Michael Hiteshew

The Breakdown of the Social Contract and the Rise of Geopolitics

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Dr. Pippa Malmgren, founder of DRPM Group, former US Presidential Adviser and alumna of the London School of Economics, makes some very insightful connections between the breakdown of responsible economic policy in the USA and the increase of global warfare, from China and the South China Sea to Russia in the Ukraine.

She also explains that things like inflation don’t just happen like bad weather or something, they’re choices made by policy makers as a method of defaulting on debt.

Some quotes:

If you people in emerging markets are experiencing knock-on effects from our (inflationary) policy, that’s your problem…It’s our dollar, and your problem! …They’re view is, I’m taking enough pain, you can’t expect me to ask my people to take even more pain by dealing with a global financial crisis and now demand has collapsed..you can’t ask me to inflict more pain. What is the end result? When central banks are trying to create inflation, a normal side effect is that hard asset prices go up…we’ve seen record all time prices for stock markets, for property, we actually seen record all time prices for things like proteins, which are particularly important in an emerging market context. Emerging market workers are spending 40%-70% of their income for food and energy, so price movements in this area matter.

Suddenly, all these pressures, all these problems are bearing down on these few smart people sitting in the West Wing who we think can solve this. And they’re speaking in a language that is highly technical, highly mathematical, it makes it very difficult for the general public to engage in the question. They’re told, Don’t worry about quantitative easing, it’s all in your interest! And they’re going, Yeah but my Cadbury Creme Egg, I’m getting less of those, and my rent is going up, and I can’t get a job still. But there’s a mismatch between the language the public wants to speak to engage in these issues and the language in which the policy discussion is conducted. And that a gap exists in understanding, What are the consequences of the choices that being made on our behalf?

A highly worthwhile use of an hour or so of your time.

What is China’s Goal?

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In  China Restructures for War  we find that China’s armed forces have reorganized even while they continue a rapid upgrade in the quality of their weapons systems.

China’s officially-disclosed military budget grew at an average of 9.8 percent per year in inflation-adjusted terms from 2006 through 2015, and Chinese leaders seem committed to sustaining defense spending growth for the foreseeable future.

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During 2015, the PLA continued to improve key capabilities that would be used in theater contingencies, including cruise missiles; short, medium, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles; high performance aircraft; integrated air defense networks; information operations capabilities; and amphibious and airborne assault units. The PLA is developing and testing new intermediate- and medium-range conventional ballistic missiles as well as long range, land-attack, and anti-ship cruise missiles, which once operational would extend the military’s reach and push adversary forces further from potential regional conflicts. China is also focusing on counter-space, offensive cyber operations, and electronic warfare (EW) capabilities meant to deny adversaries the advantages of modern, information technology-driven warfare.

China has built a number of military outposts around the South China Sea, including Mischief Reef, Johnson Reef, Hughes Reef, Subi Reef, Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and Gaven Reef.

Over the past 15 years, China’s ambitious naval modernization program has produced a more technologically advanced and flexible force. The PLAN now possesses the largest number of vessels in Asia, with more than 300 surface ships, submarines, amphibious ships, and patrol craft. China is rapidly retiring legacy combatants in favor of larger, multi-mission ships equipped with advanced anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-submarine weapons and sensors. China continues its gradual shift from “near sea” defense to “far seas” protection…

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In 2015, the PLAN’s first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, certified its first cohort of domestically trained J-15 operational pilots. The air wing is expected to deploy on the  carrier in 2016. China also began construction of its first domestic aircraft carrier and could build multiple aircraft carriers over the next 15 years. Even when fully operational, Liaoning will not enable long-range power projection similar to U.S. NIMITZ class carriers. Liaoning’s smaller size limits the number of aircraft it can embark, while the ski-jump configuration limits aircraft fuel and ordnance loads. Liaoning will possibly be used for fleet air defense missions, extending air cover over a fleet operating far from land-based coverage. Although it possesses a full suite of weapons and combat systems, Liaoning will probably continue to play a significant role in training China’s carrier pilots, deck crews, and developing tactics that will be used with later, more capable carriers.  

In his talk  Chinese Views, Strategy and Geopolitics, Robert Kaplan  sees China in the early 21st century as was the United States in the early 20th century, an emerging world military and economic power. In that respect, he says, China considers the South China Sea as the USA considers the Gulf of Mexico, a strategic naval zone it intends to dominate. With the Monroe Doctrine, the USA warned European colonial powers that the Americas were off limits to them, and with the Spanish American War the USA removed the last colonial influence and outpost from the region. We may see a similar attempt by China to remove American, Japanese, Philippine or any other influence or outpost from the South China Sea and possibly further.

Perhaps most worrying, China is engaging in a prolonged domestic campaign of anti-American rhetoric and propaganda. The only possible purpose for that, from my point of view, is to ideologically prepare its populace for war. And seeing Glasnost as a dangerous example of a loss of political control leading to societal breakup, it is redoubling political conditioning in its military, including an expansion of political commissars and checkists inside the chain of command with a   purpose is to ensure ideological purity and loyalty.

Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016

Book Review: The Myth of the Robber Barons

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The Myth of the Robber Barons, by  Burton Folsom

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MythOfRobberBaronsCover‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ ~George Orwell, 1984

Controlling our view of the past – even our view of the present – is an obsession with the Progressive Left. Our understanding of history  deeply influences our thinking and philosophy. Among other things, it shapes our view of both the morality and social-economic effects  of  free market capitalism versus socialism.

To that end, a group of  enormously successful people from the 19th century were  demonized by turn of the century  Progressives and have continued to be demonized as The Robber Barons by  Leftist historians in primary school and college texts ever since. More subtly, through dark Orwellian references in Leftist entertainment programs and media, they have been thoroughly maligned in the popular imagination as well. Yet few people know who these people actually were and what, for better or worse, they actually did in their lives and how their works affected our lives even today. In his book, Robert Folsom sets out to take fresh look at people we would today call entrepreneurs.

 

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The Sun

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From NASA TV, here’s an image of Mercury transiting the sun today:

Mercury Transit
Mercury Transit

That image gives  a good feel for the scale of the planets versus the sun. Earth would appear a little more than twice that size.  Here’s an amazing 4k time lapse video of the sun in various ultraviolet wavelengths. Based on the scale of Mercury in the image above, pick out a small feature in this video and consider the entire Earth would probably fit inside it. Then by comparison, consider the scale and the energies of the loops and streams and mass ejections in this video.

The video is even more amazing just left running in full screen on an HD monitor . It’s completely mesmerizing.

NASA Ultra-HD Video Gallery

‘People Are Stupid’, And What Follows From That

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From The Men Who Would Be King

For all his persuasiveness, incompetence is Satan’s principle problem. The devil always sets out  to construct heaven and winds up with hell because he uses the wrong principles. ~Richard Fernandez

I’m reminded by that statement of something a former Soviet general wrote after the fall of the USSR, that the difference in societies produced by the Bolshevik Revolution and the American Revolution came down to founders and their guiding principles, You had Madison and Jefferson and The Enlightenment, we had Lenin who led  us into communism.

I remember a conversation I had with two young leftists where I work. One, a young girl with a physics degree, the other a young man with a BSEE. They were Obama supporters and Progressives. I tried to engage them in the idea of First Principles, in the cause and effect and unintended consequences of political and economic policies and approaches. Neither knew what I was talking about. They were simply convinced that a smart guy needed to be in power to do whatever needed to be done. ‘People are stupid! They need to be told what to do.’ I think they would have been committed Bolsheviks in another place and time. In reality, both were the idiots they were sneering at, they just didn’t realize it. Possibly they were projecting their own lack of understanding of the world onto everyone. They had no understanding of the disastrous effects Progressive policies have had on the black population, on race relations, on the economy, on their own lives and opportunities and job prospects. They just wanted someone ‘smart’ in charge to fix it. They set out to build heaven and will be forever confused by the hell that results.

Ben Rhodes and  Jonathan Gruber both lied to sell Progressive policies that could not be sold on their merits. That’s why they lied. But like the young Progressives above, both believe people are stupid and need to be told what to do by someone a lot smarter, like them. The lying is incidental. It’s ego  confirmation to them that the peasants are so dim they actually believed them. No wonder Obama spends his whole life with a smirk on his face.