I’m thinking it was a doctoral thesis or something that I picked up from one of my bosses who was an instructor in military history at West Point. It was a hell of an interesting read, because it pulled in stuff from the Venetian arsenal system and made connections between that and the rate of innovation in Venetian commercial shipbuilding that didn’t take advantage of the things done in the arsenals.

Come to think of it, it may have been a doctoral thesis for the Naval Post-Graduate School down in California, because that’s where he’d gone for his post-grad work. It wasn’t his, but it was something he’d grabbed a copy of while he was there, if I’m remembering right. I don’t think it made it into commercial print, but I think it damn well should have.

Could this be it?

William Playfair,”Inquiry Into The Causes Of The Decline Of Powerful Nations”

I wonder if I read that. I would sure like to I have interest in these sort of things.

I think there are some good questions to be asked here, and when you look at things like Apple, where Steve Jobs formed the company, got thrown out of its governance, and then was brought back to figurehead its renaissance… Well, you start to see some interesting things about the people who are involved in these things.

A parallel I’ve noted from my military service is that there are some interesting factors that go into this–A case in point that I’m personally somewhat knowledgeable of is the Engineer School’s (nee Center…) Sapper Leader Course. Originally, that course was designed to serve as a means of bringing junior Engineer leaders up to Light Division leadership standards, due to the Ranger School not having enough slots or interest in providing Engineer leaders with that sort of training–Which was absolutely required for the Light Division to work. Sooo… The Engineer School handed off a mandate to a bunch of folks that they needed to come up with a training course that would enable the cadre for the Light Division Engineer Battalions to at least meet the minimal standards for the Division. This was met, and the early days of the Sapper Leader Course saw some pretty intense training, because the initial cadre were a bunch of semi-outcasts and misfits with the “program”. Those guys did a lot of good things, because they were allowed the room to do it, and because they were dedicated men with clear vision of what they wanted to do. The career-minded folks? They all wanted nothing to do with the program, ‘cos… Hard work, and they didn’t see it as being “good for their careers”, and was risky, to boot–They might not make it through the Ranger School prerequisite training, and that whole SERE School requirement was scary, as was the Airborne thing.

So, flash forward a few years, and the guys who started the place were successful, and were ready to move on to bigger and better things. All of a sudden, the Sapper Leader Course cadre slot wasn’t seen as a risk, and was “good for the career”, aaaand… The careerists took over, colonizing the place. They eventually ran it into the ground, and then the usual sine wave of excellence started happening–One set of cadre would come in, screw the place up, and then the leadership of the Engineer School would go “Oh, my God… We gotta fix that place!!”, and send in good men with a mandate to un-f**k the situation.

It’s a friggin’ life-cycle, once you start to recognize the whole thing. You see similar syndromes down at the micro-level in military units, with regards to things like the Arms Room in a company. Usual cycle there is that a commander comes in, takes over, and then comes to a realization that “Holy f**k-nozzles, my Arms Room is f**ked-up…”. This sometimes happens because the previous commander got relieved due to Arms Room issues, but not always… It’s usually neglect. So, the commander recognizes he has a problem, and then fixes it via assigning a Really Good Soldier(TM) to the Arms Room, and closely supervising them, giving them plenty of support. The Arms Room is thus eventually fixed, and goes on to demonstrate excellence in management under that specific commander. Follow-on commander? The Arms Room isn’t an issue for him, so a policy of benign neglect and ignorance follows, which over a succession of a couple of commanders, results in the Arms Room becoming a disaster area again. Thus, the “Sine Wave of Excellence” syndrome I refer to–You can see this same thing take place across society in governance, schools, and commercial life.

The rate of innovation in a society is somewhat connected to this, because the progression is similar. Main difference is that as a new technology or commercial practice comes into use, it’s usually covering fallow ground, and the original innovator can quite literally get away with murder. The Internet is like that, and by virtue of the fact that the founders like Google have abused their resultant power, we’re going to see trust-busting come in and break them up over the ideological BS they’re pulling. Monopoly issues don’t come into play just over economic factors–You have in our society a demonstrated problem with intellectual monopoly as well, when you see that 90% of political donations in the academy and some highly influential tech companies are going to one ideological side and political party. Action will have to be taken, and it will be interesting to see what works out.

Imagine in you tried to bring *electricity* into common use in today’s political climate. Edison would have gotten away with his sleazy fear-based campaign against AC, and no would could get electricity unless they lived within 3 or so miles of a generating plant.

It’s like aspirin–A doctor familiar with medical testing once told me that if you were to try to bring aspirin on the market in today’s regulatory environment, you’d never be able to do it. Too many “risk factors”; the FDA would never allow it. Plus, we’re really not too damn sure how aspirin even works, to this day. Safer to just not allow it…

Which is one reason I seriously doubt that anyone will ever get flying cars off the ground, in large numbers. The FAA simply won’t allow it, and it will be adopted, if at all, in some country that’s still delightfully unregulated.

I’m a self-admitted huge Heinlein fan, and I don’t think any of his books are not at least very, very good, but of the juveniles I think Red Planet is my favorite.

Looking forward to passing on The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers in another few years.

I can’t believe that so many Heinlein juveniles are out of print. Heinlein may be a Politically Incorrect Dead White Man, but I would be surprised if the books didn’t still sell rather well.