What is derp?

To understand derp, you must first learn about its cousins: ignorance, stupidity, lies, and bullshit.

Ignorance is a natural state and often found among the young. It is merely a lack of knowledge and is excusable in most cases.

Stupidity is what happens when someone is exposed to knowledge but chooses to ignore it. It is a self-punishing vice.

Lying is the act of knowing the truth and then saying something else to hide it.

Bullshit comes from not caring what the truth is. The goal is to distract.

All these are character flaws. Derp is different.

Derp is a state of mind. It is a celebration of ignorance. It is the strange pride that comes from ignorance and stupidity.

Perhaps this is the best way to explain it:

Lessons from the Dukakis Tank Ad

Yes, 1988 is ancient history by US standards, but let's have a look anyway. Here is the ad for those unfamiliar with it:

I have heard many times from progs that Dukakis lost because of this ad. Specifically, they say that he looks silly in that helmet, even though it only appeared for a moment at the end of the ad. 

But isn't the content compelling? The majority of the ad is just text explaining how he opposed various military projects and then at the last moment shows him posing with a tank. The contrast between his actions and his posing is powerful. Keep in mind too that the US at the time had been locked in a long struggle with a powerful enemy. 

This ad didn't make Dukakis look bad because of the helmet. It made him look bad because it showed that his actions didn't match the image he tried to put out. There is powerful delusion among progs to attribute their failures to anything except their own ideas. 

This fear of looking silly in helmets persists to this day among progs. 

The paradox of air defense

In order for an aircraft to defend itself against incoming missiles, it must be able to detect them. The only practical method for that is radar. But the use of this radar puts out a signal enemy missiles can use to track the aircraft. I know that in the Vietnam War, a separate plane out of missile range would provide the radar coverage for the strike aircraft, so there's one way to resolve it.

I don't know, but I strongly suspect that ground-based radar has a longer range than aircraft radar. If that's the case, the best air defense has the edge over the best air attack. There's a limit to how much radar equipment you can fit into a plane, so there is a limit to how far its radar can see. Ground-based radar can be scaled-up indefinitely.

Whoever can see the farthest can shoot first. Whoever shoots first will win.  

Is the F-35 a flying Maginot Line?

Earlier today, I was reading a debate about the pros and cons of the F-35 fighter. The gist was 5th generation fighters like the F-35 are needed to counter the 5th generation fighters being developed in other countries. Supposedly, having better fighters than everyone else is the reason US ground troops have not been attacked by enemy aircraft since the Korean War. I think a better explanation is the fact that the US has not fought a war with any advanced nation since WW2.

Germany lost WW2 despite having the most advanced aircraft and tanks. They lost the air war because they ran out of pilots and they lost the ground war because they were outnumbered.. There are many examples in history where some new technology is seen as a magic bullet- tanks, aircraft, submarines, etc. Over and over again, military leaders learned the hard way that every weapon has a countermeasure. For that matter, every tactic and strategy has a countermeasure. Even the countermeasures have countermeasures.

This focus on air-to-air combat is a good example of missing the big picture- strategy. A strategy comes from identifying an enemy's vital organs and then making a plan to cripple them. The people the US are currently fighting have no air force and the US is unlikely to fight against any air force in the near future. So it is a waste to plan or build for such a war, at least for now.

Even when you know who the enemy is and where they will attack, it is hard to prepare. The US knew the Japanese were likely to attack the planes at Pearl Harbor, but they thought it would be by sabotage. For that reason, they parked them close together so they could be guarded more easily. Unfortunately, those planes were much easier to destroy when they were attacked from the air.

In chess, it's pointless to guess what a possible opponent might do. The only way to prepare for a chess game is to play as much as possible. This gives experience in improvising and deep-thinking. Likewise, I think the US should spend less on new weapons and much more on war games and studying recent wars, not ones from 50 years ago.

The Maginot Line failed because the French believed the Germans would not be able to go around it. I hope the F-35 is not built on faulty assumptions about the future of air warfare. 

Dumb Laws- Episode 3: Throwing away someone else's junk mail is a felony

Here it is:

Whoever takes any letter, postal card, or package out of any post office or any authorized depository for mail matter, or from any letter or mail carrier, or which has been in any post office or authorized depository, or in the custody of any letter or mail carrier, before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was directed, with design to obstruct the correspondence, or to pry into the business or secrets of another, or opens, secretes, embezzles, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Most Americans commit several felonies unwittingly every day.

It's high time to start pruning away these insane laws. 

Dumb Laws- Episode 2: The Bradley Amendment

This law:

• automatically triggers a non-expiring lien whenever child support becomes past-due.

• overrides any state's statute of limitations.

• disallows any judicial discretion, even from bankruptcy judges.

• requires that the payment amounts be maintained without regard for the physical capability of the person owing child support (the obligor) to promptly document changed circumstances or regard for his awareness of the need to make the notification.

Some interesting cases:

Taron James, a U.S. Navy veteran from California, was forced to continue to pay child support until 2006, even after the child was demonstrated by DNA test in 2001 to be not his; James paid $12,000 in such payments. A California District Court of Appeal eventually set aside the paternity judgment against James in 2006, but the same court denied James' request to have his child support payments reimbursed 

Bobby Sherrill, a Lockheed employee in Kuwait from North Carolina, was captured by Iraqis and spent nearly five months as an Iraqi hostage. Sherrill was arrested the night after his release for not paying $1,425 in child support while he was a hostage.

Dumb Laws- Episode 1: Merchant Marine Act of 1920

This law requires that only US-flagged ships may transport cargo between US ports. This means that a foreign ship from Hong Kong cannot stop in Honolulu to pick up cargo bound for Seattle. Instead, once it stops in Honolulu, the cargo bound for Seattle must transferred to a US ship.

This law is merely the broken window fallacy applied to sea trade. If the goal is to protect the jobs of sailors and longshoremen, why not ban cranes, forklifts, and diesel engines? A sailing ship requires a far bigger crew than a modern ship and many more would be needed to carry the same amount of cargo.

There is no net benefit to doing things less efficiently. Doing things more efficiently is what makes progress possible, because it allows resources that were used on one thing to be used for something else. Agriculture freed up people to be craftsmen, warriors, thinkers, etc instead of just hunter-gatherers.

Bastiat wrote that laws like the above act like a negative railroad. A railroad makes it more profitable for the countries connected by it to trade. A negative railroad like tariffs, regulations, etc makes it less profitable for two countries to trade. If you build a railroad, you can cancel out the benefits of it by just passing enough tariffs and regulations.

Will politicians and their supporters ever learn to stop building negative railroads?