Yeah, so maybe some officers and employees of Andersen shredded some documents. Maybe they did engage in some criminal activity. But to indict the entire company? Did congress indict the entire Marine Corps after Ollie North lied to them and authorized document shredding? Was anyone indicted after Hillary Clinton ordered the shredding of Vince Foster's documents in the Rose Law Firm, and of Health Care Task Force documents that were the target of a court probe? If obstuction of justice is the issue, was the FBI indicted after the Branch Davidian's door "disappeared?" It's pretty clear that the Justice Department is applying a different standard to private organizations than the one they have applied to govenmental organizations.

The market, all by itself, has already punished all of Andersen Accounting. There is already an incentive for officers of private organizations to be their "brother's keepers." Why add criminal prosecution of people who were't connected to the shredding? Particularly when government officials in similar circumstances face neither market retaliation nor criminal charges?

Because they can, that's why.

OK, I’ve had it for now with writing about the police state. Don’t think that I didn’t notice the fact that the feds are too concerned with exerting their authority over us to bother pulling the visas of foreigners who (1) are dead and (2) have flown planes into the WTC. That story has been covered to death; I really don’t have anything to add.

So, today’s blog is about a cool aircraft concept: the zero-roll gyrocopter. There are two companies that have been working on this concept: CarterCopters and the Groen Brothers. The CarterCopter achieves zero-roll liftoff by (1) spinning up the main rotor on the ground, while cancelling out the tortsional forces with the landing gear of the grounded aircraft, (2) storing the rotational energy in the rotor with the aid of rotor weights which turn the rotor into a gyroscopic energy storage device and (3) lifting off and achieving autorotation before the energy stored in the rotor dissipates. The Groen Brothers plan to achieve zero-roll takeoff by (1) turning the rotor with ramjets at takeoff then (2) lifting off and achieving autorotation before turning off the ramjets.

From what I can tell, the CarterCopter seems like a much more elegant design. No ramjets on the rotor means no fuel supply to pump into the spinning rotor, no need for ramjet maintenance, and no ramjet noise. Further, the CarterCopter team has already achieved reproducible zero-roll takeoff.

The other cool concept of the CarterCopter team, which the Groen Brothers don’t seem to be replicating, is the concept of slowing rotor speed in flight and generating lift with fixed wings. Current rotor wing aircraft have a limit on forward speed because the spinning rotor tip travels through the air faster on one side (the advancing edge) than on the other side (the retreating edge). At relatively low speeds, this leads to asymmetrical lift; the faster part of the rotor generates more lift than the slower part of the rotor, and steps must be taken to prevent the craft from tipping over. At high speeds, the advancing tip speed relative to the fuselage, plus the airspeed of the entire craft relative to the air, add up to a rotor tip speed that is much faster than the craft is traveling through the air. This exposes the advancing tip to more turbulence, even, in the extreme case, to mach buffeting. If the CarterCopter team can slow the rotor rotational speed enough, then this problem shouldn’t show up until much higher speeds, and so the aircraft can travel faster.

So all this adds up to a zero-roll, fast, efficient aircraft. Think you’d want one of those? I know I would. And I bet a lot of other people would too. I therefore nominate the improved gyrocopter, from whatever source, as my pick for the technology most likely to get us the Jetson’s-style flying car.

Next (probably tomorrow): the cheap, high-capacity AN2. Costs $50,000 to buy and $160/hour to run, holds up to 14 passengers and 2 crew, needs 492 feet to take off, and is barred by the FAA from any useful task in the US (damn, my hatred of the feds slips in again).

Horrible updates to March 5ths post

Yes, I know that this blog has a predictable side. You can rely on me to come down on the anti-police-state side of any police state story. And I was going to write about something different today, namely Cartercopters and innovative aircraft in general. You can still check out cartercopters by looking at the link on the left.

And then I read this website: man arrested for “public drunkenness.” He was at home drinking a beer; police knocked on his door, he answered the door, and then was arrested for being drunk in public. Read the web site. I have no idea what is true and what is false on that web site, but, if true, it’s pretty damning.

placeholder

Megan McArdle still doesn’t have any multivariate regressions on her site, but she does have a clear description of how moral hazard can lead to economically inefficient investment decisions. She relates this to the social security privatization debate.

For me, the bottom line is that current social security goes to fund government, which is just about the least economically efficient use possible. Even so, I am willing to grant, for the sake of argument, that the government can offer a “return” of 1.25% on social security money. That’s 25% of the lowball estimate of US equity returns. Moral hazard would have to decrease average equity returns by 75% before a privatized social security system became a worse deal than the current system.

Apropos of a discussion I had with a cousin of mine this afternoon, I want to pose the question: when does an organization go bad? It seems to me that there is a continuum between organizations that are so bad that just joining makes you morally suspect, and those that are so good that one is compelled to give its members the benefit of the doubt beyond what you would give others.

The Nazi party, al-Qaeda, and the KKK would be organizations on one end of the continuum. If you know that someone has joined those organizations, you are justified in surmising that the person is more evil than average.

Contrawise, joining any fire department implies that one is, if not actually on a higher moral plane, at least entitled to more of the benefit of the doubt than average. I personally feel the same way about Salvation Army officers. Those organizations have a reputation of doing good, for few rewards, and (especially for firemen) at great personal risk. Therefore, it’s a safe bet that anyone who joins is likely to be more selfless and giving, and perhaps even good, than the general public.

So this is what I’m thinking about: where are the borders between one type of organization and another? In particular, when does an organization stop being morally neutral and become so bad that joining it implies some sort of moral failing? It seems that there are two influential and important organizations which are drifting into just such immorality as we watch. Ironically, membership in both those organizations has been thought of as “good” in the past, but is rapidly becoming an indication of evil.

Those two groups are the Catholic Bishopric and the FBI. I’m going to write about the FBI first, because I might not have time to address both, and I’m more concerned with the FBI, since I have to pay for it even as it degenerates into a modern version of the SS.

In recent years, the FBI has been responsible for almost every type of crime which past generations might have expected it to fight:

Mass murder. Try mass incineration of men, women and children, live on international TV, at Waco, followed by a multi-year coverup of same.

Home assault. Look at Ruby Ridge. (An aside: While I'm on the topic of home assault and incineration, I also suggest that you look up the death of James Beck, who was burned to death in his home as homes on either side of him were doused with water. The embers were bulldozed within 48 hours. The ATF, but not the FBI, was involved).

Espionage on behalf of the Russians (before and after the fall of the evil empire). Done by FBI special agent Robert Hansen.

Perjury, false imprisonment, and knowing protection of murderers. All done in the case of Joseph Salvati, set up by the FBI, and imprisoned for 30 years for a murder he didn’t commit, so that the FBI could protect Joseph "the Animal" Barboza. Barboza, now thought to be the real killer, was one of the FBI’s informants, and Salvati spent 30 years in jail to cover up the FBI’s connection with him.

Random street violence. There’s an example of that on this very blog, just a few posts down.

False imprisonment and perjury (if Wen Ho Lee was innocent) or setting free communist spies (if Wen Ho Lee was guilty). Check.

The FBI was too busy committing all these crimes to stop terrorists, even those they knew about, from getting into the United States. The FBI was even too busy to pay attention to pleas from a Minnesota flight school to check out Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the flight school’s students.

It is perfectly clear that the FBI has already sullied its reputation to the point that honest citizens should question anything they say. When, however, is the organization bad enough to sully the reputation of everyone who joins it? This goes back to the conversation I was having with my cousin, described at the top of this post. The cousin is thinking about joining the FBI.

While I love my cousin, and I know he is a decent, honest, gentle young man, I would loose respect for him if he was to knowingly join an evil organization. Again, I refer to the top of this post: if my cousin joined the Nazi party, I would know that there was something wrong with him. If he joined any fire department (something he’s talked about as an alternative to the FBI), I would know that he was a better person than I give him credit for, and certainly a better person than I am. So what about the FBI?

My cousin says, perfectly reasonably, that he thinks the FBI has made mistakes, but that it’s basically committed to good, and that he wants to make it better from the inside. I know that he believes what he is saying, and that makes me think that most of the young people who join the FBI this year can also believe the same thing. However, at some point, it must become clear to any observer that the FBI is beyond redemption, and making it “better” from the inside is likely to be as effective as trying to make a traveling minstrel show out of the 1940’s einsatzgruppen. When it’s that obvious, then anyone who joins can safely be said to be evil.

So when does that time come? How many crimes and coverups does an organization have to commit before it’s obvious that there’s a problem? More difficult to answer: how many crimes have to be committed before it must be obvious to the 22 year old young people who make up the junior ranks, and hence an indictment of the character of those who do join? I know from personal experience that 22 year old men are pretty clueless; I look back on my 22nd year, and count myself lucky to have survived at all. A lot of the kids who join any organization, honest or corrupt, don’t really know what they are getting into. But, again, at some point, it must become obvious, even to 22 year olds, that there’s a problem. Mustn’t it?

I suggested to my cousin that, if he wants to become a peace officer (note that I did NOT say law enforcement officer) that he move to Texas, join a Texas agency, and work on becoming a Texas Ranger. They seem squeaky-clean.

Well, if you have any thoughts on this topic, please comment. Like the blog says, I’m trying to make sense, and maybe others are as well.

I finally put a comment system on this blog. Yes, I probably should have done this earlier, but this is a work-in-progress, and I'm learning as I go. I want to encourage anyone who wants to comment to do so. Thank you.