Happydayz

There is a really strong bias among people in the west to overemphasize their role in complex international events.

The US absolutely played both sides in the Iran-Iraq War. However, let's not strip the very real agency that Iraq and Iran exercised in the conduct of it.

What the US did was tilt the scales in Iraq's favor when things were looking exceptionally grim for them. This probably prolonged the war or at least prevented it from reaching an early decisive end. However, this shouldn't be surprising given the events of '79 and what that did to the US's prior Middle Eastern strategy.

Assuming your premise is true, that the US government exists to transfer taxpayer money into select corporate accounts, then there are far easier ways to do this than venturing off to war. Most of the large private companies that benefited financially from the Iraq and Afghan wars are primarily logistics or general defense companies; there are plenty of other opportunities for these guys to win new defense contracts outside of active war zones.

So there is no value in a uniquely Norwegian culture? Or Korean? Or Japanese?

One of the side effects of totally open borders is that human culture might homogenize, with strong bias toward the developing world where birthrates are exceptionally high. I think Indian and Bangladeshi culture are both wonderful, however I do not think they are necessary worth more than Norwegian, Japanese, etc.

No, you're right. Lawyers are protected by their licensing requirements. However the medical profession does protect itself and is opposed to bringing in many foreign born nurses, medical staff, etc.

Lawyers have that nice shield that is the bar exam, but that is also de facto immigration since only ABA accredited schools qualify. So in one sense you're right, the legal profession does not need to lobby against high skilled immigration. However, the reason they don't need to isn't for any moral reason but rather because they can just lock out immigrants through non-legislative means.

There are plenty of domestic groups opposed to open borders for high-skilled immigrants. Doctors, nurses, and others within the medical profession spring first to mind, and they are incredibly powerful politically. Ditto lawyers or really any other trade that controls its own barrier to entry via the certification process.

And let's not forget software engineers - just see what happens whenever H1-B comes up.

Yes, but there is also the opportunity cost of your downpayment, the transaction costs of getting into and out of a house, and maintenance. Oh man, maintenance.

Ref - transaction costs. You have to figure it will cost you around ~8% of the value of a property to both get into and out of it. This does not include the cost of movers. With a rental your transaction costs might be $50 for the apartment application fee.

likely have constituents who work in an industry that would be threatened with greater trade integration.

Nationally a detrimental move with greater costs, but locally they might very well be better off without it.

The standard story trotted out about trade are the steel tariffs implemented by Bush 43. Highly beneficial for the small number of steel workers in the US, but an effective tax on every other consumer. Forgot the figures from way back when, but IIRC we could have paid every steel worker $2-300,000/yr for the rest of their lives and still come out far ahead as a country.

Food companies spend a significant amount on R&D to maximize the taste and attractiveness, but not necessarily the nutrition, of their pre-packaged foods.

I usually bring up a similar point when people criticize modern agriculture and food production.

Right now someone can buy a pound of ground beef for around $3-4. After tax that represents around 30 minutes of labor for a minimum waged employee.

It is absolutely remarkable that our lowest skilled, lowest productivity workers, can afford a pound of beef for 1/2 an hour of work.

Obviously there are clear environmental issues here, and we are not taking into account all the externalities associated with meat production. But that figure above, and what it represents in terms of human nutrition, should be breathtaking.

You can't discharge a student loan in bankruptcy. This makes sense. If you borrow money to purchase a car or a home the lender always has the option of repossessing the goods as a last resort.

You cannot legally repossess someone's human capital. So the current law is set to avoid the moral hazard of someone borrowing $100k in student loans and then declaring bankruptcy right after graduation.

Ah, very interesting then. I lived in Germany for three years, but there are still obviously many aspects of German culture I'm still not 100% on. Thanks for that correction. My understanding from the time (mid 2000s) was that the school tracking happened relatively early and that moves between tracks were infrequent.

US educators are well aware of the German model. Like you said, we've opted not to go with serious tracking for students. The minimal tracking we already do is controversial as is. It would be a huge ruckus for us to do what the Germans do and start segregating students by ability soon after elementary school. We just value different things differently, and in this particular case we accept less optimal social outcomes in the name of greater quality.

Flip the import/export and mercantilist attitude around and see what happens. Imports simply mean that you are getting what you want from external producers. There is nothing inherently bad or good about this. You could also just as easily say that the US has now offshored a lot of our (dirty/unpleasant/etc) manufacturing requirements to other countries and gets to reap the fruits of their labor.

The concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is generally not used in warfare. This isn't an American thing; it's long been part of the customary / traditional rules governing lawful conflict.

To provide an easy to understand example why; you would not have to have a legal proceeding to determine that someone wearing a grey uniform with an iron cross on it was in fact a German soldier during WWI. Visual recognition, even from a distance (of the kind that would cause serious cross-examination in a domestic court), is sufficient to make the call that he is an enemy combatant.

Soldiers are absolutely empowered to act as judge, juror, and executioner, and are given significant latitude in determining who is and is not a lawful combatant.

It is worth noting that this Marine officer was acting under not just US rules of engagement, but also NATO ROEs. Those ROEs would have been vetted by the lawyers of all the NATO members, who already abide by some of the most historically rigorous applications of the laws of war.

As for whether Kudo knew anything else about the men digging on the side of the road. The answer is probably not. But, he also knew a lot about the cultural context in which they were operating, and leveraged that to make an informed judgment call about how to proceed. Regardless of whether you personally think that was moral or not, the fact is that it was legally permissible under internationally agreed upon laws of warfare.