Trump is bad business

Steve Rattner's Trumps Economic Muddle brings up a good point. How can putting in a chief executive whose primary motivation is looking out for himself be good for a company (four bankruptcies!) or for a country?

Realpolitik

A libertarian assessment of power and position of foreign players should dwell primarily on a political union’s capability at directing resources efficiently. Whether authoritarian, democratic or in between the primary criteria of American foreign policy should be to support those that more or less distribute efficiently and disentangle from those that don’t.  Disentangling means releasing the bolts on a pressure cooker containing a dysfunctional system sooner rather than later and never never defend to the end a regime that does disservice to our Declaration of Independence, such as Vietnam’s Diem regime.

The pressure cooker of the middle east is currently Egypt. A libertarian realism would assess that the arms we provide, typically aircraft, will be useless in the revolution that is sure to come. The revolution in Iran is the perfect example of the counterproductiveness of our full on support of a corrupt dysfunctional regime.  That a revolution is sure to come is a libertarian conclusion regarding Egypt’s crony capitalist market disfunction and absence of the rule of law. When Egypt does convert we stand to be on the wrong side, again, with another unforgivable tarnishing of our heritage of liberty and adding another implacable enemy to our list.

A libertarian realism is one that does not put the cart before the horse when assessing the power dynamics within a region. The horse required is a political union whose citizens, not outside recruits, are willing to fight to the death for their cause. It appears that the lesson not learned by our foreign policy experts is that an attempt to use the military to change an outcome of a weak political union is doomed to fail.  Currently in Iraq, American policy is to jawbone a political union among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.  Each of the three sects are unions willing to fight to the death for their own, but not for a unified Iraq.  Libertarian realism would recognize that pursuit of this apparently wrongheaded policy is counterproductive. The evidence for this conclusion is that the few successes in Iraq and Syria have come from the Kurdish pesh merga forces of Iraq’s Kurdistan, the most unified and efficient political union of the region.

Finally, taking sides in a rebellion is counterproductive no matter how grotesque the rebels actions. Assad’s Syria suffers from serious political dysfunction.  The public beheadings of western journalists by ISIS was a rational recruiting and fear mongering tool for establishing a Sunni stronghold in Syria and Iraq.  The braggadocio of a caliphate was tempered by overreach in Kobani, a Kurdish city with a strong interest into not submitting to a Sunni reign.  With this and other setbacks ISIS has now morphed into Daesh, a less imperialistic union practicing a more effective distribution of scarce resources so as to gain political credibility among Sunnis. It’s so much better than Iraq’s tainted distribution by Shiites that Sunnis polled today would indicate a preference to Daesh versus Baghdad.  Destroying ISIS as this point is taking sides in a civil war.

Another rebel group is the Turkish Kurds PKK.  We have taken sides by labeling the group terrorists at Turkey’s behest, yet the Kurds are our ally in the fight against ISIS and so it goes throughout the Middle East.  Taking a neutral position such as Switzerland has a pacifying effect.  Ultimately a pacifying effect is what people want in a foreign policy so that more trade and interpersonal contact is made, also pacifying. Yes a strong military is necessary to defend our citizens and borders but one directed by a foreign policy that doesn’t squander its capabilities. One that pacifies rather than provokes.  

Conservatives versus Libertarians

This Cato debate’s principal insight is that Conservatives come a from a few in command determining and enforcing a social order while the Libertarian perspective is that the social order bubbles up from below from individuals and communities.

Seperate Church and State

Jeb Bush Causes a Stir on Women's Health Issues is an example of authoritarian pandering augmenting tension rather than leadership defusing it.

Saving Tunisia

Saving Tunisia From ISIS s subject that requires thought beyond just do something.

Shoot Me

Rival Insurgents Surprise Syrians Supported by U.S. shows such an abysmal lack of understanding of military and political reality that the consultant group that developed this plan should be sent to the corner with a dunce cap.

Don't Underestimate Hubris

The handwringing over too much money in politics and decrying the Citizens United  Supreme Court decision for allowing billionaires to express themselves with as much money as they wish is amusing, if not hilarious in the case of Donald Trump.  The Donald is a lucky guy who thinks it was his brains that got him where he is today.  There is no evidence that money and celebrity status can grow his thoughtless candidacy beyond a tiny unthinking base of voters.

After the 2012 Presidential Campaign the G.O.P. did an audit on the election and came to the conclusion that brains beats money in politics.  The first aspect of brains is to come to a reasonable decision after gathering and discussing the pertinent facts.  Today’s web based intelligence gathering capabilities anticipate customer needs and wants almost before they can express them which makes for a completely different political tool where each voter’s inclination is determined in a seemingly clairvoyant way.  It puts the top down Fox News political machine in the 1950’s position of selling politics like soapy suds. Top down uses big money to spread a message to the least common denominator while the new fangled big data approach allows for a nuanced campaign bubbling up.

For example every campaign has workers bring those people to the polls that they identify as likely to vote for their candidate.  Ohio was a key state in the 2012 election and the two sides had different approaches.  Big money Fox based advertising blanketed the state with its closed loop developed message.  The Obama team’s big data on the other hand made small economical purchases at what appeared to the opposition as coming from lack of funds but were in actuality smart little bets.  Fox’s sweeping ads attracted as well as insulted voters.  The Obama team knew who had been insulted and gathered them up.  They also had a better handle on who to take to the polls and who to ignore or to let the clueless opposition take and let disappoint in the privacy of the polling machine.  The most hysterically funny political scene, ever, is on the 2012 election night when Megyn Kelly's group has to tell a sputtering Karl Rove that yes, despite all his data to the contrary, he lost Ohio.  Koch brothers et al weren’t amused either.

The audit makes clear that more efficient advertising is required.  Due to federal election laws big money groups can not directly coordinate their activities with a campaign.  Sure there will be a lot of eye winking et-cetera but the problem is that  big data requires really really close coordination so that the outside money will always be the stupid money.  Stupid in the way TV Stations overcharge them and then of course the message is always simple, bludgeoning and repeated ad nauseum so that it can run counter rather than add support.  

The Donald  has free publicity because of his celebrity status so that it appears he has an unfair advantage but then of course there is no accounting for the insults. But once he departs the Republican primary with either a withdrawal or a third party candidacy the G.O.P. still suffers from a thoughtless belief, faith if you will, in a dogma that doesn’t fit well with big data.  Creationism is an example of a science that rejects evidence contrary to its theory. A candidate espousing creationism in the schools is not one to embrace a big data conclusion on anything much less a political campaign.  Nor is he likely to attract an intelligent practitioner of big data to guide him.  A big money operative directing his minions to go find a big data person for a campaign may get a brilliant mercenary, but the mercenary’s light will go out with the lack of intelligent interaction in the king’s court.

The Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court is correct in staying out of the minutia of determining what is and isn’t free speech. That it has the appearance of giving an unfair advantage to the billionaire class is true, but not necessarily so.  On the other hand free speech is a right worth preserving in as pure a manner as possible because there always are issues. Funny though how those pressing issues just float away from memory when the hubris of the actor’s finally catches up to them.