I just got a note about the 'debacle' in Afghanistan. I'm not sure that's what it is, but there is one thing that it clearly is not. The US war in Afghanistan is not about gaining territory for our empire. As far as the Ferengi are concerned, we are wasting our time. The Humanitarians may feel we're doing the right thing. The Right is mostly for it, for what I believe to be many irrelevant principles, and the Left is mostly against it based on bad accounting.
But whatever reason we are at war, (Libya? Anyone? Beuller?) there is some kind of benefit to us peasants. That is because that which is in the interest of the United States is in the interests of its people. (Read free men). But first we review an important rule and its corollary.
If the poor and uneducated knew how to work the system, they wouldn't be poor and uneducated.
The corollary to this rule has not been digested to something as pithy but it basically has to do with the notion of enlightened self-interest. People see what's going on - where the money is being made, where the centers of power are, who's who and what's what and they insinuate themselves into the vicinity. Smart people want to get in on the action.
Here in the US, we have a lot of smart people, and lots of them want to get in on the action. But how big does the action have to be? How smart do you have to be? Tough questions. Clay's Pizza is a good way to think about what we in the Jet Age used to call 'critical mass', and now we in the Internet Age call 'network effects'.
Clay's Pizza idea works like this. When you have enough people, it makes perfect sense to do things that make no sense in a smaller population. In NYC it makes perfect sense to sell pizza by the slice. But if you were in a small town, it makes no sense to cook up a cheese pizza before anybody orders one and just hope 8 hungry people walk by. In a small town there's not much action to get in on. So nobody profits from experimental restaurants. In a big metropolis where there's lots of action.. well, there's lots of action.
Now. What could 98,000 American troops in Afghanistan possibly be doing that benefits America? Maybe that's a pizza my small town just isn't ready to eat, but that doesn't make it a debacle. Somebody, at some level of American society is smart enough to figure that out. Could it be the President?
Recent Comments