A thoughtful piece on England and its influence.
Related: The rage of the British elites. Note especially the guy who compares Musk’s purchase of Twitter with Paris under the Nazi occupation.
Katya Sedgwick, who grew up in the USSR, on the social costs of scarcity. Not just of scarcity, I think, but of top-down economic planning.
A Norwegian study found that replacing one of the 5% worst general practitioners with one of average quality generates a social benefit of $9 million. Surely true of many other occupations as well.
CDR Salamander writes about dependencies on China on US defense procurement.
Speaking of defense procurement, Tablet has a long profile of Palmer Luckey, founder of the defense startup Anduril: American Vulcan. The article also mentions General Bernard Schriever, who spearheaded USAF ballistic missile development in the 1950s and 1960s–and we need some Schrievers in government and well as entrepreneurial and creative people in the private sector if we are to become more nimble and effective in weapons-system development. See my review of Schriever’s biography: A fiery peace in a cold war.
The WSJ book section last weekend had a review of Patrick Bishop’s “Paris 1944″…reminded me of an outstanding French TV series set during years of the Occupation. “A French Village,” as its name suggests, is set not in Paris but in the fictional town of Villeneuve. One of the best television series I have ever seen. Here’s my review. That link goes to Ricochet, I also posted a review at Chicago Boyz, but the one at Ricochet is easier to read due to the WordPress typography plague. This series should really not be missed.
David,
Thanks for linking to Josh’s piece concerning England and its Influence. He’s got a lot of good stuff and a great backstory.
His recent podcast with Aaron MacLean at School of War (also linked at his Armas substack) is a fascinating look at the southern border both involving Texas’ history as well as the national security aspects. I used to call the cartels a “21st Century Supply Chain Breaking Bad” but I’m going to steal his depiction as “Evil Amazon”
A transcript of the podcast can be found here
The reminiscence by Kyra Sedgewick was interesting, too – interesting and disheartening, given that our own home-grown socialists would dearly love to duplicate that kind of scarcity here – oh, perhaps not deliberately, but through “good intentions.”
The essay also reminded me of something that I had read elsewhere – that the constant search for goods, and the endless wasted hours of standing in line, and the incessant backstairs dealing and bargaining consumed so many hours of the day and so much energy in the Soviet Union and in the Iron Curtain countries – that there was no space for much else. Limited time for creativity, for an interesting hobby, for physical fitness, or even to spend much time at your regular job. The struggle to put meals on the table, shoes on your feet and clothes on your back consumed practically every waking hour of every day.
The Soviet bosses might have liked it that way, though. It meant little things handed out as rewards, and very few people had the time to plot resistance against the State.
Likely our own home-grown socialists like the prospect of that operating system as well.