Review of The Fiat Standard, by Saifedean Ammous

I reviewed the author’s previous book about five years ago.  That seems an eternity ago.  It was before the ham-handed responses to the Covid outbreak that had more to do with political and corporate power than with real medical necessity.  There was polarization in the United States, but it wasn’t as bad as it is now, and inflation wasn’t out of control. 

How times have changed.  In 2021, when the lockdowns were still biting with full force, Professor Ammous released The Fiat Standard, which describes the evolution of the modern paper and electronic fiat currency system.  Professor Ammous defined fiat “as a compulsory implementation of debt-based centralized ledger technology monopolizing financial and monetary services worldwide.  The fiat standard was born out of the need for governments to manage their de facto default on their gold obligations.”  Governments are free to alter the money supply by physical printing of money or through “quantitative easing”, which is printing money electronically. 

As usual, Professor Ammous brings a rapier wit to his examination of fiat currency: 

“This was the fiat standard protocol installation, and the whole world copied it: run unsustainable deficits, default by confiscating and restricting the movement of gold, suspend redemption, increase the supply of paper notes, and if you can, try to get other countries to hold your currency as reserve. The U.S. did it best.”

“Governments effectively took over the banking sector everywhere, or depending on who you ask, the banking sector took over governments.  Details of who wore the pants in this relationship are of no concern to this book, which focuses on its bastard spawn.”

“After a century, it is fair to say fiat has successfully destroyed the modern university as a center of learning and research, transforming a once noble institution into a make-work welfare program for nerds, a highly overpriced credential mill, an inescapable debt trap, a country club experience, a political indoctrination camp, and a corporate advertising agency.”

Professor Ammous takes readers behind the scenes to show how the modern fiat currency system evolved.  He also discussed the many ways that the easy production of fiat currency has corrupted modern societies, from investment decisions to science funding to education to family life to the unhealthy diet choices promoted by governments and industry.  I nibbled around the edges of this in my previous post, but Professor Ammous deserves credit for a real deep dive into this widespread corruption of society.   “Very often, fiat’s most catastrophic effect is not price increases but the myriad distortions – and outright destruction – of incentives it brings to many areas of human life,” he warns. Particularly important is his explanation of high inflation as causing people to heavily discount the future. Discounting the future is another way of describing lack of faith in the future.  “With the future so heavily discounted, there is less incentive to be civil, prudent, or law-abiding, and more incentive to be reckless, criminal, or dangerous.  Crime and violence become exceedingly common…families break down under financial strain.”  Sound familiar?

Other major takeaway points are Professor Ammous’s explanation of the concepts of salability across time, space, and scale.  Professor Ammous compared three methods of payment: gold, Bitcoin, and fiat.  Gold has low salability across space, given that it must be physically transported. Fiat has high salability across space and time, given that most fiat currency is electronic.  Bitcoin combines the scarcity of gold with the speed of settlement of electronic fiat currency, but Bitcoin cannot at this time handle as many transactions as the regular fiat currency system.

The main reason for the survival of the fiat currency system is that it keeps governments and corporations in power.  If people are working and hustling to survive, then corporations have workers and governments don’t have to worry too much about people protesting. The FIRE (financial independence retire early) goal is difficult for most people to achieve because inflation is a constant movement of the financial goalposts.  (It’s also a lot harder for people with children; most of the FIRE practitioners choose not to have any.)  If people were more easily able to achieve FIRE, employers would have a harder time finding workers. Yes, fiat currency causes inflation, but the largest enterprises can afford the cost of inflation. Their smaller competitors cannot.  Hence, less competition.

We cannot expect that a Bitcoin or gold standard will create paradise on Earth.  There were, after all, wars and corruption and fraud before modern fiat currency became widespread.  Furthermore, gold or other precious metal currencies can be debased; this happened during the Roman Empire, and has also happened in modern times.  Even Bitcoin might be damaged by a coding flaw (which Professor Ammous discusses in this book). Yet the main point of The Fiat Standard is to describe how the fiat currency system has some useful aspects, but that it is harmful for individuals and countries.  In that, Professor Ammous succeeded. 

It's no wonder that Professor Ammous left academia to set up his own business.  He’s too real and too direct for the tired statists of academia. He’s a young hell-raiser bringing new life to Austrian economics – that strange notion that sound money and freedom (both individual and entrepreneurial) are important.  He is truly anti-establishment in a way that few others are.  It would be greatly entertaining to watch him debate Jay Powell, Janet Yellen, Paul Krugman, or other statists. 

For those who are infuriated – as I am – by high prices for everything, and who wonder how it happened and what might be done about it, The Fiat Standard is well worth reading. 

A Lament for My Major

As a young undergraduate in the late 1990s, I majored in political science and minored in history, mostly because I enjoyed family discussions of these when I was growing up.  I took a lot of courses describing international affairs, domestic politics, comparing different countries, and learning about different periods of history. 

Maybe universities still teach that way.  But it doesn’t seem that way anymore. 

Universities are more interested in regulating and stifling speech than in teaching students.  Since when is the word “American” bad? How does banning that word teach students how to function in the world? How does that teach students how to be scientists or doctors or engineers, or how to do anything else?  Why is it wrong to teach that there are two genders, male and female?  How is it possible for mathematics to be racist?

In modern times, political science seems to be mainly about justifying more control over people, more foreign adventures, and more empowerment of large corporations and transnational institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or the World Economic Forum (WEF). That’s the trend in Foreign Affairs, which I subscribe to.  Many books by professors or by institutions are advertised in every issue; these are usually wordy tomes that prescribes complicated and costly solutions to the world’s woes. Not surprisingly, most of these solutions involve transnational institutions and their poking, prying, and meddling in the national affairs of every country and the affairs of individual citizens.  The academics believe that their academic credentials make themselves superior to everyone else, and that those who lack academic credentials are rubes who need guidance in the form of endless regulations, hectoring, and nagging.  God forbid that we consider returning to a minimal night-watchman state instead of endless programs of questionable utility funded by endless debt and inflation. 

One of my pet peeves in political science is the term “resource curse”.  Stop saying this! Resources are NEVER a curse! Resources, energy, the knowledge of how to harness them, and work are what brought our species out of the Stone Age!  The real curse is rotten, inept, corrupt, and oppressive governments, as well as the corporations and academic ideologues that hijack governments. But if we called it the “government corruption curse” or the “government tyranny curse”, people might start being skeptical of government. Can’t have that; it might be bad for the MICIMATT gravy train.  Hey academics and environmentalists – if resources are such a curse, stop using them. Sell your homes and your cars. Get rid of your smartphones and your laptops. Stop flying to conferences; walk or ride a horse instead. Don’t buy your food at the grocery store or have it delivered; get off your butts and get back to hunting (without modern weapons) and gathering.  Show us how we can live without resources.  Lead by example or shut up. 

The professors and the globalists behind corporations and transnational institutions want a world government.  They believe that the world will function more smoothly – for themselves – if nation-states are no longer sovereign.  Sovereignty, as defined by one of my professors long ago, is supreme legitimate authority within a territory.  Robert Heinlein’s more cynical definition is that “sovereign” is a place in the dictionary between “sober” and “sozzled”.  The bottom line is that the globalists want to suborn traditional nation-states to the authority of transnational bodies.  They are well aware that most people worldwide are deeply skeptical about world government, for many reasons. They won’t subject this to a public debate in every nation.  Instead, they try to sneak it in by treaties, conventions, or simply getting potential future leaders or influencers to sing from the same horrible songbook. 

What is good governance?  What is most likely to bring peace and prosperity to every nation, regardless of culture or religion or demographics?  Many books have been written about this, but it’s hard to beat David Landes’s definition in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations:

1)    Secure rights of private property, the better to encourage saving and investment.

2)    Secure rights of personal liberty – secure them against both the abuses of tyranny and private disorder (crime and corruption).

3)    Enforce rights of contract, explicit and implicit.

4)    Provide stable government, not necessarily democratic, but itself governed by publicly known rules (a government of laws rather than men).  If democratic, that is, based on periodic elections, the majority wins but does not violate the rights of the losers, while the losers accept their loss and look forward to another turn at the polls.

5)    Provide responsive government, one that will hear complaint and make redress.

6)    Provide honest government, such that economic actors are not moved to seek advantage and privilege inside or outside the marketplace.  In economic jargon, there should be no rents to favor and position.

7)    Provide moderate, efficient, ungreedy government. The effort should be to hold taxes down, reduce the government’s claim on the social surplus, and avoid privilege.

I sure don’t see any of Landes’s prescriptions being implemented today in the United States. The Federal Reserve has been debasing the U.S. dollar since 1913.  The federal government is spending money like water; the national debt is almost $32 trillion dollars.  One “solution” to the national debt has been to vastly increase the size of the Internal Revenue Service and tax anyone making more than $600 on side hustles.  Apparently reducing civilian and military spending is anathema. Admiral Michael Mullen, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated in 2012 that the biggest threat to U.S. national security is the national debt.  Over a decade has gone by since he made that speech, yet the national debt has grown by leaps and bounds.  Instead of “hearing complaint and making redress,” the United States government jumped into bed with Big Tech to silence complaint.

There is no attempt to promote energy generation except for ground-based solar and wind, which are politically correct but intermittent.  Mining on Earth is highly restricted.  There is some justification for this in the sense that mining can be very destructive, but little acknowledgement that these resources are needed. Star Trek replicators do not exist.  Some companies are preparing to mine in space, but there seems to be no encouragement by the U.S. government.  No one seems to have thought through the fact that electrification of the economy will require lots of metals, including rare earth elements.  Recycling of rare earth elements and precious metals in electronics seems to get very little attention.  The British are doing it; why can’t we?  Some companies are preparing to mine in space, but there seems to be no encouragement by the U.S. government.  Orbital solar power has been studied by the U.S. government many times (look for the links at the end of the article), but not implemented.  In theory, studying something is a way of making sure that the government does not waste manpower, money, or time on something unwise; in practice, “studying” something is a quiet way to kill it. 

Civilian spending programs seem to be about promoting the homeless-industrial complex and traditional K-12 methods of education, without any attempt to think about whether these programs are solving the problems that they are ostensibly meant to solve.  Are alienating and overcrowded “kid factories” really the best environment for turning children into educated, self-reliant adults?  Ssshhh…you’ll offend the public school unions.  Is a university degree the only way up?  Ssshhh…you’ll offend the professors and the administrators in universities, who need to keep the student loan gravy train going.

The military budget is now over $800 billion dollars, yet somehow it takes a long time to bring weapons from design to front line, and somehow the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy has grown larger than the United States Navy, despite the smaller Chinese military budget.  Somehow various kinds of drones are sneaking into restricted U.S. airspace, within the continental United States.  What are we getting for this $800 billion?  Has the U.S. government been spending too much on power projection (aircraft carriers, long-range bombers, etc.) and not enough on home defense? Is it possible to involve We the People more (here and here) instead of just relying on hideously complicated and expensive high-tech programs? Should we put more effort into securing our borders, our airspace, and our coastlines?  Ssshhh…you’ll offend the military-industrial complex. 

The United States is in danger of being trounced economically or militarily by countries that make stuff and do stuff instead of studying, filibustering, and litigating everything to death.  What do the academics have to say about that?  Mostly nothing useful.

None of David Landes’s prescriptions require any transnational organization of any kind.  The only requirements are understanding of these solutions and consensus within every nation for implementing it. That’s the toughest part. Some people won’t understand; others will understand very well but also understand that honest government would mean a loss of power and profit for them or even imprisonment.

In addition, the concept of the nation-state is eroding.  Many people are more concerned with older methods of identification such as race, religion, or clan.  A few people are talking about “network states”, but Earth is still organized into territorial nation-states; the members of “network states” are still going to be subject to territorial nation-states.  Robert Heinlein warned about the rise of corporate states – that is, corporations that can match the economic power of conventional nation-states -- in his dystopia Friday, which depicts the breakup of the United States and has a hilarious and prescient parody of California.   

It might do academics some good if they went out and got their hands dirty once in a while instead of just wallowing around the halls of academia and government and writing position papers. A few do, but not many; they’re happy in the MICIMATT.  Their lives are good; most other people’s are not.  Political science isn’t about good governance anymore. It’s about academic prestige, corporate donations, and government contracts. My old major has gone down the drain. Not surprisingly, government’s ability to do its job has gone down the drain too. 

NOTE: I edited this on 08-25-2023 to denounce the term “resource curse” and to add some comments about the night-watchman state and about home defense.

Visit to Very Large Array

I recently took a day trip to the Very Large Array, a radio astronomy telescope system located on the vast and uncrowded Plains of San Agustin, and featured in the movie Contact under the pseudonym Argus Array. The nearest town is Magdalena, twenty miles away. 

It was wonderful to get out of the city.  The moment I cleared the city limits and set the cruise control on I-25, I felt myself relax. I love driving through rural New Mexico.  It always feels like I’m driving through a Wild West movie or novel.  My car performed like a champ on the two-hour road trip.  I was driving by myself, but I had companions: George Strait, Alison Krauss, and Natalie MacMaster, as well as others. 

The rules at the Very Large Array are very clear: turn off all electronic devices and put them on airplane mode.  However, the first thing I saw when I walked into the visitor center was a fool gabbling on her cellphone, right under a security camera.  If the very sensitive radio receivers here would be affected by a cell phone signal, as numerous warning signs attested, then this woman should have been promptly removed by security. Astonishingly, there was no security – at least not that I saw. 

The emphasis on no electronic devices is so strong that (tongue planted in cheek) the Very Large Array might be able to raise funds for maintenance or scientific research by hosting a “digital detox” center.  Parents driven to exasperation by their social media-addicted offspring could bring their children there for a week or so. The inspiring, wide views of the surrounding countryside and the rigorous scientific work carried out at the Array might be able to break addiction to social media, which generally ranges from drivel to psychological warfare.  Sedation might be required for the worst cases. 

I enjoyed the self-guided tour. I walked underneath one of the big radio receivers, saw a parabolic system designed to show the propagation of sound, which is best done with a partner. This would be a good exercise for children. When I meet my wife and have a few rascally children of my own, I will take them to the Very Large Array.  I also viewed the Barn, where the radio receivers were constructed, and where they are periodically taken for maintenance by the special transporter trucks. 

On the way back, I stopped in Magdalena to refuel my car and myself. Then I stopped at Water Canyon to ramble around. There was a short trail which I followed by the unreliable method of following people’s footprints in the melting snow. Then I switched to hiking on a muddy dirt road. After that, I hit the road for home.

It’s nice to see a government big project that does something useful and awe-inspiring in these times when the word “government” is usually associated with incompetence, corruption, obscene expense, and abuse of power.  Such a project is not likely to be undertaken today; there has been a turning inward instead of an expanding outward. There has been a national loss of confidence.  People would find some excuse to litigate it to death.  Dr. Carl Sagan, the great scientist and great American who wrote the book which was turned into the movie, would be delighted to see that the Very Large Array is still going strong, but he would be disappointed to see that some of the cultural trends he mentioned in his books, such as a preference for entertainment over knowledge, have gotten worse. 

For further reading:

Carl Sagan, Contact

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World

Law Enforcement In Space

Abstract: This article is an examination of what law enforcement might look like in space, either in an orbital colony, a spaceship, or a surface colony, such as on the Moon or Mars. For more on my non-sworn law enforcement experience, click here and here. This article will limit itself to what is technologically current or possible in the near future. The findings of this article are that law enforcement is going to be very different from what it currently is on Earth, due to the different environments (shipboard/space station vs. colony on the Moon or Mars, as well as different gravity fields) and due to the nature of the people there, at least at the beginning.

Law enforcement in space will be very different. Everything that law enforcement officers on Earth currently take for granted – instant communications through radios or mobile data terminals (laptop-sized computers mounted in patrol vehicles), patrol vehicles, breathing and moving around without an astronaut suit, the one-gravity field that we’re all used to, and the most important part – rapid backup (at least in an urban environment) – all of this will be gone.  Backup might take a long time to arrive, or might not arrive at all. Officers responding to a situation will be on their own. 

Law Enforcement on a Spaceship or Space Station

Officers will need to be trained and equipped for the unique environment that they are operating in. For example, shipboard law enforcement officers will have to deal with periods of acceleration and periods with no acceleration, which means zero gravity. A space station or colony will be like a ship in the sense that it is an artificial environment in space, but it is meant to stay in one place. Gravity might be provided by slowly spinning the space station, but it is unlikely to have the same gravity as Earth. An officer who is used to a low-gravity or zero-gravity environment might have an advantage over a suspect recently arrived from Earth; on the other hand, the suspect will still have muscles and skeletal strength from living in Earth’s gravity field. An officer who has been in a low-gravity or zero-gravity environment for a long time will suffer from bone or muscle deterioration[1], which would put the officer at a disadvantage if the officer has to fight or subdue a suspect hand to hand. However, this would be less of a problem if both the officer and the suspect had been living in the same gravity field for a long time. 

If travel between Earth and space stations or colonies becomes as routine for civilians as air travel is now, then it may be possible to use current laws governing passenger conduct on board airliners as a structure to provide laws governing passengers on liners traveling between Earth and space destinations. Various international protocols govern the security of civilian air travel, including the security of airports. There is no international law enforcement agency charged with enforcing laws governing passenger conduct and airport security; the enforcement of these protocols is the job of national law enforcement agencies.[2] However, air travel is a short-term activity; under normal circumstances, a passenger may spend a few hours both at the departure and arrival airport, and a few to several hours on the aircraft. For longer voyages, such as between Earth and another planet, the circumstances will be different. Laws will have to evolve accordingly.

The legal basis for law enforcement on board commercial ships (passenger and cargo) provide another basis for law enforcement on board spaceships or space stations. Under such laws, the master of an aircraft or ship may use force, or enlist other crew members, to use force to subdue a suspect who is endangering personnel on board.[3] There is also the Code of Conduct for the International Space Station. The commander of the International Space Station crew is empowered to enforce this Code of Conduct. This Code of Conduct was established by agreement between the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, and the member states of the European Space Agency.[4] This code governs the activities of individuals on board the International Space Station.  While there are no law enforcement officers of any nation on board the International Space Station, the Code of Conduct provides a model code that could be applied to commercial space stations or spaceships, if a sufficient majority of nations can agree on what that code should encompass. Such a code might then be enforced by law enforcement officers or crew members on board space stations or spaceships, just as they are enforced today on aircraft or ships. 

Law Enforcement Policy and Procedure

The culture of the country that creates a colony or launches a space station or space ship will make a large difference in what’s tolerated and what’s not, and how much role government and law enforcement will have. Policy and procedure will also depend greatly on how large a colony is and whether it is a military or research base, or one open to general civilian immigration and settlement. In light of the costs of setting up a colony, especially a large colony, multiple countries might pool their efforts and settle a colony using population, leaders, and law enforcement officers from each country. In such a case, the countries would have to be closely allied and culturally related already, so that the personnel (civilian, law enforcement, or military) can work together. For example, a colony jointly planned by Canada and the United States is likely to work much better than a colony jointly planned by China and the United States.[5] 

No matter what the basis of the starting culture is for a colony, the colony will evolve. We’ve already seen this on Earth. The United States started as a colony of the United Kingdom, but soon won independence and went its own way. No one would deny that the United States and the United Kingdom are related, but different. This will become even more pronounced on a colony that is off Earth, whether it is relatively close by (the Moon) or farther away, such as Mars or the Asteroid Belt. After all, traveling between Earth and other worlds will be difficult and take a lot of time[6]. There will be no more instant phone or radio communications except at close ranges.  The different and evolving needs and wants of colonists might well lead to changing or abolishing the laws that came along from Earth[7]. When the laws change, law enforcement officers will have to change what they do and how they do it, just as they do when laws change on Earth. 

Law enforcement is about people. Technology may be used to commit crimes, but it is people who commit crimes. As it was put in Federalist #51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”[8] Colonies, whether orbital or surface, are likely in the beginning to be picked military or scientific personnel, and ruled under the laws of the country that creates the colony.  The rigorous crew selection process will filter out those with criminal records, the mentally ill, alcoholics, and drug addicts – those who are more likely to commit crimes.  In addition, prospective crew members are filtered out if they might not function well in the confined environment of a space station or colony. “From my perspective, the much more difficult skill for an astronaut candidate was being psychologically adept for space travel,” warned Terry Virts, who served as commander of the International Space Station from 2014-2015[9]. 

All of these measures will greatly reduce the likelihood of crime. However, crime is still possible because of other motives or problems. Examples include tempers flaring because people are tired or having a disagreement, or because people who grew up with the “fleecy skies and cool green hills of Earth”[10] become unstable from too much time in a colony or a spaceship, even though they had been psychologically screened before leaving Earth. It is also possible that a colony’s personnel might split into factions over some issue.[11] This might be more likely in a scientific colony or a general settlement colony, as opposed to a military colony with strict hierarchy and discipline.

In the case of a spaceship for short ranges, such as a flight from Earth to a space station, it would be prohibitive to do a full background check on every passenger.  However, it would be possible for governments or commercial spacelines to maintain “no-fly” lists of people who have caused trouble or might cause trouble in the future, just as airlines do now.[12]

In addition, people might become unstable or violent if they are exposed to toxins from outgassing or a poorly functioning life support system.[13] This is not a problem for short-range space ships, but may well be a problem for colonies or space stations.  Cosmic ray bombardment causes brain damage and may accelerate Alzheimer’s disease.[14]  This is more of a problem on space ships or space stations rather than colonies, because colonies can be built underground; the surface dirt and crumbled rock (known as regolith) will stop the cosmic rays. The possibility of crime caused by brain damage or toxic exposure can be mitigated by frequent medical examinations of colonists, including the law enforcement officers, and also by going to great lengths to ensure that the shipboard or colony environmental systems are in top shape. A healthy diet, with lots of green vegetables and supplements of Vitamin A and Vitamin E, will also help. [15] 

Sooner or later, children will be born on these colonies, especially colonies designed for large numbers of civilians such as the orbiting colonies first proposed by Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill in 1974,[16] and more recently advocated by Jeff Bezos.[17] The children won’t be picked for stability and clean records; they’ll grow up there. Some of them might not turn out well, just like children on Earth.  In other words, law enforcement on a scientific or military colony won’t be like Saturday night in a big city on Earth. However, on a colony with large numbers of civilians, it might be. 

A colony or a space station will have to decide what to do with suspects.  In the case of a space station or space ship orbiting Earth, the solution is easy: return the suspect to Earth, where the suspect will be dealt with by his own government. For a colony on the Moon or Mars or the Asteroid Belt, returning a suspect to Earth would be prohibitively expensive.  The outcome will depend on the founding culture and government of that colony, and to what degree the colony has evolved away from its founding government, even without secession.  A small, struggling colony might not have the room or the resources for long-term incarceration. This might make the death penalty more attractive, especially for crimes endangering colonial personnel.  On the other hand, if it can be proved that the suspect’s behavior was caused by exposure to cosmic rays or toxic chemicals, it might be possible to confine the suspect until sanity can be restored by medical treatment.  Lesser punishments might include ostracization by other colonists, loss of privileges, or fines.[18] 

Lastly, let’s consider the junction between law enforcement and military. The human future in space will not always be peaceful.[19] Given the difficulty of calling for or getting reinforcements in time of trouble, as well as the small size and small industrial capacity of a new colony, a colony’s police force might also become its de facto military. There is some similarity between law enforcement and military forces: uniforms, military ranks, a strict hierarchy, use of weapons, 24-7 operations, and a prepared outlook[20]. Furthermore, a colony’s police force, acting in a military capacity, might need the backing of the colony’s population at large. In other words, instead of the current nation-state model of professional military forces (conscript, volunteer, or a combination of both), we might see a return to the militia system as it was once practiced in the United States (and still provided for under U.S. federal law[21]), or as it is currently practiced in Switzerland[22] and the Scandinavian countries[23]. There are some echoes of this in current U.S. law, which provides for the deputization of civilians to enforce laws in some cases.[24] This might become especially important if a colony declares itself independent of whichever government set it up.[25] 

Law Enforcement Technology in Space

Use of force, especially deadly force, will be a problem. Using a gun within a confined spaceship or space station might result in the bullet ricocheting, posing a risk to the officers or others. A bullet might also cause a hull breach, in which the atmosphere would leak into space. A compartmented spaceship or space station would be able to seal off the affected compartment, but this is still something to avoid. This might also be a problem in a colony, whether underground or a dome colony on the surface. Furthermore, in a zero-gravity environment, the recoil of a gun would propel the officer firing it backwards; at least this would not be a problem for officers in a colony, which will have a gravity field, although this will be less than that of Earth[26]. Officers might have to use less lethal projectile weapons such as Arwen[27] or bean bag shotguns[28]. These would still have the problem of recoil in a zero-gravity environment, but they might be less likely to breach the hull of a space station or spaceship. Pepper spray or tear gas are options that do not have the large recoil of a projectile weapon, though there would be some small pushback in a zero-gravity environment, because the compressed air spray system would act as a small thruster on the officer wielding it. Unfortunately, pepper spray or tear gas used against a suspect would be sucked in to the life-support system of the space station or spaceship or colony, which would affect others. In any case, pepper spray or tear gas would not stop a suspect wearing a spacesuit. The Area Denial System, which uses microwave radiation to produce a burning sensation on human skin, might be another option for law enforcement officers in space.  However, it is designed for crowd control rather use against individual suspects, and it is not a hand-sized weapon.[29] Furthermore, it might not affect individuals wearing a spacesuit. The Area Denial System might be best used for a large colony in which crowds are possible. Tasers are another option, but these have limited range, and they will not be effective against a suspect wearing a spacesuit.[30] Other devices for entangling and restraining might prove useful, but these devices have not been used enough for any definitive consensus on their usefulness.[31] More emphasis on de-escalation might help,[32] but if de-escalation worked all the time, there would be no need for law enforcement at all – a concept lost upon those who clamor for #DefundThePolice.

Technical surveillance and the size of the colony will do a lot to deter crime. Technology like CCTV, as well as monitoring of the colonists’ communications, will very likely become part of any space station, spaceship, or colony. While there is a lot of concern about privacy here on Earth[33], those who are on board a space station, spaceship, or colony might be comfortable with living in a proverbial fishbowl. (Ask the residents of the International Space Station about that – the total living space is the size of a large house, which sounds nice, but you can’t just take a walk or a vacation. Everyone will know your quirks and what you’re up to.[34]) Anyone who does anything annoying or criminal would be rapidly found out, especially in a colony with a small population. 

While CCTV and communications monitoring will be easy, more specialized work such as forensic investigation may be difficult. Bodies and other evidence might have to be sent to Earth for analysis, or detectives and other specialists brought from Earth, at least until colonies are large enough to have their own police forces and their own forensic laboratories and personnel. This is similar to not expecting cruise liners or air liners to have on-board police and forensic laboratories. However, this solution would only be useful for space ships and colonies near Earth. It would be prohibitively expensive for space ships and colonies farther out. One major barrier to establishing forensic facilities on colonies, or just in space stations, is the cost of lifting cargo.  Though launch cost is going down, at this time it costs roughly $1200 per pound to lift cargo into orbit via SpaceX’s Falcon 9.[35]  This means that at least initially, colonies are unlikely to have forensic laboratories that can rival those available to law enforcement agencies on Earth. 

Conclusion

Law enforcement in space is coming. It will happen bit by bit. New law enforcement agencies might be established, or current law enforcement agencies might have their mandates extended.  Colonies, even those set up by the same government, will soon grow to have their own cultures; this will in large part be guided by distance from Earth and the unique conditions on each colony.[36] Culture matters, both on Earth and in space for law enforcement.  Those countries that are first to establish a military and law enforcement presence in space are going to be the ones that dictate what space law and space law enforcement evolves into. 

For further reading:

[1] Iddo Magen, “The Dangers of Zero Gravity,” Davidson Institute of Science Education, Weizmann Institute, Israel, February 27, 2017, accessed December 19, 2021. Vision problems have also cropped up in zero-gravity: Scott Kelly, Endurance (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), 139-141.

[2] “Aviation Security: The Role of International Law,” Paul Stephen Dempsey, https://www.mcgill.ca/iasl/files/iasl/aspl_633-2015-dempsey_aviation_security.pdf, accessed May 29, 2022.

[3] Lee Seshagiri, “Spaceship Sheriffs and Cosmonaut Cops,” Dalhousie Law Journal, October 1, 2005, 492, https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1886&context=dlj, accessed May 29, 2022.

[4] Code of Conduct for International Space Station, https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/1214.403, accessed April 3, 2022.

[5] For much more on cultures and civilizations, see Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (New York: Touchstone, 1996).

[6] Depending on how close Mars is to Earth, a radio signal might take from 4 to 24 minutes to go from Mars to Earth.  Thomas Ormston, “Time Delay Between Mars and Earth,” European Space Agency, https://blogs.esa.int/mex/2012/08/05/time-delay-between-mars-and-earth/, accessed December 26, 2021.

[7] Albert A. Harrison, Spacefaring: The Human Dimension (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press), 234-237.

[8] Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, “Federalist #51”, https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60, accessed September 4, 2021.

[9] Terry Virts, How to Astronaut.  (New York: Workman Publishing, 2020), 165.

[10] “The Green Hills of Earth,” The Green Hills of Earth/The Menace from Earth (Riverside, NJ: Baen Books, 2011)

[11]Charles Wohlforth and Amanda Hendrix, Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets (New York: Pantheon Books, 2016), 191-93.

[12] Michael Bartiromo, “No-Fly Lists: Major Airlines Reveal How Many Passengers Are Banned From Their Flights,” Fox News, July 18, 2021, https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/no-fly-lists-major-airlines-how-many-passengers-banned, accessed May 30, 2022.

[13] Albert A. Harrison, Spacefaring: The Human Dimension (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press), 124-128.

[14] Chris Impey, Beyond: Our Future In Space.  (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2015), 115.

[15]  Albert A. Harrison, Spacefaring: The Human Dimension (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press), 51.

[16] “O’Neill Cylinder Space Settlement,” National Space Society, https://space.nss.org/o-neill-cylinder-space-settlement/, accessed September 4, 2021.

[17] Alexandra Ma, “Jeff Bezos Wants Floating Colonies in Space With Weather Like Maui All Year Long—Here’s What He Thinks They’ll Look Like,” Business Insider, May 10, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-proposes-floating-colonies-with-weather-as-good-as-maui-2019-5?op=1, accessed September 4, 2019.

[18] Albert A. Harrison, Spacefaring: The Human Dimension (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press), 237.

[19] For example, see Joshua Carlson, Spacepower Ascendant: Space Development Theory and a New Space Strategy. Independently published, June 2020.

[20] Jay Fortenbery, “Police Militarization in a Democratic Society,” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, June 13, 2018, accessed August 29, 2021.

[21] Militia: Composition and Classes, 10 USC 242, https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title10-section246&num=0&edition=prelim, accessed August 29, 2021.

[22] John McPhee, La Place de la Concorde Suisse. (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1994).

[23] Elisabeth Braw, “There Are More and More Threats that Militaries Can’t Stop. People’s Forces Can Help,” DefenseOne, March 15, 2018, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/03/norway-peoples-force-preps-threats-military-cant-stop/146705/, accessed January 2, 2022.

[24] David B. Kopel, “The Posse Comitatus and the Office of the Sheriff: Armed Citizens Summoned to the Aid of Law Enforcement,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, pp. 802-805, https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7539&context=jclc, accessed May 29, 2022.

[25] Robert Heinlein’s Red Planet and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are both about colonies seceding from governments on Earth.  Both books feature the use of militia forces using tools and arms on hand to win their cause.

[26] Mars has 38% of Earth’s gravity; the Moon has 17% of Earth’s gravity.  Kate Broome, “What is the Gravity on Mars vs Moon vs Earth,” December 12, 2017, https://sciencetrends.com/gravity-mars-vs-moon-vs-earth/, accessed December 19, 2021.

[27] Arwen Less Lethal, http://arwenlesslethal.com/launchers/ and http://arwenlesslethal.com/munitions/, accessed August 31, 2021.

[28] Larkin Fourkiller, “Less Lethal: Bean Bag Rounds,” Police, March 1, 2002, https://www.policemag.com/338860/less-lethal-bean-bag-rounds, accessed August 31, 2021.

[29] Active Denial Systems FAQs, U.S. Department of Defense Joint Intermediate Force Capabilities Office, https://jnlwp.defense.gov/About/Frequently-Asked-Questions/Active-Denial-System-FAQs/, accessed September 4, 2021.

[30] The different Taser products are compared at https://taser.com/products/, accessed September 5, 2021.

[31] Josh Cain, “New BolaWrap Lasso Device Has Only Fully Wrapped an LA Suspect Once, But Police Give It High Marks,” Los Angeles Daily News, August 5, 2020, https://www.dailynews.com/2020/08/25/new-bolawrap-lasso-device-has-only-fully-wrapped-an-la-suspect-once-but-police-give-it-high-marks/, accessed September 4, 2021.

[32] Verbal Judo, https://verbaljudo.com/about/, accessed September 4, 2021.

[33] “Privacy,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, https://www.eff.org/issues/privacy, accessed September 4, 2021.

[34] International Space Station Facts and Figures, NASA, May 13, 2021, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/facts-and-figures, accessed August 28, 2021.

[35] Denise Chow, “To Cheaply Go: How Falling Launch Costs Fueled A Thriving Economy In Orbit,” NBC News, April 8, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/space-launch-costs-growing-business-industry-rcna23488, accessed May 30, 2022.

[36] Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, (New York: Random House, 1994), 337, 384.

What's Next For Work?

Work is usually unpopular.  Sometimes work shifts are nights, weekends, and holidays. Sometimes work is physically difficult or dangerous.  Sometimes it’s boring.  Sometimes work involves dealing with people who are angry, violent, insane, dishonest, or ignorant. That’s not just for law enforcement or other first responders; people in other jobs can encounter these as well.  They might be managers, coworkers, or the public. Sometimes work involves a horribly long commute; I had a commute like that a few years ago.  It’s no wonder Scott Adams has done so well with Dilbert.  For many people, work is hell.  It’s no wonder that being paid not to work during the initial stages of the pandemic became so popular.

Yet no goods or services will be produced without work, defined here as putting energy, resources, and knowledge together to produce goods or services that people want.  This includes the goods and services demanded by people who don’t want to work.

Those who flat-out don’t want to work seem to think that either the world (the rest of us) owe them a living, and that any goods they want come out of Star Trek replicators at Amazon warehouses.  A 3-D printer is not the same thing.  Some just beg and hustle on the streets, even though businesses are offering signing bonuses for employees.  Others seem to think that they can be social media influencers, or professional gamers, or make big money by posting videos on YouTube. Young women are flocking to OnlyFans.  Hey, why work when you can pose and strip at home?  However, for every one of these people who becomes famous and rich, there are many who are not famous and not rich. Many are called, but few are chosen.  It would behoove these I’m-too-cool-to-work social media wannabes to remember that there would be no social media without the people who do real work to maintain the infrastructure of those companies and of national and global communications networks. 

“All work is honorable,” said Secretary Colin Powell in his autobiography.  Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese poet, said that “you work that you may keep pace with the Earth and the soul of the Earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession…”  However, Gibran was writing during a time when most people in his country worked on their family farms, growing food mostly for themselves.  Powell rose from humble roots to the heights of power in Washington D.C. at a time when the United States was more cheerful and prosperous.  We can forgive a harassed, overworked customer service representative (for example), or someone working two jobs, or a weary first responder drafted for overtime at the last minute, for regarding work as a tiresome and pointless daily grind rather than something noble and honorable. Having the U.S. Federal Reserve inflate the dollar so much that a worker’s work is not rewarded doesn’t help either.

Pay and hours are, obviously, a big problem. It shouldn’t be a surprise that most people are going to be cynical about working if they are getting minimum wage while the C-suite crowd enjoys private yachts and multiple mansions.  CEOs who live that lifestyle and wonder why they are having trouble finding employees should look in the mirror.  However, skill and experience and training also count for a lot. Yes, there really is a reason why being a nurse or engineer or lawyer pays a lot more than stocking shelves or sweeping floors.  Yet those who stock shelves, sweep floors, or flip burgers are also contributing to the bottom line, even if it’s not high-skill labor. They deserve to be paid well too. Their work may not be high-skill, but it is usually more physically onerous.  The C-suite crowd would do well to remember an old saying from the Soviet Union: “They pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work.”

Workers don’t have to put up with low-skill/low-wage work.  If you are in one of these jobs, do not expect corporate chieftains to have a sudden change of heart about your paycheck or working conditions.  Learning new skills is easier now, thanks to various online courses. CompTIA paid off a lot for me!  Thanks to CompTIA, I was able to leave my non-sworn law enforcement job and get a bigger paycheck, and it cost a lot less than a traditional university!  People, the choice isn’t either high-priced universities or low-wage retail work. There are other options.  You aren’t trapped.  I did it! You can too!  Don’t delay; something that is truly low-skill will sooner or later be automated: examples here, here, and here.

It is also time to reconsider the 40-hour work week. It worked well in the past, when inflation was lower and women generally took care of home chores. Now most women work full-time. Men and women return home tired. There isn’t much spare time to cook, clean, do laundry, or just rest.  Again, nothing can be produced without people working, but forty hours per week was not handed down from Mount Sinai.  Some companies and municipal agencies have tried a 32-hour work week with promising results.  Others want to go beyond 40 hours; they seem surprised at the backlash.  (Workers aren’t robots who never get tired? Gee, they didn’t teach that in my executive MBA program!)  Working from home also addresses the problem of working people spread thin between work and home chores in the sense that someone working from home can, for example, start a load of laundry and then clock in for work (I do this), but not every job can be done from home. 

We are not about to enter some golden age where robots do everything and we can all take it easy forever. (Yes, ChatGPT is a step forward in artificial intelligence. No, it will not pick up trash, fix roads, clean bathrooms, etc.)   Work is not going to go away. Those who are able to do so should work; those of us who work should never be obliged to support laziness.  But workers are going to have to feel that their work is rewarded and that they aren’t the only ones working.  

We might reward work by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, which legalized the income tax, and discourage laziness by increasing consumption (sales) taxes. That way, those who work will keep more of the money they earn, and those who don’t want to work will find that their life becomes more expensive, which might encourage them to work.  We might also accept that some people prefer gig employment rather than the standard 40-hours-per-week daily grind; encouraging this instead of discouraging it by increased IRS scrutiny would encourage more people to work by preserving the option of gig employment.  Abolishing the U.S. Federal Reserve and its quantitative easing (printing of money) will help too.  Debasing currency never creates prosperity; only work and freedom create prosperity.  Somehow, politicians around the world can’t be bothered to learn this lesson. 

Employers need to remember that the pre-Covid days of employment aren’t coming back. People are less willing to put up with Dilbert pointy-haired boss management practices or annoying coworkers. They are not going to want to commute if it is possible to work from home, at least on a hybrid basis.  Those employers who cannot be bothered to acknowledge this are going to find their workers leaving for employers who do.

Visit to Roswell UFO Museum

I recently went to the UFO Museum in Roswell, NM.  I’ll give it a mixed grade – some schlock, some serious stuff.  The best part was the library, which had many books and some DVDs.  Again, some of it was serious, and some was New Age or other schlock.  One of the books was on how to survive 2012 because Earth’s magnetic poles would supposedly flip. I’m writing this 10 years later; somehow I survived without reading or even knowing about that book. I guess I’m lucky. One of the pictures on the wall was of the saucer section of Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise, as depicted in the first three Star Trek movies, but minus the engineering section and drive nacelles. That was utterly shameless. If there really are aliens out there, it would be quite a coincidence if their starship looked exactly like the U.S.S. Enterprise. (Side note: The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Little Green Men” provided an explanation for the Roswell incident.)

Of course, the crash or other incident wasn’t in the city of Roswell, but in one of the remote areas out of the town. I drove through that remote area on US-285 to get to Roswell. It’s very desolate out there.  There aren’t many gasoline stations, and not much cell coverage; if you drive this road, be sure your vehicle is in good condition and has a full tank! 

Something may have happened back then, but there is so much fluff and schlock that it is hard to tell what, if anything, really did happen. 

It is possible that there are technically advanced alien civilizations out there.  It is even possible that they may have visited or monitored Earth.  I don’t give much credence to alien visits to Earth in pre-industrial times. Earth’s existence might have been known to astronomers from other planets through the use of telescopes that take advantage of gravitational lensing which would be able to see Earth-size planets.  However, in pre-industrial times, with no radio transmissions leaking into the cosmos, no nuclear weapons tests or uses, and no satellites, Earth would be much less obvious to any alien species exploring our area of the Milky Way Galaxy.  Curiously, the Roswell incident happened after Earth had become industrial, just two years after the first detonations of nuclear weapons, and only a few hours’ driving time from the Trinity site, where the first nuclear weapon was tested.

One of the great notions encouraged by the Museum and by many others is that yes, a space alien starship crashed on Earth in 1947, but it was hushed up by the government of the United States, either to prevent domestic panic, or to prevent the governments of hostile nations such as the Soviet Union from learning that there might be other civilizations, with other technology that might be turned against the United States. 

The domestic panic excuse seems overblown. Remember what the United States was back in 1947: the world’s preeminent industrial power and the only nation with nuclear weapons.  The United States emerged triumphant and undamaged from World War II, the greatest conflict in human history.  There was much more national self-confidence back then, and – very important – much more trust in government.  So why bother covering it up?  Possibly the Truman Administration would have been concerned about a panic similar to that caused by the 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ classic The War of the Worlds.  However, President Truman could just as easily have revealed the presence of aliens to the nation in the calm manner of the “fireside chats” used by his predecessor, President Roosevelt.  He would have been able to describe what happened in a manner designed to avoid panic, using the same techniques that had been practiced during World War II to keep the population calm and enthusiastic about fighting and supporting the war effort. Moreover, it would have been fairly easy to return the United States to a war footing in 1947, only two years after World War II ended.  It would have been possible to hastily establish a presence in space, including armed spacecraft. For a fictional description of this, try Allen Steele’s V-S Day, or Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series.  The scientists brought from Germany to the United States via Operation Paperclip would no doubt have been able to contribute to a crash effort to establish a U.S. presence in space before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin.

But none of this happened. Instead, there was the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the unrest of the 1960s.  The Soviet Union, not the United States, was the first to put a man into space. The United States went to the Moon with the Apollo program, but did not stay.  All of this taken together rather strongly suggests that there wasn’t an alien crash or other form of alien contact at Roswell in 1947. There are two alternative explanations.  One is that yes, there was a crash and it was hushed up by the “Deep State”, a catchall term that describes the intelligence services, the armed forces, and the permanent civil service.  However, the Roswell incident happened in July 1947; the CIA was established in September 1947 – hardly enough time for CIA’s influence to become pervasive.  Furthermore, many of the modern intelligence services did not yet exist.  The other interesting explanation is that the government has chosen to ignore or wish away the matter for fear of looking incompetent or impotent.  If that was the choice, it wasn’t much of one; governments the world over are regarded as exactly that, even in those countries where the people are not allowed to do so openly. 

It has now become much more fashionable to discuss UFOs, or the more modern term: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).  It is now openly discussed in the mainstream media and by NASA and the Department of Defense.  Why the sudden interest?  Are aliens truly slavering to invade Earth?  If so, what exactly is it that Earth itself has to offer?  What resources are on Earth that could not be extracted from the Asteroid Belt or the Oort Cloud?  Colonization would be difficult on a planet of almost 8 billion people, and that presumes that the aliens are sufficiently like us to find Earth’s biosphere and gravity compatible. Or is the sudden interest to distract a divided and angry populace from high inflation and supply chain disruptions caused by a ham-fisted response to Covid, as well as other machinations of Big Business and Big Government?  Again, it’s possible that there’s someone out there, but the distraction thesis has merit. If the U.S. government is seriously concerned about an alien invasion, it should be doing much more to defend against it. Instead, we have the same old interventionist foreign policies, debt piling up, no serious attempt to harden infrastructure, no attempt to build High Frontier or a similar program to construct defenses against orbital threats.  The Air Force recently unveiled the B-21 Raider, a new stealth bomber that is meant for flying and fighting in Earth’s atmosphere; it cannot fly into space.  There is the fledgling U.S. Space Force, but as of now, it does not have any fighting spacecraft.  While nothing like the ships of Star Trek or Star Wars is possible right now, it would at least be possible to establish armed space stations for planetary defense, and back them up with ground-based defenses. For a fictional description of what that might look like, try Nick Pope’s Operation Thunder Child and Operation Lightning Strike.  Furthermore, there’s no real attempt to prepare the American people for an alien invasion or for any other kind of war, as is done in Switzerland, Israel, or some of the Scandinavian countries – and this despite the fact that the U.S. government has already admitted that the homeland is no longer a sanctuary. 

The subject of whether anyone else is out there deserves far more serious study than the fluff at the UFO Museum, or the constant evasions of the government.  Perhaps the proposed National UFO Historical Records Center will be able to provide that.  When it opens, I’ll stop by and write a blog post about it. Stay tuned!

The journey home took me through a different area of New Mexico.  I drove through many small towns, some of which were beautiful, and some of which were run-down.  I stopped at Valley of Fires Recreation Area near Carrizozo.  The sunset was beautiful.  New Mexico really is the Land of Enchantment; I’m glad I moved here.  The park was in great shapes: clean restrooms and a short trail through the frozen lava. It’s nice to see a government agency doing something right for a change. 

For further reading:

Nick Cook, The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology

Carl Sagan: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Review of No Other Road to Freedom, by Leland Stowe

No Other Road to Freedom is a collection of Leland Stowe’s dispatches for the Chicago Daily News during the first years of World War II, before the United States declared war.  Nowadays, a reporter or freelancer can jam out an article on a laptop or tablet and then upload it or email it to wherever it needs to go. No muss, no fuss, unless there’s no Internet access. 

In 1939, life was very different. No Internet! Leland Stowe and his pal Bob Casey, a fellow reporter, had to fly to Europe via flying boat – a large piston-engine aircraft which landed and took off on water.  Many of us, myself included, detest being cooped up in narrow seats on modern airliners with indifferent service, but at least we’re getting there via jet propulsion – a lot faster than those old piston-engine aircraft.  When in war-torn Europe, he got around via ship, train, cars on weather-damaged and war-damaged roads, and finally home via slow piston-engine aircraft. The book has a pull-out map of Stowe’s travels, which were extensive enough to make any modern “digital nomad” happy.   

World War II was long ago, and Stowe died in 1994.  Yet his writing is fresh and exciting.  He was there for the German takeover of Norway, which was accomplished with very little bloodshed. He was there for the Winter War of 1940, in which Finland, all by itself, fought off an invasion from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union won, but the Finns extracted a stiff price for the invasion.  He described how the Finns set aside political and class differences to repel the invasion, and how the Finnish women (whom he referred to as “Lottas”) filled in many jobs so that the men could go to the battlefronts.  Stowe skewered British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s response (no arms or troops, but allowing British citizens to join the Finnish army after the Finnish defenses had been broken): “Here at last was old Creeping-Paralysis Neville Chamberlain hobbling frantically toward a five-alarm fire with a teacupful of water.”  His account of sharing an ambulance with a mortally wounded British fighter pilot in Greece was also eye opening.

The most relevant part of No Other Road to Freedom for those of us reading it long after World War II is a dispatch entitled “The Real Menace to America.” In that one, Stowe correctly named Nazism for what it was – a different form of Communism.  (The word Nazi is a contraction, like writing “can’t” instead of “cannot”. The full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Worker’s Party.)  Stowe referred to Soviet Communism as Red Bolshevism and Nazism as Brown Bolshevism.  He stated bluntly that Nazi Germany would not fight the United States in a military engagement, but would seek to seize the United States from within.  Stowe listed a lot of problems that we see today: “excessive materialism in certain strata of our society…lack of faith prevalent among so many of our American youths; the unbridled selfishness with which so many Americans, rich or poor, put their own interests and pocketbooks above the welfare of the nation and the swift completion of its defenses.” Stowe also called Nazism “political syphilis” and discussed in several of his dispatches in his book how German diplomats and businessmen worked hard to pave the way for the arrival of German forces, or to facilitate the election or installation of leaders, such as Vidkun Quisling of Norway, who would work with Nazi Germany.

I loved Stowe’s fresh, clear writing about what he saw and what he learned. Sadly, it looks like we’re facing the same thing again, against an opponent that is a lot stronger than Nazi Germany ever was. At the very least, it gives credence to the idea that history moves in cycles or “turnings”. 

Today the primary menace to our country is Communist China.  The U.S. government openly stated in the 2018 National Defense Strategy for the United States that the “homeland is no longer a sanctuary”. The United States is divided so badly that many are talking about another Civil War.  The “political syphilis” that Stowe warned about spreads a lot faster thanks to the Internet and social media. Many current and former U.S. officials have been influenced by Communist China.  Stowe described it well: “The most important factor of all was a paralyzingly efficient revolutionary technique. This was the unseen war, and the truly undeclared war.  This was the thing which poisoned a nation’s morale, divided its people into bitterly hostile groups, undermined its defense forces, cripped its industrial production, disseminated fear and confusion.” (Italics were Stowe’s, not mine.)  And this: “The Nazi technique of conquest from the inside is already a menace to American parliamentary government and our free institutions – yet many Americans will not face this fact.” Sound familiar?  Our nation is divided into bitterly hostile groups, we haven’t as much industry as we did in the twentieth century, and even the U.S. military is being crippled by cultural Marxism, as well as by complacency and bureaucracy. 

The solution to the threat of Communist China is the same that Stowe prescribed to vanquish Nazi Germany: be resistant to the divisiveness spread from abroad and by those at home who are so convinced that our country is terrible that they would welcome its destruction, or those that hope that it happens so that they can gain power or money from it.

Stowe’s writing is fresh and relevant to our current situation. It would be nice if people in high places would read this book and learn the lessons from the past, but they’d rather lead, not read. 

Review of Tangled Up in Blue, by Rosa Brooks

I finally had the chance to read Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City, by Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

I enjoyed this book in large part because Professor Brooks’s experience and background are similar to mine. Like her, I have an academic background – B.A from the University of California at Santa Barbara, M.A. from California State University, San Bernardino.  Like Professor Brooks, I served in law enforcement for a time, though unlike her, I was not sworn.  I was a courthouse security guard.  Read more about that here and here.

She came to many of the same conclusions that I and others have – that there are too many laws for police to enforce, that many of society’s problems are dumped on police, and that it is incredibly difficult to carry out the multiple jobs of a police officer: enforcer, social worker, chaplain, therapist, EMT, etc.  The difference between myself and Professor Brooks is that she was better able to adapt to those multiple roles. If I ever return to law enforcement employment, it will be as a civilian. I simply do not have the endless amount of patience required for working with the public, especially during these times when it’s fashionable to hate law enforcement. 

Particularly laugh-out-loud funny was Professor Brooks’s description of mentally switching between the world of frontline law enforcement, in which opinions and suggestions for improvement are expressed in blunt, profane language, and the world of academia, which she describes as passive-aggressive.  Her description of the arrest process is also clear and blunt.  “Try hard not to get arrested,” wrote Professor Brooks dryly – good advice for all of us.  Chris Rock offered some similar advice.

I also enjoyed Professor Brooks’s description of how she developed her Police for Tomorrow initiative, which is described here and here.  Encouraging police officers to talk about what they are exposed to, what they are doing, and why they are doing it are all good things.  My only disappointment was that while Professor Brooks raised the problem of too many laws to enforce, her Police for Tomorrow initiative does not seem to include a call for any reduction of laws in general, whether municipal, state, or federal.  It’s all very well to teach law enforcement officers empathy and de-escalation and the origin of the current legal system, but if their political masters keep on creating laws, then law enforcement officers will have to enforce those laws. Surprise, surprise – giving police officers laws to enforce means that they might sometimes use force.  Giving police less work to do – that is, less laws to enforce -- means that they will have to use force less often.  If our political “leaders” – I use the term loosely -- really want to reduce officer-involved shootings and other uses of force, they can start by going through the legal codes that they and their predecessors created and revising or eliminating laws and regulations that may once have served a purpose, but no longer do.  The buck stops with the political leaders.  Oh yes, one more thing: if politicians want to jump on the #DefundThePolice bandwagon, they can start by defunding their own police protective details.  Similarly, if protesters want to be really revolutionary, they would demand that politicians start revising or eliminating laws. Tearing down statues and rioting and looting doesn’t get rid of bad or obsolete laws.  Police for Tomorrow fellows are required to complete a capstone project; I suggest that starting or assisting a campaign to reduce the number of laws on the books might be a great capstone project. 

Not every critic or student of law enforcement or law in general is going to go to the trouble of becoming a reserve law enforcement officer.  That’s understandable; not everyone is inclined to do so, and we’re all busy.  However, it would really be nice if the critics of law enforcement, whether in politics, academia, or media (regular or social) would at least try a ride-along with their local law enforcement agency, or try a simulator in which they would have to make the same split-second decisions about whether to use force that real law enforcement officers do.  It would be educational. Many of these critics like to preen about being educated and valuing education, so let them educate themselves. There’s education in the university, and education on the street. To her great credit, Professor Brooks walked in both worlds.  She learned a lot, and we can learn a lot from her book.

Review of Spacepower Ascendant, by Joshua Carlson

Joshua Carlson’s book is a solid contribution to the literature on space power at a time when space travel and space power are becoming prominent topics, both in the United States and abroad. 

Carlson notes that the United States has a choice: cast off the business-as-usual complacency toward space that was a leftover from the 1990s and get serious about having a strong presence in space, or get used to taking orders from China.  Carlson uses several examples of Chinese expansion on Earth to pound home the point that China cannot be trusted to not use space travel against the United States. 

Carlson’s space development theory provides an excellent framework for thinking about why a strong presence in space will be important to the security and prosperity of the United States.  He breaks it down into exploration, expansion, exploitation, and exclusion. That last is where armed conflict is likely to break out, because the point of exclusion is to keep someone else out of a given area, whether through deterrence or the use of force.  Other powers might not take kindly to being excluded from, for example, the LaGrange points, or areas on the Moon or Mars or the Asteroid Belt which might have exploitable minerals.  Carlson correctly notes that the United States has been the leader of exploration of space, but has remained stuck at exploration.  Yes, the crew of Apollo 11 planted the U.S. flag on the Moon on July 20, 1969, but that won’t matter if that flag isn’t defended by a robust U.S. presence on the Moon. While private ventures in space such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are part of the reason why space is becoming more prominent, Carlson correctly notes that companies in space will work with China if China becomes the leader in space expansion and exploitation.  They won’t have a choice.

Carlson outlines two scenarios exploring how the race for space might turn out.  In one, the United States ends up at the mercy of China because the United States does not take space exploration, exploitation, and exclusion seriously enough.  In another, the United States prevails because it takes these three concepts seriously.  He notes that China has thought more carefully through the value of control of space than the United States. “The space competition between the US and China is neither academic nor inconsequential,” warns Carlson.  Carlson also looks at how space war might be waged. It will not look like anything out of Star Trek or Star Wars.  No warp drive, no Death Star, no cloaking devices, no transporters; but there will be missiles, lasers, ships propelled by nuclear energy, electronic warfare, and space carriers – large ships hosting small ships. 

The sad part is that American authors such as Robert Heinlein and Jerry Pournelle had the vision to see the importance of American expansion into and exploitation of space, but that they were unable to persuade those in power of the importance of this vision.  They would both be alarmed at the growth of Chinese power and the complacency in the United States.  In Spacepower Ascendant, Joshua Carlson has taken up the banner of these visionary authors and produced his own visionary work that they would both enjoy reading. Let us hope that this book will be read and acted upon in Washington D.C. It is almost certainly being read in Beijing. 

Star Trek, U.S. Space Travel, and UFOs

I grew up with Star Trek. My favorites were The Next Generation and Deep Space 9. 

            Without going into detail, the main thrust of Star Trek, as envisioned by its creator Gene Roddenberry and his successors, is that Earth becomes politically unified after the Eugenics War and the Third World War (seven hundred million dead was the casualty toll mentioned in Star Trek: First Contact) and then forms an alliance with the Vulcans, which eventually evolves into the United Federation of Planets.  Starfleet serves as the Federation’s exploration and defense force.  All is well, at least within Federation territory, most of the time. 

            To put it mildly, this is unlikely. Set aside the technological miracles, such as warp drive and transporters, which were addressed in The Physics of Star Trek.  Politically speaking, a United Nations (or League of Nations, or some other name) with real political sovereignty -- not the current United Nations which is not a world government, but rather a forum for speechifying and obfuscation by national governments that are not interested in giving away their independence, preachy non-governmental organizations (NGOs), self-serving globalists, and the occasional virtue-signaling celebrity – is impossible.  Robert Heinlein noted in his speech to the 1973 graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy that “the seeds of war are everywhere; the conflicts of interest are real and deep and will not be abolished by pious platitudes.”  It’s safe to say that this hasn’t changed.  And no, it’s not all the fault of the United States, or of President Trump.  The European nations have, to some extent, given up some sovereignty to the European Union – but note that the European Union excludes non-European countries. The members of the European Union are not about to give up their sovereignty to China or Russia or Turkey. 

            The United States started as a federation of sovereign states. Now, sovereignty is vested in the U.S. government. The states are allowed some autonomy, but that autonomy has decreased.  The current sharp-edged political conflict in the United States might be reduced if federalism was embraced again.  In other words, the federal government should be limited to national defense, foreign affairs, immigration, monetary policy, and interstate infrastructure. Everything else should be left to state and municipal governments. Each state and municipal government would find its own way to run its own affairs – which is the point.  Instead, many on the left, and some on the right, want the federal government to impose their vision on everyone else.  That is one reason why the political debate in the U.S. is so angry – each camp regards the other as a threat to its freedom and ideology. 

            If people in the United States can’t understand and accept federalism, even though it is designed into the U.S. Constitution, how could there be a world government, whether called the United Nations or something else? A world government would include countries which do not have a tradition of limited government, individual rights, and federalism – in other words, most countries.  The only real way of making a world government work would be if a) one country was able to totally subjugate all the others – a tough task, to say the least – or b), to have a federal republic in which national governments would be stripped of their armed forces but be allowed to order their own affairs within their own borders as much as possible.  Again, the problem of whose vision would rule would be paramount. Will it be the Western version – individual liberty, limited government, a mostly free market with some government oversight? Or will it be a theocracy, as would be wanted by many people of various religions?  Or will it be Communism, the current governing ideology of China and North Korea? 

            Star Trek and other science fiction has influenced and inspired real space travel – but not as much as might be hoped. Carl Sagan once noted that a senator (he did not say which one) told him that despite Star Trek and Star Wars, there was no significant public lobbying for major NASA projects. This might be because Star Trek and Star Wars show technology that is way too far ahead to be something that the public would lobby for. Most people will justifiably dismiss what is portrayed by both series as nothing that is likely to happen in their lifetimes, and will see little justification in NASA’s various space probes.  A TV series or movie which depicts something that is within human technical capacity now might lead to more public support for NASA. For example, one could create a sitcom about colonial life on the Moon or Mars – or a show about a crew mining the Asteroid Belt.  Instead of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, there could be a show about a space station in Earth orbit, with the crew members discussing stuff like the Van Allen belts, space or lunar mining, comets or asteroids that are coming close to Earth, or many other possibilities.  Or emphasize relationships – what if lovers break up on a confined environment such as a space station or domed colony?  I’m well aware that many good books, fiction and non-fiction alike, have been written about these topics, but the fact remains that many people prefer to watch rather than to read.   

            There is a lot out there – resources, energy, room for colonies great and small.  A few examples of good fiction describing this are Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, or Robert Heinlein’s Red Planet and The Rolling Stones.  It’s time to start turning that fiction into reality. It will take lots of money and effort; this money can be found through less intervention abroad, ending the war on drugs, streamlining the military procurement process so that we have more good-quality weapons systems instead of fewer gold-plated weapons systems that take too long to develop and produce, and having the federal government, as well as state and municipal governments, get out of the way and let people make their own economic decisions.  One of the great disappointments of modern times is that of the West turning inwards – focusing on cancel culture, political Itchy-and-Scratchy fights, foreign interventions – instead of turning outwards and getting back to the can-do spirit of the Apollo missions.  A nation that is currently living in fear of the coronavirus and is engaged in political witch hunts over not wearing masks in public or for having too many Thanksgiving guests is not a can-do nation.  If the United States does not make the most of space, China might – and the results would be dangerous to the United States and the West. 

            Beyond energy, resources, and geopolitics, there is one more reason to revive the moribund space program of the United States – to answer the age-old question of whether there is another intelligent species somewhere out there.  There has been a good deal of speculation about this, some of it sober, some of it ridiculous. I’ll try as much as possible to lean toward the sober side. 

            Let’s state the obvious – our galaxy is very large.  There are many stars, most of which are likely to have planets.  Some of these might harbor intelligent life.  Where are they?  Some say that aliens have visited Earth for a long time, and that aliens are responsible for helping or encouraging the building of various large ancient monuments.  Why aliens should go to the trouble of flying across the galaxy to teach technical primitives how to build monuments that would do nothing for the aliens has not been adequately explained.  No remnants of alien ground bases or satellites? Really?  More recently, there is the intriguing gun-camera footage from some U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornets.  There have been various other reports.

In The Demon Haunted World, Dr. Carl Sagan also explored this question. He wondered why there were no reports of flying saucers prior to 1947, the year of the incident at Roswell in New Mexico.  (An episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 entitled “Little Green Men” offered its own explanation for what happened there.)  The answer, just possibly, is that nuclear weapons were developed in 1945.  It is possible to monitor a planet for nuclear weapons detonations – the United States has had such satellites since the 1960s. It might be possible for an alien culture to place such a probe sufficiently close to Earth to watch for nuclear weapons detonations, but far enough away so that the satellite would not be noticed by Earth-based radar or telescopes.  We must then ask how the probe would notify the species that left it there in a timely manner?  Radio waves move at the speed of light; sending a message to the nearest star system would take four years.  The Roswell incident happened two years after the first nuclear weapons detonation in July 1945.  That brings us back to science fiction – either the probe was able to report directly back to its creators, which implies a faster-than-light drive, or it was somehow able to send a message that moves faster than light. The Star Trek term is subspace radio. 

            But why these mysterious encounters, such as those reported by the U.S. Navy recently, and various others? If aliens want to send a message to Earth, why not simply contact the governments of Earth openly – say, by landing in front of the United Nations complex in New York City, or by taking over TV or radio broadcast frequencies?  One frequently proffered answer for this is that the aliens don’t want to cause panic on Earth.  (If people can be panicked by a coronavirus that is nowhere near as lethal as the bubonic plague, then maybe there’s something to this idea.)  This sounds suspiciously like the Prime Directive of Star Trek. Why aliens that evolved in a completely different environment and in different directions than humanity can be expected to obey a notion that hasn’t been obeyed by humans with each other has never been properly explained.  Some other answers are available here.

            Another answer is that these objects are not alien, but something created by a hostile foreign government.  There are two which might be capable of such a thing: Russia and China.  So why aren’t they openly dictating terms to the United States? Why, given the tensions between Russia and China and the United States, aren’t these craft completely wrecking the ability of the United States to fight, such as destroying military bases, power plants, communication centers, etc?  China and Russia certainly aren’t holding back out of any humanitarian consideration for the people of the United States.  These countries, as well as many others, would like nothing better than to see the United States trashed, its cities turned to rubble, its citizens reduced to poverty.  Yet it hasn’t happened.

            The question of whether UFOs are a creation of a hostile foreign government on Earth or an alien species is worth pursuing, if for no other reason that the various reported intrusions into U.S. and allied nations represent an invasion into the sovereignty of these nations.  So far, nothing major that cannot be ignored has happened, but these reported incidents point out both technical weaknesses (an inability to capture, shoot down, or otherwise determine the nature of these incidents), and an unwillingness by governments to discuss the matter openly for fear of appearing weak in front of their own citizens or other governments.  For more, click here and here.

            If there are aliens out there, they would certainly notice a serious attempt to exploit Earth’s solar system through mining and colonization of other worlds.  Perhaps that would inspire them to contact our species.  A real space program would give us opportunities for more monitoring of the galaxy – for example, a large radioastronomy array on the dark side of the moon (free from terrestrial radio interference), or the possibility of setting up a free-floating observatory on the edge of the Solar System to take advantage of gravitational lensing.  All of these monitoring systems could be used to look for evidence of alien life.

            The future won’t be Star Trek.  But it could be better than what we have now.  And there might really be someone out there.  Let’s get off our duffs and find out!

For further reading:

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World

Jerry Pournelle, A Step Farther Out

UFO Data Project

Center for UFO Studies