Carl from Chicago

Business executive interested in history, economics, taxation and energy policy.

Around Chicago July 2012

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Upper left – we have been having some crazy storms here in Chicago along with the heat. This red art sculpture was knocked down by the micro-burst last weekend as I drove through the rain. Upper right – I remember in my marketing class that you could sell on “price” or “quality”. This car dealer is clearly going with the “price” approach. Middle left – two girls on a scooter on the Eisenhower in heavy traffic is a bad idea.
Middle center – the beautiful Nissan GTR supercar valet parked in front of a hip restaurant in River North. Middle right – are we in Russia? $5 Vodka? Lower left – a monster Red Bull truck dwarfs traffic in a spot on Wacker Drive. Lower right – the Protein Bar, a place where non-obese Chicago citizens (there are a few of them) tend to congregate and eat healthy food. Highly recommended.

Cross posted at LITGM

Wind Doesn’t Work

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For Whole Foods, “environmentalism” means supporting wind power, and saying that their stores are “100% powered by wind”. What this likely means is that they buy power from renewable suppliers, paying an additional fee since that sort of energy is more expensive (unless massively subsidized by the government).

Power, however, cannot be economically stored. Thus the real time when you want power is when it is brutally hot outside, which in the Midwest often means little breeze and an overhead haze (which makes solar less economical). This means relying on traditional “base load” resources like coal, nuclear, or natural gas fired fleets.

When I walked into that Whole Foods it was a cold as a meat locker, and the flags hung limply in the breeze. Wind power wasn’t supporting Whole Foods when it was most needed; wind power blows whenever the wind blows, unreliably.

My suggestion to environmentalists is to just move their support of causes to the next level; the same way that vegetarians don’t eat meat, those that do not support reliable base load power (coal, nuclear, gas) along with the necessary (unsightly) transmission infrastructure to bring the power into your city (since having a plant near the city is usually out of the question due to noise and emissions), should TURN OFF THEIR AIR CONDITIONING AND THEIR ELECTRONIC DEVICES during times of extreme heat. After all, this is what that hated infrastructure is buying – reliability and power during peak loads.

Like those that pine for a diverse society yet move to far flung mono-cultural suburbs, those that value their environmentalist credentials above all should start “living the sweat lifestyle” that they believe in. Turn off that air conditioner, and don’t be part of that peak consumption, which in turn justifies the base load power in the first place.

Cross posted at LITGM

Baseball

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Nothing says the 4th of July more than a great game of baseball. From the White Sox blowout victory over the Texas Rangers last night.

Wolf Point and Urban Traffic Lies

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Wolf Point is a famous piece of land that is a penninsula where the Chicago River is on three sides, right in front of the Holiday Inn and adjacent to the Merchandise Mart. Recently the Kennedys, who own this land, proposed building three giant high rises on the site, as described in this article.

Of all the habitual liars in this world, one of the most odious has to be the “traffic consultant”. One of these firms, hired by the Kennedys, gave a report on the impact of traffic, and per the article:

Residents also suggested the development would further clog already-congested streets and mocked a traffic consultant’s conclusion that the project would not significantly worsen traffic.

To some extent, per the picture above, it is impossible to further “worsen” traffic. This is a photo taken during rush hour that is relatively typical; the bridge going north on Orleans (it is one-way) is completely gridlocked leading towards the Wolf Point site and backed up into Wacker drive, blocking both streets. Thus to some extent the consultant is right, because you can’t get worse than gridlock.

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The Re-Organization of the Russian Military

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The historical Russian (using the USSR and Czarist Russia as a proxy for Russia) military generally featured the following characteristics:

1. A heavy emphasis on conscripts, with all males who had any sort of connection or means of escaping service, doing so, since the conditions were horribly and brutally bad
2. A “shell” organization of units with only a few active duty soldiers, to be filled out by reservists at mobilization
3. A vast inventory of equipment of various vintages (i.e. old tanks, planes, artillery) that the reservists would use when called up for service
4. In the old “Soviet” military, many of the soldiers were from regions where they did not speak Russian and communication was often poor. This may be partially mitigated today by the fact that many of these former republics of the Soviet Union have now split off into separate countries and are no longer part of the Russian military organization
5. The Russian navy faces particularly difficult conditions because each of the fronts has to operate independently because they are not interconnected, or make vast sea voyages in order to join forces. This contributed to the defeat at Tsushima in 1905, for example

These concepts began to falter after the end of the cold war and the dissolution of the Soviet empire. The lightning US victory against conventional forces in the various Iraq wars and the Russian military’s poor performance in the military conflict against Chechnya led the Russians to consider new methodologies.

The inaugural issue of “Modern War“, which is a new magazine (to begin in September, 2012) by the publishers of the excellent magazine “Strategy and Tactics“, covers the reorganization of the Russian military and is highly recommended for anyone interested in the field. They sent me an issue (since I used to be a subscriber) and I hope it will be on the newsstand soon if you have one near you.

The article is called “Russia’s Ongoing Military Reorganization” by Bruce Costello. It describes the following changes to the historical Russian model:

1. Russian forces are to be kept in a state of rapid readiness, fully mobilized, equipped and ready for battle
2. The number of units will correspondingly be significantly reduced
3. Unnecessary equipment and non-fighting organization ranks (officers) will be eliminated (or reduced, in the case of officers)
4. There will be four OSD (Operational Strategic Districts) which will jointly command the land, sea and air units in those districts rather than being independently managed (the rocket forces will remain centrally controlled)
5. The brigade will be the unit size of choice, and reconnaissance will be embedded in the unit along with sufficient communication gear to meet the mission
6. The Russians are moving to purchase foreign arms where needed, such as a French amphibious ship, a dramatic departure from former practice
7. There is to be more of an emphasis on professional troops rather than conscripts. There are various sources on the effectiveness of this move from a conscript army to a professional army, but apparently the goal is to have 1/3 of the troops as conscripts (rotating out every 12 months) with the remaining 2/3 professional and long serving soldiers. The article didn’t emphasize this transition enough, from my perspective, since it is a crucial element of the change-over.

As a keen student of military history it is very odd seeing Russia moving to a semi-professional army staffed in a “ready” mode. It also is unusual that they are considering buying foreign arms since the Soviet Union was able to manufacture pretty much everything at the height of the USSR (although the former Czarist Russians and inter-war USSR did purchase foreign equipment, particularly for ideas on home grown designs). Times change, and these changes are reaching even historically consistent organizations such as the Russian military. It is difficult for me to remain neutral on these changes if they make the Russian military more effective; the Russian military has historically not been deployed in alignment with the interests of the US or the West. Note their current backing of odious Assad in Syria, a reaction to their client Gaddafi meeting his end thanks in part by the backing of NATO and their air and sea assets.

Cross posted at LITGM