The Contradictions of Joseph Schumpeter

Is the title of Chapter X (10)  in The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner a Touchstone Book  published by Simon & Schuster.  I have a copy of the revised seventh edition with a 1999 copyright.

For Schumpeter, capitalism was intrinsically dynamic and growth oriented.

Yet for all his faith in the inherent buoyancy of capitalism, Schumeter's long-term outlook was the exact opposite to the optimistic outlook of John Maynard Keynes.  Schumpeter, in an almost perversely teasing way, first maintained in "short run" capitalism would indeed trace a long climbing trajectory, adding that in these things, a century is a "short run".  But then came the disconcerting final judgment:  "Can capitalism survive? No.  I do not think that it can."

Any rational basis for American Exceptionalism must be based on the different economic system we have in the United States.

Schumpeter's dynamism creates problems for equilibrium models. 

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is the name given to the US policy in effect for many years.  It was probably developed by John von Neuman and co-workers.  John von Neuman died in 1957 at age 53.  The basic idea is that US Strategic Nuclear Forces were in such number and physical protection that the US could ride out a Soviet First Strike and retaliate with sufficient weapons to retaliate.  The current Wikipedia entry describes it as a Nash equilibrium.

Strategic Planners brag that Deterrence Worked.

I went into tactical command and control because that is where the work needed to be done.  I tried to avoid Strategic stuff because there was a whole lot of  noise associated with the funding of strategic weapons systems.

A wiser coworker developed a graphical display of a "nuclear laydown".  He used an HP TRS-80 to drive a flat bed plotter.  His work with the HP TRS-80 grew into a facility housing the most user friendly IBM system a 4341.  The IBM 4341 system could accommodate about 10 user terminals.

The facility was TEMPEST tested.  It was expensive.

The coworker developed an event-driven Monte Carlo simulation model which our customers liked very much.  For simulations, we considered 30 repetitions to be a large number.

I was able to use the system to support the Joint Chiefs of Staff in collecting the Operational Information Requirements for the World Wide Military Command and Control System.  This was useful work and it help my employer be in a position to bid on and win contracts.

As happens in Defense work, I needed continued employment and I had skills relevant to the analyses of the simulation runs.  I performed some analysis that was "well received" by everybody with a physics background.  It ran into problems with MAD people because my analysis is likely to lead to a "Use or Lose Decision Point".  The Measure of Effectiveness I was forced to use to get any perceived benefit to communication architecture alternatives is "additional decision time."

The analysis was labelled a "LUA" analysis and essentially went no further.  LUA is the acronym for
Launch Under Attack.  LUA scenarios were "not well received."

Proponents of MAD as part of US and USSR strategic doctrine believed that nuclear war could best be prevented if neither side could expect survive a full-scale nuclear exchange as a functioning state.  Since the credibility of the threat is critical to such assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in their nuclear arsenals even if they were not intended for use.  In addition, neither side could be expected or allowed to adequately defend itself against the other's missiles.  This led both to the hardening and diversification of nyclear delivery systems (such as nuclear missile silos, ballistic missile submarines , and nuclear bombers kept at fail-save points) and to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The MAD scenarion is often referred to as nuclear deterrence.  The term "deterrence" was first used in this context after World War II, prior to that time, its use was limited to legal terminology.

Feyman on an Honest Politician

It has long been a part of the physics folklore that Richard Feynman said that an honest politician can’t win.  While with Harris Corporation in Florida, I mentioned this as a possible analogy for marketing.  The idea is that an “honest marketeer” is at a big disadvantage and/or can’t win.

The best reference to this that I have found is on pages 65-6 in The Meaning of It All, Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1998.  This is on page 28 of my downloaded copy of The Meaning of It All Feynman discusses two politicians running for president.  One goes through the farm section and is asked, “What are you going to do about the farm question?”  And he knows right away – bang, bang, bang.  Now he (the farmer) goes to the next campaigner who comes through.  “What are you going to do about the farm problem?” Well, I don’t know.  I used to be a general, and I don’t know anything about farming.  But it seems to me to be a difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say that they know how to solve the farm problem.  And it must be a hard problem.  So the way that I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it….

He continues on for a while and then observes that we would not elect the second politician. 

 In the discussion earlier in the book, Feynman has stated that when it comes to the profound questions (which can appear simple), an honest man will say that he does not know the answers.  The answers are not known to anyone.

The book, copyrighted in 1998, consists of three lectures Feynman gave considerably earlier.  He is dead now and was in 1998.  I believe the lectures were given in the 1960s.

More recently, James Carville and Jim Morris, using polling and focus groups, have helped William Jefferson Clinton have the good sounding bang, bang, bang answers.  Whatever the issue/problem, it was ole Slick’s #1 or “Top” priority.

Translation for 2016:  "Bang, bang, bang answers" translates to a "plethora of plans"; the translation of the second politician is left as an exercise for the student.  [Hint: TBD might be useful.]

As lessons/guidance for Sales/Marketing,

 1)                  Customers/voters like vendors/candidates with products/answers.  If you don’t appear to have the product, you lose the sale.

2)                  An “honest vendor” does not have the (ideal) product.  I have found that it is much easier to “promote” someone else’s work because, in part, I do not know all the weaknesses and so can do so honestly.  This says that you shouldn’t try to understand fully the technical aspects of the product.  The better you do, the harder it is to be a good politician (marketeer).

3)                  Like the political process with respect to “campaign promises”, the marketing process does make it extremely difficult to fulfill “marketing promises.”

Time to re-litigate Unfunded Mandates

Unfunded mandates are orders that induce "responsibility, action, procedure or anything else that is imposed by constitutional, administrative, executive, or judicial action" for state and local governments and/or the private sector without providing appropriate funding.

In the United States, federal mandates are orders that induce "responsibility, action, procedure or anything else that is imposed by constitutional, administrative, executive, or judicial action" for state and local governments and/or the private sector.

An unfunded mandate is a statute or regulation that requires a state or local government to perform certain actions, with no money provided for fulfilling the requirements. Public individuals or organizations can also be required to fulfill public mandates.

Wikipedia states:

"As of 1992, 172 federal mandates obligated state or local governments to fund programs to some extent.  Beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the United States federal government has designed laws that require state and local government spending to promote national goals.  During the 1970s, the national government promoted education, mental health, and environmental programs by implementing grant projects at a state and local level; the grants were so common that the federal assistance for these programs made up over a quarter of state and local budgets.The rise in federal mandates led to more mandate regulation. During the Reagan Administration, Executive Order 12291 and the State and Local Cost Estimate Act of 1981 were passed, which implemented a careful examination of the true costs of federal unfunded mandates.  More reform for federal mandates came in 1995 with the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA), which promoted a Congressional focus on the costs imposed onto intergovernmental entities and the private sector because of federal mandates.  Familiar examples of Federal Unfunded Mandates in the United States include the Americans with Disabilities Act and Medicaid." 

If #BlackLivesMatter and other “in-your-face” protestors were required to fund these protest marches, the market would have some influence on current day events.

Change of Culture Needed at State Department

Acting as the current spokesman for the State Department, former Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby (Ret), disagreed with FBI Director Comey’s characterization that there is a culture of carelessness within the State Department with respect to the handling of classified information.

About 1979, I decided to stick with the operations side of the “ops/intel interface”.  There’s much more money on the INTEL side.  Over the years, I have observed a feeling of superiority among the Special Forces.  They thought they were Special (and above the law).  General David Petraeus was the commander of the Special Forces before he was chosen to lead the surge.

The CIA is under the State Department (not Defense).  Prior to George W. Bush, covert operations were covert.  My views on this are expressed in http://dr2h.blogspot.com/2012/09/covert-operations-should-be-covert.html.

I helped the State Department migrate to “Open Systems” in the 1990s.  Their computer system consisted on Wang computers.  When the US Government had trouble connecting the dots a few years ago, I figured it was because Hillary “pulled the plug” after the Bradley Manning affair.  Our stated objective was to provide all relevant information to the Warfighters in a timely manner.

Kirby announced July 7, 2016, that the State Department would reopen their investigation into Hillary’s emails.

Back “in the day”, Henry Kissinger was photographed reading a Top Secret document and the photo appeared in Time or Newsweek.

Somebody needs to instill some sanity in the handling of classified information at the Department of State and in the Special Operations community.  Nobody should be above the law.

Goals Study 1963 - 1968

Close on the heels of the PSAC Report, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) initiated the study, Goals of Engineering Education - The "Goals Study" - is probably the most ambitious, authoritative, and comprehensive study of engineering education ever undertaken. However, it suffered the misfortune of having been compiled during the very crest of the growth wave stimulated by the PSAC Report. As a result, it followed the 

prevailing philosophy of the time, used the latest data available (1966), and projected that the growth trends in engineering education would continue; it did so almost precisely at the time that the growth was in fact on the verge of being reversed.

Seven uniformed services

The United States has seven federal uniformed services that commission officers as defined by Title 10, and subsequently structured and organized by Title 10, Title 14, Title 42 and Title 33 of the  United States Code.

The seven uniformed services are, in order of precedence by ceremonial formation:

1. United States Army
2. United States Marine Corps
3. United States Navy
4. United States Air Force
5. United States Coast Guard
6. United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
7. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps

Each of the uniformed services is (except the United States Marine Corps) administratively headed by a federal executive department and its corresponding civilian Cabinet leader.

Obama discovers need for strategy

You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes.

You see, change requires more than righteous anger. It requires a program, and it requires organizing. At the 1964 Democratic Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer — all five-feet-four-inches tall — gave a fiery speech on the national stage. But then she went back home to Mississippi and organized cotton pickers. And she didn’t have the tools and technology where you can whip up a movement in minutes. She had to go door to door. And I’m so proud of the new guard of black civil rights leaders who understand this. It’s thanks in large part to the activism of young people like many of you, from Black Twitter to Black Lives Matter, that America’s eyes have been opened — white, black, Democrat, Republican — to the real problems, for example, in our criminal justice system.

But to bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom. If you care about mass incarceration, let me ask you: How are you pressuring members of Congress to pass the criminal justice reform bill now pending before them? (Applause.) If you care about better policing, do you know who your district attorney is? Do you know who your state’s attorney general is? Do you know the difference? Do you know who appoints the police chief and who writes the police training manual? Find out who they are, what their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community, present them with a plan, work with them to bring about change, hold them accountable if they do not deliver. Passion is vital, but you’ve got to have a strategy.

Capitalist Democracies

All liberal democratic polities have capitalist economies, but not all capitalist economies have been liberal and democratic.  Nazi Germany and current day China are examples.

Regimes which combine capitalism with democracy have all developed into what economists call welfare-state capitalism..  These states have taken a variety of forms.

The Gosta Esping-Andersen model consists of three regimes:

   A.      The conservative regime is most often found in Catholic countries and stresses job protection and high wages in order to allow a male breadwinner to be the sole support of his family.

   B.      The social democratic regime is found in the Nordic countries stresses government provision of social services and income supports to create a more egalitarian society and allow (some say require) both men and women to work.

   C.      The liberal version is found in the United States and, to a lesser degree, in other Anglo-Saxon countries and tries to offer government support for those who can’t work in the job market.  It generally has looser labor laws that make it easier to hire and fire people.

Lecture 35, Course Guidebook for “Thinking about Capitalism”, Jerry Z. Muller, The Catholic University of America, The Great Courses #5665, 2008, page 143.

I expect Pope Francis to favor the conservative regime found in Catholic countries.  This regime would not be expected to support equality of pay for women.

Bernie Sanders likes the Nordic model,  It requires both partners to work.

Could the American Dream be an Unintended Consequence of its liberal version?

The Dream of Utopian Socialists

Is the title of Chapter 5 in The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner a Touchstone Book  published by Simon & Schuster.  I have a copy of the revised seventh edition with a 1999 copyright.

With people “feeling the Berne” recently, it seems appropriate to revisit this.  Young people may not have been here before.

I.  Introduction

II.  The Economic Revolution

III.  The Wonderful World of Adam Smith

IV.  The Gloomy Presentiments of Parson Malthus and David Ricardo

V.  The Dreams of the Utopian Socialists

VI.  The Inexorable System of Karl Marx

VII.  The Victorian World and the Underworld of Economics

VIII.  The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen

IX.  The Heresies of John Maynard Keynes

X.  The Contradictions of Joseph Schumpeter

XI.  The End of the Worldly Philosophy?

        I.        

Alimony in Florida 61.08

Unless Rick Scott signs SB 668 in the very near future, Florida's alimony laws will continue to be governed by

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0000-0099/0061/Sections/0061.08.html

Paragraph (10)(c) states in entirety:

 "If there is no minor child, alimony payments need not be directed through the depository."

I discussed this with Judge Earpp during a Contempt Hearing.  I said that the statutes said that if there were no minor children, alimony does not have to be directed through the depository.  He said he was aware of that.  Neither of us gave any indication that we were thinking of the statute differently.

I now think that he was thinking that judges do not have to direct alimony payments through the depository.  In my case, Judge Charles J. Roberts did direct alimony payments through the depository.

As a minimum, it was an abuse of discretion for Judge Roberts to award alimony in my case.  His award is not consistent with law.

I thought the legislature was thinking of me when they said alimony does not have to directed through the depository.  Judge Earpp was likely thinking of "the judge" did not have to direct alimony payments through the depository.

I now consider Judge Charles J. Roberts, Jr's directing alimony payments through the depository as just another example of Government Overreach.  In this case, Judicial Overreach.

Govern Scott should do everything he can to prevent more victims in the future.  I believe Govern Scott signing SB 668 into law would be a step in the Right Direction.

Are all Florida Family Lawyers algorithm challenged?

Diane Baccus-Horsley has repeatedly demonstrated that she is date-challenged and I have accused her of being arithmetically challenged.

The arithmetically challenged accusation is based on her calculations related to two withdrawals I made in 2000.  The first was about 10 times the second.  Baccus-Horsley could or did not remember that two withdrawals were involved when checking the percentage of ownership values.

I desired to close my Pioneer II account.  Transactions were limited to $100,000 or less.  My premarital Pioneer II account was over $100,000.00.  Diane Baccus-Horsley had difficulty getting the correct figure for my percentage ownership of an account in my name in which I placed my ex-spouses funds to enable her to earn about 9% interest on her funds.

The Florida Supreme Court specified a five step process in Kaaa v Kaaa.  I blogged on Kaaa vs. Kaaa is this blog on Thursday, July 16, 2015.  After determining the "marital portion", the Florida Supreme Court recommended the Stevens Methodology for allocating the marital portion.

They said that if, for example, one party brings to the marriage an asset in which he or she has an equity of fifty percent, the other half of which is financed by marital funds, half the appreciated value at the time of the petition for dissolution was filed, § 61.075(5)(a) 2, Fla. Stat. (1993), should be included as a marital asset.

[The other half of the appreciated value at the time of the petition is nonmarital.]

Florida Family Lawyers seem to have difficulty with common sense and identifying “half the appreciated value”.  Half the appreciated value is marital.

A typical case would have the marriage beginning about the same time as the purchase of the marital home.  My case had stipulated values beyond what would be available in a typical case.  My case had a stipulated value for the Fair Market Value of my home at the time of my marriage.  An eight year period of appreciation belongs to me as a premarital asset.   

Two afflicted with Potomac Fever

Prior to the 1960 election there was some discussion about age and running.

Stan The Man Musial, born November 21, 1920, was considered getting too old to run.  Jack Kennedy who born May 29, 1917, was three and a half years older was considered too young to run.

Kennedy was about 43 and a half years old when he took office.

His predecessors:

Dwight David Eisenhower:  Was 62

Harry S Truman:  Was 61 when he took office

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:  Was 62 at his last inauguration.

Our country grew old with FDR.  Both Kennedy and Nixon were of a younger generation.

I feel that Obama's disastrous foreign policy is in part due to his inexperience (youth).  Comments on his foreign policy can be found at http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/obamas-flawed-foreign-policy-doctrine-laid-bare

According to the Urban Dictionary:

Potomac Fever (n): A disease peculiar to the greater Washington, DC, metropolitan area that presents chiefly as an intense desire in the infected to be associated with the power and prestige of the United States Federal Government, particularly the Executive Branch. Associated symptoms include acts of extreme obsequiousness to those in power or likely to be in power; asserting as fact things one knows or suspects not to be true and; a burning desire to do more work for less pay.

Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz seem to be afflicted by Potomac Fever.

COUNTERINSURGENCY

FM 3-24 (MCWP 3.33.5) is the Field Manual on COUNTERINSURGENCY.  The digital copy has a left hand menu with the "FOREWARD" near the top.

It seems to be a compromise between FORWARD (as in march) and FOREWORD (as in word coming before or whatever).  I spent 2 years in civil service as a Department of Army civilian.  I have seen FORWARD many times.

This manual is designed to fill a doctrinal gap. It has been 20 years since the Army published a field manual devoted exclusively to counterinsurgency operations. For the Marine Corps it has been 25 years. With our Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations. Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it also must be informed by contemporary experiences.

This manual takes a general approach to counterinsurgency operations. The Army and Marine Corps recognize that every insurgency is contextual and presents its own set of challenges. You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamic extremists the same way you would have fought the Viet Cong, Moros, or Tupamaros; the application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each varies considerably. Nonetheless, all insurgencies, even today’s highly adaptable strains, remain wars amongst the people. They use variations of standard themes and adhere to elements of a recognizable revolutionary campaign plan. This manual therefore addresses the common characteristics of insurgencies. It strives to provide those conducting counterinsurgency campaigns with a solid foundation for understanding and addressing specific insurgencies.

A counterinsurgency campaign is, as described in this manual, a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations conducted along multiple lines of operations. It requires Soldiers and Marines to employ a mix of familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies. The balance between them depends on the local situation. Achieving this balance is not easy. It requires leaders at all levels to adjust their approach constantly. They must ensure that their Soldiers and Marines are ready to be greeted with either a handshake or a hand grenade while taking on missions only infrequently practiced until recently at our combat training centers. Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation builders as well as warriors. They must be prepared to help reestablish institutions and local security forces and assist in rebuilding infrastructure and basic services. They must be able to facilitate establishing local governance and the rule of law. The list of such tasks is long; performing them involves extensive coordination and cooperation with many intergovernmental, host-nation, and international agencies. Indeed, the responsibilities of leaders in a counterinsurgency campaign are daunting; however, the discussions in this manual alert leaders to the challenges of such campaigns and suggest general approaches for grappling with those challenges.

Conducting a successful counterinsurgency campaign requires a flexible, adaptive force led by agile, well-informed, culturally astute leaders. It is our hope that this manual provides the guidelines needed  to succeed in operations that are exceedingly difficult and complex. Our Soldiers and Marines deserve nothing less.

This foreword was signed jointly by Lieutenant General DAVID H. PETRAEUS, US Army and Lieutenant General, JAMES F. AMOS, U.S. Marine Corps.

Overseas Contingency Operation needs beefing up

The Bush administration used the term War on Terror to argue a global military, political, legal, and conceptual struggle against both organizations designated "terrorist"  and countries which host them.  It was easy to transition from “host” to “do not dispel them”.  Washington pressured other countries to join them in the WoT saying that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."  Many countries joined. 

As defined, there are no civilian casualties in the WoT.

In 2013, President Barack Obama announced that the United States was no longer pursuing a War on Terror, as the military focus should be on specific enemies rather than a tactic. He stated, "We must define our effort not as a boundless 'Global War on Terror', but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”  In March 2009 the Defense Department officially changed the name of operations from "Global War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operation" (OCO).

The Unscientific Age

“The Unscientific Age” is the title of chapter III in Richard Feynman’s The Meaning of It All http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_It_All.  The last half of the 20^th century went downhill under the influence of Postmodernism.  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

The Unscientific Age –

“The speed at which science has been developing for the last two hundred years has been

ever increasing, and we reach a culmination of speed now. We are in particular in the

biological sciences, on the threshold of the most remarkable discoveries. What they are

going to be I am unable to tell you. Naturally, that is the excitement of it. And the

excitement that comes from turning one stone over after another and finding underneath new discoveries has been going on now perpetually for several hundred years, and it is an ever-rising crescendo. This is, in that sense, definitely a scientific age. It has been called a heroic age, by a scientist, of course. Nobody else knows about it. Sometime when history looks back at this age they will see that it was a most dramatic and remarkable age, the transformation from not knowing much about the world to knowing a great deal more than was known before. But if you mean that this is an age of science in the sense that in art, in literature, and in people's attitudes and understandings, and so forth science plays a large part, I don't think it is a scientific age at all. You see, if you take, the heroic age of the Greeks, say, there were poems about the military heroes. In the religious period of the

Middle Ages, art was related directly to religion, and people's attitudes toward life were definitely closely knit to the religious viewpoints. It was a religious age. This is not a scientific age from that point of view.”

Required reading: page 28 from http://bondalapati.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/8773894-meaning-of-it-all-by-feynman-nobel-laureate3.pdf.

Richard Feynman gave these lectures in 1963.  It will soon be 50 years (2.5 generations) ago.

It is time to elect an honest politician, one that does not have a detailed plan with the all the answers or even a good vision of “the city on the hill.”  George H. W. Bush had “a problem” with “the vision thing.”  He didn’t know where he wanted to lead us.

Anyone with a vision of where they want to lead us is most likely a Democrat.  A good small government Republican does not have such a vision.

In the 1980s, “Build it and they will come” was a credo.  Now, “Create it and they will abuse it” seems to be more and more appropriate.  Recent studies say that the people come first.  (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110124111142.htm.)

Michigan State University. "Build it and they will come? Think again." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 January 2011.