Ray guns and Econ

Yes, I have two more subjects today.

Northrop Grumman Corporation has opened the first ray gun factory. It will be part of the anti-tank system, shooting a light beam towards incoming artillery or RPG to protect the tank or vehicle.

Now when they can load it on a plane to zap the bad guys (Star Trek) or better yet, hand held phasers, that will be neat.

Ever wonder why Central and South America seem to have such a difficult time providing the economic output and political stability in North America (technically, Mexico is part of North America, but at the moment, I'm considering it part of Central America for this post).

South and Central America have an industrious people, they have natural resources so what is the problem? Political stability? Well, that is a symptom of the problem. It all comes down to economics or rather the lack of economic freedom. If you have the rich and poor and the rich through manipulation of the political process prevent the poor from the possibility of becoming rich, the poor will revolt after a while. Most of the leaders of these revolutions are from the upper middle class (they are the ones who have gone to university and know that revolution is possible and how to do it) and once in power, they want their clans, families, tribes to get rich and keep everyone else poor and the cycle repeats.

Chile has broken this for the most part when the military government allowed more economic freedom and then step down for civilian rule when it saw it couldn't keep power anyway. Argentina tried political freedom after its military government was gotten rid of and some economic freedom, but not enough. In the end, the lack of economic freedom (and accountability), lead to political instability which lead to economic instability and folks there lost a lot of their money wealth.

Allowing economic freedom (knowing some will win and some will lose), will create wealth in those countries and the economic freedom will also create political stability which will create more economic wealth, etc. etc.