Assault of Thoughts 12/27/2012

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" - JMK

- The National Academies have a new conference report out on the defense industrial base that borrows a table I made for the Sloan work I'm doing. They misspell my name in sourcing it, but at least it's out there! There is a lot in this report that acknowledges responsiveness of this workforce to market forces, which is excellent to see.

 - The Washington Post reports on how many historic homes in Virginia are struggling to attract visitors. I learned a lot of Virginia history visiting these homes for a Saturday history class at William and Mary. Every Saturday morning we'd load up in a van and drive somewhere in the state to visit a site - often to these restored homes. It was one of the best classes I've ever taken.

- George Dvorsky ponders world government. As many of you probably know, I'm a proponent of that. I think people take an unrealistic view of what this would amount to, though. I would expect for a long time we'd see a loose confederation with a lot of the existing nation-state apparatuses intact. It ought to help a lot with cutting down on armed conflict and solving more international externality problems. Most importantly, we should probably push for this now while the United States is still ascendant, to ensure that the world government is a liberal, constitutionally limited government.