The world’s biggest employer is the US Department of Defence, with 3.2 million people on its payroll. The People’s Liberation Army of China has 2.3 million and Walmart 2.1 million. Fourth equal are the British National Health service and McDonald’s, with 1.7 million each.  (The Times,  20 July 2019)

3.2 million people working for the armed forces!  Over 600 overseas bases.  A trillion dollar annual bill.  And to what effect?  I fear the outcome will , in retrospect, be similar to the effect on the Roman empire, and we know how that ended.  Looking ahead, dealing with hordes of people displaced by the effects of climate change will not be so different from the effect of dealing with huge, invading tribes in Roman times.  That is, eventual  collapse under the sheer force of numbers.

What has this to do with Epicureanism?  Peace of mind, or lack of it if you keep up with the news!  The Epicurean way is to tackle the problem at source, like now, not wait for it to get out of hand with armies that can’t win wars or stop migrations.   In short, stop the ridiculous denial of the  warming of the planet and do something about climate change!

From the National Review:

US police have got a bad rap lately, but is it any wonder? Too often, they seem to get away with murder, literally. In recent years we’ve seen “the sad spectacle of a mistrial after a cop shot an unarmed, running man in the back”; the acquittal of the Minnesota officer who shot Philando Castile dead as Castile “was doing his best to comply with the cop’s panicked, conflicting demands”; and the acquittal of another cop who needlessly killed a drunk man, Daniel Shaver, who failed to follow his instructions.

And then there was Amber Guyger. A white Texas cop, she claimed that she thought she was entering her own flat,  saw what she thought was a burgler and killed him, a totally harmless black man, watching TV.  She wasn’t booked until three days after the killing, and was tried for manslaughter. If the roles had been reversed, does anyone doubt the man would have faced a prompt murder charge?

We ask a lot of cops, and most of them do a great job, but the justice system is too stacked in their favour. Officers must be “subject to the very laws they’re sworn to enforce”.  (David French, National Review, 29 Sept 2018).

  We have to have the rule of law and apply it to everyone. You can train policemen on the beat, but fear rules all – fear of guns and the trigger-happy characters the police have to deal with, or, rather, are afraid they will have to deal with.  Nothing will improve while such a large segment of the population defend the chaotic ownership of handguns and military-style weapons without let, hindrance or common sense background checks.  If a slew of white supremacist shootings , with 31 people dead, won’t move public opinion and get sensible safety rules, then there is no hope.

This is a moral issue.  I have first hand experience. The bullet grazed my forehead.  Don’t talk to me about the “right to bear arms”!

No British government report has had such a disastrous impact on this country as the one produced by transport minister Richard Beeching in 1963, recommending drastically reducing the rail network.  On the basis of its fatally flawed premise – that “the car was the future and rail the past” – hundreds of stations and thousands of miles of track were axed, isolating many of the most economically challenged parts of the country.

By favouring north-south trunk routes and links between the capital and other big towns and cities, the report unquestionably “contributed to the London-centric nature of the economy”. The Beeching report assumed that buses would fill the gaps in areas hardest hit by the cuts, but that didn’t happen. Instead, those areas suffered a “double whammy” as new road-building schemes went on to favour cities that still had rail connections. Beeching’s rail cuts established a “geographical divide” that has polarised our politics ever since. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that without Beeching, Brexit might never have happened.  (Larry Elliott, The Guardian. 19 Oct)

My comment:  this was a huge lifestyle upheaval for tens of thousands, a political decision that was totally unnecessary, driven by the unremitting desire to cut costs, and taxes, without caring too much about actual people. I remember the event very well – the closing of so many rail lines caused outrage, up-turning the lives of tens of thousands of people nationwide who depended on train travel, and who now had to buy cars and drive along roads not designed for the purpose.  The only upside is that the rail lines were ripped up and the routes were converted into hiking paths, spurring a minor boom in walking gear.

I mention this because governments are regularly doing things with unintended consequences, failing to think things through (or not being capable of thinking things through).  Epicurus must have spotted this in ancient Greece, which is one reason he didn’t like party politics.