turret's pivot, creating an explosive weak spot the Ukrainians have exploited. Any light to shed on that element of their manufacturing?

The whole 2016 presidential campaign had me feeling like everyone was going insane as my social media feeds were full of people leaning both left and right to varying degrees falling for all sorts of things I thought were obvious malicious propaganda. Despite expecting Trump to win, the day after the 2016 election had me depressed and barely able to speak. To ease my bewilderment I decided to revise my understanding of US history, starting from the country's founding, through the lenses of propaganda, militarism, and and covert operations. For over a year I frequently spent anywhere from 4-8 hours after work at that endeavor.

What I learned of the Cold War was among the most depressing for the disproportionate nature of the US effort in that long and global conflict. The success by which some US people convinced the world of a nonexistent monolithic communist plot to take over the globe while they themselves made every effort to ensure capitalism would win out everywhere no matter the cost (empowering dictators, accepting civilian deaths, etc) is still hard to accept. But maybe I've not carefully enough scrutinized some things. Have you learned much of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird, and if so, do you have any reason to believe it didn't happen or that any particular account(s) of it are inaccurate?



For the first time tonight I listened to the podcast "Tech Won't Save Us", particularly an episode featuring Malcom Harris, an author who wrote a book on the history of Silicon Valley called "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World". At least twice he said "historiography", and he did a great job tearing up the glossy narratives Silicon Valley has peddled. For example, I learned that Xerox was an early investor in Apple, since Apple could make personal machines at a cheaper price...thanks largely to immigrants, some refugees, building those machines in home basements throughout the Bay Area. Just thought you might be interested given your penchant for unraveling historiography.



Your comment reminds me of various stories I've come across in recent years thanks to the Pentagon finally facing and failing audits, but I too have yet to feel confident in any claiming trillions unaccounted for (though if evidence comes out, I won't be surprised). Would love for anyone else in the know to chime in on this.

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There's a lot to unpack here. I'm not a regulations guy so I'll let someone else do that. The entire Russian campaign was based on lies and misinformation fed to Putin. As a former KGB agent, I would have thought he'd exploit contacts to confirm or deny what his generals, admirals, and defense industry guys were telling him. In the past decades, Russia has been like a car dealer with their shiniest weapons featured in the showroom in hope of selling them for hard currency. The Russian dealer has a few dozen Corvettes and acres of AMC Pacers. The invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated just how poorly the Russian weapons perform. A battlefield littered with tanks separated from its turrets is not good for sales. The US knew the weak points on Russian tanks because other than drive train and weapons, they haven't changed in many decades.

For comments about propaganda and the Cold War, we did it. I don't think it was necessarily a bad thing. Battles are fought with many different weapons including public opinion. Social media has made traditional methods mostly obsolete, but the principle of "the first liar wins," is still king. If you can spread disinformation before your target can tell their story, then your opponent is spending money and energy to first disprove the lie, before they can make their case. History is full of examples. My master's thesis examined the Confederate Lost Cause and how easily the alternate version of history was entrenched into US culture.

As a culture, we're too lazy to fact check. Politicians and business executives know they can say something false and have a decent chance of getting away with it. As an example, my son graduated from Annapolis last May. The President spoke at the graduation and claimed that he had been offered an appointment to the Naval Academy but turned it down. I know he was trying to portray himself as "one of the guys," but it was all false. A fact check would have exposed it all as falsehoods. But, the media was willing to let it slide. Agendas win out over truth.

For Historiography, I mostly work in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. IMO, the current culture was shaped by events between the Revolutionary War and the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Government sanctioned racism and Manifest Destiny shaped the US. I have a list of rabbit holes to explore. My current interest is the plight of Black Pioneers on the Great Plains, specifically eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska. The township of Empire, WY, (no longer exists) was an African American community that eventually ended due to racism. The county museum has no mention of their plight, just that of Mormon settlers who arrived later. The study of Historiography uncovers truths and makes sure the story is complete. History isn't necessarily wrong, there's just a lot that was left out.

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Originally Posted by bigbill

[snip] Hollywood depicted the west as it never existed and that is what people know.

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As John Ford told us in "The Man who shot Liberty Valance"

(Senator being interviewed) Ransom Stoddard : You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?

(newspaperman) Maxwell Scott : No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

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Originally Posted by Mark Kelly

Bill since you are here: I recently heard that there was a major report on unaccountable money lost in the US military system amounting to staggering sums, literally trillions of dollars. The report had the great misfortune to be delivered to the then Secretary of Defence on the 10th of September 2001.

Does this ring a bell? Is it a thing or a conspiracy theory?

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN13V08B

the devil is in the details. I think the report you mention is one of those urban legends, but waste is real. It is just probably more mundane than trillions of dollars of unaccounted spending. The reality is more like billions of dollars yearly in paying for overpriced services and items like hammers and toilet seats. . . But over 20 years, 50 billion can be 1 trillion in real savings.

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Originally Posted by vertical_doug

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN13V08B

the devil is in the details. I think the report you mention is one of those urban legends, but waste is real. It is just probably more mundane than trillions of dollars of unaccounted spending. The reality is more like billions of dollars yearly in paying for overpriced services and items like hammers and toilet seats. . . But over 20 years, 50 billion can be 1 trillion in real savings.

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The military is top heavy because we keep adding programs. In World War 2, the Navy had over 7600 combatant ships. The Navy currently has fewer than 300 (another 100 or so reserve ships). We had around 230 admirals in world war 2, we have about two dozen fewer today. 7600 ships versus 300ish. We also have retention issues because of the high operation tempo. If you go back to world war 2, the reason for the Japanese defeat at Midway was leadership and the material condition of their carriers. The Japanese carriers at Midway had essentially been at sea since Pearl Harbor. We do the same thing now with our ships because we made them overly complex, beyond the sailor's ability to maintain, so if they're always deployed, broken stuff stays that way.

For costs, we are spending for a worst case war. We up the ante with more technology to counter technology. F-35s are cool, but they cost three times as much to operate as a Super Hornet. A Super Hornet with highly trained pilots, is a match for almost any aircraft in the world. Every aircraft in our inventory doesn't need to next-gen. But it all comes down to the sales pitch of the MIC and how much Congress will fund, especially if the tech is manufactured in home states. There's a big push to retire all the A-10s, and I get it, they only work where we have air superiority. If we sent them to Ukraine, the mystique would quickly gone because they'd be shot down. But, populist politicians want to keep them because they have a larger than life reputation.

For expensive parts, sometimes the cost is due to the specialization required to make just a few parts. Those ten thousand dollar wrenches would be much cheaper if we bought more than a few dozen. I used to run the submarine repair facility in Pearl Harbor. Seawater valves are $40K or more because of the certification and materials. Sonar hydrophones in 2007 each cost as much as a Honda Accord. I actually had a spreadsheet that I'd use to brief admirals that reflected costs in units of Honda cars.

I really appreciate bigbill's perspective from an operational point of view. I see some of these same challenges from the engineering and procurement side of DoD support. I've provided input to several Level of Repair Analysis (LORA) studies for military electronic systems. Due to the long distances involved in recent conflicts (Afghanistan and Iraq) as well as the use of miltary cargo planes to provide delivery (C-130s, C-17s, and C-5s are unbelievably expensive to operate), parts that would normally be repaired at a US depot were/are instead scrapped since the cost to ship was higher than the cost to replace. This contributes to the legend of "$500 hammers". It's not just the cost to purchase a widget, it's also the cost to sustain/repair/replace the widget that drives military budgets (and the taxpayer tempers...) to stratospheric levels.

Greg

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Originally Posted by gregl

I really appreciate bigbill's perspective from an operational point of view. I see some of these same challenges from the engineering and procurement side of DoD support. I've provided input to several Level of Repair Analysis (LORA) studies for military electronic systems. Due to the long distances involved in recent conflicts (Afghanistan and Iraq) as well as the use of miltary cargo planes to provide delivery (C-130s, C-17s, and C-5s are unbelievably expensive to operate), parts that would normally be repaired at a US depot were/are instead scrapped since the cost to ship was higher than the cost to replace. This contributes to the legend of "$500 hammers". It's not just the cost to purchase a widget, it's also the cost to sustain/repair/replace the widget that drives military budgets (and the taxpayer tempers...) to stratospheric levels.

Greg

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When I did the project in Sardinia to turn the NATO base over to the Italians, we left a enormous barge crane, some LSTs, and a barge with a six man hyperbaric chamber. It would have been too expensive to move them back to the US and the closest base in Gaeta didn't want them. The Italian Navy took the chamber, they'll use it. I think the crane barge ended up being sold to an Italian shipyard. We did pick up a bunch of stuff in Rota, Spain on the way back and dropped it in Norfolk, but it was all in containers.

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Originally Posted by bigbill

I'm still shopping for an online history Ph.D. that's not Liberty.

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Make some calls to scholars you want to study under. The majority of a terminal degree are engaged in your own research. This leaves the first year or two of courses…and it all runs through your advisor. If you catch one that gets who you are and trusts your intentions, then they may greenlight a largely online endeavor.

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Originally Posted by mjbabcock

Make some calls to scholars you want to study under. The majority of a terminal degree are engaged in your own research. This leaves the first year or two of courses…and it all runs through your advisor. If you catch one that gets who you are and trusts your intentions, then they may greenlight a largely online endeavor.

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I have some peers that are working through University of Stirling (Scotland) and King's College. GI Bill will pay for foreign colleges but not online so I need to figure that out. I'm not taking classes, I'd be working under an advisor and writing my dissertation. I want the pursue the research path and have no desire to be a professor, student teach, or take a foreign language. I teach at the Community College.

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Originally Posted by bigbill

The military is top heavy because we keep adding programs. In World War 2, the Navy had over 7600 combatant ships. The Navy currently has fewer than 300 (another 100 or so reserve ships). We had around 230 admirals in world war 2, we have about two dozen fewer today. 7600 ships versus 300ish.

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Literally the origin of Parkinson's Law C. Northcote Parkinson was a naval historian who wrote an essay in The Economist outlining how the growth in administration, the Admiralty, was decoupled from the size of the administered, the Royal Navy. The generalisation is that (administrative) work expands to fill the available space.

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Originally Posted by bigbill

Seawater valves are $40K or more because of the certification and materials. Sonar hydrophones in 2007 each cost as much as a Honda Accord. I actually had a spreadsheet that I'd use to brief admirals that reflected costs in units of Honda cars.

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That's not just the military, either. I worked for a while as a design engineer for a company that installed specialist water purification for things such as pharmaceutical plants. We only used equipment from ultra reputable suppliers such as Yokogawa, probably the world's pre-eminent supplier of industrial automation and control equipment, but everything had to be double checked. To comply with specification, each and every part sourced from said company had to be certified by a third party laboratory who basically signed off that Yokogawa weren't lying when they said the part was made from 316 stainless. Often the certification cost as much as the part did.