The problem with revolutions

 There is a general principle in engineering that complex systems are almost never built successfully from scratch; they are always evolved incrementally from successful simpler systems. Corporations and governments confirm this observation daily with expensive failures. And there is a similar principle in developing new software systems: always budget and schedule to write the system twice; once to learn how it SHOULD have been designed and the second time to incorporate what was learned from the first attempt.

These principles come to mind as I listen to political activists propose one revolutionary idea after another. Historically, revolutions seldom work. Oh, they often accomplish their initial goal of throwing out incumbents and/or destroying the existing system. But the aftermath is often disastrous – think of the “reign of terror” that followed the French revolution, or the rise of Stalin in the aftermath of the Russian revolution as examples. Yes, the American revolution seemed to be successful, though it too had some nasty side effects, mostly ignored in history.

Here is the problem. Most things of consequence in the real world are immensely complex, far more complex than anyone can fully understand. That certainly applies to anything having to do with governing a nation. Any change, even a small change, is almost certain to involve many unanticipated side effects, some minor, some major. There are simply too many agendas, too many conflicting incentives, too many ways to game the system, too many unexpected interrelationships for complex social things to change smoothly.

Successful change comes about by making small incremental steps, and dealing with the unanticipated problems and side effects of each step before taking the next small step. Yes, it is slow, and I can understand why activists get frustrated and chafe at the slow pace, but in fact in social change as in many other domains slow but steady wins the game.

It is probably good for us to have social activists on the fringes challenging us to do better. It keeps us focused on things we as a culture really should change. But we would be unwise to adopt their more revolutionary ideas. Far better to move slowly and incrementally, so we can detect and deal with the unanticipated, and often fairly nasty, side effects of each small step before taking the next small step.

The reparations question

I have noticed that the accusations people make often tell more about themselves than about those whom they accuse. This comes to mind as I read about the various liberal groups proposing reparations for the descendants of black slaves.

If the proposal were to pay reparation to the slaves themselves I would understand it and support it wholeheartedly. But why should the decendents of slaves, several generations later, be entitled to reparations? And why just to blacks? What about others who have faced systematic discrimination in our society like women, Jews, immigrants, Asians, the Irish, Native Americans, the handicapped, the poor, etc. etc? Indeed, almost all of us have ancestors who suffered discrimination and exploitation somewhere.

No, what I see here is clearly racism from the very people who are so quick to accuse anyone else who doesn’t agree with them of racism.  And it couldn’t be more clearly a racist proposal – it proposes to offer reparations explicitly on the basis of race, and exclusively to one race – how much more racist could one get?

Recommended: Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, 2nd Edition

This is a recommendation, for those sufficiently interested in military matters, for Wayne Hughes’ 2003 book Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, 2^nd Edition, which is a revision of his 1986 first edition, which was profoundly influential in naval circles. Why this book?

Of the four nations which currently threaten to cause serious trouble in the world, Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, it seems to me only China is a real threat to the US. North Korea and Iran are mostly focused on regime survival, and Russia is a shadow of the old Soviet empire, able to cause trouble along its immediate borders but not much else. China, on the other hand, is addressing its serious internal problems by stoking aggressive nationalism, building up its navy, and might eventually try some military exploits in the China Sea, like invading Taiwan. So if we get into a dust-up with China, it will undoubtedly be a naval engagement in the seas bordering China, and probably within the first island chain.  

Now what is important, as Hughes points out, is that naval warfare has changed dramatically since World War II.  The advent of long-range precision weapons – ballistic and cruise missiles and now hypersonic missiles – has replaced not only the big guns of warships, but has even changed the role of naval aviation.  Ships at sea are now at risk from missile attacks from many hundreds of miles away, and even from shore and inland missile installations. But missiles are expensive and large, and ships which used to carry thousands of rounds of shells can only carry dozens or perhaps low hundreds of missiles, which suggests tactics which encourage ships and shore installations to empty their missile magazines too early. Moreover, precision missiles attacking moving targets require precision targeting, from airplanes, drones, space, or even submarines, which again changes tactics.

All of which means a rethinking of what a modern naval fleet ought to look like. Are carrier battle groups still effective against a near-peer opponent, or are they just compact targets for swarms of precision missiles? Should we build a few big expensive warships or distribute our power among larger fleets of smaller, more expendable ships? Can surface ships even survive a modern naval battle, or should we emphasize stealthy submarines more?  Where should we put our limited defense funds most effectively? These are important questions that need an understanding of naval tactics to evaluate.

Hence the recommendation for Hughes’ book.  It is academic in nature, though quite readable, so it takes some commitment to study more than read. But I have found it worthwhile.

He has, by the way, written, coauthored or edited several other good books along the same lines, including Fleet Tactic and Naval Operations, 3^rd Ed (2018), Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (1986), and U.S. Naval Institute on Naval Tactics (2015).

 

Biden’s Infrastructure bill

There is no question that the nation needs to put more money into its crumbling infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimated in 2017 that the U.S. needed to invest about $2 trillion just to bring the current infrastructure back up to satisfactory condition (ie – bridges aren’t falling down).  Economists have estimated that every dollar invested in infrastructure adds about $3 to the nation’s GDP, so it is a good investment.

The Trump administration made a lot of promises about this, but in effect didn’t do much if anything. So it is promising that the Biden administration is proposing to do something meaningful about infrastructure.  The problem is that this isn’t really an infrastructure bill – it is a massive liberal wish list pasted onto a token infrastructure investment to give it political cover.  

The bill totals about $2 trillion, about what the ASCE estimated would be needed just to bring our current infrastructure up to par. But in fact only about half of this bill is really about infrastructure.

Here is how it breaks down in the current proposal:

·         $621 billion for transportation (roads, bridges, ports, airports, trains)

·         $111 billion for water (replace lead pipes, improve drinking water quality)

·         $200 billion for broadband and electric power improvements

For a total of $932 billion in real infrastructure improvement

Another $764 billion goes for housing, education, child care facilities, and the like, with a final $180 billion for research and development.

I’m all for the investment in infrastructure (though some of the efforts proposed, like re-activating the wildly-expensive California high-speed rail project, are highly questionable). And certainly some of the non-infrastructure items are worth talking about, though it is not clear that these should be the federal government’s responsibility, especially if they are being funded with yet more federal debt.

And that brings up the question of just how this will be funded. Biden proposes to fund it by taxing corporations and the rich more. Lots of luck with that! Big corporations can afford to hire masses of lawyers and accountants to find every legal loophole that a compliant Congress has given them over the decades in return for their campaign contributions, which is why many of the largest corporation (Nike, Amazon, Hewlett Packard, FedEx, etc) pay no taxes at all, whatever the corporate tax rate is supposed to be. And the really wealthy do the same.

So in the end, whatever the promises made, this will no doubt be funded by yet more federal deficit. It might make sense to fund the real infrastructure portion with federal debt, despite the risks of pushing the already massive debt yet higher. But funding the rest of the liberal wish-list with debt? That seems imprudent, though no doubt politically popular.

 

Meaningless activitry

Three news items caught my eye this week. One reported that China just cracked down on an esports (electronic sports) cheating ring, seizing $76 million along with luxury cars and other ill-gotten gains. For those who haven’t been keeping up, esports, or competitive video game playing for prizes, and the gambling that accompanies it, has become a big business. Clearly, if cheaters can amass $76 million and change doing it. The largest competition, the International, offered a bit over $34 million in prizes in 2019, and had 90 players in 18 teams competing for that money. The games played are usually relatively violent first-person shooter games like Fortnite or Dota 2, in which very quick reflexes matter.

Drexel University and Northwestern University in the U.S. even offer an undergraduate business degree in e-sports business, and there is a whole class of investors who invest in it for profit. Major competitions are even broadcast.  The global market for esports in 2019 was about $700 million, and growing rapidly.

The second news item reported that there will continue to be a shortage of video cards (GPUs), because amateur bitcoin miners are buying them all up to build home bitcoin mining systems. Again, for those who perhaps haven’t been keeping up, bitcoins are a pseudo-currency which has recently reached astronomical heights ($60,000+ per coin at its most recent peak) of a flurry of speculative trading.  Bitcoins are “created” by building huge computer banks to solve a difficult but otherwise meaningless mathematical equation – in essence guessing very large random numbers, though the actual mathematics are a bit more complex than that.  

The point is that bitcoin mining has also become a big business, with major investors building massive bitcoin mining systems based on thousands of specially-designed microchips and drawing immense amounts of power. As of January, 2021, bitcoin miners were drawing more power than the entire nation of Argentina, about 130-150 terawatt hours per year and growing rapidly.

The third news item reported that high-speed trading firms in the stock market were shifting to hollow-core fiber cable to connect their trading sites to the market computers because it gains them 1-2 nanoseconds more speed in making their trades. Apparently some firms intend to replace hundreds or even thousands of miles of perfectly good fiber cable with the new cable, just to gain a nansecond or two advantage over their rivals. Once again, for those who might not have been following this field, high-speed trading firms make their money by having computers that take advantage of tiny (microsecond or even nanosecond) delays in the market that create momentary imbalances in prices between locations.

What connects these three disparate news items? They all involve massive investments in money and resources and talent in essentially meaningless activity. I suppose one could make a weak argument for the value of esports as entertainment, no different than football or basketball or movies.  I don’t see any comparable argument for the value of high-speed trading or bitcoin mining. Nothing is actually created or built, no useful service is delivered to the nation, no useful knowledge is added to civilization. It is just, I would argue, a massive waste of money, resources, fossil fuel, and bright minds.

I have always thought that gambling had an essential nature; it is a sucker game. That is, in almost all gambling what is involved is someone making money out of fleecing suckers. Casinos don’t really care who wins or loses from moment to moment, because they take their percentage on every play the suckers make. The stock market operates largely the same way, though it is marginally more socially acceptable.  But in fact, most daily market activity is people betting against one another – will this stock rise or fall? If it is high right now, can I find some sucker to sell it to before it begins to fall?

It seems to me the three things I discussed above, esports, bitcoin trading, and high-speed market trading, are essentially sucker games in which a few people are willing to make a big investment because there are so many suckers waiting to be fleeced. Clearly they are right, because a few people are making millions or even billions from these activities.

I can’t help but worry about the state of the nation if this is what some of our best and brightest minds are drawn to, and if we are wasting our resources on such meaningless activities.