President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Yes, our military is a run away bureaucracy. ... the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned of has grown beyond what he probably even could have imagined.

Why does everyone have to mischaracterize what I said in order to try to make their point? That stupid @cranberry post. ... And then your post. I didn't say anything close to "hellbent" blah, blah, blah, taking away your freedom, their egos, blah blah blah. Can't you respond to what I posted instead of a buffoonish distortion?

I don't think every 4-star general is hellbent on taking away my freedom, for what it is worth. I do think that they are a part of something that doesn't work to the benefit of most people in this country. The EFFECTS of what they do to stay much larger than is necessary (and keep themselves relevant), undoubtedly erode our liberties. Whether it is the property that gets confiscated from people in the form of taxes, in order to fund a giant military force that we can't even afford anyhow (as is the case with lots of things like this). Or outright civil liberties breaches, such as what the Patriot Act did as part of our militarization.

I pointed out in that post that bureaucracies thrive on the perception of crisis to justify their existence. In the case of the military, when there aren't enough crises, they often manufacture them. I can think of so many examples. The Gulf of Tonkin. ... an alleged attack on our Navy by a North Viednamese torpedo boat leads to our military going to Vietnam (without Congressional approval). The whole WMD thing with Saddam Hussein. ... and we are invading Iraq (again, without Congressional approval).

 

If a Fortune 500 company devolves into a ball of red tape that exists to benefit the people working for the company rather than the customers of that company. ... the difference is that it affects the owners of that mismanaged company. It's not something being imposed by law on everyone in the country. In a competitive world, a company that doesn't supply demand for something can't survive. Government bureaucracies don't need that kind of accountability. Their justification is a crisis. Not a profit (as it is for that company). The fact that they exacerbate the crises that are the basis for their existence, is the exact opposite of the dynamic with that Fortune 500 company. If red tape makes a Fortune 500 company less profitable, it works to the detriment of the company. If a government bureaucracy fails, it's justification for MORE of that bureaucracy. They ALWAYS fail, precisely because that is the motivation they have.

 

We can't pay for those programs. We are burying ourselves in debt for them and they are increasingly closer to insolvency. Worse, though, in the case of Medicare-Medicaid, what those bureaucracies did was take something that was banrkupting us slowly already (created in the first place on the basis of crisis, and have spent decades exacerbating the problems). ... and the bureaucracy is now even bigger. In the process, we damaged the market for health care further. ... because the overhand of the price fixing distortions those programs impose on the market creates bigger and bigger inefficiencies. This is exactly why people's health insurance premiums (who aren't being subsidized) have gotten so big, and their insurance choices and health care have been destroyed.

It's not just about how satisified someone receiving an entitlement is with Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security. It's the damage you do overall by imposing those things on everyone. If I rob everyone's house on your block (including yours) and play robin hood a neighborhood over, do you look at it as, "Well, the people in the next neighborhood are very satisified"? Worse, though, if in the process of robbing your home, I break all of your windows and tear up your lawn, leaving a lot of damage behind, do you even look at the net effect as, "Well, he just shifted some stuff around"? To me, that is the relevant kind of analogy.