Our military industrial complex is our largest exporter. That is both a good and a horrible thing at the same time. On the one hand, it goes to correct the trade deficit of trillions in oil exports with the Saudis. On the other, though, our arms are used in conflicts around the globe, often not in the name of peace or defense, but of power grabs, political manipulation, death and destruction.
War and conflict are not going away any time soon. It would be naive to say that we can turn our whole defense establishment on a dime and end the arms race and its lucrative billions world-wide.
What we can do, though, is incentivize peaceful application of the volumes that have been learned by the engineers, scientists, and builders of the defense business.
All this month, I will be investigating out-of-the-box solutions to our political, social and financial problems.
The first of those articles, To Grow Green, Put Profit in Peace I just finished.
There is no reason that the Democrats can't come up with a progressive policy to help wean us off of the heavy military spending that we engage in every year, without killing jobs and aggravating lobbyists for Lockheed and their Republican shills.
If we can build aircraft that are made out of lighter, stronger composites, why can't we build a ground-based vehicle that can get from Milwaukee to Chicago in 50 minutes?
After hours of researching everything from the Google Car to advanced fighter jets, the biggest thing that we need to do is rethink how we incentivize green living concepts, and rebuilding our infrastructure.
Check out my blog at Truth-2-Power, and the video link to the discussion at TED.com, if you are interested.