Laughs for doomers

Boris Yelnikoff is a self-described "Nobel-level thinker" who feels beseiged by "microbes," one of his many terms for people who don't see "the big picture." And, what's the big picture? He tells us in the first five minutes of Woody Allen's latest movie, "Whatever Works," when he says, "On the whole, I'm sorry to say, we're a failed species."

Yelnikoff, played by Larry David, is an aging former Columbia University physics professor who has divorced his wife, moved to a dingy (but affordable) New York apartment, and taken up teaching chess to children to support himself. While the movie doesn't explicitly tackle the many converging catastrophes of the 21st century--there is exactly one mention of global warming--it does provide a catharsis for one's doomerish side as we laugh at Yelnikoff's misanthropic pessimism and his general ability to be a killjoy. We even get a treatment of the concept of entropy that elicits laughs. Now that's a true doomer's delight!

The failed species remark indicates promise that the movie will provide laughs for doomers. This is confirmed in what is really an opening monologue in which Yelnikoff warns the audience as follows:

I'm not a likeable guy. Charm has never been a priority with me. And just so you know, this is not the feel-good movie of the year. So if you're one of those idiots who needs to feel good, go get yourself a foot massage....What the hell does it all mean anyhow? Nothing. Zero. Zilch.

That such a character could be the basis for a comedy is a testament to the genius of Allen. That this character could be the conduit for catharsis for the peak oil- and climate change-obsessed is a minor blessing. Yelnikoff tells us in the opening monologue that the daily news is enough to drive one to suicide as it did his father:

My father committed suicide because the morning newspapers depressed him. And could you blame him? With the horror and corruption and ignorance and poverty and genocide and AlDS and global warming and terrorism..."The horror," Kurtz said at the end of Heart of Darkness. "The horror." Lucky Kurtz didn't have the Times delivered in the jungle, then he'd see some horror. But what do you do? You read about some massacre in Darfur or some school bus gets blown up, and you go, "Oh, my God, the horror!" And then you turn the page and finish your eggs from free-range chickens.

Yelnikoff also demonstrates frustration you can believe in. How many times a day (or times a minute if you are watching any cable newscast) do the peak oil- and climate change-obsessed among us want to yell out, "You idiot, you moron, you imbecile!" Most of us are too polite to say it, so Yelnikoff says it for us (for various doomer- and non-doomer-related reasons) over and over again.

The continuing spark for the comedy in "Whatever Works" comes from Yelnikoff's liaison with a young, beautiful runaway from Mississippi. Desperate for food and shelter she accosts him in front of his apartment one evening and convinces him to let her in. She ends up staying, and eventually (spoiler alert), they marry. It doesn't last. But Yelnikoff is resigned in the proper entropic way: "The universe is winding down. Why shouldn't we?"

In the end, however, as is appropriate for a comedy, love conquers all, and the main characters land in fulfilling, if not necessarily traditional, love relationships. The film also examines the role of chance in life, an issue discussed frequently on this blog in both the financial and natural worlds. The film's focus, of course, is on chance in our love lives.

The movie never seems to have gained wide release, probably in part because it takes so many jabs at gun advocates and Christian fundamentalists--two of the main characters are fundamentalists from the South--and probably because of its relentlessly doomerish main character.

I recommend more than one viewing to get the full cathartic effects, and also because you won't catch all the jokes the first time through. If you are among the peak oil- or climate change-obsessed, how can you resist a film that uses Heisenberg's Uncertainy Principle and the fate of the ancient Mayans as setups for jokes?

Memo to Kurzweil: The human-machine hybrid already happened and the results are pretty scary

Modern people ridicule the search for the mythical fountain of youth, a search that has preoccupied our forebears through many generations. Still, even today claims that human progress will accelerate so fast in the next few of decades that immortality will become a fact are taken seriously by people at the highest levels of society.

The latest version of the fountain of youth comes from a group who believe that a merger between humans and machines in the near future in ways that are not currently possible to foresee will enable a type of life everlasting. This belief comes out of a movement for which the most famous proponent is probably Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil, an entrepreneur, inventor, and writer, believes that no later than 2045, we will build machines that are smarter than humans. These machines will in turn build even smarter machines. Technological progress will proceed at a rate that represents the end of the human era and the beginning of one shared by humans and machines joined together and producing unimaginably rapid technological change. He and others refer to this point of transition as the technological singularity. This change, he believes, will enable humanity to overcome all of its most pressing problems: disease, hunger, climate change, resource scarcity, and, of course, death.

Part of the trouble with Kurzweil's ideas is that they seem to ignore history. People who are heavily involved in the computer industry as Kurzweil is often believe that they are helping to create a new era, a complete break from the past. But in this case history would tell us one very important thing. Humans have long been joined to machines. Yes, the machines started out simple: a plow, a compass, a sail, a waterwheel, and a windmill are all examples. But even these simple machines vastly altered the relationship of humans with nature and each other.

With the advent of fossil fuels the power of machines increased greatly. And, the division of labor which this development allowed increased the rate of technological innovation. This cycle has repeated itself as more fuel was added to an ever finer division of labor. So great has the power of humans on planet Earth become that sociologist William Catton Jr. dubbed the new form of man "homo colossus," a vigorous human-machine hybrid.

Kurzweil tells us that the human-machine hybrid he foresees is different. It will have powers that are many orders of magnitude beyond that of current humans. Again, he seems to ignore history. The introduction of fossil fuels, a concentrated, versatile, and (until recently) plentiful energy resource gave humans capabilities that are indeed orders of magnitude greater than those living in the pre-fossil fuel era. Think of the horsepower of a human, 1.2 horsepower for brief periods and 0.1 horsepower on a sustained basis. Compare that to the horsepower of a jet aircraft, for instance, the Airbus A380 with a cruising speed of 647 mph and four engines rated at 280,000 lbs. of total thrust. Where 550 ft-lbs/second equals one horsepower, this results in 1.72 hp/lb of thrust or 481,600 horsepower--in other words, several orders of magnitude greater than what a human can do with muscle power.

Of course, Kurzweil predicts that humans will perform this feat all over again in the area of intelligence giving humans access to intellectual abilities "trillions of times" greater than those we have today through a physical merger with intelligent machines. Here is a quote from the website for Kurzweil's book, The Singularity is Near:

We will be able to assume different bodies and take on a range of personae at will. In practical terms, human aging and illness will be reversed; pollution will be stopped; world hunger and poverty will be solved. Nanotechnology will make it possible to create virtually any physical product using inexpensive information processes and will ultimately turn even death into a soluble problem.

If you believe Kurzweil is correct about the vast expansion of human capabilities in the future, you must also believe that doing the same thing all over again--that is, increasing the power of humans by several orders of magnitude--will bring about different results than the previous fossil fuel driven increase. (I am reminded of the old joke that doing that same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.) The powers given to us by fossil fuels have put us on the path to ecological suicide due to climate change; soil depletion; fisheries depletion; deforestation; toxic pollution of the air, water and land; and ironically, depletion of fossil fuels which have enabled humans temporarily to overshoot by a wide margin the long-term carrying capacity of the Earth. But Kurzweil tells us that the results are sure to be better in the upcoming orders-of-magnitude ramp up in human power that he foresees.

The basic facts of biology and the record of history already tell us that Kurzweil's dream is a mere fantasy. While we should laud the man for his many important contributions to society--omnifont optical character recognition, text-to-speech and musical instrument synthesizers, and speech recognition software--we should also be wary of his bizarre vision of the future. It is not the content of that vision that should worry us so much as the meta-message it is sending to so many in our society: Sit back and let the technocratic elite solve all of our problems. After all, they've done such a good job so far!

No post this week

I expect to post again on Sunday, June 20.

The addict's excuse

As I read Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's letter to President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asking them to reconsider a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling, I was reminded of a Wendell Berry essay I read several years ago.

In "Word and Flesh" Berry wrote, "The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do." Or do we? The Gulf of Mexico is currently experiencing the human equivalent of metastasizing cancer, and the governor of Louisiana proposes that the activities which resulted in that cancer be resumed immediately even as BP's underwater gusher continues to flow into the gulf. The picture that comes to mind is one of a smoker who, having had his cancerous voicebox removed, immediately resumes smoking through his tracheotomy, a permanent opening in the throat made necessary by the operation. It is a repulsive, grotesque, and yet darkly humorous image.

We are that patient. And, it is as if Jindal, in the role of our physician, is prescribing post-operative cigarettes to prevent any nicotine withdrawal symptoms. Make no mistake. The symptoms will be severe when the inevitable withdrawal from oil arrives. Even now one little-noticed side effect of the deepwater drilling moratorium is that new deepwater natural gas wells, wells essential to keeping domestic supplies in balance, are also not being drilled. Perhaps as early as this fall, the entire country will feel the effects of the tragedy in the gulf in the form of higher natural gas prices. Liquid natural gas ports are limited in North America, and so we won't be able to import our way out of trouble as we do with oil.

Of course, Jindal feels he must show concern for the oil and gas industry. That industry not only buys influence among Gulf coast legislators and governors to ensure their pliability, but it also employs a sizable workforce in the region. It is a mark of how thoroughly corrupt our system of government has become and how tenuous our fossil fuel system is that Jindal didn't even have the decency to wait for the leak to be plugged before speaking out.

The prudent course for the previously discussed cancer patient would be to attend smoking cessation classes and learn to live without. For us as a society when it comes to oil, there will be no going cold turkey; nor would it be advisable to do so. Too many critical functions would collapse. But as regulators and the U. S. Congress look for ways to avoid a similar calamity in the future, we can, as Wendell Berry suggests, begin to solve the problem of oil addiction without them. We can change our habits in ways so often listed across the Internet and in books, magazines and newspapers: walking, bicycling, riding public transportation, buying and growing food locally, keeping our bodies warm instead of the entire house, and so on.

The failure of our vaunted technology to plug the blown out oil well at the bottom of the gulf some six weeks after it began leaking ought to be a warning about the limits of that technology. We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that the combination of large corporations, government and technology can be counted on to provide the solutions to our major resource and environmental problems. If the failure of technology currently on display in the Gulf of Mexico and the now widely reported collusion between the oil industry and federal regulators don't convince you of this, nothing will.

Reinventing Houston

Downtown Houston

Until the late 1960s Houston was primarily a hub for the oil and gas industry. But the oil boom of the 1970s launched the city on a trajectory to become the recognized international city that it is today. A panoply of skyscrapers built since then form an impressive and glittering core for the city. An increasingly diverse population has provided Houston with one of the hallmarks of big city life, superb ethnic restaurants of practically every kind.

The influx of oil and gas money has helped to finance the arts, both graphic and performing. Besides many excellent art museums Houston has its own opera, ballet and symphony orchestra. The museum district includes a natural science museum that I think is rivaled only by the Smithsonian. The Houston Zoo is what one expects in a city as large as Houston. And, there are the requisite sports teams familiar to all who follow professional sports.

While the Houston economy is more diverse than it was prior to the 1970s oil boom when oil and gas, chemicals and shipping dominated, these industries still broadly affect the overall economy since much of the service economy is dependent on them.

What struck me during a recent visit to Houston is that efforts to create a downtown with the kind of around-the-clock activity one sees in other world class cities such as Chicago or New York have so far not succeeded. Houston has long been a sprawled out, car-dependent city. Retail businesses now almost exclusively inhabit the malls, strip centers and small business districts that dot the Houston landscape. The retail that remains in the city center must live primarily off commerce conducted at midday by the plethora of office workers who populate the soaring towers that dominate the downtown.

The city has completed a light rail line that runs from Reliant Park, a football stadium and convention center complex south of the downtown; to the Texas Medical Center, one the world's leading complexes of hospitals and treatment centers; to the museum district and then into the downtown. The hope was that Houston residents would park at the Reliant Park complex and take the train downtown for work, events and shopping.

But old habits die hard. Rather than heralding the light rail line as a great achievement, Houstonians have become polarized over its costs, usefulness, and unintended consequences. It doesn't help that Houston's drivers were so befuddled by the presence of a train on their streets that in its first year of operation the city's single light rail line set an all-time annual record for vehicular crashes involving municipal light rail systems in the United States. Accidents have fallen markedly after new procedures were implemented.

Since Houston sits on soft sediments which run literally miles deep, it was impractical to build the light rail system underground. According to a friend who watched the progress of the above-ground construction, many of the retail establishments along the route were devastated and forced to close. Houstonians simply refused to brave the construction to patronize the affected businesses since it was easier to find what they needed at the many other strip centers and malls in the city. And, while the single line may seem underutilized, this is in part because it is only the first of six planned which would feed each other passengers from various parts of the city.

But the first thing one notices about Houston in this regard is how low the population density is. Cities with heavily used light rail systems have much higher population densities compared to Houston. New York's population density exceeds 27,000 persons per square mile. Chicago has a density of more than 12,000 persons per square mile. Compare this to Houston which has a little more than 3,800 persons per square mile. This is not to say that light rail can't succeed in Houston. But, it would take a sea change in the thinking of this car-addicted culture.

Perhaps most disturbing was that on a clear, dry, springtime Friday evening there was little activity within the confines of the great man-made canyons of the city center except for the theater district and the historic part of the city where a few restaurants and pubs remained opened. After 5 p.m. on weekdays the downtown almost empties out.

My friend, a real estate broker, reports that many new loft apartments and condominiums have been added to the downtown, and these are especially attractive to young professionals. But almost as soon as those professionals start to have children, they flee the downtown for single-family homes in neighborhoods. It seems impossible to build a critical mass of downtown residents who are needed to give it vitality after 5 p.m.

Houston has one very large impediment to the kind of active street life characteristic of successful city centers, an impediment that may elude the understanding of many Houstonians who merely cope with it as a background phenomena: Heat. During much of the year Houston is so hot and humid that most people prefer to stay indoors in air conditioning. The downtown district actually has an extensive set of tunnels and skybridges that allow people to avoid going outdoors and still move through much of the downtown. However intelligent such tunnels and skybridges may seem, the effect is to diminish the already sparse street life in the city center. And, without the "eyes on the street" provided by pedestrians, people don't feel nearly as safe, day or night.

While accidents of geology and climate seem to be conspiring to keep Houston's city center from ever becoming an analog to downtowns in New York or Chicago, there are plenty of examples of cities in hot climates with vibrant street life and healthy urban centers. It is the peculiar legacy of sprawling low-density development, car dependency, and an overreliance on air conditioning--people never let their bodies adjust to the heat--that spells a continuing uphill battle for those in Houston who would like to see its center pulse with activity through all the parts of the day.

Photo Courtesy of Hequals2henry on Wikimedia Commons

No post this week

Since I am currently traveling to do research for a large writing project, I am skipping my post for this week. I expect to post again on Sunday, May 30. In the meantime, I hope you'll take a look at my most recent column on Scitizen entitled "The Wages of Complexity."

The wages of complexity

My latest column on Scitizen entitled "The Wages of Complexity" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

While accusations continue to fly back and forth about who is to blame for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and investigations commence into the recent wild one-day gyration in the American stock markets, the real culprit stands quietly and in plain sight in the corner: Complexity....Read more

Saving the casino: America's economic recovery strategy

A surprising number of America's localities have made themselves increasingly dependent on casino gambling. Las Vegas and practically the whole state of Nevada need no introduction in this regard. There is also, of course, Atlantic City, New Jersey. And, there are the myriad riverboat casinos, Native American-run casinos, and casinos in many states limited to designated cities. The taxes from these gambling enterprises enrich both localities and states.

But there is a much larger casino operating in the United States. It variously goes by the name banking, stock and bond investing, commodities speculation, asset-backed securities, and myriad instruments classified as derivatives which get their value from some underlying security or commodity. So much of this casino-like activity is now embedded in the American economy that the so-called FIRE sector--finance, insurance and real estate--makes up more than 20 percent of the gross domestic product as of 2008 and 31 percent of corporate profits in 2009 excluding real estate.

That means that nearly everyone in the United States directly or indirectly is dependent on the well-being of the FIRE economy whether they work in it or not and whether they have savings and investments or not. It means that governments at all levels have become dependent on tax revenues generated by this part of the economy. Given this, it makes sense that the federal government's economic recovery efforts have focused on financial companies--commercial and investment banks, insurance companies, brokerages, and, most critically, mortgage lenders. The aim has been to levitate both stock and real estate prices with the hope that confidence will be restored and growth will resume.

But as most people now know the FIRE economy depended for its profit on toxic subprime mortgages, dubious commercial real estate deals, heavily leveraged buying and selling of stocks and bonds, questionable and inscrutable derivative instruments, and the issuance of massive amounts of government debt to finance the American living standard in an era of low taxation.

This system has remained essentially unchanged despite belated attempts to rein in risk-taking and prosecute lawbreakers who duped investors. And, it is this system which we are trying to revive through bank bailouts, automobile company bailouts, huge government stimulus spending, and Federal Reserve Bank emergency measures including ground-hugging interest rates and massive purchases of low-quality mortgages.

It is a sign of just how preposterous and counterproductive this strategy will ultimately be that CNBC's Larry Kudlow is apoplectic over the wave of investigations now besetting Wall Street. His concern is that too much scrutiny of Wall Street's machinations will sink the economy which he rightly suggests is dependent on the FIRE sector for its well-being. If the government shouldn't investigate Wall Street and its co-conspirators in the FIRE economy because it might weaken the overall economy, and if maintaining a strong economy is the single most important task of the government, then perhaps Kudlow believes the government should never investigate these people for any reason. It's the equivalent of saying that we shouldn't investigate drug pushers for fear of creating hardship among addicts.

And, therein lies the problem. The whole nation including the government has become overly dependent on this parasitic part of the economy. We are told that it will be dangerous if we even try to make sure that those working in the FIRE economy don't bilk their customers or if we try to put into jail those who already have.

A healthier path would be to wean America off its addiction to the "gambling" revenues and profit generated by the FIRE economy by once again separating investment banks from commercial banks and heavily regulating commercial ones as mere public utilities for facilitating the day-to-day operations of the economy. We should also limit the size of insurance companies and banks, both commercial or investment, so that financial institutions are not in a position to blackmail the government into saving them when their bets turn against them. In other words, it will be possible simply to let them fail.

The incentives in these institutions should be regulated so that the managers do not get their bonuses immediately, but only after a period sufficient to make sure they are not simply pocketing profits now and saddling shareholders and the public with losses later. Taxes on financial transactions should be raised enough to discourage frequent trading. And, taxes should be levied as well on outsized profits so as to discourage the flow of society's precious capital into the nonproductive avenues of finance. And finally, most people should be actively discouraged from investing their money in speculative markets. Instead, society should find some way to have retirement money managed in a very low risk manner on behalf of the vast majority of people who know little or nothing about the risks they are taking in investing.

The first step to curing an addiction is admitting it. Wall Street took the public for a ride, an almost 30-year ride, promising endless prosperity and riches without work! It turned out to be nothing more than a vehicle to enrich the few at the expense of the many. But instead of acknowledging this fact, members of the public are once again being enticed by Wall Street to stick with what is essentially a gambling addiction. The government is abetting the financial industry with the sales pitch that Congress is going to reform the casino so that it will be a fairer place to gamble. (But, we aren't even going to do that with the current proposed reforms.)

The odds that throwing one's savings at risky stock, bond and commodity markets will again end in tears for the vast majority of average investors are almost 100 percent--just as they are for the losing gambler who goes back into the casino vowing to recoup his or her losses.

Politically impossible?

Last week I spoke before a very committed group of juniors and seniors taking a college class on sustainable cities. In our discussion I suggested that one approach to improving public transit would be 1) to end all subsidies for fossil fuels, cars and trucks including road building and repair subsidies and 2) to place very heavy taxes on fossil fuels and the use and ownership of roadway vehicles. This I conjectured would make private investment in and ownership of city transit and intercity passenger rail attractive (which is the way it used to be) and could lead to a relatively rapid buildout and improvement of such services. But, I concluded, the first two steps are, of course, politically impossible.

My last remark evoked a spirited rebuttal from a woman in the class. She said, "I'm tired of people in your generation saying that everything we really need to do is politically impossible. All of us here are graduating soon, and we will be moving into positions of responsibility including ones in government. When we're the generation making the decisions, the things we need to do won't be politically impossible." Point taken. I promised in the future to tack on the words "right now" to any declaration that some action seems politically impossible.

With this exchange in mind, as the week unfolded, I began to notice that certain things which only a few months ago seemed "politically impossible" were now be trumpeted as possible and perhaps likely. Who would have guessed a few months ago that the U. S. Senate would be seriously debating whether the country's largest banks should be broken up into smaller banks? Who would have given such a move even the slightest chance of passing let alone a fighting chance? Even though the proposal was defeated, it garnered 33 votes. It seems doubtful that the issue is dead given the continuing rage against the large banks, and the possibility that another financial panic may result from the sovereign debt crisis in Europe or from a crash in China as its real estate bubble collapses. And, the financial reform bill as a whole which the Republicans and the big banks vowed to stop now seems headed for approval.

I have also begun to think that maybe the Obama administration's energy and climate legislation which includes an end to some subsidies for fossil fuels might actually pass. Congress has yet to act on it; but the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has put the entire fossil fuel industry on the defensive. How quickly things change. Even the sclerotic, corrupt U. S. Congress--made pliable and timid by the monied interests through campaign contributions and the threat of attack ads--seems to have awakened from its long slumber of submission.

When the president first proposed changing the health care system to provide universal coverage, I gave such legislation no chance of passing. I was certain the insurance companies could sink any bill through attack ads, fake public demonstrations, a monstrous media relations disinformation campaign, and direct contributions to key members of Congress. Although I'm not particularly pleased with what did pass, I was completely wrong about whether something could pass. Apparently, it was not "politically impossible" to do so.

Circumstances, strategy, personalities, evolving political alignments and myriad other variables change what is politically possible and impossible from week to week, from month to month and from year to year. But, after being stuck in first gear for a long time, history seems to be on the move. The oil price spike, the financial crisis, a dramatic election that put the first African-American into the Oval Office--something that was previously deemed "politically impossible"--all seem to have shaken even the entrenched U. S. political establishment out of its torpor and made, in some cases, the unthinkable, thinkable and the politically impossible, possible.

If my young student is any indication, there is more to come.

Oil spills, crime waves and the increasing militarization of American life

Three recent developments are just the latest examples of the increasing militarization of American life: 1) The National Guard will now assist in the cleanup of the oil spill created in the aftermath of the explosion and subsequent sinking of a deepwater drilling platform off the Louisiana coast. 2) Several members of Congress are asking for a deployment of the National Guard along the U.S.-Mexican border. 3) Two Chicago area state legislators are now calling for the Illinois National Guard to assist Chicago police to quell a supposed wave of violent crime.

At first blush readers might accept that these problems are all worthy of military intervention and perhaps beyond the capability of civil authorities to handle on their own. The response to the growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico now includes U. S. Coast Guard vessels and equipment and two cargo planes provided by the U. S. Department of Defense. BP, the oil giant that operated the rig, seems overwhelmed. The damage to Gulf Coast habitat, fisheries and tourism seems potentially catastrophic. And, the accident itself raises serious questions about the safety of offshore oil exploration, especially in deep waters. No wonder Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared the spill to be of "national significance." The spill seems a natural candidate for military intervention. And, after all, the military has personnel and equipment that no other entity, public or private, has.

As for border security, there have been periodic calls for a National Guard presence at the Mexican border. Few people will deny that the borders of the United States are very easy to cross and therefore an invitation to those wishing to come into the country. Whether the National Guard could be effective in doing anything about this is an open question. A guardsman commenting on the most recent call doubts it. (See Havoc29 from Kansas.) Nevertheless, policing the borders is essentially a federal responsibility, so why not involve soldiers?

Less clear cut is the case for involving National Guard units in the policing of the nation's communities. The Illinois state legislators who are calling for National Guard intervention on the streets of Chicago failed to mention that deaths from violent crime this year are running only slightly ahead of last year. And yet, with municipalities facing increasing budget pressures, it seems inevitable that police officers and patrols will be cut, perhaps significantly in the coming years.

I'm skeptical that we are now in a sustained economic recovery, and fully expect a second leg down that will leave the world economy in perhaps a decade-long funk. If I'm right, that would mean continuing cuts at all levels of government leading to further problems which will then lead to increasing calls for military assistance for a variety of tasks including those related to public safety and infrastructure repair.

Along the border the National Guard has, in fact, been providing support for a long time as the Guard proudly declares on its website: "The National Guard has provided engineering, counterdrug and other support to [U. S. Customs and Border Patrol] for more than 20 years and will continue to do so." The military's Joint Task Force North founded in 1989 has been helping to interdict drugs and fight terrorism as well. The Army Corps of Engineers has long been party to many projects that are clearly civilian in nature. Abroad, the U. S. military has often performed tasks not directly related to combat such as humanitarian and peacekeeping missions.

The involvement of the military in many of these missions seems in some ways logical. But that is just the problem. We are shaping public policies and priorities so that the resources to perform these tasks are increasingly unavailable to the civilian federal agencies or to the state and municipal governments responsible for those tasks. Starved of tax revenue or congressional appropriations, these entities have turned to the military for help. In part, this is because the country's politicians have convinced the public that much of government is wasteful and even useless with one very important exception: the military. The lavish funding heaped on the military is not, however, a reflection of the return American society is getting from that funding. Rather it is a consequence of the powerful military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned the country against in 1960.

The dangers of this mission creep were evident as far back as 1992 when a prescient U. S. Air Force lieutenent colonel, Charles J. Dunlap Jr., wrote an essay entitled, "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012."(PDF) Dunlap foretold that U. S. military involvement in the kinds of activities discussed above would expand with deleterious effects on the ability of the military to fight effectively. The involvement of military personnel in civilian activities, he warned, would also lead to their increasing politicization. Military officers are not used to taking orders from seemingly inefficient, democratically elected bodies which are often slow to act to address even urgent problems. Those officers may seek to circumvent such bodies when they appear to be impeding action on challenges that seem to call out for quick responses. Dunlap even predicted a second, but this time disastrous engagement in the Middle East, the result of a military scattered in its focus and mission. (He guessed the confrontation would be with Iran rather than Iraq, but results are roughly what I think he foresaw.)

With the dangers to the world economy increasing yearly from oil depletion, climate change, mountainous public and private debt and myriad other challenges, it seems likely the United States (and the world) will face continuing economic difficulties including declining or stagnant revenues for government at all levels. With economic difficulties ongoing and the needs of public intensifying, it will be all too tempting to ask the institution likely to suffer the least from funding cuts, namely, the U. S. military, to step in and address problems that overwhelmed local, state and federal governments and agencies cannot.

This is why Dunlap imagined that there will ultimately be little opposition to a military coup if it arrives. After all, by then the military will be performing so many tasks in civilian life that taking direct command of government may well seem the next logical and necessary step to the save the nation.