What do we value?

During a time of global crisis it is helpful to reflect upon what what we most value. What does American society spend more money on than anything else? What do we invest the most time, effort, and funds into?

Imagine if we had 1,347,106 scientists and doctors working full time ready to go and fight this virus and solve medical and scientific problems. Imagine if we had 807,562 backups to them who regularly updated their knowledge and were ready to help anytime. Imagine if we budgeted $693,058,000,000 in the year 2019 for training, support, equipment, research and development and more for this group. Imagine if trillions of dollars on top of this were spent on industry to support this crew.

This is exactly what the United States invested into its military last year.

The last time America faced a serious foreign invasion was in the war of 1812. The last time a foreign nation attacked the United States was Pearl Harbor. America staged two wars recently, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. I am not sure if either of these wars actually advanced American interests, are you?

I think many people would agree that if we had 2 million full-time scientists and trillions of dollars a year and spend to support them that we would see our society rocket forward. If we actually did face a foreign invasion or attack threat, our technology and industry would be so vastly superior that we could turn and very easily fight them off. The wars that we have won were not won with the standing military we had, it was won by gearing up industry and using it to build new forces.

The only group that benefits by maintaining a massive standing military are the politicians who are able to get re-elected time and time and time again by bringing pork barrel projects like the F35 into their state.

Some people will argue with me and say that the US military is doing things to support the effort to stop the virus. That is true. But wouldn’t it be much much more effective if it was a force of 2 million scientists with trillions of dollars to back them?

I am a believer in low taxes, few regulations, small government and other core tenets of the Republican philosophy. I am a libertarian. I do not actually think that we should have a 2 million person standing group of scientists, but I also do not think we need a 2 million man standing army or the trillions of dollars of pork barrel spend that go with it.

My recommendation for the best way to fight things like the virus is for the government to put up massive prizes and let market incentives drive people to solve the problems. If the US government funded a $100 billion dollar prize for a cure or vaccine for the virus we would have one in weeks. You could do the same thing for foreign invasions or attackers. Put up a hundred billion dollar prize for the group that defeats ISIS and we would have seen ISIS wiped off the face of the earth very quickly. You don’t need a standing group to address any of these things, you need a flexible society that can put incentives in place that motivates individuals and groups to go and achieve the goals we have.