I’m sad that NSFWCorp has gone down PandoDaily’s maw — guess the future of journalism is all glibertarian tech billionaires pissing on each others’ vanity media projects — but at least John Dolan/Gary Brecher/The War Nerd still has a paying gig:
… Militarism in American history is like undulant fever: It comes and goes in waves. There was a time in the 1970s when most people saw the Armed Services as a last-ditch job for the otherwise unemployable. That changed during the Reagan years. The change didn’t happen because the US military did much to cover itself with glory; Reagan’s administration was timid about direct military involvement, only willing to invade pushovers like Grenada and wisely reluctant to provide the Afghan “mujahideen” with advanced weapons. No, it was the fact that you stood very little chance of actually getting killed, combined with the shift to Reagan’s “service economy” that made the military look good. Compared to working at WalMart, the Army was a socialist paradise: lifetime medical care, free room and board, and all the education you could handle.
Once people saw the WTC in flames, soldier-worship ramped up to a frenzy. The United States has been involved in multiple wars for a decade, and surveys show that public approval ratings for the military top those for every other profession, including doctors and scientists.
Meanwhile, Libertarian ideology has been tracking enthusiasm for soldiering. By now, almost a quarter of all Americans lean libertarian. It’s a group that looks a lot like Erik Prince, 94% white, two-thirds male, and of what used to be called “military age.”…
… [But] the U.S. Armed Services are a government monopoly — the government monopoly, the one that underwrites and provides protection for all the others. When you have a monopoly on large-scale violence, you have a monopoly on anything you happen to want. The IRS, the pet hate of Libertarians, would be a harmless joke without the threat of military force backing up their collection letters.
So how do the young white males who share these two incompatible hobbies, militarism and libertarianism, square their circle? Well, that’s where Erik Prince comes in, with a simple solution: the glorification of the perfect combination of free-market independence and American militarism — the mercenary….
The more I looked at the history of mercenary captains like Prince, especially those from the era of the condottieri, the mercenary commanders who destroyed Italy in the late 15th and early 16th century, the more sense Prince’s indifference to American military success started to make. Prince is the direct descendant of the condottieri; even the word “condottiero” means “contractor,” Prince’s preferred term for his soldiers of fortune. Some of these condottieri particularly Francesco Bussone Carmagnola, are eerily similar to Prince, in their cynicism, in their career trajectory, their selfishness, and their megalomaniacal vanity. Carmagnola set the pattern for all condottieri: He would win a tactical victory, as he did in the Battle of Maclodio then allow the defeated army to retreat and regroup, ensuring more campaigning and “…forcing [his backers] to pay incredible amounts in upkeep for the almost useless army.” From 15th century Northern Italy to the Sunni Triangle isn’t all that far, when you think like a mercenary…
KG
It’s like people (other than Eric Cartman) are reading/watching Game of Thrones and taking it as a guidebook
MikeJ
Actually that would be court system that backs up IRS threats.
raven
So my buddy and I are fishing in the beautiful water of the Gulf of Mexico from the beach. We start to notice the water turning a bit red and start to wonder what the deal is. About 200 yards to the east we see the water churning from to shore out about 50 yards. Upon investigation we find that it is a dune breach by one of the very rare “Coastal Dune Lakes” that are here in South Walton County.
I shot a short video of this rare event that KILLED the fishing!
That may work soon.
NotMax
Take it you read the snippet you provided, and afterwards misspelled Prince’s name anyway.
Belafon
What an idiotic statement. The US military has nothing to do with IRS enforcement.
Now, privatize the military and we’ll probably be talking about Microsoft hiring mercenaries to extract a guy from Amazon after he implanted in his daughter’s head a device to allow her to be constantly connected to the internet.
MikeJ
@Belafon: And we can deliver pizzas on skateboard and harpoon cars.
Mr Stagger Lee
I wonder the number of war crimes committed by Prince’s Blackwater adventures in Iraq? Funny if a group of Yahoos form a militia in the Boondocks of Mississippi, the FBI is all over them, but if that militia is backed by Wall Street money, isn’t the latter a threat to national security as the former?
KG
@Belafon: excuse me, I have to go write a bad screenplay to sell to a studio based on your idea, are you good with a “story by” credit or would you prefer an executive producer credit?
I’m fairly certain syfy would pick it up if nobody else did
KG
@Mr Stagger Lee: all depends on where the guns are aimed, our government or somebody else’s government
Belafon
@MikeJ: Thank you.
@KG: Sorry, William Gibson gets most of the credit for that one.
NotMax
@KG
Mercnado!
KG
@NotMax: ha! And to expand on my GoT comment earlier, [spoilers!] it’s like they haven’t figured out that the free companies will switch sides in an instant for a bigger payday (or they think they’re all Lannisters)
Little Boots
the world is terrible, and thanks to the internet, we have a front row seat.
HinTN
@raven: Page still not found
MikeJ
From the article:
Wasn’t somebody talking about Silicon Valley n the previous thread?
raven
@HinTN: I just hit it and it seems to be loaded now.
Little Boots
@MikeJ:
yup
Little Boots
it’s our top heavy society.
cherish it.
Cassidy
@KG: Google “Shadowrun”. Sorry.
Little Boots
the hell are the night people?
Belafon
@Cassidy: I wonder if anyone has proposed a somewhat credible screenplay for Shadowrun. It would definitely be hard to pull off, but I would pay to see someone try.
BBA
@MikeJ: The first part isn’t Silicon Valley, though. What self-respecting disruptive innovator would deign to take a government job?
Little Boots
@BBA:
a lot I hope, for obamacare’s sake.
Cassidy
@Belafon: I think it’d work better as a cable tv show, personally.
Amir Khalid
@Little Boots:
Be patient. It’s not even midnight yet over there.
Origuy
@raven: If you fly over the southern end of San Francisco Bay, you can see areas of various colors, shades of green, brown, and red, including that shade of red. They are salt evaporation ponds. As the water goes from brackish to briny, different species of algae populate them.
Little Boots
@Amir Khalid:
i know, just being pissy.
Cassidy
@Belafon: There’s plenty of reason to think it would work: Oceans 11, The Losers, Almost Human…
SiubhanDuinne
@raven: That is beautiful, compelling, fascinating, and a bit scary. Sorry about the fishing, but that’s some terrific video.
Little Boots
actually…we do have an oversupply of gun nuts in this country. exporting them does seem one option.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: This was the worst trip as far as weather and fishing in 8 years and we are as content as we could be.
Belafon
@Cassidy: Along those lines, there has been talk for years about trying to make Neuromancer into a movie. I was just thinking it might actually be easier to make Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive into a movie.
fuckwit
That analysis is a little loopy, and tries too hard to connect dots in the most complicated way possible.
It’s not that hard.
What young glibertarians love and worship about the military is the same thing some of them love and worship about guns in general, or fast cars, or CoD, or sports stars, or rock stars, or about Sand Hill Road “Shark Tank” VC assholes, or about Wall Street bazilionaires: POWER. It’s pure machismo. That’s the common denominator.
You are talking about young white males of privilege drowning in testosterone. Power is fun, power is exciting, and power with the privilege (or the illusion of it) to weild it more or less with impunity is exhilirating and addicting– for most people, and especially for privileged teenage boys who believe in their own immortality and are completely convinced of their own awesomeness.
The older I get, the more of human behavior (others’, and my own) which used to bewilder me becomes so obvious and predictable to me. We’re driven by our limbic systems to a huge degree. We’re just monkeys with very dextrous thumbs.
Little Boots
@fuckwit:
drearily true.
Fort Geek
@raven: Greetings from about 40 miles to your west. *hat tip*
Cassidy
@Belafon: I don’t think Gibson translates to movies well. The fans will hate it because it’ll never be “true” enough and it would be overly complicated for people who haven’t read it. That’s why I think a TV series would work best for any cyberpunk property; you have more time to introduce the concepts in small digestible bites.
max
@Belafon: What an idiotic statement. The US military has nothing to do with IRS enforcement.
Dolan/Brecher wasn’t referring to the military actually literally performing IRS lien enforcement, he was referring to the fact that a government without an army tends to (sooner or later) have difficulty collecting taxes or enforcing the law. Federals and Confederates in the Civil War didn’t agree on much, but I am pretty sure they would both agree with Brecher here.
max
[‘It is a hit piece on Prince, after all.’]
srv
@KG:
More like Catch-22
Belafon
@Cassidy: True, unless we let Peter Jackson turn each book into a three-parter (I kid, believe me).
An Orc with a cybernetic arm guarding an elf jacked into an ATM will work for me, whether it’s on TV or in a theater.
Little Boots
@Belafon:
you are a truly awesome geek.
raven
@Fort Geek: Weather got better huh? We’re gone at dawn!
Belafon
@max: Maybe, though I didn’t read it that way. That would be arguing that you can’t have a good judiciary or police force without a good military. His cause and effect seems backwards: It’s the fact that we have a functioning collection system (the IRS) that allows us to have a large military.
srv
@Belafon: Molly had more in common with Hermione. Always carrying Panther Modern and what-not gear in her bag and trying to break into places.
Didn’t anyone love Johnny Mnemonic?
Cassidy
@Belafon: As long as said Orc has a panther cannon and a pink mohawk.
Speaking of geek, I think most libertarian power fantasies always go back to Han Solo and Boba Fett. When it comes down to it, males always fantasize about being the lovable rogue or the baddest man in the universe.
Belafon
@Little Boots: There was one really great (as in geeked out) thing about my going to an engineering school in the late 80s/early 90s: I hit Gibson, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, GURPS and Superheros all at once, and had friends who did live role playing games. We even did a Cyberpunk based LRPG for one guys Junior year research topic.
And yet the number of people I know – outside of WPI obviously – that know any one of those things I could count on one hand.
Little Boots
@Cassidy:
as did ayn rand, I’m sure.
Joel
@MikeJ: I think the implication is that the rule of law is ultimately backed by military force? True in the absolute sense, but horribly simplistic.
Little Boots
@Belafon:
love you. although I’m a very minor geek. lord of the rings/h.p. lovecraft/dungeons and dragons years ago/video games. but you are major. and I love that.
Cassidy
@Belafon: I got into RPGs and cyberpunk in the same time period. Even today, some friends and I get together and play about every three weeks. Aamof, me and a friend just made our own game. We just started playtesting and we haven’t written any fluff, but it seems to be working so far.
Fort Geek
@raven: I was ready to hibernate these past few days…46 is almost freezing. Got severely inconvenienced having to scrape frost off my windshield *grin*
Fortunately I was only driving 500 feet from a friend’s house to mine. Coulda been a survival situation!
/slight exaggerations in places
Little Boots
@Fort Geek:
why don’t we as a society embrace that? everything in the midwest should shut down from december to march.
Mary G
What we did today.
dmsilev
Amazon announces DROONNEEESSS.
If this were the first of April instead of December, I’d have thought it a joke, but they seem serious. When you absolutely positively need something in 30 minutes and are (presumably) willing to pay through the nose for it.
Coming up next, the Amazon Ballistic Delivery Service ™. Orbiting warehouses and re-entry-capable packaging for truly rapid delivery.
Little Boots
@dmsilev:
I’m starting to believe in the end times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQB2-Kmiic
Belafon
@Cassidy: That’s cool.
Belafon
@dmsilev: Actually, I wouldn’t put it past Bezos to install air delivery tubes to everyone’s house to deliver stuff faster. Amazon will charge you at cost for the install, obviously, but they’ll make their money in products sold.
Little Boots
@Belafon:
pneumatic. awesome.
raven
@Mary G: Santa Monica?
Little Boots
can’t believe johnny put me on a delay mechanism
(okay, I totally can.)
Gravenstone
@Belafon: I fondly remember an evening playing Battletech at the former gaming shop in town. I ended up having to intervene in a near fist fight among the high school kids playing Shadowrun the next table over. Seems the rules were written broadly enough that interpretations could become, heated.
dmsilev
@Belafon: And then, at long last, the Internet truly would become a series of tubes.
Gravenstone
@Belafon: Careful what you wish for.
Gian
what does it say in “the Prince” about mercenaries like Prince?
I mean I expect that’s what the full article is trying to get at…
“…if one holds his state on the basis of mercenary arms, he will never be firm or secure; because they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, unfaithful; gallant among friends, vile among enemies; no fear of God, no faith with men; and one defers ruin insofar as one defers the attack; and in peace you are despoiled by them, in war by the enemy.”
http://www.emachiavelli.com/The%20Prince%20and%20Machiavelli%20with%20Quotes.htm
so concludes my lazy contribution
billgerat
@Fort Geek: 46 degrees is almost shorts and flip-flops weather here in the Pacific Northwest.
Little Boots
@Gian:
yikes. literate.
Gravenstone
@dmsilev: Sssshhhhh, don’t give them ideas. Especially when, for a fee, I’m sure someone could disable the reentry packages. Voila, corporate, space borne ballistic weaponry. Someone alert Skynet.
Chris
@Gian:
You could also go all the way back to the Roman Empire and note that towards the end they were outsourcing more and more of their military work to Germanian mercs.
Belafon
@Gravenstone: Since I have totally geeked out this thread, does anyone remember Hardwired?
Fort Geek
@billgerat: One of my old favorite jokes: International Thermometer (that’s the title I saw it under, years ago)…
-40
Californians disappear
Minnesotans button top button
Canadians put on sweaters
Your car helps you plan your trip South
Glocksman
@Gravenstone:
“Hello, Amazon? I’d like to order 5 kilos of weapons-grade plutonium.
Deliver it via Orbital Express™ to my home.
My name is Dick Cheney and I live at x”
Then hack into the drone and disable the reentry thrusters. :)
billgerat
@Fort Geek: I always laugh when my relatives in Georgia put on coats and say it’s cold out at 60 F.
Fort Geek
@billgerat: I usually wear shorts year-round, at least down to the mid 40’s. It’s fun watching my fellow NW Floridians bundling up like they’re at the North Pole.
There’s a point, though, in the upper thirties or so, where even I have to start grabbing for flannel and it ain’t funny anymore *grin*
Narcissus
I think he’s talking about the monopoly on violence in the Weberian sense.
Yatsuno
@MikeJ: I’m still laughing hysterically at that line. The IRS doesn’t need the military for enforcement, all we need to know is where you keep and/or get your money.
EDIT: Although having a squad of my own Marines would be cool. I’d have aesthetic considerations of course.
Liechtenstein
the fact that a government without an army tends to (sooner or later) have difficulty collecting taxes or enforcing the law.
A fact? No army here, and one of the world’s lowest crime rates?
YellowJournalism
@Yatsuno: Suppose they have a catalogue you could flip through to pick out your squad? Think any of them look like Kevin Bacon in “A Few Good Men?”
Yatsuno
@YellowJournalism: There is a division of Marines picked for looks: the parade Marines in DC. They are the ones who end up on TV a lot because they are meant to be the public face of the Corps. So naturally a stint there would be a requirement.
And yes, the NYD did do a tour in the DC barracks, why do you ask? :)
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Little Boots: love you. although I’m a very minor geek. lord of the rings/h.p. lovecraft/dungeons and dragons years ago/video games. but you are major. and I love that.
This just came out. It’s a lot of fun. Geek-Bob says check it out.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Glocksman:
“Hello, Amazon? I’d like to order 5 kilos of weapons-grade plutonium.
Deliver it via Orbital Express™ to my home.
My name is Dick Cheney and I live at x”
Then hack into the drone and disable the reentry thrusters. :)
Better still, just make multiple orders for lots of 3 kilos and tell them to leave it on top of all the other packages…
Lurking Canadian
@Glocksman: if you’re delivering 5 kilos of something without re-entry thrusters, it doesn’t need to be uranium. There’s an appealing irony in bombarding Cheney with the collected works of Leo Strauss.
Matt McIrvin
@Lurking Canadian: Actually that’s only about 150 megajoules, or 0.3 tons of TNT (and that’s not even considering atmospheric dissipation during entry: probably the thing wouldn’t make it anywhere near the ground; it’d just be an impressive shooting star). If you could get it to the surface with most of its kinetic energy, it could do significant damage, but there are easier ways to do that kind of damage.
Science-fiction fans tend to vastly overestimate the efficacy of pure kinetic-energy weapons for attacking targets on Earth, probably because they’ve read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
cminus
I think the people who are croggled by the implication that the military is the ultimate enforcement mechanism for the IRS are missing who the intended audience was for that bit. That portion is addressed first and foremost to libertarians, and it’s a common article of faith among libertarians that all government authority ultimately flows from military coercion. It’s nonsensical to outsiders, but that’s hardly uncommon in libertarian theology.
slippy
@cminus:
This may explain why glibertarians don’t have any respect for democracy: they only know of one tool for social obedience, and it’s the gun. I guess the idea of doing the right thing without being forced to is . . . why they are glibs in the first place. It simply never occurs to them to start with doing the right thing, instead of the selfish, destructive thing.
LanceThruster
War is good business…invest your son (or daughter).