Logistics

My father worked in logistics for the Air Force. He was once on a committee of representatives from the various services and headed-up by a guy from the Department of Defense. The idea was to inspect supply depots around the country to determine if it made sense to consolidate the supply of certain things in the hands of the DOD. 

According to my father there was a consensus in the group that it didn't make sense to consolidate any of it. The branches were already into diseconomies of scale independently of one another. But, lo, the report appears, written by the DOD dude, recommending consolidation. My father thinks it was a setup--that the DOD wanted it done.

This reminds me of Ken Starr, for some reason. Anyway, dad refused to sign the report and subsequently got his ass kicked, by so doing. Now, when you look at American businesses and industries and all the consolidation that has occurred, it happened in the same way, not by fair play and the promoting of efficiency, but by influence.

Think of all the formerly locally-owned stores and such which are now nonexistent or part of huge, effectively unregulated and anonymous monster-corps which got that way as part of a gamed and prejudiced system. Yet again, thank you, Republicans, for ruining our country. I remember the locally-owned stores and businesses where I grew up.

They are gone, gone, gone with some kind of ill, right-wing wind--burned, sacked and obliterated, for all intents. It seems inevitable now but it wasn't. It's a choice we made by electing the wrong people, which we did because we, too, were influenced, in subtle and contrived ways. We've been had, but so easily we can't blame anyone but ourselves.