It has long been my suspicion that the ownership of purebred dogs is at least in part aspirational. Ross Pomeroy’s report on a study of canine intelligence at RealClearScience makes one wonder about that:

Researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland put over 1,000 dogs from 13 distinct breeds through a battery of cognitive tests in perhaps the largest laboratory study of canine intelligence ever conducted. Their findings were recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Between March 2016 and February 2022, the authors invited dog owners to bring their one- to eight-year-old pups into a large indoor field to undergo the smartDOG test battery, which was developed by study author Katriina Tiira.

AS will surprise no one Border Collies are the smartest. Labrador Retrievers on the other hand were the dumbest. They’re also the most popular breed in the United States.

I wonder if Danny Ervin will actually get any traction with his plea in this piece at RealClearEnergy to resume mining and processing of rare earths here in the United States:

We should stop pretending that domestic mining is unessential. The best way to keep the competition for minerals from erupting into a conflict with China is for the U.S. to do what has served it so well for over a century: to offer a viable alternative to imports based on increased domestic mining. Congress should approve without delay a bill that would streamline the permitting process.

I suspect not but hope springs eternal.

It would be prudent for us not to lose track of the reality, lamented by Ryan Morgan at American Military News that the Russia-Ukraine War is a very dirty one with both sides perpetrating atrocities and committing war crimes:

The head of a U.S. private military contractor training and assisting Ukrainian forces said, in a recent podcast interview, that Ukrainian forces have violated conventions on the rules of warfare and he repeatedly alluded to Ukrainian forces abusing and killing surrendering Russian troops.

Andrew Milburn, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who now leads a private military contractor called the Mozart Group, appeared on an episode of the Team House Podcast. Max Blumenthal, an editor at The GrayZone, shared an edited clip of several of Milburn’s comments on the podcast, where he shared his concerns about potential Ukrainian war crimes.

The Russians and Ukrainians are more like one another than either are like the Americans. We’re on the side of the Ukrainians but neither side is really aligned with our interests and we disregard that to our own detriment.

I found Andrew Latham’s post at The Hill considering the U. S.’s next grand strategy pretty interesting:

The five competitors he discuses are:

• liberal internationalism
• deep engagement
• strategic competition
• restraint
• “progressive” grand strategy

That last candidate emphasizes “environmental justice, countering authoritarianism and in general addressing the world’s social ills”,

Unlike in most of the rest of the world U. S. grand strategy is not a coherent policy as such but an emergent phenomenon composed of the competing interests of different factions of Americans. Consequently, try as they might I doubt that any interested party will succeed in making their own preferences dominate. It is likely to be some not particularly coherent combination of those grand strategies, I suspect some combination of liberal internationalism and strategic competition with lip service paid to the interests of progressive grand strategy. My own preference would be restraint which I doubt will gain much traction.

Jamie Dimon is the chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co. As such he is one of the most powerful people in the United States and the world. Today Mr. Dimon has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal>, ostensibly a call for American leadership in “the Western world”. Here’s the opening:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine punctured many assumptions about the future of the world and thus was a pivotal moment in history. America and the West can no longer maintain a false sense of security based on the illusion that dictatorships and oppressive nations won’t use their economic and military powers to advance their aims—particularly against what they perceive as weak, incompetent and disorganized Western democracies. In a troubled world, we are reminded that national security is and always will be paramount, even if it seems to recede in tranquil times.

It should also lay to rest the idea that America can stand alone. U.S. leaders must always put America first, but global peace and order is a vital American interest. Only America has the full capability to lead and coalesce the Western world, though we must do so respectfully and in partnership with our allies. Without cohesiveness and unity with our allies, autocratic forces will divide and conquer the bickering West. America needs to lead with its strengths—not only military but also economic, diplomatic and moral.

and here are his objectives:

• Rededicate ourselves to the qualities and principles that made America great
• Develop a Marshall Plan for global energy and food security
• Increase military spending, along with our allies, as much as necessary to protect the world
• Recover our economic dynamism
• Deal with China thoughtfully and without fear

I could be glib and remark that Mr. Dimon is probably the biggest single obstacle to achieving any of those objectives but I’ll be a bit more practical. See my previous post:

U. S. power overseas is a consequence of our military strength and our military strength is downstream from the productive U. S. economy—our production of stuff. Not finance or services.

To that end we need to undo the financialization of the U. S. economy that has taken place over the last half century. We’ve got to consume less, save more, make more of what we consume, and borrow less.

A couple of final points. I think that Mr. Dimon is dreaming if he thinks that “the Western world” is languishing from a dearth of U. S. leadership. If anything there’s too much U. S. leadership and an almost complete vacuum of followership on the part of our putative allies. Their attention is focused unswervingly on their own parochial interests as it has been for decades.

Second, they’ll follow if it’s in their interest to do so. They, too, are interested in a more vibrant U. S. economy.

Finally, why is Mr. Dimon publishing this op-ed at this time? Is he interested in throwing his hat into the ring? Why should he take such a demotion not to mention pay cut?

After reading the editors’ of the Washington Post’s editorial advocating a revival of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), it’s still not clear to me what “a better China trade strategy”, their stated objective, would be. Here’s the gist of it:

In the closing weeks of the year, Japan announced a surge of defense spending, Taiwan extended its period of mandatory military service, and the Biden administration, which is keeping Trump-era tariffs in place on thousands of Chinese products, tightened export controls blocking Beijing’s access to strategic computer-chip technology.

Missing from this defensive formula is a positive strategy for competing with China on trade. China is consolidating its position at the center of Asia’s trading system. Its trade in Southeast Asia grew 71 percent in the past four years, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis. Beijing is on a trajectory to dominate the economic landscape of the world’s most productive region, increasing its leverage over the United States and its allies.

concluding:

It isn’t enough to promote industrial policy and tighten export controls on computer chips and maintain tariffs on Chinese goods; the United States needs a positive economic strategy to engage with Asian states to expand export markets and counterbalance China’s pull. The time might not be right in this Congress, but Washington would be wise to turn its attention to Pacific trade while it can still do so on its terms.

It isn’t easy to summarize the joint and national interests of countries which in aggregate contain 30% of the world’s population succinctly but let’s give it a try. China is politically controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, irredentist, nationalist, and racist. China has border disputes with every neighboring country. That isn’t particularly extraordinary—so do we. The difference is that a number of China’s border disputes are “hot”, i.e. there’s fighting going on. We have border disputes with Canada and Mexico but if we’re actually fighting with either one of them it’s news to me.

China has been engaged in a program of occupying, annexing, and Siniticizing areas adjacent to it since 1950. Every single one of its neighbors is aware that there is no future for them in a close relationship with China (see above). Why are they cozying up to China?

Three reasons: they want China’s trade, they know that a close relationship is the price for that trade, and they don’t trust us. Why should they? If we had set out to deliberately engage in a program of causing people to mistrust us we could hardly do worse than what we’ve been doing over the period of the last 60 years.

What should we do? You’re going to get tired of my repeating this. U. S. power overseas is a consequence of our military strength and our military strength is downstream from the productive U. S. economy—our production of stuff. Not finance or services. Consequently, we need to do four things all at once:

• Ensure that we are, if not self-sufficient, at least near-shoring production of strategic goods.
• Bolster our productive economy
• Refurbish our military
• Take a less interventionist stance

and to accomplish those we’ll need to stifle two powerful domestic constituencies: free traders and international interventionists. Those are tall orders. As the Magic 8-Ball might tell us, don’t count on it.

I’m just full of questions today. Why do we subsidize the beachfront houses of the top 1% of income earners? See here and here.

Chris Pope concludes his post at City Journal on our healthcare systems like this:

The United States cannot solve its health-care challenges by adopting one or another country’s health-care system wholesale. But it could avoid lots of heartache by better aligning its four principal health-care systems. In recent decades, the Netherlands and Germany have sought to break down barriers between employer-sponsored insurance and individual coverage. The United States should do something similar.

I’ve said it before. We have an employer-based healthcare system larger than Germany’s, a single-payer system (Medicaid) larger than Canada’s, and a “dual payer” system like France’s or Australia (Medicare) larger than both of those systems put together. Needless to say our tightly regulated individual insurance system (PPACA) is larger than Switzerland’s by an order of magnitude. We even have a fully socialized system like National Health in the system of the Bureau of Indian Affairs although it is significantly smaller than BNH.

I agree that we need reform but I find it farfetched that uniting our healthcare systems under any single system will result in cost savings until and unless the Congress is willing to limit that system which it has shown little inclination to do. The burden of proof is on anybody who thinks that just scaling up any of these systems will inherently result in cost savings.

Practically no one would like the way I would reform our healthcare systems so I won’t even bother to outline it. Suffice it to say that the focus would be on public goods (non-excludable and non-rivalrous) and, consequently, would be limited to public health.

The definition of “schadenfreude” is taking pleasure from the misfortunes of others. Other than schadenfreude what is the interest in the squabbling among Republicans over who will be the next Speaker of the House?

I have even less interest in what Republicans do or do not do than most. No Republican has even run for mayor of Chicago in the last 45 years. That’s why it always galls me when Republicans say “Well, that’s what you get for electing Democrats”. Who else are we going to elect? They’re the only ones running.

I sincerely believe that if every Republican were to mysteriously vanish from the State of Illinois, it wouldn’t solve a single one of the state’s problems.

According to House rules the majority and minority caucuses each nominate one candidate and whichever of those candidates receives a majority of the votes cast by House members becomes speaker. In theory the Speaker of the House is not a partisan role like House Majority Leader. In practice it is.

As I’ve said before IMO the Speaker of the House is the most powerful individual in the United States. Not the president. Not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not even the CEO of Amazon. The Speaker of the House.

I also think that the accretion of power by party leaders is what makes the United States undemocratic. Consequently, reducing the power of party officials is more urgent than electoral reform or even civil service reform, both of which are long overdue.

So, what’s the big deal about Republicans squabbling over who will be the next speaker? I think it’s healthy. Healthier than no contest, anyway.