Is the Department of Defense the Shadiest Organization in the World?

[Montmorency]

I am willing to lean on the side of overdoing it than the opposite. Maintaining Pax Americana will never be anything less than a drain on our national coffers.

Seeing as the United States will remain an empire as long as it exists, and we want a more peaceable or at least helpful empire that isn't just the ultimate capitalist hound dog, we may have no choice but to become Trotskyites. That is, reparametrize Empire toward a healthier outlet. This obviously has implications with respect to China and geopolitics. Seems like it'll come to an influence war in the Third World over access to key resources, with America promising Justice and the Chinese promising hard cash, no questions asked.

Essentially the New Order/Comintern/Human Alliance or whatever has to ensure common prosperity at least as well as China has, preferably much better to justify transitioning economy, while being ideologically and morally superior in conscripting the "hearts and minds" of citizens under it. And so it should spread across the world from the grassroots, with the endgame being a popular revolt in China against the police state, us hopefully hanging in the background as an exemplar: 'Why do we need repression and mediocre prosperity when we can have both freedom and prosperity like the foreigners?'

But this isn't a primarily military campaign, and the gravity of their edifice is so great that it could easily corrupt government or subjure foreign policy (inasmuch as the Left won't have a coherent alternative theory to defend). So when you say that national security is a good excuse that can be abused, the hairs split may be impossibly thin. Let me reiterate for the howeverth time that mere inefficiency at the DoD isn't the core problem unless you have a Kubrickian laser focus on competing with China on narrow metrics, it's the fundamental corruption and taint of the organization and its overseers. We know for sure that most of these chuckleheads aren't nearly as smart or skilled as they claim, to be allowed to have such de facto authority over so much of the state and society.

Given our establishment's grand strategic track record, I also am not even sure we could trust the military on their terms to guarantee superiority over or even parity with the Chinese. So if you're worried about China, that's fair, but it's a whole cluster that we can't begin to approach without specialized knowledge. Let the default attitude be suspicion.

Nah, I don't think you appreciate just how socialist this system is. We are artificially inflating a demand for highly educated positions and propping up local economies in every state of the union (at least one region of SoCal exist solely around aerospace companies having their facilities there, kept alive by DoD money/contracts. This is money coming from a progressive tax base, so it is in effect a redistribution of wealth downwards and provides many perks as well.

Government spending and patronage are certainly not inherently socialist, and even if they were it doesn't make it good or right. Like I said somewhere else, if the expertise of the engineers and researchers is the absolutely indispensable asset, put them on payroll doing non-functional tinkering in the shops and labs. If wealth redistribution is the goal, get on with the Universal Income and Job Guarantee schemes.

We can do better, but we as citizens just won't know why or how. There are bigger fish to tackle much more viable politically (healthcare).

I admitted as much where you quote me. Just remember that none of these items are dissociable from the rest in a real government and society. The world is so amazingly complex I, as ever, can't help but be pessimistic.




Chesterton's Fence as an analogy has always been a fallacy. There isn't a fence but a rather sloppy Jenga tower.