Woe to the Heretic!

Congress again sets about the task of destroying the economics behind hiring private Contractors, instead of using Government employees or military personnel. American law, as interpreted by the American Courts, insists that prior attack must be instigated, before Security personnel can responds with violent methods. The Secret Service conducts its protective details using the principle of area saturation, something prohibitively expensive and unworkable in the protection of lower level Personnel below a President or Cabinet officer; foreign nations resent a battalion of armed personnel arriving with every diplomat. Current Employment schedules will not protect Our personnel with the added burden of Congressional regulation. We also lose the flexibility of hiring already-trained personnel for Security duties; the Congressional legislation in action will require extensive Training programs for these Security personnel, who will probably be rubbing shoulders with FBI Trainees at Quantico. There will be few to train, though, as Security personnel learn that they cannot put down Suppression fire, even though they lack adequate backup. A better Course would be to make a polite apology to Iraq, and express hope that it will never happen again.

I read Robert Lawson’s Post, then Dani Rodrik’s Post, which first left me with no desire to read the Report cited, and feeling that the evidence was far more telling than Dani would allow it. I have always personally felt economic growth was based more on down-sloped Education than on economic freedom; where having Everyone with the equivalent of a Grades school education was more vital than Expertise, Economic freedom, or available Capitalization. Economic growth continues to expand as the universality of Education expands to a High School education, but thereafter economic growth depends more on Trades school education spread than great numbers of higher Academics. The real fact I am trying to define is that excess numbers of Collegiate Graduates to total labor elements will lead to excess Capitalization debt retarding economic growth by Middleman Costs. I just know my colleagues in the Blogs will burn me for this one!

Dani Rodrik also penned another Post which Everyone should read. I would first comment that the Conflict discussed is a ‘Tempest in a Teapot’, only important in the arena of collegiate faculty representation. I belong to the Second School and believe that Free Trade and Free Markets are not the source of success. No nation which arose to high development status has acquired their status from Free Markets or Free Trade. History records that the most primary organs of development were the creation of enlightened Oligarchies for Capital concentration. I say ‘enlightened’ because All were quick to innovate, and mostly steal, new technologies from elsewhere in the World. It is why I believe Patent and Copyright protection will always be a futile effort, and why I believe an intelligent, universal system of national Tariffs produces more Gains than Losses in economic growth. Boy, am I heterodox today! lgl