Cyreenik Says
Much as Democratic mythology pronounces, President Obama's administration has learned many things from President Bush's administration... as well as Clinton's, and the previous Bush's, and others. It appears that one of them is to not send "ground pounders" into failed states of the Middle East and nearby Africa to rebuild those nations in America's image. I consider this a good lesson to learn. But Obama is still fighting terrorists in those failed states with military methods. Instead of soldiers on the ground he is using spies and drone strikes. This is not such a good idea.
In many ways this solution is exceedingly attractive:
o It plays into America's strengths because it's high tech
o It's comparatively surgical
o It may be keeping Al Qada off balance
In spite of these formidable virtues, I'm not sure it's a good idea.
The first problem with this tactic is something I've talked about at length over the years: It's bad strategy to treat terrorists as a military enemy. They should be treated as criminals and pursued with civil methods. Treating them as criminals and pursuing them with legal methods builds the enfranchisement of the local communities, and enfranchisement is the ultimate enemy of terrorism. If your neighbors think causing mayhem is a criminally crazy idea, you're going to have to be both psycho and clever to pull off a terrorist act -- contrary to all the urban legend surrounding terrorism this is a rare combination.
In addition to this root strategic problem with drones and spies there are others. The first of these is accountability: How are targets picked? The current government spin is that Obama is sitting in a war room of some sort and personally making these choices. The more this is true, the worse it is -- he needs to be leading a country, not managing a hit list. Another problem is how do we measure the results of these attacks? Do we have marketing people on the ground doing post-attack surveys?
...Well, we do... but they are here in the US, surveying US people.
<sigh>
This thought was inspired by a 7 Jul 12 Economist Schumpeter article, No rush: In praise of procrastination. The article makes several interesting points but the most interesting to me was:
"[a study shows]...that slowing down makes us more ethical. When confronted with a clear choice between right and wrong, people are five times more likely to do the right thing if they have time to think about it than if they are forced to make a snap decision."
Choosing fast in a novel situation means relying on instinctive thinking. It is a variant on panic thinking. This is why "sleeping on it" and other similar techniques for letting the brain work on a problem for a while can be so valuable. They give judgment thinking time to work. This phenomenon is one we don't think much about in our day-to-day lives, but it's important.
Just to be clear, this taking time to decide applies to novel situations -- ones that haven't been encountered before. If the situation comes up repeatedly then "sports thinking" can be used and fast decisions will be as good as leisurely ones. (To see more on this check out my Brain's Thinking Stack article.)
This thought was inspired by a 7 Jul 12 Economist Free Exchange article, Move over: Falling labour mobility in America may reflect a more efficient market, which describes how mobility in America has been declining steadily since the early 1990's. The article offers two explanations for this:
o Many more jobs are of the "non-tradable" sort where location matters. This would be things such as retail, health care dealing directly with patients, and K-12 education where it's location, location, location. The alternative would be something such as manufacturing toys, cars or airplanes which can be done anywhere a factory can be built.
o The plummeting cost of information. It's now both cheaper and easier to research about living in different locales and Information Age-type jobs are location independent.
This is a wonderful example of how technology changes how we live. And it's a wonderful example of how recessions are about changing dreams. Being willing to move is no longer as essential to finding better work as it used to be, so it's not as much a part of ambitious dreams as it used to be. The days when IBM workers joked that IBM stood for "I've Been Moved" have faded.
One interesting change over the last six months is that media doomsday talk has switched from Mayan Calendar end-of-world to the US "fiscal cliff" end-of-world. Both are "end of the world as we know it" scenarios -- one is fun to be scared about, the other is more tangible.
Either way, my human thinking calculation is that the combination is currently sustaining an investor mania and that mania will transform into a hangover-style bust starting one or two months either side of January 1st.
The pattern I see is that while the media talks long and hard about the doom and gloom side of any "end of the world as we know it" prediction, behind the scenes this prospect thrills investors of all sorts and many respond to the thrill by becoming more willing to take on investing risk. (See my Mania and Markets for a fuller explanation of this concept.)
So watch for it. My guess is that, weak as the American economy is, we are in the middle of stock boom centering on social media stocks, we will see the "social media bust" begin plus or minus two months from January 1st, 2013, and that stock bust will be the beginning of another round of US economic malaise lasting a year, perhaps two.
Update: This 15 Jul 12 WSJ article, The Tax Cliff Is a Growth Killer
No matter what happens from now on, 2013 will be a very tough year, by Arthur B. Laffer and Ford M. Scudder, outlines in more detail why government policy is supporting an upcoming bust.
The Euro Crisis keeps dragging on and the US recovery remains anemic. These are now joined by economic slowdowns in India and China. This means we are still living in socially stressful times when conventional solutions aren't working. This means that blunders can happen easily, and The Time of Nutcases continues.
The Time of Nutcases is my description for times when conventional leaders offering conventional solutions to social problems are being replaced by previously-ignored radical leaders offering unconventional solutions. The Arab Spring is one example, the Tea Party in the US is another.
I use the "nutcases" description because nine out of ten of these people and their solutions were previously ignored for good reason -- they don't work well. But that last ten percent will work well and will become "the new normal" as social problems are solved and the crisis abates. Example: US social security system was created in The Time of Nutcases the US had under FDR in the 1930's, but so were a whole of lot "alphabet agencies" such as the WPA that withered.
It's an exciting time because only experimenting will determine which are the ten percent gold.
...Exciting in the Chinese Wish sense. Brrr!
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