Now imagine that the hawks with razors were the first hawked electric multicopter razors. Many paragliders and balloonists will know what it is to be sliced in the depths of the rotors that day, I can tell you.
bob sykes: If there is a war over Taiwan, it will happen because we went out of way to make it happen. In all our wars since 1945, we were the aggressor, and we lost all of them. China will beat us, too, even if we resort to nukes. Shugart is one of the all too many war criminals who infest our demented Ruling Class. May they all burn in Hell.
Richard Morchoe: Great analysis of a war that it would be stupid to fight. I am old enough to remember when we recognized Taiwan as part of China. So, why do we fight for what we gave up already.
Jim: Or: “Every man is most free-market about what costs him least.” Or: “Every man is most free-market about what impacts him least.”
Jim: I only ever see “free market” used to justify the status quo. As soon as any real free-market-dom erupts begin shrieks from all corners of the land. Silicon Valley Bank is a fair recent example. The automaker bailouts are a more distant example. The concept of “wage inflation” (whereby employee purchasing power dares to increase) is a perennial one. Perhaps we can formulate a kind of inverse Conquest’s First Law: “Every man is most free-market about what he owns...
T. Beholder: Jim says: Even if “free markets” were desirable, (only rarely) Free(-ish) market is mostly an optimization mechanism for usage of resources. For which it’s wise to optimize in some contexts, but not all. Much like production of paperclips, etc. Free market also has a fun little paradox living in it. As one character in “Babylon” (by Pelevin) noted: a truly free market, by definition, allows for services of limiting the market’s freedom (in that case, protection racket).
Michael van der Riet: Where did Shugart get his 44% fatality rate statistic from? Bomber Command and USAAF in Europe suffered almost identical fatality rates of around 60%.
Jim: Roo_ster: “The deadliest weapon in the world today is a biological weapon: The Sub-Saharan African.” LMAO.
Southerner: Mitchell’s Plain, part of Cape Town South Africa, is a serious contender for the title of Murder Capital of the World. Very few Blacks live there. A lot of drug dealers do. I don’t believe that a lot of sub-Saharan Africans live in Detroit either. Detroit does however have a high population of gang members, probably resulting from misguided policies enacted by well-meaning do-gooders. Perhaps the shootings are motivated by wars between drug-dealing gangs.
Michael van der Riet: I believe that much of the effectiveness of English longbowmen came from technique. An Olympic archer will draw a bow as described above, by holding the bow steady and pulling back the string and arrow. A longbowman held the string steady and leaned into the bow. Because it’s a *long* bow, greater distance and velocity are achieved. I have tried this myself with a powerful bow and it’s not nearly as strenuous as pulling the bowstring back.
Albion: As someone who once did archery, I know how tiring it is, and believe me accuracy suffers enormously to the point where you just start loosing an arrow simply to get a rest sooner. There is however ample evidence that (say) during the Hundred Years War the traditional longbowman could sustain draw and release much more consistently and accurately than at any time since. It’s also interesting how there were various developments in armour to counter arrows and equally the advances in the...
Roo_ster: The deadliest weapon in the world today is a biological weapon: The Sub-Saharan African. A contender would be another biological weapon: Immigration, with its communicable diseases and genocidal impact on the host population.
Handle: Selection effect. When conduct of war was labor intensive, the priority enemy weapon asset to take out was humans. As weapon platforms and systems become more and more capital intensive with technological progress the things you want your machines to destroy are other machines. Large scale organized War is still obviously pretty deadly, but has been getting less deadly, and probably that trend will continue. It’s plausibly that shifts the dominant form of homicide from big war to relatively...
Bob Sykes: In all three cases, the great majority of murderers are black Africans. Perhaps we should focus on controlling them.
Gaikokumaniakku: If you feel you were born to be a warrior-king, or perhaps to trample the jeweled thrones of civilization beneath your sandalled feet, just remember: Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. — H.L. Mencken
Gaikokumaniakku: What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king. — Robert E. Howard
Jim: Please consult the old social contract: https://i.ibb.co/d4yDgmS L/old-social-contract.jp g And with the seriousness of a heart attack, please consult the new social contract: https://i.ibb.co/1G9Kj99 d/new-social-contract.jp g Bonus: https://i.ibb.co/8npv84F Z/new-social-contract-bo nus.jpg
Jim: Even if “free markets” were desirable, (only rarely), Bryan Caplan has never been within smelling distance of a free market. He has spent his entire life in the warm, cozy embrace of the least-free of all unfree corners of America. And even if he had wanted to visit a free market, the only plausibly free markets in America are its black markets. This ridiculous notion that capitalists—financiers by any other name—have a moral right to monopolize ownership of everything and jack up prices...
Just imagine if the hawks had razors attached to the leading edges of their wings, and were trained to attack the suspension lines of the chutes.
Now imagine that the hawks with razors were the first hawked electric multicopter razors. Many paragliders and balloonists will know what it is to be sliced in the depths of the rotors that day, I can tell you.