From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Jul 23 2000 - 15:49:51 MDT
Spike Jones wrote:
>
> Spike Jones wrote: wooo hooo, woooo hoooooo! {8^D spike
> > U.S. Shoots Down Cruise Missile in Defense Test
>
> "Michael S. Lorrey" wrote: Did you or John have a wager on this event???
>
> Nah. I volunteered to have my prediction (a hit)
> reposted with the traditional implied neeener neeener should
> the shot go awry (as it did the two times before) but John
> Clark was too much the gentleman to neener me. {8^D
>
> Actually I think John and I have identical goals, to
> end war, but we just have a difference on how that goal is
> to be attained. Fair enough: there are those who believe
> that peace can be attained thru a mighty room filled with men,
> a paper they are signing says they'll never fight again.
We've been here before. Remember we had already outlawed war, just a few
years prior to WWII.
>
> I do not hold that opinion. Perhaps I have a too-cynical view
> of human nature, but all treaties are temporary solutions.
> Overwhelming technology is the way to permanent peace.
> And it must be *truly* overwhelming, and Mike all of us
> will pay a price for that peace. You and I have had differing
> views on privacy: well, you know what all this anti-missile
> tech eventually leads to, do you not? As soon as we really
> can defeat all incontinental missiles, we need to go after the
> next level of threat, which is smuggled suitcase WMDs, and
> we know where that line of reasoning leads, do we not?
x-ray radar from satellites should do the trick of tracking all high
density objects from suspicious sources.
>
> Actually I have recently been entertaining a new notion,
> that war can be ended by another, far more wonderful
> means: by choking off the profitability of it all. Right now,
> few young people are going into military technology fields
> because mil-tech development pays considerably less than the
> commercial counterpart. There are no stock options,
> no company furnished BMW, no IPOs, no chick-magnet
> T-shirts, no 25 year old CEOs in lear jets. Hell we dont really
> even have company picnics. Mil-tech aint sexy. But I would
> far sooner achieve final world peace using the dollar rather than
> using the missile.
We've reached the late Empire stage of development, where we will likely
need to hire 'barbarian' mercenaries from the frontier in order to keep
the peace. Opening up immigration should also keep the supply of young
macho ignoramuses (I can say it cause I was a domestically grown young
macho ignoramus) for the military available. However, don't think making
the manpower expensive will change things. We've done this before in
Europe. Study up on the era of Condottiere Armies, where the european
powers still fought their wars, but they were with small armies of
professional soldiers / mercenaries, where unit commanders frequently
owned all the equipment in their unit, and treated it like a business.
Young men would join in order to avoid legal problems or family
embarrassment, and in hopes for the chance for loot.
Then again, we could have a swarm of recruits available if the dot com
craze goes south, with hundreds of thousands of out of shape guys and
gals trying to avoid their creditors in the military, and getting back
in shape thanks to boot camp...if you get sent overseas on military
deployments, creditors are legally barred from seizing any of your
assets.
>
> The problem is, this is currently working against the U.S.
> We need to figure out a way to make mil-tech less profitable
> than commercial development in *other* countries.
That is the problem, except creating that competition, and giving them
the technology will only enable them to conduct hacker warfare on us in
order to destabilize our economy (as we are seeing a few instances from
the Phillipines, China, and Argentina.) Its the minds and hearts you
need to change, Spike, which is the hard part.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:30:07 MST