The Angry White Man

On Feb 25, 10:59 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:
Hi Jeff, studied your post.

On Feb 25, 1:34 pm, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:



On Feb 25, 4:08 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

On Feb 25, 11:30 am, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

On Feb 25, 1:07 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

On Feb 25, 9:29 am, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

On Feb 23, 1:04 pm, " wrote:

On Feb 23, 12:45 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

I think war is usually a business mistake, nowadays.
Ken

Right, and that is always the overriding concern that trumps the war
option, I suppose?

Certainly that was the case in 1861, 1914, and 1939 -- years devoid of
business interests.

Every time that argument comes up, I'm more and more tempted to go
digging through the college textbooks I have in storage until I find
one reading that mentions a very compelling book, written by a well-
respected economist, that was very popular in its time. It carefully
explained how, due to the interconnected nature of international
trade, widespread war was now impossible because it would call too
much economic damage to everyone involved.
Written in 1912.
-JTD

That's a case of too much power, not enough brains.
1% of those in control, say we must build 1000's of
ICBM's because the other are guys are.

ICBMs were involved in the buildup to World Wars I and II? Do tell.

Yet, 99% of the people on both sides have not motive
or desire to harm the other guys, apart from being
told they should.

Perhaps true. Even probably true. And almost certainly true of
Americans and Chinese today, or most people all over the world for
that matter. But war happened anyway. So what has changed in the
past 60 years, or even the past 30, that prevents such a situation
from devolving into war?
JTD

I'm lookin at history from 5000BC to the present.
Mongols slaughtered 30 million chinese using a
sword (not the same one), hence the sword is a
weapon of mass destruction, that's why I think
one should take care to the analysis of the 1000
ancedotal tactical battles, humans have fought.

Okay, hang on.

In your original post, you implied that wars weren't going to happen
any more, because they would be a "business mistake", that the world
had gotten too interdependent for a wider war. Others (including
myself) pointed out that for most of human history, war has been a bad
move, economically, and that in fact your thesis had been put forward
early in the 20th Century just before the most devastating wars the
human race has ever fought-

Not really WW1 and 2 were sissy fights, historically
serious war is totally genocidal.

I apologize to the group for not snipping this part, but I think it's
sufficiently interesting to watch the entire interplay of this
argument. You're now reduced to arguing that World Wars I and II
weren't all that bad, when in fact they were some of the most
devastating conflicts the human race has ever waged. They weren't
completely genocidal- although World War II came damn close, on some
fronts- but they still killed tens of millions of people and ruined
three of the world's great industrial powers, to the point that two of
them had to be rebuilt by the victors and the other one had to loot
Europe to get back on its feet.

Serious war in the ancient period was not typically genocidal, just
like serious war today- it was fought for objectives that usually did
not include "And kill everyone on the other side". The exceptions,
such as Carthage at the end of the Punic Wars, Genghis Khan, and the
Crusades get a lot of press, but they were just that- exceptions.
Sargon I didn't kill everyone on the other side. Neither did the
Persians, or Alexander, or the Romans in most cases, or the combatants
of the Hundred Years' War, and so on. The "cut off their hands and
sow the fields with salt" treatment makes for good historical reading,
but it *didn't* actually happen that often.


and that wars keep happening anyway,
besides being really bad for business in general. In the post you
replied to, I pointed those things out, and asked what you thought had
changed in the years since that meant that this time, business
concerns would trump out, and wars wouldn't happen.

In response, you're invoking 5000 years of history, and calling us to
analyze the wars that humans have fought.

From the formation of city states (~5000BC) to the
present, ~7000 years. Each empire believed "Might
is Right", and War = Strength, including economical
but that never happened, otherwise the world would be
unified by force.

And this proves...what, exactly? Sorry, but as far as I can tell
that's a total non sequieter. What does that have to do with anything
we've been discussing? War's never unified the world by force,
although Alexander got pretty close, but it's done a bang-up job of
fulfilling various countries' objectives of the moment throughout
history. You've yet to present evidence that today is any different.

The world can be unified but by Benevolent Capitalism,
(according to our simulations).

Which ones?

That's a non sequieter, but let's look at it for a second. The last
time anyone could make a case that "war pays for war" between
civilized states with a straight face was in the early 18th Century,
when conscript armies under folks like Blenheim were merrily marching
back and forth blowing the Hell out of civilized Europe. They spent
most of their time "levying contributions", which is a nice way of
saying "we marched into this state and forcibly stripped it of pretty
much anything of value to feed and pay the troops". Since the armies
didn't require a terrible lot of manufactured goods that couldn't be
captured and since international trade wasn't a big deal at the time,
this meant that an army in the field could more or less sustain itself
indefinitely with minimal expenditure from home. Any territory it
captured was more or less gravy for the homeland. As you can imagine,
this led to some awfully long wars.

I read a theory about Spain stealing gold etc. from
America. Spain didn't need to develope a home
based GNP and when the America's gold ran out,
everyone they were purchasing goods from were
far more economically more powerful, because
they had a GNP, Spain had very little.

Well, not really. What did happen was that Spain had a money system
based on gold, which up until then had been very rare in Europe, and
then imported a lot of gold from the New World. What followed was a
classic demonstration of "inflation in action" that made Spanish money
almost worthless and wrecked their economy pretty thoroughly. It
didn't help that at about the same time Phillip II of Spain died after
a long reign during which he allowed almost nobody else to actually
make decisions, which paralyzed the Spanish government at a very
inopportune time.

Not really relevant to what I was discussing above, and as I mentioned
above I may have to revise my thesis on war paying for war slightly
after discussions with Dan. Nevertheless, I'd argue that war almost
never actually pays for itself, and that this has been the case for
quite some time.



*After* that time, though, the balance tips the other way. Sustaining
an army in the field takes a lot of manpower, a lot of high-end
manufactured goods, and a lot of mundane supplies like food and
clothing- and you have to supply those on your own now, because armies
have gotten big enough that you can't gather what you need by "levying
contributions"/bank robbery on an international scale. All of that
takes money, and lots and lots of it. All of this means that since (I
would say) about the mid 18th Century, fighting and winning a war is
almost always going to cost more money than any *economic* benefit you
could get out of it.
[All of this applies, of course, to wars between cultures with roughly
equal technology. I haven't looked at the figures in detail, but it's
entirely possible that some of the colonial wars that pitted breech-
loading rifles against spears ended up being economic wins in the long
run. Although conquest was generally one thing, pacification
another.]

I'm still trying to figure out why somebody attacked
the Taliban, it wasn't my decision.

That's a whole different discussion that I *really* don't want to get
into. It's not really relevant to what we're talking about.


The thing is, though, that wars still happen between industrialized
countries, and have for a long time. Even though they're economic
losers, they still happen. Because they can bring political benefits,
like more territory for the Big Man to rule or showing that your
country is not to be trifled with. Because they can fulfill
somebody's idea of national destiny. Because people do stupid things,
don't consider the consequences that their actions might have years
down the road, and get painted into corners. And any of those things
could still happen between the U.S. and China.

I devoutly hope they don't, because the one thing I do think you're
right about is that such a war would very likely be ruinous for both
sides and because I think wars in general are to be avoided, even if
they're sometimes necessary. But saying that it can't happen is
wrong, and dangerous because if we assume it can't happen we may not
be vigilant enough to keep it from happening.

So, with the above in mind: why, specifically, do you think that the
U.S. and China are so economically interdependent as to render war
between them impossible?

I claimed war would be a bad business decision,
only nothing is impossible,

War is a bad decision from a business point of view. But nation-
states aren't businesses. Thus, the fact that the U.S. and China are
economically interdependent (which was what we were originally
discussing) may make a war between them less likely, but does not rule
it out. Looks like we agree on that.

-JTD

On Feb 26, 2:43 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:
On Feb 26, 9:59 am, " wrote:



On Feb 26, 12:39 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

Not really WW1 and 2 were sissy fights, historically
serious war is totally genocidal.

50+ Million killed over 8 years is a "sissy fight"?

It's a matter of proportion, try to keep a global
perspective, eg. Spanish Flu killed more than
WW1 did, something few know about.
Entire races were wiped out in the past, 99%.

So according to you, a war is "sissy" if the 'entire race" wasn't
wiped out.

POW's where taken in WW1&2,

Except on the Eastern Front during WWII and in the island fighting
against the Japanese, when they mostly weren't.

but historically, the
captive soldiers had genitals removed, salted and shipped
back for consumption, and the rest slaughtered or
enslaved.

Except when they weren't, which was most of the time. See my previous
post for discussion.

Hunh? Which? SimCity?

No, the sims were automated.

Well, there you go. Who can gainsay such compelling evidence! They
were AUTOMATED!

The "automation" removes contamination.
It's rather like growing bacteria on a Petri dish.
One merely introduces various bacteria on to
the dish with variables in it's reproduction habits,
and statistically determines the winner.
It's bit more complex, but you get the picture.

OK, hang on. I did my degree in molecular biology and I work in a
research lab, and I can't figure out what experiment you're
describing. I also know that:

a) What works in a model system does not always work in a more complex
system. The bacteria that grows out of control on a petri dish may
not grow as well in a living host, and so on. There are always
variables you didn't allow for.

b) Any experiment is only as good as its design, not as good as its
techniques. Having an automated simulation is meaningless if it's not
designed to reflect reality, just like having clean glassware in the
lab is meaningless if you don't have proper controls. If I'm going to
accept that your automated models show something relevant to the real
world you're going to have to convince me that they actually model
what's going on in the real world accurately.

snip


LOL, I guess you'd bomb Sicily to attack organized crime.
Ever heard of NATO?

Dan

Regrads
Ken

Yes, I heard of NATO. Served in the US Army in support of NATO in
Germany.

Well then duh you should know the Afghan mission is
a NATO operation and entire force of NATO cannot get Bin
Lauden, so why do think the Taliban could, you're wasting?
Ken

Sigh. I know I said I'd stay out of this, but...does it occur to you
that the U.S. and NATO *might* have been just a bit more interested in
finding bin Laden than the Taliban were?

-JTD

On Feb 26, 6:12 pm, " wrote:
On Feb 26, 5:23 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

POW's where taken in WW1&2, but historically, the
captive soldiers had genitals removed, salted and shipped
back for consumption, and the rest slaughtered or
enslaved.

What does this have to do with your argument?

You don't Need To Know, fine with me.
Ken
[snip waste]

:: YAWN ::

We tire of this one. Off with his head!

We shall endeavor to find a more interesting one next time, Sire. Ah
well. Shall we bring in the dancing girls now? :-)

-JTD

On Feb 26, 11:35 pm, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:


We tire of this one. Off with his head!

We shall endeavor to find a more interesting one next time, Sire. Ah
well. Shall we bring in the dancing girls now? :-)

-JTD

You need ask???

Off with your head!

On Feb 27, 1:54 am, "Owner" wrote:
WHAT THE **** DOES THIS CRAP HAVE TO DO WITH AVIATION???

Wars are bad for aviation, except when they produce the P-51.

And the SR-71

And the F-86

And the Jet Engine.

And cool flight suits.


Dan

On Feb 26, 11:33 pm, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

Sigh. I know I said I'd stay out of this, but...does it occur to you
that the U.S. and NATO *might* have been just a bit more interested in
finding bin Laden than the Taliban were?

-JTD

Who knows what NATO wants anymore?

The US -- well, it's not as easy as "find the guy and kill him and
everything will go back to the wonderful Clinton years." (Even though
Bin Laden attacked more targets during those years than the Bush
years).

First, with Bin Laden in the mountains, Pakistan has an incentive to
remain in play. So far they have rounded up hundreds of his
accomplices, kept pressure on the Taliban sympathizers, and kept the
pressure on internally against fellow fanatics. None of this done
incredibly well, of course, but as expected from such a splintered
mess of a country.

Second, the US public would probably heave a collective sigh and
think, "Good, now that's over" once the images are broadcast. The
drive-bys would declare that everything bad is over, and the weasels
would start demanding all troops immediately be brought home and given
a warm blankie and some milk..

Even though "getting bin Laden" only takes out one ultra rich Muslim
jihadist. There are many, many more willing to step up and take his
place.

His continued miserable existence -- while unjust and annoying to
those of us who want him handed over to NYPD/FDNY for 24 hours --
continues to expand our knowledge of his network and his organization.
It also gives moral justification to various activities worldwide
you'd rather not know about.


Dan

On Feb 26, 10:14 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

I wouldn't think there's much difference. I've had a few airplanes in
ice, but not a Bonanaza. It's hard to quantify since each accretion is
unique. I've been in a 172 in fairly bad ice, IMC and completely lost my
ability to hold alitutde in just a few seconds. I was fairly high. 9,000
maybe? it was pretty warm below and I told ATC I needed descent and
needed it now. they said "we'l have it for you shortly", and I had to
reply that it didn't matter, I was coming down anyway at that stage.
I've flown Mooneys in ice and they seem to be better at just plain not
picking it up than most airplanes. Again, hard to quantify, I could just
possibly have been lucky with the conditions. Cessna singles seem to
suffer worst with is. Struts, long gear legs and what not, I guess. It's
a complete non-event in jets, though. Most types rarely even get
airframe icing and even if they do the hot wings blos it off quickly.
The engines are more of a worry, but the anti-ice on them works well.

Bertie

I don't plan on trying it in the Bonanza -- at least not this A36 and
certainly not the straight 35..

There are a few out there with TKS and other systems, but it seems if
you have that need you should be flying a twin or a turboprop, not a
normally aspirated Bonanza.

I haven't flown a 172 that I would want to fly any length of time in
IMC -- you're in it too long as you're so slow, the big wing catches
every bump, and the climb performance is anemic (unless you have the
180 HP conversion).



Dan

On Feb 26, 11:25 pm, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

I apologize to the group for not snipping this part, but I think it's
sufficiently interesting to watch the entire interplay of this
argument. You're now reduced to arguing that World Wars I and II
weren't all that bad, when in fact they were some of the most
devastating conflicts the human race has ever waged.

-JTD

Not exactly.

There's no "interplay."

There's a moron making idiotic claims and someone with sense refuting
each one.

That's not an argument. That's a smackdown.


Dan

Hi Jeff,
I read your post and respect it.
Maybe we should repost this discussion in a more
appropriate group, it's far away from piloting :-).
Ken
PS: Let me know if you do.

On Feb 26, 8:25 pm, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:
On Feb 25, 10:59 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:



Hi Jeff, studied your post.

On Feb 25, 1:34 pm, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

On Feb 25, 4:08 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

On Feb 25, 11:30 am, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

On Feb 25, 1:07 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

On Feb 25, 9:29 am, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

On Feb 23, 1:04 pm, " wrote:

On Feb 23, 12:45 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

I think war is usually a business mistake, nowadays.
Ken

Right, and that is always the overriding concern that trumps the war
option, I suppose?

Certainly that was the case in 1861, 1914, and 1939 -- years devoid of
business interests.

Every time that argument comes up, I'm more and more tempted to go
digging through the college textbooks I have in storage until I find
one reading that mentions a very compelling book, written by a well-
respected economist, that was very popular in its time. It carefully
explained how, due to the interconnected nature of international
trade, widespread war was now impossible because it would call too
much economic damage to everyone involved.
Written in 1912.
-JTD

That's a case of too much power, not enough brains.
1% of those in control, say we must build 1000's of
ICBM's because the other are guys are.

ICBMs were involved in the buildup to World Wars I and II? Do tell.

Yet, 99% of the people on both sides have not motive
or desire to harm the other guys, apart from being
told they should.

Perhaps true. Even probably true. And almost certainly true of
Americans and Chinese today, or most people all over the world for
that matter. But war happened anyway. So what has changed in the
past 60 years, or even the past 30, that prevents such a situation
from devolving into war?
JTD

I'm lookin at history from 5000BC to the present.
Mongols slaughtered 30 million chinese using a
sword (not the same one), hence the sword is a
weapon of mass destruction, that's why I think
one should take care to the analysis of the 1000
ancedotal tactical battles, humans have fought.

Okay, hang on.

In your original post, you implied that wars weren't going to happen
any more, because they would be a "business mistake", that the world
had gotten too interdependent for a wider war. Others (including
myself) pointed out that for most of human history, war has been a bad
move, economically, and that in fact your thesis had been put forward
early in the 20th Century just before the most devastating wars the
human race has ever fought-

Not really WW1 and 2 were sissy fights, historically
serious war is totally genocidal.

I apologize to the group for not snipping this part, but I think it's
sufficiently interesting to watch the entire interplay of this
argument. You're now reduced to arguing that World Wars I and II
weren't all that bad, when in fact they were some of the most
devastating conflicts the human race has ever waged. They weren't
completely genocidal- although World War II came damn close, on some
fronts- but they still killed tens of millions of people and ruined
three of the world's great industrial powers, to the point that two of
them had to be rebuilt by the victors and the other one had to loot
Europe to get back on its feet.

Serious war in the ancient period was not typically genocidal, just
like serious war today- it was fought for objectives that usually did
not include "And kill everyone on the other side". The exceptions,
such as Carthage at the end of the Punic Wars, Genghis Khan, and the
Crusades get a lot of press, but they were just that- exceptions.
Sargon I didn't kill everyone on the other side. Neither did the
Persians, or Alexander, or the Romans in most cases, or the combatants
of the Hundred Years' War, and so on. The "cut off their hands and
sow the fields with salt" treatment makes for good historical reading,
but it *didn't* actually happen that often.

and that wars keep happening anyway,
besides being really bad for business in general. In the post you
replied to, I pointed those things out, and asked what you thought had
changed in the years since that meant that this time, business
concerns would trump out, and wars wouldn't happen.

In response, you're invoking 5000 years of history, and calling us to
analyze the wars that humans have fought.

From the formation of city states (~5000BC) to the
present, ~7000 years. Each empire believed "Might
is Right", and War = Strength, including economical
but that never happened, otherwise the world would be
unified by force.

And this proves...what, exactly? Sorry, but as far as I can tell
that's a total non sequieter. What does that have to do with anything
we've been discussing? War's never unified the world by force,
although Alexander got pretty close, but it's done a bang-up job of
fulfilling various countries' objectives of the moment throughout
history. You've yet to present evidence that today is any different.

The world can be unified but by Benevolent Capitalism,
(according to our simulations).

Which ones?



That's a non sequieter, but let's look at it for a second. The last
time anyone could make a case that "war pays for war" between
civilized states with a straight face was in the early 18th Century,
when conscript armies under folks like Blenheim were merrily marching
back and forth blowing the Hell out of civilized Europe. They spent
most of their time "levying contributions", which is a nice way of
saying "we marched into this state and forcibly stripped it of pretty
much anything of value to feed and pay the troops". Since the armies
didn't require a terrible lot of manufactured goods that couldn't be
captured and since international trade wasn't a big deal at the time,
this meant that an army in the field could more or less sustain itself
indefinitely with minimal expenditure from home. Any territory it
captured was more or less gravy for the homeland. As you can imagine,
this led to some awfully long wars.

I read a theory about Spain stealing gold etc. from
America. Spain didn't need to develope a home
based GNP and when the America's gold ran out,
everyone they were purchasing goods from were
far more economically more powerful, because
they had a GNP, Spain had very little.

Well, not really. What did happen was that Spain had a money system
based on gold, which up until then had been very rare in Europe, and
then imported a lot of gold from the New World. What followed was a
classic demonstration of "inflation in action" that made Spanish money
almost worthless and wrecked their economy pretty thoroughly. It
didn't help that at about the same time Phillip II of Spain died after
a long reign during which he allowed almost nobody else to actually
make decisions, which paralyzed the Spanish government at a very
inopportune time.

Not really relevant to what I was discussing above, and as I mentioned
above I may have to revise my thesis on war paying for war slightly
after discussions with Dan. Nevertheless, I'd argue that war almost
never actually pays for itself, and that this has been the case for
quite some time.





*After* that time, though, the balance tips the other way. Sustaining
an army in the field takes a lot of manpower, a lot of high-end
manufactured goods, and a lot of mundane supplies like food and
clothing- and you have to supply those on your own now, because armies
have gotten big enough that you can't gather what you need by "levying
contributions"/bank robbery on an international scale. All of that
takes money, and lots and lots of it. All of this means that since (I
would say) about the mid 18th Century, fighting and winning a war is
almost always going to cost more money than any *economic* benefit you
could get out of it.
[All of this applies, of course, to wars between cultures with roughly
equal technology. I haven't looked at the figures in detail, but it's
entirely possible that some of the colonial wars that pitted breech-
loading rifles against spears ended up being economic wins in the long
run. Although conquest was generally one thing, pacification
another.]

I'm still trying to figure out why somebody attacked
the Taliban, it wasn't my decision.

That's a whole different discussion that I *really* don't want to get
into. It's not really relevant to what we're talking about.



The thing is, though, that wars still happen between industrialized
countries, and have for a long time. Even though they're economic
losers, they still happen. Because they can bring political benefits,
like more territory for the Big Man to rule or showing that your
country is not to be trifled with. Because they can fulfill
somebody's idea of national destiny. Because people do stupid things,
don't consider the consequences that their actions might have years
down the road, and get painted into corners. And any of those things
could still happen between the U.S. and China.

I devoutly hope they don't, because the one thing I do think you're
right about is that such a war would very likely be ruinous for both
sides and because I think wars in general are to be

...

read more »

" wrote in news:30a2796b-6108-4101-
:

I don't plan on trying it in the Bonanza -- at least not this A36 and
certainly not the straight 35..

There are a few out there with TKS and other systems, but it seems if
you have that need you should be flying a twin or a turboprop, not a
normally aspirated Bonanza.

I haven't flown a 172 that I would want to fly any length of time in
IMC -- you're in it too long as you're so slow, the big wing catches
every bump, and the climb performance is anemic (unless you have the
180 HP conversion).


Flown smaller and slower than that IMC! you get used to it..

Bertie