war stimulus dead 3

WAR STIMULUS DEAD 3

Back when agriculture was first conceived of/experimented with, the domesticated grain was a supplement to hunting and gathering.  The hunting was still primary and the cultural and social structure placed the needs of the hunting into its infrastructure.  And when industry was first introduced ( using carbon fuels-there had been water powered industry throughout the Agricultural Age ), farming was still the economy and the culture and the social structure and industry merely supplemented that as it always had.  The difference was the machines replacing labor.  The transition took some time, to replace labor AND farming as a culture.

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Or as an economy.  The War ‘Agin Mexico was an Agricultural Age war, through and through.  Less than fifty years later industry had displaced enough farming that militaries went from seasonal militia to the reserve system that used most males for much longer wars.  The US pretty much transitioned from Ag to Industry in one four year war.  The war did for industry what took decades for the railroad to do, government subsidy and investment to guide the economy.  Folks complain how much NASA spent to subsidize the microchip or similar industries, but that was the norm from the Erie Canal.

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Most countries used fascism or communism ( or its kissing cousin socialism ) to guide the economy for the good of the nation ( with the elite getting hookers and blow as a bonus, in ALL systems ).  We just used capitalism.  Probably because it worked so well for the then current colonial empire.  If we had come along later to the Industrial Age, we might have modeled ourselves after Prussian Militants.  But of course, capitalism has its own systems cost.  The bankers need to be paid, a built in heavy cost.

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This works while building empire, but not so well as the empire starts to get into trouble.  That is what we are seeing today, the end of the spiral as the system goes broke more and more treasure is diverted to the bank.  But what happened fifty years ago, the half way point of empire?  I maintain that the only thing that occurred was a halt in growth.  Not a drop in resource growth, still nearly a decade away.  Just a halt in growth.  That was enough to break the economic system.  Other factors didn’t help but they were bit players.

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We could have had a soft coup by the intelligence services that assassinated Kennedy.  They enjoyed the man behind the throne part too much to be disbanded.  They were smart enough to leave the bankers position alone, and had no problem supporting a war that was supposed to goose the economy as WWII had done ( well, to be clear, WWII saved the economy.  The Cold War continued that paradigm-complete economic mobilization to fight had a built in demand system capitalism lacked ).  They could have fumbled the ball there with mismanagement.  Like the KGB trying to run the Soviet Union, basically.

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But remember why the Civil War was so successful.  It paid for the industrialization of the country, a government subsidy.  World War One and its aftermath bailed out the farming industry and helped manufacturing production ( it helped TOO much, leading to overproduction-just as today’s Chinese expansion lead the world economy into a Depression ).  WWI was another Total War, using a large section of our finances to fund the Europeans.  We waited long enough to weaken all other countries, winning economic superiority globally ( military dominance would have to wait until the next war ). 

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During the war we social engineered massively, propaganda and dissent control across the whole nation ( we anti-German’ed to the point most German Immigrant culture northern tier states changed school curriculum as well as other adaptations to purge German culture.  And that was BEFORE we entered the war ).  It was another Total War.  And that was just a warm up for how we conducted ourselves in the next global conflict.  Yet, Vietnam was not the same, at all.  All the social engineering ( subsidizing the Hippies, the Pill and the Women’s Lib movement, Black Revolution, immigration of OtherColors legalized ) was AGAINST the war.

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The war was fought like all the others from the last century.  Turn every factory into war time production and induct every warm body to fight by human wave tactics.  It is easy to say there was no popular consent to the war and that is why it failed, but I still maintain the civil unrest was engineered, in that is was tolerated and encouraged rather than rigorously crushed ( like anti-war protesters were in WWI and WWII ).  I think the fight against the dissenters was staged and managed. 

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I can only conclude that the war was deliberately lost, as a profit center.  The war was conducted tactically, strategically and economically just as WWII had been.  Total War, the entire economy devoted to production.  My guess might have been that the war was conducted as business per usual, then it was discovered that rather than goosing the economy is was destroying it, and in desperation the profiting elite changed tactics and used manufactured discord to try to save the economy.  But I think that misses the mark.  The timeline and details are too murky for me to draw conclusive details.

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Be that as it may ( and I will probably keep plugging away at that question in the future as it fascinates me-the exact turning point we started our decline ), the Total War model was dead.  In its place, we attempted to fight Smarter Rather Than Harder, going all in with technology to substitute for walls of steel.  Smart guided missiles rather than artillery barrages.  More firepower per person to reduce the number of soldiers needed.  Etcetera.  Since we no longer needed to mobilize the population to fight, we no longer needed social cohesion ( although that might be a chicken and egg problem ).

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Lack of Total War saved a bunch of money.  It was excused and promoted along the lines of anti-guerrillas to supplement our nuclear arsenal, two counters to the “new realities” of war, but it was nothing more than a sorry substitute for a military we no longer had the resources to field.  The Soviet Union breaking their economy on the rock of Afghanistan was their Vietnam.  Both the end of military empire and the end of Total War being affordable ( we didn’t have the resources for it, the Soviets didn’t have the finances for it ).

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So, I guess that means our Afghanistan was their Afghanistan J Now, let me be clear on our war in that country and our inability to fight Total War.  No matter how long we end up staying there ( it is almost like pulling out would curse our economy like it did the Soviets, so superstition alone keeps us there ), it is only a high tech war.  It was never a total war in that we mobilized the entire economy to fight it.  Vietnam was the last war we could afford to do so, and it ended up bankrupting us.

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We can print up as much money as desired, and get into as big of deficits as desired to fight, but it is ALL costs.  Not return on investments.  All wars until Vietnam paid.  The botty was bootylicous.  Lots of free land, free colonies, free economic stimulus ( free to those profiting, anyway ).  Now wars just cost.  There is no return.  No sectors of the economy are stimulated.  High Tech has gotten to be High Cost because it became just another asset stripping activity after Vietnam, a reward sector like insurance or medical.

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( The first Gulf War we actually profited off of, I’ll admit.  Mostly because we got all the other allied nations to foot the bill ).  Our entire defense industry is built to ONLY build high tech weapons on a small scale.  Civilian companies have built more AR-15’s in the last ten years than the military bought in the last fifty.  No computer chips for all the tech are built here.  We have no more military industrial production capacity.  How can you fight a Total War, afford it, equip it or get economic stimulus from it, without Total War infrastructure?

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( P.S.-I had to cut this a little short, more than I would have cared to.  The Vietnam economy was simply glossed over.  Sorry.  More research is obviously required and I was on the way to writing a book, which no one wants.  I would have liked to focus more on the high tech aspect of warfare, the switch over, etcetera.  The takeaway is that we have no feedstock for Total War, and the infrastructure was dismantled in the 70’s and 80’s. 

( .Y. )

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