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Space Wars
There have been lots of interesting stories recently about the US's growing reliance on satellites to control gee-whiz weaponry and provide detailed real-time images to battlefield commanders. MSNBC has a story on the military's growing bandwidth crunch. The AP has a story about how many other nations are putting up their own spy and communications satellites, suggesting that the US edge in space imagery might disappear (unless we start shooting other satellites down, of course). And Bruce Sterling has a fun story in Wired (fun in writing style, not in its implications) suggesting that we're entering an age of Pax Americana, where the US military is so dominant that competitors exist only at our sufferance (though that might not stop people from trying).
Today it's other countries, tommrow it is ourselves.
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Our enemeies are not nations, with navys to sink, armies to slaughter and cities to destroy. Having all the cards doesn't amount to much when your the only on left in the game. These new schemes are deisgined to protect us agains threats that are all but non-existant, while leaving us open to the next terrorist with a scheme that no one else thought of before.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
Yeah, the US is all about respecting treaties. (-1, Flamebait)
Military spending?
Nope-- Not even close.
Willingness to invest in military?
Nuh uh.
The usual actions that European militaries have been involved in follow a disturbing pattern.
Enter a troubled region to protect someone.
Set up bases.
People they are to protect flock to those bases.
When situation gets hot- leave.
People to be protected are now gathered together for the slaughter.
It has happened over the last 10 years in various countries in Africa and Europe.
Most European nations do not have the will to carry on any kind of extended operations. They would rather pull out and let the defensless die than deal with all the negative side effects of taking action.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Just to put a little perspective on your comment, the Roman Empire was the most dominant empire in the history of man in terms of total amount of world population under their control as well as territory, technology, and medicine. They lasted for much longer than any other modern empire on record, and formed the basis of a representative democracy which you now participate in.
Granted they were brutal in some of their rule, but you cannot ignore the benefits they brought to this world in the midst of said brutality. If you're going to use them as an example, you must speak on BOTH sides of the issue, not just the one that happens to support your argument.
Using the Third Reich is a poor example and you know it. You might as well use the Taliban as an example.
Before you start calling other people myopic, it might do you a little good to open your eyes a bit more yourself. The world is not a pretty place, but that does not make it evil. Darwinism forces us to survive by whatever means possible, and you are not in a position to criticize the very system you benefit from without sounding a tad hypocritical.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This is all just a massive build up to spend ever more pointless billions on arms that don't solve a problem, except how to line the pockets of the rich, powerful and dangerous.
This is a planet we live on, not the plaything of the maniacally aggressive and greedy. Either we all get on, or we don't. The underground caves aren't big enough to hold you all, and who want's to have to live in caves for the next thousand years anyway?
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
The article says that each Global Hawk requires 500Mbits/s. That is a huge amount of data. Yo think that it must be relaying a lot of recon information (probably at least three cameras, and I should imagine they have radio scanner as well), on top of the data required to fly it in both directions.
They must have some major processing power on board - I should imagine that trying to fly something over a relatively high latency satellite link would be hard otherwise/ But they still have a lot of human intervention - it's probably more guidance than actual flying. I remember seeing an experiment where they introduce a random delay between 0 and 0.5 seconds to what the pilot sees (not feels, as this was in the back of a large jet used for remote flying experiments) and it made control of the aircraft very hard - the pilot overcompensating, and almost unable to land the thing.
There could also be a level of redundancy in the 500Mbits/s - possibly two or more links, because clouds and other conditions can stop them working, and I should imagine that would be a bad thing to happen.
Anyway, I'm off to do some research on these planes... but if anyone else finds anything interesting, why not post it.
PS. Yes, I am glossing over the real issues behind these articles. But hey, it's better than the "What about the treaties" or the serious "US kick ass, no one can touch us posts". Wake up. The world isn't like that anymore. Flying planes into building, killing lots of civilians goes against a lot of international laws and treaties.
Face it - these treaties are to stop developed, civilised, large military forces from wiping out small countries and commiting war crimes. The smaller countries do not give a shit.
Like the US listen anyway:http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/r ec.bush.abm/
I have heard that argument many times and it still makes little sense. When testing a guidance system (i.e. can we even manuver the missle to contact the other missle) then how we detect it is irrelevant. Much the same as any software product you write does not meet every goal before you test it neither will this. Just the same as a software project you write "drivers" for the parts not implemented. The parts to counter act those measures have not been implemented, thus testing a guidance system any other way is stupid.
As a test for the guidance system it was a very large success, they successfully made one missle strike another. Of course as a test of overcoming counter measures it was a complete failure, but well, the linux kernel makes a pretty shitty word processor - read what they are working on/testing before you make a knee-jerk reaction to a success or failure. Now then when they test detection systems then that's another story.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
I'm just damn glad that it wasn't any of our competitors. New Zealander hegemony wouldn't be that offensive to me, but they were relatively inactive.
it is undoubtedly a good thing that the current situation came about through political change and revolution, not war.
Sure about that? Let's add up the body counts from Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan (the Soviet invasion specifically) and the various regional wars that ended up being almost all surrogates (Latin America and Africa were thick with these)
But a paradox exists, why then are so many countries dramatically _increasing_ defence budgets? America is by a _significant_ amount, down here in Australia we are again by a big amount again, at least by our standards.
You have neighbors. Some of them may or may not be very nice. China and India both have combinations of nuclear weapons and population pressure, for instance. And while India may be civilized about such things, the PRC makes me nervous.
All of this in such an age of optimism?
Who said optimism? Last year there was a mass fatality incident in New York, on a scale previously only caused by natural disasters or nation-states. I'm supposed to be on the "Front Lines" (if you believe the Fraternal Order of Police junkmail, even though I'm mostly on the front lines of vandalism, underage drinking, and spousal abuse enforcement lately). And I'm not sleeping a whole hell of a lot better. Neither are our fire/EMS department.
Australia hasn't really done much to piss anyone off lately, and especially not the deranged folks who think themselves divinely ordained to kill people. Here on the other side of the Pacific, we're considered by some to be stooges of the International Zionist Conspiracy because we haven't actually nuked Israel off of the map yet. And that "some" has had a disturbing habit of killing Americans (and people who look vaguely like Americans). And that's very much on our map here.
To empahasis my previous post now (the subject), think about it all you westerners (like me), could you even stomach a world war? What _possible_ reason could that be tolerated by the people of the world? Lets assume for a moment democracy works. (which i think it does)
I'm having a hard time visualizing one in the next decade. If there's a major nation-state threat, it's mainland China, but they know what'll happen if they step too far over the edge, and it'll be worse than our not selling them Boeing aircraft anymore.
It really makes you wonder.. Perhaps we are un-learning some things, important things, like how to contain regional conflicts, (think middle east), perhaps some things we never learnt..
Can it be done? In the Middle East, you have several problems. One problem won't be settled until either every Jew or most of the Muslims are dead, unless there's some breakthrough that I'm not seeing. (Well, I do have the answer. Yassir Arafat and Ariel Sharon need to quit being shitheads, but I'm not holding my breath). One problem would require that certain heads of state give up on expansionism. (Or cease breathing, which might be more helpful altogether). And then there's the issue of very-traditional societies having conflicts with the modern world. That's not limited to the ME, and we don't really have an answer to the conflict it causes here in the US either.
ps. Yes i know money is needed to fight new forms of terrorism, and as this topic is about space war, etc, but with 10 gazzilion dollars worth of space weapons, does the US really need a 400,000 (or whatever) man army??
Ever read Heinlein's Starship Troopers? (Yes, the book. Not the movie. The movie sucked ass and Paul Verhoeven should be deported and penetrated to death by feral donkeys for making that crap). Anyway, one character made an interesting point: Anybody can nuke a target. But all you've done is kill a lot of people and made a mess. You don't control it until you can stand a 19-year-old kid with a rifle on it. If you can't control it, you can't pacify it. And if you can't pacify it, then you'll have another one of those conflicts that stretches out for decades and kills a lot of people (like Yugoslavia) and that even an absolute dictator with a powerful secret police (like Tito) can only control for a few years. Those peacemaking missions need a lot of manpower.
Also, consider: There are more deer hunters in the state of Pennsylvania than there are infantrymen in the US Army. Most of those hundreds of thousands are support personnel rather than line soldiers.
Um, it would take *alot* longer than 10 years for that to happen. Remember Yugoslav? If the EU can't even take care of a problematic country in their own back yard, how the heck are they going to project their power anywhere?
For example, a great deal of America's power comes from its Aircraft Carriers. It would take them alot longer than 10 years to build anything equivalent to our fleet. And even, they tend to do stupid things like spend billions on a carrier that isn't even long enough and broke its port propeller on its first long-distance trials:
http://www.romanchess.com/DeGaulle.htm http://www.pigdog.org/auto/laughable_technology/li nk/2357.html
Sheesh - old propaganda trap you fell into!
The military budget is so overblown, wasteful and outdated: stoneage dialog: Uh - you hit me, I hit you better with a stone
Fact is all the $$ are going into a destructive porpose which could be avoided altogether with a little bit more smartness
Using the example of the cold war to show how great dterrence can be is a pretty skimpy example, sample size of one, success rate %100, but can you really quantify how close we came to nuclear war? How many times? I suspect it's a bit like this example. I used to drive drunk a lot, I never hit anything, therefore drunk driving is quite safe.
The difference is that the Cuban problem is a political problem, not a military problem. We could measure in hours the amount of time it would take for us to take Castro out. And incase you didn't notice we WON the only Cuban conflict that mattered--the Cuban Missle Crisis. The reason that Castro is still in power is political not military.
Yugoslavia was a military problem. Good old Milo was killing a whole bunch of Muslims and wasn't listening to "reason". And for all of "Europe's Power" they couldn't do a darn thing about it.
Brian
These articles are all indicative of the problem the USA faces today. Unfortunately whilst the USA continues to have no respect for the sovreignty of other nations it will continue to find that other nations and terrorist organisations will have no respect for the USA.
Before you write me of as another mis-informed mad terrorist let me make a few things plain:
I am a citizen of a country that is an ally of the USA, yet the USA was instrumental in bringing down our democratically (Westminster System) elected Government.
I've lived in the USA and seen the general paranoia of its' citizens - I know of no other country in the world that is so convinced that all other countries are out to get them, so they must be crushed.
I'm not so naive as to believe the world is a nice friendly place, but I am sure that as long as the USA remains dedicated to massive military force and the continual de-stabilisation of other nations the world will remain much more dangerous than it need be. As long as American Ideology is far removed from reality this will continue.
The fact is that most countries and people do not want to be like America, we don't want to own America, we don't want to destroy America. The USA is a great example of how not to run a democracy - your last Presidential Election demonstrated that you don't have a democratic system as is generally understood in civilised countries.
As long as the USA continues to believe that it is the de-facto "leader of the Free World" (tm) and engages in aggressive "Police Actions" to further the agendas of the real powers in the military-industrial complex there will continue to be terror attacks against it. I myself know that as a foreign national in the USA I could buy dynamite with no problems, I could buy firearms with no problems.
And for my final piece of hyperbole, many Christians outside the USA consider GW Bush to be the Anti-Christ. God help us all.
Death to America
It ain't gonna be easy, says Bruce Sterling, but that won't stop enemies from trying. Thirteen strategies they might use to knock the eagle out of the sky.
1. BUILD YOUR OWN
Method: Duplicate American space assets: surveillance, navigation, telecom, the works.
Upside: Legal. Can be accomplished largely using commercial products and services. American contractors might even build a lot of it for you.
Downside: Cripplingly costly; Russians tried it and went broke. Looks suspicious. Takes years. Yankees in good position to blow your assets to smithereens.
Already pursued by many other nations, India, China, Russia, Japan and the EU to name but a few.
All of these countries have far cheaper launch costs. They can replace a satellite for far less than it costs the US (currently) to replace its own satellites. A huge military advantage. Also, due to the location of US lauch sites, not that hard to shoot down sats launched from the US.
It's also possible to combine launching your own satellites with leasing/buying satellites from
other nations.
2. DECAPITATION
Method: Never mind fancy space assets. Obliterate Washington with a truck nuke.
Upside: Massively destructive, highly destabilizing. Heavy casualties among governing elite. Deadly shock to US national morale. Can be repeated in other cities.
Downside: Nukes hard to build. Sets dangerous precedent that puts your own cities at risk. US space assets still up there, available to US allies even if US no longer exists. Loss of Congress and Washington bureaucrats might be dangerous tonic to US military.
Not a likely strategy. Any nation that does this is asking for nuclear war. The safest way to implement this strategy is to give nukes to a terrorist group (NNAQ - short for NNAQ Not's AL Qaida ). Let them take the heat.
Bruce omitted chemical/biological warfare. Especially with biological, great built in denial.
Your heroes die carrying the disease to the US. No trail to lead back to you. Chemical also has great potential. Imagine the release of sarin in a football stadium.
3. ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE
Method: Detonate nuclear warhead in upper atmosphere, disabling spacecraft circuitry.
Upside: Inexpensive, quick, ruthless. Disables civilian assets, including pagers and TV, by stripping circuits on ground. To evade detection, bomb can be disguised as something benign, like a commercial satellite.
Downside: Some military sats hardened against radiation. Might destroy your own space hardware, if you have any. Unlikely to destroy distant sats; might destroy very little, in which case you've gone nuclear against a superpower.
This would be a very valuable tactic. Combined with the other tactics 4-11, it makes it possible to annihilate US forces.
4. SPACE PARASITES
Method: Infest space with armed mobile nanosatellites. Sneak them up to expensive American space machines. Attach like limpets. Detonate on signal.
Upside: Sneaky, insidious, inscrutable.
Downside: Hard to test. Americans likely to build fleet of nanosats teensier and sneakier than yours.
Very easy to test. Take out an American satellite or one of your own. The countermeasure is very
weak. Considering the Americans will build nanosats anyway, this is no deterrent.
5. SANDBAGGING
Method: Spew sand into paths of orbiting Yankee assets, turning them into Swiss cheese.
Upside: Ultracheap. Slowly suffocates space power. Might be done persistently in tiny quantities by some unorthodox launch method, say electromagnetic rail-gun launch or Jules Verne space cannon.
Downside: Space too big to pollute. Armor countermeasures possible. Retaliation by all space users likely. Sand sifts down into atmosphere after a while.
If you're careful about targetting, potentially useful. A nuisance tactic at best. High risk
of making every space faring nation come after you.
6. SPOOFING
Method: Mimic American datastream. Hack satellites, own them.
Upside: Bloodless, sexy, wired. Gains huge military advantage.
Downside: Requires vulnerable ground stations plus better hacking, crypto, and dongle skills than NSA and Air Force. Still can't launch, repair, or replace space assets.
That's not hard. Many of the US potential adversaries posess all three. And the US ground
stations are very vulnerable. There are many unmanned and poorly guarded ground stations
for US satellites here in Australia and NZ begging for just such a tactic. One man who was a demo/sniper could easily take them out.
All it needs is one weak link. If the encryption is weak, all the other skills do not matter.
If the admins securing machines lack the necessary skills, it is also easy to compromise hardware.
It's also not necessary to have vulnerable ground stations. If you can crack encryption, you
can spoof a ground station easily, without ever having been near it.
7. JAMMING
Method: Deploy huge electromagnetic noisemakers that thwart US communications.
Upside: Disables guided missiles, turns smart bombs into dumb bombs. Good for locals who communicate via fiber optics.
Downside: Ineffective beyond theater. Noisemakers make obvious targets.
A tactic that will be used by almost all opponents. Not enough by itself, but in combination very deadly. Only terrorist groups will possibly lack the ability to use this.
8. ATTACK GROUND STATIONS
Method: Use mortars, bombs, or missiles against satellite ground stations.
Upside: Kills highly trained analysts, destroys specialized equipment. Bases generally easy to find, not well fortified.
Downside: Secret mobile backup facilities likely to exist. US has large techie population, can train more space geeks.
Can they train them instantly? The crucial element is time. If you can open a window of vulnerability
where the US has no space assets, you can decimate the US forces by the time they recover.
9. DENIAL AND DECEPTION
Method: Hide facilities underground. Scatter armadas of fakes on surface. Broadcast phony transmissions to fool spy sats. Camouflage everything.
Upside: Effective during wartime. Forces US to waste expensive munitions.
Downside: Windowless cave quarters bad for soldier morale. Constant, consistent deception hard to maintain. Avoiding surveillance increases cost of all operations.
This tactic will be used by everyone, including the US.
10. ESPIONAGE
Method: Bribe or coopt Yankee sat personnel, obtain manuals, secrets.
Upside: Cheap, traditional. Proven success with Pollard, Walker, Falcon and Snowman.
Downside: Satellites return to US control once mole is discovered.
If used to create a window of weakness, where the US has no functioning sats for a short
period of time, means mega death for US soldiers.
By the time the US recovers, there might be no
army/air force/carrier group left in the region.
11. DEATH RAY
Method: Build laser or particle beam. Blind or cook satellites from ground.
Upside: Unexpected, shocking, repeatable. Appealing to Aum Shinrikyo-style tech-literate madmen.
Downside: Ambitious, expensive, hard to conceal. Requires huge power source. Works only in clear weather. Invites swift conventional retaliation.
Much easier/cheaper to use ballistic missile for the same job. The laser beam tactic will only be used by advanced nations, US allies and India, China, Russia.
12. WAR BY OTHER MEANS
Method: Abandon conventional warfare. Go nuclear, descend into terrorism, or both.
Upside: Everybody's doing it.
Downside: Going nuclear is expensive, destabilizing, dangerous. Terrorists lack secure bases, logistics, traditions, esprit de corps; "masterminds" hard to distinguish from deranged amateurs. American social, economic, cultural pressures irresistible. Your war may devolve into reading Noam Chomsky while sipping Coke.
By far the best tactic for every opponent of the US. Is already used, and has proved very successful. So far, no terrorist has yet started to read Chomsky. Has already beaten the US in Somalia. Will be used extensively by China when the war over Taiwan begins.
13. WAIT IT OUT
Method: Wait for US to get careless, go broke, forget, sell out, and/or collapse from inherent contradictions of postindustrial capitalism.
Upside: Easy. Basically indistinguishable from giving up.
Downside: Capitalist democracy has buried many competing systems. Top challenger blatantly suicidal and feared by all. Huge American sums spent on space strengthen US economy by creating Tang instant orange drink and heat-trapping pizza delivery bags. US will commodify your discontent, sell it back to you on DVD.
This is hardly a tactic. US culture helps to create enemies as well as allies.
- "On the other hand, Washington's war wonks don't seem actively oppressive, bloody-handed, or evil. Old Glory hangs all over town in its riveted incarnation as the 9/11 battle flag, but there are no jackboot parades or martyr cults. Let's face it, the world might do much worse."
Leave that mod button alone for a sec--I'm trying to present an honest viewpoint, not troll. I don't hate the US. But this smug, presumtuous attitude is a problem. I agree that there must be measures in place to stop factions like the Taleban from damaging our own society. But I believe this should be something that is done through international cooperation. A single country cannot assign itself as judge, jury and executioner simply because its the most powerful. When people do that, they're called bullies.The article seems to take the attitude that the "Usian way" is the "right way"; that it's just fine for the US to target whomever they please in order to ensure their own safety. You can't build a "New World Order" by simply crushing anyone who disagrees with you. And if you're on the side that would benefit from such a New World Order, you should probably be concerned about how your way of life is built, and who will be the next target after all the opposition is gone (hint: the population of this New World Order).
Once again, please don't misunderstand. I don't mean to bash the US; I would like to question the article itself for assuming that the world must go along with the US or be beaten into submission, because to me that's what it seems to say. The problem is primarily with the leaders, who are people apparently intoxicated with their own power and completely without the wisdom or responsibility to use it with restraint; and also with the population, who are apathetic to the attitude their leaders hold as long as their easy way of life continues.
Now, I'm not saying that the US is without cause for its actions. I don't want to make any judgements on who is in the right in specific instances. But the reckless attitude of "Global Cop" put forward in the article, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, is something that is heavily, heavily resented, and not just by radical Middle-Eastern parties. I don't feel I speak for myself alone. As a New Zealander and former South African I know that what I'm saying is a fairly prevalent viewpoint in both those countries. One only need watch TV to hear Bush commenting on the Israeli activities of the last few days: words to the effect of "I am not going to put up with this." Perhaps to people in the US these sound like strong words, but to people in other countries they sound like the words of a spoiled man with no real understanding of what he's talking about, assuming that the power he has gives him some right to dictate the actions of other countries. Of course I'm not saying that Sharon is right or that Bush is wrong--I agree with Bush's intent, but not his conviction that whatever he wants another country to do must happen, however true that is.
This attitude is what I see in the article. I imagine I'll be heavily downmodded for this post, since this is a Usiacentric forum, but I'm hoping open minds entertain differing ideas, on the supposition that most Slashdot readers are fairly open-minded and will realise that I'm trying to state an honest viewpoint as inoffensively as I can.
Yeah, we espicallly like breaking treaties ..... WE DIDN'T EVEN RATIFY.
Driven by al Qaeda's atrocities, the US charged into the classic quagmire of Afghanistan, legendary death trap of military ambition. With the customary roll of thunder, out came the full routine of the modern American expeditionary force. First, a cautious, methodical, widely televised suppression of local air defenses. Then, once CNN became accustomed to the violence, some leisurely and terrible precision targeting throughout the theater, around the clock. In Serbia in 1999, US aircraft smashed stationary targets, like buildings and bridges. In Afghanistan, thanks to much faster satellite relays, they demolished rapidly moving tanks, fleeing Toyota trucks, and amazed guerrillas. It took only two weeks to chase Taliban and al Qaeda forces into Pakistan, Iran, and beyond.
"Driven by al Qaeda's atrocities", they decided to go create a few atrocities of their own. Seen any estimates of civilian casualties on your TV news lately? A few dozen? Hundreds even? No, thousands. Professor Marc Herold has put together the only methodical public attempt to date on casualty estimates, and his figure is between 3,000 and 3,400.
"Terrible precision targeting"? Yes, the precision was pretty terrible alright. But the carnage isn't over yet, and won't be for decades: the UN estimates that around 14,000 unexploded cluster bomblets are still on the ground in Afghanistan. They're bright yellow, the same color as the food parcels the US very kindly dropped, while all the aid agencies pleaded with them to stop. So thousands more will die, long after you've had all your parades and pinned on all your medals.
Slow, careful police work was far too unglamourous. Much more sexually satisfying to bomb the shit out of the country harboring the prime suspect. Do you really think that the strikes against the US will stop, simply because the Taliban have been chased into retreat? How many more young suicide bombers are being created daily, thanks to these atrocities and all the others supported and funded around the world by the US? Will they all just give up and go home, awed by superior US satellite technology? Use your brain, for God's sake. You will reap what you sow.
At what point do the ends justify the means? It is very easy for us to sit in judgement of them, with 2000 years of hindsight on our side. The world as we know it today was affected in an untold number of ways by Roman rule, both good and bad. If they had not operated the way they did, the world would be different -- how different no one can say, but most certainly it would be different. Perhaps the world would've been a better place, but it also might've been a more barbarous place. You must accept these tenets because you cannot prove one thing or another with any degree of certainty.
One thing is certain, however. The Roman culture, for all its hedonism and brutality, was the pinnacle of "civilized" society at that time. And I did not say they invented democracy, I said they invented the Republic, which (contrary to popular notion) is the real form of government in the U.S., not democracy. Rome invented the concept of roads to secure an empire, created a system of trade that spanned the known globe, pioneered philosophy, spawned countless objects d'art...they had an immense impact on the future world. Could they have done all this without the crushing heel of a conqueror? Who knows? You and I certainly don't, and we are in no position to judge them since we now live and breath in a world that (for better or worse) they helped to create.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You cannot dispute this fact -- it is true.
Sure I can dispute it. The fuckwits who claim that only hard work and their own superior intelligence got them to where they are today are also saying that they're more hardworking and more intelligent than everyone else lower down on the social food chain. This is complete, self-serving bullshit readily apparent to even the casual observer, not to mention incredibly arrogant.
Hard work and intelligence are good starting points, but by far the biggest determinants of where you are going to end up are a) what social circle you were born into, and b) luck - lots and lots of luck. Fact is, your hard work and intelligence might have helped you get where you are, but plain dumb luck put you there ahead of everyone else who works harder than you and is more intelligent than you - and is still not making it. Because no matter what you claim, there are *millions* of people smarter, more determined, and more hard-working than you are and yet aren't making as much as you do, or have the kind of money that you have, or wield the kind of power that you do.
Modern social darwinists - the laughingstock byproducts of a bygone era - assert that luck has nothing to do with it and that everyone who doesn't make it just doesn't have 'what it takes'. Which presumes that they do, and the millions who're fucked are somehow less worthy than they themselves are. This is nothing more than the 'nobility by birth' argument in different clothing that ruled the upper classes prior to the industrial revolution.
End result: your argument is a crock. No one except these freaks takes social darwinism seriously. If you have a burning desire to factor chance out of your success so you can bolster your own ego, kindly spew the megalomania in a different direction.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Right. That's why we have to take out any country in the world that attempts to create and maintain weapons of mass destruction that they can unilaterally use in a crippling attack against another country, based on some obscure and unsupported religious argument rather than a morally sound argument and the support of the people of that country.
No, wait. We'd have to start by nuking the US and UK.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.