Posts Tagged ‘NG36B’

Caring about what you actually control

Posted: September 25, 2021 by ng36b in economy, News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths
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Apparently its a thing to not have kids due to climate change.

https://www.popsci.com/environment/having-children-climate-change/

‘It’s a human right to decide whether or not you want a child. It’s not a human right to drive an SUV or fly in planes.’

-Sara Watson

The article references a survey of 10,000 young people (16-25), with 59% “very or extremely” worried about climate change, and 45% “said their feelings negatively affect their daily life.”

After actually reading the survey, my biggest critique is that there is no control group. The survey asked questions like “Do you think the previous generations did not take care of the planet?” Are you surprised that 81% said yes? I would take it more seriously if we had a control group to measure how much young people at that age normally hate authority figures because, fun fact, that’s typical for that age group. I thought my parents were morons when I was 18, and it wasn’t until my late 20s that I realized “Gee, maybe Mom and Dad were pretty smart about the choices they made.” That age group is also naturally anxious about…well, everything, yet we don’t have a control to compare the normal anxiety to climate anxiety.

Control groups are really important in studies. We’ve seen this in COVID-19 vaccine discussions. I’ll see a headline “Woman dies of (insert crazy condition here) a day after receiving the (insert vaccine here)!” OK, that’s sad, but that’s all we know. Did this woman have underlying health conditions? What else was going on at the time? And what’s the normal rate of dying from these conditions? It’s similar to the “bacon causes colon cancer” discussion. Once you realize that it takes eating a pound of bacon a day to raise the less than 1% chance of colon cancer to…less than one percent, you quickly realize the study is nonsense.

Actual solutions to problems aren’t typically sexy. There’s an apocryphal story about an elevator mechanic called in to to fix elevator timing in a large skyscraper. He tested all elevators and spent a day investigating where things could be wrong. Finding nothing wrong with the elevators, but still being told that people are “waiting too long,” he installed mirrors near all the elevator doors. Soon people were fixing their hair and adjusting suit coats, and the complaints disappeared.

In terms of climate change, there are a lot of things we can change now, on our own, without government telling us to. Driving and flying less is inside our control. Composting and having a small garden are inside our control (at one time, Victory Gardens accounted for over half of US agricultural output). Better insulating homes to reduce electricity costs is inside our control. Spending less time on social media, which relies on big server farms consuming fossil-fueled electricity, is inside our control.

Will not having kids help? Is that something inside our control? Would that actually help climate change?

Doubtful. Even Vox (Vox!) has doubts. And from looking at the sort of people running movements like BirthStrike, I have to wonder if its simply a continuation of how they were already inclined to think vs. a movement inspired by climate change. Wouldn’t a control group be nice to compare this to?

Which makes me ask, is the movement to not have kids really just an extension of pre-existing beliefs? If so, do you subscribe to those beliefs? I find the belief that humans are bad for the planet and need to be eradicated (the only logical end of not having kids) pretty sickening. I’ll place my faith in us getting smart about the planet and cleaning it up. I’ll happily do my small part, knowing that long term, its only through thousands of small actions that we’ll actually help the planet in any long term scenario. And I don’t need the government to do anything to get started.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you want to support me, please purchase my book, To Build A House, on Amazon.

The Navy is trending towards Battleship

Posted: September 18, 2021 by ng36b in News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths
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…and not in a good way

We’re seeing more news on people leaving the military, even when within one or two years of retirement. First it was Marine Corps Lt Col Stuart Scheller. Next it was Army Lt Col Paul Hague. I’m sure over the next two months we’ll get about one of these every two weeks before it dies down. They’ll make the news, people will comment needlessly on Twitter, and then life will go on.

That’s not the real story. The real story is that for every one of these very public resignations, there are thousands that are quietly leaving. These people aren’t willing to throw away a pension if they are close to it. For the ones that are ending their first five year commitment, they are simply preparing now to walk away. They won’t make a big stink about it. They won’t leave five page resignation letters talking about Marxism, transgender policy and imbedded racism. Nope. These people will simply leave. They won’t make a ruckus or create waves, they’ll simply vote with their feet.

The military will cover this up. Not like X-Files “I want to believe” sort of cover up. It’ll just not make headlines. You’ll hear things like “We’re short on fighter pilots” now and again, but nothing earth shattering will make the news. The media that cover military stories focus almost exclusively on operations, because operations is sexy. It’s sexy and cool to interview the Blue Angels and look at drones landing on an aircraft carrier. It’s boring to look at numbers. That stuff is for nerds.

But nerds rule, and the numbers already look bad on the Navy side. The best indicator of what is called “community health” is how well you’re filling control grade officers, specifically the O-4 (LCDR), O-5 (CDR) and O-6 (CAPT) ranks. These are important for a few reasons.

  • Almost all of your commanding officers and executive officers come from these ranks. These officers control the day-to-day operations and they have by far the biggest impact on Sailor morale. If morale is suffering and things are getting done, this is the first place to check.
  • These people are lifers. They’ve stayed past 10 years, so they are “in it” for the long haul. They either love what they do, or at least don’t hate it enough to quit.
  • These ranks have the not-fun jobs. These ranks run the show from the background. The sexy jobs flying fast planes, driving boats and shooting at bad people are now past. That makes these jobs harder to fill.

So how is the Navy doing in this area? Easiest way to check is selection rates. The Navy’s officer manning is a pyramid. There are lots of O-1, O-2 and O-3 young officers at the bottom. The ideal selection rate to O-4 is 70%, meaning that 30% of otherwise qualified people are not selected. That seems brutal, but it allows you to pick the best. It also takes into account people that leave anyway, since O-3s that are eligible for promotion would also be finishing their first 5-year committment.

As we go up the pyramid, it gets harder. Ideal selection to O-5 is only 60% of eligible people, and selection to O-6 is about 50%. You only want the best people in positions of command and responsibility, and there aren’t as many jobs that high up, so you’re naturally going to shed more people. Also, these ranks allow people to stay until retirement, so you’ll have more non-selected officers that fill slots until they retire.

So how are selection rates now? LCDR selection rate is roughly 90%, CDR is 80% and CAPT is around 65%. This varies a lot by community, with some communities significantly higher.

That’s bad. High selection rates mean not enough people are staying in until they are eligible for promotion. In a business environment, you can simply hire people from outside or promote younger people, but the military is only allowed to pick 10% from what they call “below zone” officers, who are typically 1-2 years younger than officers that are “in zone” for selection. Now, you can pick officers that were previously passed over for promotion, and in many cases, these officers are otherwise great selections. But officers that are passed over once are likely planning their exit already. Once they see opportunity elsewhere, many are going to walk away.

Worse still, look at the communities with the highest selection rates. For CAPT, these are Cryptologic Warfare (85%) and Information Professional (70%). For CDR, these are…the same group, and the same for LCDR. Cryptologic Warfare officers make and break codes, specializing in cyber warfare, signals intelligence and electronic warfare. Information Professionals connect and maintain Navy communications. Both groups require significant engineering backgrounds, and yet both groups are leaving in droves. If the people that conduct the most advanced warfare areas are leaving, it means we aren’t providing enough incentives for them to stay around compared to what they can achieve in industry.

This is the canary in the coal mine. The numbers are trending worse, not better. This has been happening for the past three fiscal years. Now, combine this with a job market that is begging people to work, and one that is rapidly adopting the use of advanced technology to replace low-skilled jobs. The first people to leave the Navy, much like the first people to leave the fictional company in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, are the engineers and people with technical skills. Others in the chain will take notice, and short of significant business setbacks, people with good skills will bail. Once they have “Gone Galt,” the Navy is going to struggle to find competent leaders.

I used to laugh at movies like “Battleship,” where the only tactics the military seems to use are bum-rush the bad guy with big guns, resembling the often suicidal battle charges from the Civil War. Sadly, that’s what we’re going to get when its not worth it for smart people to stay around.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. All data was publicly available at https://www.mynavyhr.navy.mil/Career-Management/Boards/Active-Duty-Officer/.

Since you read this far, you should buy my book, “To Build A House,” available here on Amazon.

Voting? Who has time for that?

Posted: September 11, 2021 by ng36b in elections, politics
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This year, rather than sitting on the sidelines, I decided to volunteer to help on a local conservative’s campaign. This particular candidate had a small campaign going, running against someone that hadn’t been challenged in two election cycles. I’m two months into helping him, and I’ve both knocked on quite a few doors to campaign and hosted a small fundraiser at my house.

What I’ve experienced in just this small amount of time has really surprised me.

When I started going door to door with a survey and some candidate literature, I expected to get yelled at. Given everything we hear on the news, walking around and campaigning for a conservative candidate seems like a quick way to get attacked by some nut-job left-wing whacko. But that hasn’t been my experience. Most people are pretty decent. A few have actually invited me into their homes. Nobody has swore at me, or told me I was trying to put people in chains, or anything else awful.

The second surprise is that most people I polled aren’t registered to vote. In fact, most people weren’t really following the election at all. Maybe its a Virginia-politics thing, since the governor elections are off-cycle from federal elections. When asked who people would vote for, most answered as “unsure.” Now, that might be because I’m polling them in person, and among their friends they have stronger beliefs. But I thought it was telling that there were so many people seemingly out of the loop of an election that directly affects them.

Hosting a fundraiser was a surprise disappointment. Despite having a really good candidate, I found that most conservatives are lazy. My church is significantly more traditional, yet nobody, repeat, nobody (save one family that is a close friend to mine) from my church showed up, despite our pastor encouraging it. Getting other conservatives to show up was incredibly difficult. Keep in mind this wasn’t a “300 dollar a plate” event. We had pulled pork, macaroni and steamed vegetables. More importantly, people had plenty of time to interact with the candidate and speak to him personally about what concerned them. You couldn’t find an easier way to interact with a potential politician, yet it felt like a Joe Biden press conference. Personally, it was really disappointing, and it makes me think that most conservatives are an awful lot of talk without any action.

I highly encourage people to get involved now with your local party. Talk to your city about becoming an election official, since you have to do some training and get registered. Volunteer to go door to door now, because its far less scary than you might imagine. Check that your friends are registered to vote, and not just in the federal elections. And for crying out loud, be willing to donate to candidates that have your values, especially the local candidates that control things like school boards, redistricting and local tax rates, and who are far closer to your concerns than your federal representative. Because if you don’t, the other side is going to out-compete you, and we’ll get more years of the same stupid policies.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Please take a minute to stop by Amazon and buy my book, “To Build A House,” available on Kindle or in paperback.

The military personnel crisis in 2023

Posted: September 4, 2021 by ng36b in News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths
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If you thought Afghanistan was bad, wait for the military personnel cliff in 2023.

Since Afghanistan fell, there have been plenty of discussions in the military ranks of “How did we get here?” Many military members are unhappy with how the withdraw was conducted. While there are only a few that make this public, there are many more that are quietly questioning the decision making that went into this disaster.

Afghanistan though is masking a much bigger, looming threat. I’ll go out on a limb and predict it now: the military is going to face a manpower crisis in 2023 when an “unexpected” number of people leave the service.

Don’t believe me? I’ve got three darn-good reasons its going to happen.

First, it’ll be the first year that members under the blended retirement system are up for re-enlistment. If you’re not familiar with it, the old military retirement system required 20 years of service before you could draw a pension. The pension was pretty good, equal to 50% of your base pay, and it followed you for life. Yes, if you were cagey on playing the stock market or invented the next best widget to sell on Amazon, you could do better, but if that was true, you probably weren’t in the military in the first place.

That system was replaced with the “Blended Retirement System,” which sounds like a drink you order at Tropical Smoothie, except this one blended cash and your tears into a lower grade slushy that was tough to swallow. BRS, as it is called, was a 401K program that the military would provide matching contributions. This sounds awesome, except:

  • The military only had a certain number of funds you could invest in
  • The military doesn’t start matching until 5 years
  • Most military members make well below average salary in their first five years

BRS was a way to save money. It was sold to the military as “more fair,” but it was all about saving money. More importantly, the military lost a big incentive for young service members to make the military a career. Most members sign on for an initial 5 year commitment. During this time, they receive a lot of initial training and typically deploy somewhere. For enlisted personnel walking in with only a high school degree, at five years they have schooling, the equivalent of an associates degree, and work experience. It’s enough to entice many to leave for greener pastures, and many do just that.

One of the big incentives to stay was the promise of a good career with a good retirement. So imagine a service member checking their BRS balance, and seeing a pretty paltry number because they didn’t make much money to contribute. Combined with new skills and a half-way decent job market, why would they stay?

BRS went into effect in 2018. Add five years, you get 2023.

Now, not everyone is in it for the money. Plenty of people join just to leave their crappy circumstances. I remember one of my Sailors telling me he could pick between working at a gas station his whole life or joining the Navy. In terms of non-financial reasons, this ranks as a high second reason. But that reason won’t stop the 2023 dropoff, and its pretty obvious why: once you have some mobility because you have skills, money and experience, you don’t have to return to where you came. Military members that left their small town, ghetto or whatever bad place they lived in previously have choices after 5 years of service, and they’re likely going to choose to live in a better place with more job prospects.

But wait! Don’t people serve out of a sense of honor and duty? They do, my dear reader, and that brings me to my third point. The military has been sold as an honorable profession, a meritocracy where one can serve their country. That image is being shattered. We just had a disastrous loss in Afghanistan and a significant refocus on “domestic extremism” (which was questioned by many service members). We keep repeating that the military is rife with sexual assault, despite the punishment rates being better than the civilian sector (due to non-judicial punishment and lower standards of proof than regular courts). When you keep hearing and seeing these messages, you have to ask, why bother? Why join, or if you are in, why stay?

It’s disheartening to say this, but the military is on track for a sharp decline in people willing to serve in 2023. I’m sure they’ll spin it in some positive way, but for all the reasons above, its going to happen. The members that signed up in 2018 will have less reasons to stay, and when you already have attrition rates near 30% in the first 3 years for some services, you need every reason possible to keep people around. Short of a significant correction in terms of pay, benefits, career satisfaction or popularity of mission, it’s going to be an ugly 2023.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Speaking of the authors views, you should buy his book “To Build A House: My Epic Saga in Custom Home Building,” available here on Amazon.

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