In Part Five, we looked at privateers, chartered companies, the British East India Company, and the Pinkertons. The names changed. The technology changed. The pattern did not. The Industrial Revolution didn’t invent the industrial complex. It industrialized the complex. Steam power, railroads, steel production, telegraphs, mass manufacturing, and eventually electricity transformed economies in ways previous…
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So far in this series we’ve talked about kingdoms, standing armies, and why societies eventually build permanent institutions instead of reacting to every crisis as it happens. Now we reach one of the biggest turning points in history. This is where business and government begin looking remarkably similar. Not because corporations became governments overnight. Not…
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A king can defend a castle. Defending an economy is another matter entirely. In the previous article, we looked at why kingdoms developed standing armies. Soldiers protected borders, defended cities, and responded to invasions. That was difficult enough. Then trade began changing everything. The moment two towns started exchanging goods on a regular basis, something…
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When most people hear the phrase industrial complex, they picture modern factories, defense contractors, corporate headquarters, and government agencies. That’s understandable. But the pattern itself is much older than the Industrial Revolution. Long before corporations issued stock or governments awarded billion-dollar contracts, kings were facing exactly the same organizational problem. How do you protect what…
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Cobra SC-120 Dash Cam: Six Months Later — Great Camera, Terrible App After six months of daily use, I can say the Cobra SC-120 has turned out to be a pretty solid little dash cam. I use it regularly while doing rideshare and gig work, and from the standpoint of actually recording what is happening…
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One of the biggest mistakes people make when discussing large institutions is assuming that coordinated results require coordinated planning. They don’t. That’s where I think George Carlin had one of his sharper observations. He pointed out that you don’t need a formal conspiracy when people’s interests naturally converge. Think about that for a minute. A…
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There are moments doing rideshare when something happens and you’re left wondering exactly what you were supposed to do differently. Today, apparently, that something was a smell. I had driven to pick up a passenger for what would have been another one of those longer trips across Massachusetts. The passenger gets into the car and…
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Every few years, somebody brings up President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex. Almost immediately, the conversation goes off the rails. One side starts talking about secret meetings, hidden agendas, and elaborate conspiracies. The other side dismisses the entire discussion because they hear the word “conspiracy” and assume nothing worthwhile can come from…
Read MoreI saw something in downtown Amherst that should at least make people stop and ask some questions: red shirts, hammer-and-sickle imagery, Karl Marx on a banner, and people asking passersby, “Are you a communist?” This isn’t somebody doing an edgy college bit. The Revolutionary Communists of America openly describes itself as a revolutionary communist organization…
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I have spent enough time around computers to know that when somebody says there are bugs, they usually mean something inside the software has gone wrong. This time, the bugs were real. I had been asked to help tear down an old shed. The structure was infested, which was one of the reasons it needed…
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