At 05:19 PM 3/4/01 -0800, Christopher wrote:
> a fact which does not go in the 'let's build it' column. (what
>'degree of probable efficacy', balanced against the set of 'risks of
>taking other action', and balanced against the 'costs of building the
>system' means that building the system is a good idea - and what
>balances mean that building the system is a bad idea?)
I think that for a missile defence system to be built, a minimum
requirement should be a high probability of striking down a single incoming
ICBM. As far as cost - that requires a cost-benefit analysis, which I
don't have the resources to make. Right now, however, we are only
spending no the order of hundreds of billions of dollars each year, which
seems reasonable.
> however i think that an immediate declaration of war upon
>the 'nuking party' would be followed by immediate, overwhelming,
>devastating retaliation. and that it quite possibly would include a
>nuclear warhead, accompanied by a speech using the phrase "an eye for
>an eye, a tooth for a tooth".
I would love to take a random survey on this question:
"Assume that a nuclear missile was launched by a rogue State controlled by
a brutal dictator, and detonated over Cleveland, OH. Would you support a
retaliatory nuclear missile strike that would kill an equal number of
civilians in the other country?"
Obviously we disagree on what the results of the survey would be - but I
still strongly suspect that you'd be mightily surprised.
>> There's a little problem with running a Marshall Plan for Iraq or Russia or
>> Country X these days - that little matter of an unfriendly government and
>> no occupying army.
> gosh - i guess that mean we can't use force. i wonder how much of
>the Marshall Plan depended on force? i seem to recall that a lot of
>it was loans and technical assistance....
It was also predicted on the fact that we were running Germany and Japan at
the time.
> Iraq and Russia are entirely separate cases.
> Iraq does have an actively hostile government, although that didn't
>have to be unless the US wants to make a policy of not dealing with
>repressive dictatorships/sing1e-party states. since it is hostile
>there isn't a lot that can be done inside of Iraq -
I really don't think that the Marshall Plan would be of much benefit to the
citizens of a repressive dictatorship, by definition.
> Russia - the capitalism that they have adopted is the capitalism
>that they have feared all their lives. they should have instead
>adopted a capitalism designed with what they were raised to perceive
>as 'the good traits of communism'. worker-owned companies for example
>- a company that makes its own decisions along the same kinds of
>'benefit the stockholders' approach that the Fortune 500 follow, but
>to be part of the majority stockholders you have to be a worker, a
>former worker (in good standing), inherited from a former worker, or
>a resident of one of the communities in which the company is based.
>and so on. unfortunately the nomanklatura decided to play
>robber-baron (with the encouragement of some Westerners).
Obviously, Western capitalism has performed miserably without these
restrictions.
No Chris, Russian capitalism has failed because there are no freedoms, no
rights, no contracts, and no courts. If you invest money, you have little
hope of ever seeing the profit. Unless of course, you are a crony of a
member of the government, in which case the government will transfer state
assets to you, and let you run the assets for your own profit just as you
would have done in the old days, only now they've called it capitalism.
>> Is there a reason that your <SHIFT> key works for proper nouns, but not the
>> first letters of sentences?
> yes, i want to appear as mild and unassertive as possible.
Well, unfortunately it makes your posts appear like one giant run-on
sentence, and makes them almost painful to try and decipher. I apologize
for not being able to resist the cheap shot before, but I'm asking nicely
now.... please use appropriate sentence structure. Thanks.
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of isntitutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
