New at Reason

July 6, 2007

Crispin Sartwell marvels at the government's ability to defy Darwin.

Comments

|7.6.07 @ 11:11AM|#

Yeah, but history's like boring and stuff. So are dinosaurs. Now we have teh intertubes and ParisWatch.

|7.6.07 @ 11:13AM|#

Legitimately, I appreciate this article a lot. I became an engineer because I was interested in scale-up issues and that's what I do now. Well written.

Axel|7.6.07 @ 11:14AM|#

And ParisWatch.

bill|7.6.07 @ 11:18AM|#

"The tragedy of America is the story of how it mutated into an empire, both internally and externally, and hence outgrew viability."

It didn't mutate. It was lead there, by the nose, by the international bankers.

|7.6.07 @ 11:24AM|#

That is one of the best pieces of thinking I've read in several years. And I read a lot.

It makes me sad.

|7.6.07 @ 11:26AM|#

Don't forget economies of scale. 1 large government is likely a better use of resources than dozens or hundreds of small ones. Of course, there's probably an optimum size at a given level of development.

To use the animal analogy, you could probably make 100,000 mice with the material in a single brontosaurus, but which uses more energy? If you look at the cost of supporting a given unit of animal mass, dinosaurs are likely better than mice.

The advantage of the mice is you can starve 90,000 mice with no great problem for mice in general, but if you cut by 90% the food of the brontosaurus it's in trouble.

|7.6.07 @ 11:27AM|#

Good piece. Our military is inward looking. Always looking at internal procedures and processes. Our enemy is outward looking. It might sound minor, but it is a critical and fundamental difference. Meetings and PowerPoint presentations will always be trumped by quick reaction on the ground. We are still focused on massive, expensive weapons systems that line the pockets of contractors. We are still looking at war in terms of "putting steel on a target". Our system is about funding pork projects, political promotions and justifying the status quo. Our enemy is not doing much right, but the best fighters will survive and learn from mistakes. Our troops, due to the bureaucratic machine they are saddled with, have a much slower feedback loop. It is a cruel situation to put our troops in.

Ellie|7.6.07 @ 11:30AM|#

This was an awesome article.

|7.6.07 @ 11:32AM|#

Yes, very good. But is there any hope. Can we kill the beast a department at a time before it consumes the government entire? Off hand I can think of only one massive bureaucracy that was put down and not allowed to grow endlessly, the NRA (New Deal, not 2nd Amendment). Some others that were created during and for a war. Have there been any other successful bureaucratic euthanasias?

I fear we are doomed to repeat the fate of Rome.

|7.6.07 @ 11:40AM|#

Andrew,

Economies of scale aren't about making a larger thing, they're about a larger entity doing the same thing more efficiently than a smaller entity. Making a brontosaurus over 100,000 idnetical mice is almost certainly less efficient. If the government was all about churning out the same response over and over, it would be more efficient to have a giant one, but its not, its about meeting the needs of thousands of different people and no large thing can move fast enough or be nimble enough to do that, so saying a larger government benefits from economies of scale is ludicrous.

|7.6.07 @ 11:49AM|#

While I agree with the author's conclusion, it is wise to be aware of the limitations of analogies, lest we fall into the trap that the social Darwinists did. An organization is not an organism, and a US soldier isn't a reptilian nerve ending.

|7.6.07 @ 11:54AM|#

crimethink,

but the more remote the people are that are making decisions for you, the less they'll be able to adequately meet your needs. Isn't that the principal of libertarianism, the best deicision making is made by the individual, not some government official?

ed|7.6.07 @ 11:58AM|#

Just a matter of time, kiddies.
We have the weight of all of history against us.

|7.6.07 @ 11:59AM|#

The article is both very interesting and of not much practical importance.

The key issue is applying the right size government for any specific job. At the national level, government is mostly useless when dealing with individuals. Whereas, a local-level government can get wiped out by a single natural disaster.

In Iraq, we have small, mobile bands of criminals that are able to inflict damage at will. This is because small, mobile bands are particularly well suited to doing this job. However, these bands will never be able to actually unseat the government of Iraq by themselves (although they could easily become a catalyst for the bulk of the population to turn against the government).

On the other hand, one can make rational arguments that our military is much too small to actually do the job they have been handed in Iraq. The US has been in a transition period where we are trying to optimize the military to win battles against an opposing army. It is now very well suited to doing that job. Unfortunately, it is also completely incapable of occupying an entire hostile country. So the US military is scaled quite appropriately for defending our country, but completely out of scale for empire building. That's probably a good thing, so we can now focus on blaming the US government for making the wrong choices in deciding to extend the empire to the middle east.

|7.6.07 @ 12:02PM|#

Crimethink,

I am with you on analogies and metaphors. They can be misleading and irrelevant. I don't think the author uses the Darwinian analogy to make any leaps in logic or draw any conclusions that are not solid.

|7.6.07 @ 12:09PM|#

The assessment that our current Leviathan is ill-suited to perform the functions it has taken on is certainly on target. Unfortunately, this particular beast is a parasite which can remain viable far beyond its useful life, by preying on the productive efforts of others.

|7.6.07 @ 12:09PM|#

the dinosaur/size metaphor is inaccurate on several levels - first, the size of the average dinosaur was about 50-100 kg. About the size of a Shetland pony. Secondly, even the gigantic sauropods were extraordinarily successful in evolutionary terms - the Jurassic Period - the true age of the giants - lasted for more than 50 million years. All told, the dinosaurs dominated every ecological niche on this planet for about 180 million years. Lastly, the term "brontosaurus" is erroneous - it stems from a composite skeleton of a camarasaurus skull on an apatosaur skeleton. No such animal ever existed.

|7.6.07 @ 12:12PM|#

What strikes me the most about the US government is that it has helped to create the most prosperous civilization in the history of the world. Still, I hate it because there are rules and I can't do everything I want. Not that I plan on moving or anything.

|7.6.07 @ 12:21PM|#

Right on, D. Saul Weiner. One of the huge problems (perhaps the fundamental problem) with our military is that it is more interested in surviving and growing than in performing the job for which it exists. Survival, of course, becomes the goal of all bureaucracies. It can be an inconvenience when that bureaucracy is the DMV, but it can be much more serious when it is the military. The best hope might be that the Marine Corps -- a smaller branch without the funding of the Army, but also on the ground fighting -- can lead the way by focusing on strategy, operations and tactics, rather than funding massive weapons systems. If the Marine Corp can prove that success can be had with less, not more, perhaps we can get things on track. But I wouldn't hold my breath. I suspect that the hawks will blame Democrats for this loss, no one will look closely at the system, and it will be business as usual.

libertreee|7.6.07 @ 12:23PM|#

Secondly, even the gigantic sauropods were extraordinarily successful in evolutionary terms - the Jurassic Period - the true age of the giants - lasted for more than 50 million years. All told, the dinosaurs dominated every ecological niche on this planet for about 180 million years. jaybird

Points well taken.

Fortunately, human civilization seems to cycle every 500 years or so.

Now we are in an era when the internet driven information age and biotechnology are replacing large industrial economies that depended on large nation states for protection.

The Westphalian nation states have been consolidating certainly since the late nineteenth century. Now, secession is in the air.

Many are afraid of further regionalization, and talk about the NWO and the Amero and North American Union, etc. I do not always share their fears, certainly not of fewer trade restrictions, but the fact is that people in the grassroots are reacting against more consolidation and beginning to clamor for more decentralization.

A good thing, I think. Maybe the Westphalian states will die out in the 21 or 22 century.

|7.6.07 @ 12:24PM|#

Thanks Jaybird for setting every one straight on the dinosaurs - when we have been around another 200 million years we can spout off about the dinosaurs. And although I think the government that governs best governs least, I think the article's analogy is inchoate. I'm glad we had a big army in WWII - the isssue in Iraq is whether we should be there. (note the debate about we should have sent a much bigger force to begin with). And I'm glad that it takes a lot of time and effort to pass laws, although considering the excess number we have, not nearly enough.

|7.6.07 @ 12:30PM|#

And I'm glad that it takes a lot of time and effort to pass laws, although considering the excess number we have, not nearly enough.

Ah, but that sword cuts both ways. The harder it is to pass laws, the harder it is to get rid of them once they're passed.

My solution, the Sunset Ammendment, would be an ammendment to the Constitution specifying that all federal laws become null and void five years after passage (or five years after the ammendment is ratified, for already-existing laws). That way, politicians would be able to claim they're doing something by renewing popular laws, instead of constantly having to come up with new ones.

|7.6.07 @ 12:41PM|#

While it was an interesting article, I agree with crimethink about keeping in mind the limits of those types of analogies.

When considering the viability of a society or form of government, things like the system of incentives in place and the level of commitment among the country's citizens matter probably at least as much as the size of the government. But in an organism, cells don't respond to personal incentives or hold opinions on what the ideal organism would be.

There are probably some aspects of what the government does that are better handled at more local levels, and some aspects are better hanled at the national level. I am not necessarily saying that a smaller government wouldn't be better overall, but certainly the it is a complex subject that isn't entirely covered by the dinosaur analogy.

|7.6.07 @ 12:43PM|#

libertreee,

You make some interesting points. I disagree with you about nation states consolidating since the late 18th century. There are 4 times as many countries now as in 1900.

What is changing is the monopoly on war that was largely held by nation states since the Peace of Westphalia. Governments in many countries do not represent their people and can't control their people. Those unhappy campers are turning to other groups to represent them. These are sometimes called "4th generation" or "non-state" forces. People are turning to religion, sects, whatever… rather than nation states. They are fighting for these groups, not government. That messes up the monopoly that governments largely held on war since the Peace of Westphalia.

Iraq is a perfect example. We destroyed the state in 2003. Now there is no state. People need protection because the state cannot provide it. So they are turning to non-state groups.

|7.6.07 @ 12:43PM|#

Sorry. this link on # of countries was not included in my last post...

http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=108&subsecID=900003&contentID=252023

|7.6.07 @ 12:46PM|#

Well, maybe, but the Government of the United States is, eventually, the people of the United States.

So I think the appropriate analogy is more along the lines of "in the wild, does a wolf pack last longer than a single wolf?"

Michael P. Miale|7.6.07 @ 1:09PM|#

"The tragedy of America is the story of how it mutated into an empire, both internally and externally, and hence outgrew viability."

"It didn't mutate. It was lead there, by the nose, by the international bankers."

This was all foreseen many years ago by the way, by wise men like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson.

Fallible, greedy human nature eventually always overwhelms any system of government, no matter how well-intentioned, given enough time.

|7.6.07 @ 1:13PM|#

Well, maybe, but the Government of the United States is, eventually, the people of the United States.

No... The U.S. government is a tiny subset of the people of the United States.

LarryA|7.6.07 @ 1:22PM|#

Don't forget economies of scale. 1 large government is likely a better use of resources than dozens or hundreds of small ones.

Only if you presume the goal of government is to use resources efficiently. Government can most efficiently use resources by creating large programs with standardized rules and requirements that treat everyone the same.

If the goal of government is to respond flexibly to serve the differing needs of individuals, the closer a government is to the individual the more flexible it will be. If the goal of government is to be accountable to the will of the people, then the more decentralized it is, the more accountable it is.

The trick is to know the difference. For instance, libertarian principles would say that local government should be responsible for the local system of roads. (Yeah, yeah, Real Libertarians Want Privately Owned Roads. Let me finish.) However, I've been around long enough to remember when driving rules were set by the states, and were different between states. In one state right-turn-on-red was legal, across the state line it wasn't. Each state had its own system of signs. When driving across the country it was a pain to have to learn each state's rules. Then Congress came up with a standard set and made life easier.

Today the concealed handgun laws are in the same process. My Texas concealed handgun license is valid in 30 out of the 50 states, but the carry rules are different in each state. There are rules in some states that require actions that other states make illegal.

These, to me, are legitimate interstate commerce applications.

On the other hand, federal rules tend to be one-size-fits-all, and that causes problems. A 55 MPH speed limit may be redundant in Rhode Island, and ridiculous in Montana.

Have there been any other successful bureaucratic euthanasias?

Prohibition was killed off, but it rose from the dead.

What strikes me the most about the US government is that it has helped to create the most prosperous civilization in the history of the world.

True. But much of the prosperity developed before the government grew to its current size. What strikes me is that the most prosperous civilization in the history of the world created the US government.

One of the huge problems (perhaps the fundamental problem) with our military is that it is more interested in surviving and growing than in performing the job for which it exists.

The main problem with our military is that it is not performing the job for which it exists. Protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States requires an army that can destroy armies bent on conquering the U.S. Trying to keep the peace in another country is a fundamentally different mission, and one that the military is not, and should not be, trained or equipped to accomplish.

So I think the appropriate analogy is more along the lines of "in the wild, does a wolf pack last longer than a single wolf?"

Not quite. Obviously each individual wolf is better off in a pack. But that's local government, where each individual in the pack knows every other individual. OTOH, would the wolf pack be better off if there was a wolf congress 2,000 miles away telling it when, where, and what to hunt?

|7.6.07 @ 1:36PM|#

Rummi and company were remote for reasons that had little to do with scale. Actually, Rummi himself rejected precautions that would have resolved many of those issues.

But...questions such as whether it was insurgency or civil war were not "scale" questions, but purely political personal decisions that would have not occurred under a different pres. Even a different repub pres.

While I find the thesis of size intriguing, I find this article bends to far, and would only stand a chance of convincing someone who "wanted" to "believe" it. This administration could have easily approached this from a more manageable position.

Don't blame a failure to plan on the structure itself. The Bush administration has lowered the effectiveness of many structures. Structures that by many libertarian pov's should potentially not exist in the first place, but that does not deal with the fact of complete incompetency of the implementers in the present administration. Proofs attempting to link bush's incompetency to issues of scale in this way, probably reduce the overall thesis applicability in general.

Charles|7.6.07 @ 1:47PM|#

It's hard to miss the irony of our gigantism. We started out by outmaneuvering the British-not hard considering that the decision-making power was impossibly remote from the action, that the British forces were governed by a set of rules and conventions that inhibited their flexibility, and that, already, British forces were engaged all over the world.

This ignores the vital aid provided by the French, a more intrusive and oppressive monarchy than the British ever were. More Frenchmen fought at Yorktown than Americans did.

I agree with the point of this article, but almost every analogy Sartwell uses could go just as well the other way. I mean, comparing elephants versus flies to America terrorists? Have you ever seen flies kill an elephant, or even seriously harm it?

Also, is having building somehow bad, because that's a big target? I'm not sure I follow.

libertreee|7.6.07 @ 1:53PM|#

bb-thank you for the comment.

Yes, I am interested in fourth generation war theory. William S Lind is very interesting. Sen Gary Hart and Lind were trying to reform the military to deal with fourth generation war before 9-11 "changed everything" but really changed nothing.

When I talked about consolidation I was referring to Bismark in Germany, Garibaldi in Italy, Disraeli in England, and of course Lincoln in the US.

Although there are more "nation states" today, there supposedly is only one "super power nation state"...although that will not last long.

And Somalia is the first Westphalian state to deliberately abandon the model.

|7.6.07 @ 2:41PM|#

The analogies here are pretty lame, frankly. If you examine the "evolution" of nation-states, it's the big, not the little, that flourish. Our problem in Iraq is very much like the war in Vietnam. It's a war that no one wants to fight, because it's not worth fighting. The Bush Administration doesn't ask Congress to devote substantial resources for Iraq--a revived and modified draft, for example, plus cancellation of useless Cold-War-Era weapon systems and redirection of tens of billions of defense funds that are already appropriated--because Congress would say no.

And as a dinosaur buff I would point out that the dinos lasted a lot longer than humans have. And would humans survive the multiple disasters that took down the big guys? I think not.

|7.6.07 @ 3:58PM|#

This is a stunning display of illogic in, of all places, a magazine called Reason? All things big fail? Is that the premise? You mean like WW2 and the Cold War? If he were around then, this guy would have no doubt murmured some similar empty platitude after Omaha Beach or the Bulge.
Iraq is not the big thing here - the War on Terror is. We can abandon Iraq based on the kind of unreason presented here, but we will still have to fight the war.

|7.6.07 @ 4:00PM|#

It's not the size, it the cetralized control and how quickly the response to stimuli.
Large corporations are learning to be nimble by eliminating layers of management.
If the military units on the ground, at the pointy end of the spear, didn't have to ask the unit lawyer if it was ok to shoot back, the military would be much more effective.
Give them the mission, give them the resources, and get out of the way.
On the border, retired cops and grandmas in lawn chairs have been more effective than Washington. The tools to control the border are in place. NOT the will.

|7.6.07 @ 4:01PM|#

So if New York is attacked, why should Frisco worry?

libertreee|7.6.07 @ 4:28PM|#

f the military units on the ground, at the pointy end of the spear, didn't have to ask the unit lawyer if it was ok to shoot back, the military would be much more effective.
Give them the mission, give them the resources, and get out of the way. marjon

I read this as the old "politicians tied the hands of the military that's why we lost Vietnam" syndrome.

The problem is much deeper than described. The problem lies in being sucked into a no win situation where ground and especially air forces are asymetrical to the situation at hand. You cannot fight a fourth generation war with 2nd generation means.

First generation--Early nation state, armies lined up against each other, very little damage to civilian infrastructure.
2nd generation-Napoleonic war. Heavy use of artillery preceeding ground warfare. Total war on civilian infrastructure for supplies, and to punish, and to keep out of enemy hands.
3rd generaton-German blitzkreig. Fast moving, long supply lines, strike hard at the target with mobility, officers are trained to make independent decisions, etc.
4th generation-non state guerilla war, insurrections, hit and blend into the population. Depends on support of the people. Does not have to win battles, only has to outlast the enemy armies it opposes.

This is a very brief, hopefully more correct than not synopsis. The nation states cannot win a fourth generation war with 2nd generation means, particularly air power, which is modern artillery. They more they destroy enemy infrastructure (Fallujah), the more the enemy will grow against them.

Xenophun|7.6.07 @ 4:36PM|#

Ironically one of the main goals of Rumsfeld was to reorganize the military into something less ponderous with a faster response time. For which he caught hell from all sides.

|7.6.07 @ 5:53PM|#

The Huns and the Visigoths came at the tail end of the Roman Empire. The Roman civilization had successfully dominated similar such peoples for 500 years prior. I think you have glossed over the rest of Roman history in the pursuit of an ultimately invalid, bite-sized example.

|7.6.07 @ 6:52PM|#

This article is WRONG!!! From day one, according to Army General Shinseki, at least 500,000 troops were needed. And according to PBS Frontline investigations, the root cause for our failure in Iraq was the hope that we could fight the "war on the cheap" (probably because surging to 500,000 troops would require the draft) -- in order to sell the war.

Note that it was the LARGE SCALE of flooding the streets with a cop on every corner 24/7 in NYC that enabled Mayor Guiliani and Police Chief Bratton to make NYC livable again. So General Petraus' surge strategy could work--except that it is too little, too late (and unsustainable).

At the end of the day we failed to heed James Madison's advice in Federalist #51:
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed...."

|7.6.07 @ 7:16PM|#

I thought this was a nicely written article and made good sense. As with all analogies, it can have broad fit and use for many subjects. On to Iraq:

Forget about whether we should be there or not. The fact is we went in. The problem has been the management of this war. So called Think Tanks apparently forgot to read some history; both in the manner of which warfare is executed and the history of the core values of Middle-Eastern people.

I think that if you are going to war then you fight a war completely, example, Patton, Sherman, LeMay. Not win hearts and minds. If you are not prepared to decimate your enemy to the fullest, then do not attack. You must do more damage "relatively," to your enemy than he does to you. You make examples out of found "insurgents." The local populace knows that they are there. They know the faces. When they are caught, we should not Gitmo them, but hang them publicly and locally, where they are caught. Unfortunately, harsh as this is, this is the way to win wars. Wars are inherently ugly. People die in wars. If you intend on winning then you must do what is necessary to win; ugly as it may be. I have a few ideas that could have helped:

1. Take most troops out of major Iraqi cities and place them at border areas (we should not have individual soldiers doing useless policing)
2. Blockade all in/out port/trade locations (we decide what goes in and out)
3. Remaining troops should be protecting revenue infrastructure so that the Iraqi government could begin getting revenues from resources to help themselves(letting bombers blow up pipelines as they are built is useless...these must be protected)
4. Capital punishment instituted (military summary executions for crimes such weapons caching, overt terrorism, destruction of personal property, rape, murder, torture, including individuals who house and support others who commit the actual crimes...there must be severe penalties)

I realize that people will call me a fascist, but if you truly want to win the war, then you must be prepared to match/exceed your enemies brutality. Sorry if I have offended anyone as it was not the intent.

|7.6.07 @ 7:19PM|#

This article is a huge pile of crap.

Were it true, George Catlett Marshall should not have been able to organize and execute a global war by mastering an organization of ground and air units totaling some 13,000,000 men. Today's military is but a fraction of that size. Ernest King organized a Navy of several thousand ships during the same conflict to support a land campaign in two oceans.

During the same time, in secret, a massive engineering project involving up to 200,000 people led to the development of the world's first working atomic weapons.

Gigantism has nothing to do with it. Competence, organization, and leadership has everything to do with being able to put troops, equipment, and ordinance on target and execute the mission determined by the national leadership. This administration has been lacking in same.

However, nothing can be determined until the national leadership determines what the mission actually is. Further, as the wag wrote on the wall somewhere in Anbar, ...."America is not at war, the Marine Corps is at war. America is at the Mall."

|7.6.07 @ 8:27PM|#

This is a stunning display of illogic in, of all places, a magazine called Reason?

Glug, glug, glug, .... ahhhhhhh.

Ironically one of the main goals of Rumsfeld was to reorganize the military into something less ponderous with a faster response time. For which he caught hell from all sides.

Yeah, that is a sad irony. His mistake was to then try to use that slimmed-down military to police a civil war, which is sort of like using a finely sharpened knife as a screwdriver.

|7.6.07 @ 8:43PM|#

drivel, from the first word to the last...even the "and" is a lie. keep on smokin'...

|7.6.07 @ 9:16PM|#

The federal government is simply never going back the decentralized form envisioned by the founders. There are too many tens of millions of Americans who expect succour from Washington for almost everything in life. There are too many millions more who, although they may not wish Congress in their lives, most certainly want it to regulate the lives of others. There are too many entrenched, unionized civil servants whose sinecures depend on ensuring their usefulness by fostering the metasticization of government. We simply are no longer the people of the Revolution.

If this makes the United States a dinosaur the solution is not to turn back the clock on evolution because it is not going to happen, any more than T.Rex will be resurrected to run down Pennsylvania Avenue. If dinosaurism is an accurate diagnosis of America and it is wished for America to survive, we had better find ways to teach dinosaurs to cope a bit better this time round.

|7.6.07 @ 9:51PM|#

Amusing analogy, but weak analysis.

Yes, plugging border holes is hard work, but plugging employment would not be any harder than forcing businesses to pay sales tax. Gee, that would never work, eh? Must be massive evasion of sales tax, since government inspectors are not there to monitor every transactions. Oops, there is almost no such fraud. Why? Because of regular audits and strong penalties. Checking on the legality of the workforce is even easier, except for obstructionism by businesses that like to hire cheap labor, and idiot libertarians that flack for them.

You guys are so innumerate it is pathetic. Some of the numbers you never bothered to look into when you get into your open-borders trances are in this Robert Rector piece:

http://tinyurl.com/376ahv

BTW, Milton Friedman was not an idiot like the rest of you: he pointed out that you can't have a welfare state and open borders at the same time. News bulletin: we haven't gotten rid of the welfare state yet, and show no signs of doing so any time soon.

Charles

|7.7.07 @ 7:13AM|#

This one's not even close. Yes, certainly creatures with a shorter breeding cycle can evolve faster. But how on earth does the author leap from that to the speed at which a government can make and implement a decision?

Read on the building of the Pentagon, the creation of American armored forces in 1940 or the selection and production of the Sherman tank. The US government, with no less power or centralization in such matters than it enjoys today, made and implemented decisions in days or weeks that it can now scarcely make in years or decades. If you don't like military matters, compare the response to Katrina with that to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

In the successful cases, authorities made and implemented decisions without surveys, town halls or even insightful magazine articles. It is precisely the later and unsuccessful cases which represent more democracy and diffused authority. The old adage is that in times or crisis a good solution today is better than a perfect solution next week, but this appears to have been forgotten.

There is a strong case--which I support--for limited decentralized government. But that doesn't mean that any argument for such a case is valid. This article was unworthy of its publisher.

rudy|7.7.07 @ 7:21AM|#

you know the best way to avoid a insurgency is not get started in the 1st place ,that means to respect the ppl's wishes and and bring security and stability from the beginning.

robc|7.7.07 @ 8:03AM|#

Thanks Jaybird for setting every one straight on the dinosaurs - when we have been around another 200 million years we can spout off about the dinosaurs.

I was going to congratulate the dinosaurs on their victory, but I couldnt find one. The original point is right, we are here, they arent. We out survived them (even if we did it by the sneaky strategy of waiting until they were gone to even exist).

Others seem to have missed the same point with their "how did this big government action succeed then?" questions. Of course big government succeeds - until it fails. ALL empires eventually fail, we may not be around to see the fall of the American Empire, but it will occur. The Soviet Union is the rare occurence of a rise and fall of an empire within some humans' life span.

|7.7.07 @ 8:18AM|#

While there are many comments about dinosaurs, this interesting article has a false premise- that small and/or decentralized government is inherently better than large government. The author makes reference to the US original governmental plan of having a group of agrarian republics that would be agile and responsive. He ignores two significant issues. First, while this was the dream of Jefferson, it was not the dream of all the founders. Witness the Federalists, who ultinately won the argument. Second, the REASON Federalsim won out was in large aprt the failure of the articles of confederation the constitution replaced. A weak or absent Federal government doesn't really make the country more agile and responsive- look back at the Continental Congress and its agonies in fnding the Revoutionary War.

The entire leap from the problems of a large, mechanized military fighting a guerilla force to making statements about government is unjustified and a very loose connection, brontosaurus stories or not.

|7.7.07 @ 11:25AM|#

Great article. To survive we need to be LITTLE. Not Big obnoxious broad side of a barn assholes. We ALL need to be LITTLE. And Live that way.

Dr Scott|7.7.07 @ 12:15PM|#

I am always amused by articles that show AQ running rings around the US military. One part is true: Yes, the Large will always have some trouble with the Small and Agile. But that only takes you so far. For example, cockroaches are much better than you at hiding under the refrigerator. Does that mean you should swap living arrangements?

We have a military capability. AQ has a military capability. My guess is they would be delighted to swap. Should we?

|7.7.07 @ 2:30PM|#

Bordering on the Absurd
The larger the border fences, the more metal for blowtorches to turn into (fungible) scrap metal as more exit holes are punched in the "security" fence. In effect, the fence builders subsidize blow-torch entreprenuers, thereby reducing the overall cost of border crossing. My only suggestion to the blow-torchers would be to suggest a self-imposed, per-ton tax to be used to lobby Congress to build bigger, costlier fences. Cheers.

|7.8.07 @ 11:35AM|#

bigger=better target

|7.8.07 @ 8:31PM|#

It's not so much size--it's the number of layers a decision has to go through and the speed in making decisions.

Also, there are other benefits to size and organization. Anyone who has tried taking a start-up from the "everyone can get their oar in on a decision" size to something larger will quickly realise that there's a reason why heirarchies exist.

And didn't we try that "weak federalism" bit at the beginning of the US and discovered it didn't work very well?

|7.9.07 @ 7:10AM|#

thanks, jaybird.

Also, the Roman Empire vs. Huns and Visigoths analogy is deeply flawed: those were organizations comparable in size. The Roman Empire had a total of about 250,000 - 300,000 troops, sometimes more but not much more and not for a long time, and the Visigoths could field, in one place, about 30,000; the situation was even more balanced when the Huns are considered: those "barbarians" had equal (though different) technology, and they and their Germanic allies could field as many soldiers as the Romans did.

Also, the Roman Empire was not the centralized monsters our XX-th century states are.

Returning to the "brontosaurs": there were enough resources to support them (warmth + CO2 fertilization => lots of vegetation growing fast). The modern bureaucracies will survive for as long as there are resources to support them, or go the way of the Soviet Union when the economy will collapse.

"a group of agrarian republics that would be agile and responsive" ... how long would it take for those republics to break out of the Union and start a ... civil war when the federal government is unable to stop them? ... Yugoslavia, anyone ?

|7.10.07 @ 8:43AM|#

When the increasingly decrepit electrical grid fails, making it impossible to reliably manufacture and distribute processed foods or store perishables for any substantial length of time, or when the cost of petroleum derived energy makes it prohibitively expensive to transport food thousands of miles from field to kitchen table, Americans will once again discover true economies of scale. Jefferson's ideal: educated, independent, and largely economically self-sufficient small holders, i.e. family farms, as the basic unit of a democratic republic, is not merely an ideal. It is, rather, an eminently practical and workable way of life based upon practical, viable local economies of scale. If we are very, very fortunate, we Americans will one day re-discover the benefits of Jeffersonian democracy. (Exactly what kind of thinking was it that failed to question the notion that we should import strawberries from another continent when we could grow them in our gardens at a fraction of the cost and with none of the pollution generated by massive food transport? And when was the last time you saw or heard a honey bee?)

|7.10.07 @ 3:01PM|#

When the last decrepit factory
Has dumped its final load of toxic waste into the water supply
And shipped its last badly manufactured,
Incompetently designed consumer-thing,
We gaze in astonishment
As the denizens of NU-PERFECT AMERICA dine on rats,
Poodles,
Styrofoam packing pellets,
All floating in a broth of tritium-enriched sewage,
Roasting the least-diseased body parts of abandoned 'wild children'
(Accumulating since the total ban on abortion a few years back)

|7.12.07 @ 10:42AM|#

A woman is like ... a beer.