Losing the Base

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently announced the closing or reduction of more than 800 military installations.

The ostensible reason is to reduce costs, yet of course military budgets keep going up and up and up - but none of that gets to the soldiers, the medics, the engineers, or any of the other personnel on the ground; it all goes to defense contractors, to buy $50 million dollar jets and $3,000 screwdrivers. As of now, a US army private gets about $14,000 a year. I wonder how much they could raise pay for the price of one F-16?

But this is also a bit of electoral payback. Whiles bases are closing in Conneticut, Maine, and Washington DC, they'll be opening in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama - not to mention Texas. Though there is some bipartisanship in who suffers from this:

Job Losses:
CT: Liberman (D) -6496
ME: Snowe (R) -6938 (many actually in NH)
MO: Talent (R) -3679
MS: Lott (R) -1678
ND Conrad (D) -2645
NM Bingaman (D) -2849
PA Santorum (R) -1878
VA Allen (R) -1574

Let the games begin.

An Open Question for the Visionairies

Instead of finding some contentious issue or event and posting my thoguhts about it, this time I'll leave it to my readers, however many there may be. I'm curious: What end are you working for? If you had your way, what's your vision of a better world, and in what way do you believe your chosen ideology (be it neo-conservativism, liberalism, socialism, etc.) is the best way to achieve this?

I don't want some vague answer such as 'more democracy' or 'more freedom' or 'more equality'. I want to know why you think those goals are worth achieving, what they would look like in the real world, and how your ideals lead to those things. Be as detailed as possible.

I'll leave off on my own Utopia for now; at least until I can articulate it in less than 10 pages.

Welcome to Stal-Mart

Some months ago in Econ class, the discussion turned to various kinds of ownership (private, State, collective etc.). I generally argued for as cooperative a system of management as possible, but I did speak out against “a mass-collectivization program like Stalin did with the farms.” At this point, a guy previously unknown to me spoke up and said ”Hey, you shouldn’t criticize Stalin. That’s just way out of line.” My professor smiled amiably and changed the subject. To the minimum wage, and how big companies like Wal-Mart pay their employees very little even though they can afford much more. This elicited another cry of protest from Party Comrade, who vehemently defended Wal-Mart and their low wages.

Later, I asked around to see if that guy was kidding. No, apparently he really does like both old Joe Stalin and Wal-Mart.

I asked myself; how could this be? How could someone idealize Soviet Russia in its worst years and a huge multinational corporation? Then I realized: they’re not so different.

Stalin (independent of his sheer brutality) had a definite economic system. It entailed the entire economy of the USSR geared towards a set of well-defined and pre-set goals set one or even five years in advance. They would produce a certain number of cars, a certain tonnage of steel, a certain amount of grain etc. All industry was concentrated together, and all orders came from the ‘Supreme Soviet’ – that is, the Kremlin. There would be no local control and no deviation from the script.

This ‘central planning’ or ‘scientific socialism’ was, in fact, instrumental in helping Russia become an industrial power, but it proved clumsy and unworkable, considering (among other things) the size of the Soviet empire and the logistical impossibilities that entailed. America, for its part, prided itself on its culture of independent businesses and entrepreneurship.

Now, however, things have changed. At the time of Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘trust-busting’, five companies controlled 55% of the US meat industry. Now, three companies control 80% of it. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the software industry and laughs in the face of the DOJ. Chain stores, ‘big-box’ outlets, and all-purpose megastores are taking up a larger and larger part of the American economy and driving small businesses to extinction. Wal-Mart, with annual revenues of $218 billion, or about 2.5% of total GDP, is simply the biggest.

So… a small collection of incredibly huge, unelected, all-powerful cartels with top-down management controlling our economy and reacting with total indifference to the needs of their workers? Sounds like Stalinism to me.

Enough of Talking

Today is General Election Day in Britain. I really don’t know much about modern British politics; I’m dimly aware that Tony Blair and the Labour Party will probably stay in power, though either the Tories or the Liberal Democrats might make significant gains.

In any case, the Brits have much better campaign ads than us.

I can see through your smile…

Glitter And Be Gay

If anyone ever starts to lose faith in the value of equal rights for homosexuals, they should meet my cousin Bruce. Visiting with him reminds of why gay rights are so important, and why homophobes are such intolerable worms.

Yet many people - even though who claim to have nothing against gays or homosexuality – are still reluctant to let them marry. But why?

Of course, opposition to gay marriage is based on a number of things which are either false or irrelevant. Such as:

1. Homosexuality is wrong.

Pheh. If this is your argument, I won’t even try. Even according to my Torah, homosexuality is just an 'abomination'. That sounds harsh, but 'abominations' are not so bad. It's about on the same level of eating meat and milk together, wearing clothing made out of a mixed fabric, or growing two different kinds of crops in the same field. So I guess gays aren't kosher for Passover.

2. Marriage ought to be about children.

If you like to think of it that way, be my guest. If that were really true, of course, marriage would be illegal for couples who are sterile, infertile, or have no desire for children. And marriage is not about children in the first place. Until very recently, marriage was primarily a way for the moneyed class to look after their property.

3. Marriage is the basis of our civilization and has stood as an institution for thousands of years.

What civilization? Certainly anything remotely resembling our view of marriage didn’t exist for the ancient Greeks, or for any other Western culture. The whole concept of marriage for everyone who wanted to have children didn’t arise until the Victorian era. Before then, it was more common than not for lower-class people to live together and have illegitimate children with no social stigma whatever. I find such “it’s tradition!” arguments worthless in any case.

4. Gay people don’t take relationships seriously.

Lies. Gay people take relationships just as seriously as anyone. We’ve just been inundated with images of costumed gay men in cages dancing like Jerry Falwell’s nightmare. In any case, the divorce rate for gay couples in Massachusetts is far lower than the straight divorce rate in this country.

5. If you allow gay marriage, next thing you’ll have people marrying house pets and little kids and their sisters!

Nonsense. Gay marriage is between two consenting adults. Animals cannot consent; children cannot consent; family members cannot consent. If anyone comes forward and suggests we legalize those things, the gay community will stand as firmly against them as the Catholic Church, and probably more so.

6. OK, what about polygamy? They consent, right?

Well, technically it’s not illegal to ‘commit’ polygamy, just to try and get it recognized by the State. But if it’s not between two people, the relationship cannot possibly be equal, one could argue that no consent is really possible there either. And, by bringing up these 'slippery slope' arguments, aren't you conceding the original point?