Hold Your Horses

A defense of preserving the status quo.

By
162
A carving of a Roman cavalryman Lucius Romanus. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images.)

Dear Reader (Except for Roger Stone who has other things on his mind),

I’m in a meandering mood, so don’t look for a lot of straight lines today.

Let’s start with a favorite story of mine.

In the early days of World War II, Britain struggled to get on a war footing. It had to scrounge old equipment—and the old men who remembered how to use it. They de-mothballed some light field artillery that dated all the way back to the Boer War, fought at the turn of the 20th century. It required a five-man crew, and they found some old vets who remembered the routine. Three seconds before firing the thing, two of the men would move to the side and snap to attention until all was silent again. But no one could remember why they did that. It seemed like useless movement and detail. They finally brought in an old artillery colonel. He watched the exercise for a bit, and then suddenly the memory came to him. “I have it. They are holding the horses.”

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
162
By
Comments (162)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Avatar photo
    Kevin C. Smith

    Great G-File as per usual.

    A suggestion: for members logged into their accounts, the main page for The Dispatch has a section for newsletters with links to the recent members-only fare. I don’t rely on my email for newsletters and had to come looking for Jonah’s G-File through the Newsletters link. That stinks.

    Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    WKDawson

    I'll have to look into the concept of "path dependence". It sounds rather intuitive to a physicist like me, but I didn't know it was used in economics too.

    Collapse
  3. Nickson

    I’m hardly the first to observe this fact: Members of the “left” have become the new conservatives. You know, democracy (in the form of a constitutional democratic republic), institutions like the DOJ, federalism!, etc.

    In any event, here we have yet another overwrought, ponderous, pedantic piece by JG that takes hundreds of words to “say” something that could be expressed in a single, well-constructed paragraph.

    Collapse
    1. Johnsmk36

      There’s a certain “conservatism” that comes with being in power. Both parties seem all for the legitimacy of the democracy as long as the votes go their way. But I’m running long now.

      Collapse
  4. Gmck

    I switched to a self-“defined” (via software) Dvorak-like keyboard as soon as it was possible to do so in the era of personal computers. I assigned the most frequently used letters to the home row and the less frequently used letters to harder-to-reach positions. One reason I did this is that I was doing so much fast typing that my two index fingers were beginning to develop a sort of internal sideways crookedness from typing, for example, “the” so much, with the repeat rapid sideways motion from reaching for the T and H characters. Putting T, H, and E on the home row eliminated that “overreach” issue, and the finger misalignment problem eventually disappeared.

    Also, my understanding is that railway gauge standards were based on a compromise between breadth (for cargo capacity) and narrowness (for climbing ability). The Denver and Rio Grande Western, for example, had a lot of narrow-gauge trackage because the narrower the gauge, the tighter the turns that could be made, and that is useful wherever a lot of climbing is to be done, given the maximum gradient a freight train can ascend, which is usually about 1.5%, necessitating a lot of switchbacks.

    Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    The Meg

    A discussion of metaphorical/allegorical language and common references without a TNG "Darmok" reference? Shaka, when the walls fell.

    Collapse
  6. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    If a horse is hold, is like if a man is hold.

    Collapse
  7. Avatar photo
    Gbr0wn

    "Hold your horses" - take out one 'r' and one 's', and you have . . . either, "hold your hoes", or "hold your hose"

    NOT COOL

    Collapse
  8. Harbage6179

    Where’s the like button?

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      CynthiaW

      In our hearts, along with the edit button, the delete button, and the Oy! button.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        C C Writer

        Like.

        Collapse
  9. Genny

    Single mothers have DNA tests instead of marriage these days to ensure whatever responsibility they desire from dads occurs, though dads often pay their money to the state these days, instead of directly to the mom. The mom will get whatever the state benefit is while the state determines what it should get from the dad as compensation for that benefit.

    Collapse
  10. Avatar photo
    Tmcke

    Qwerty is a bad example of Market Failure. But for a good example, we can see the American grocery store. The real food - vegetables, meat, dairy and bread are all on the periphery. In the aisles we have the chip aisle, also a soda aisle and a cereal aisle (and yes there is oatmeal but there are boxed of over sugary stuff that are like carbohydrate bombs. Americans spend mush of their food budget on process, overly sugared and salted foods.

    We also have our healthcare system which may be a mix of public and private but in recent years the formerly not for profit hospitals have been largely bought up by large corporations - and the smaller hospitals is smaller towns, or in poor areas have simply closed. Before the last 50 years, most hospitals were locally owned and provided lots of indigent care. But now, we see even so call non profit hospitals dunning the working poor to pay off bills that they can’t afford.

    The market is a great way to solve for price when the market works - as it does for paint brushes, or jeans. But when a market does not work, we need government intervention. And we need it is healthcare (and not more market incentives); we also need it with housing. We don’t produce housing for the entry level. And I don’t just mean for the poor… but for those leaving school to start their lives. And in a few California, the foreclosure crisis of 2007-8 led the the purchases of private homes as investment commodities. While this could be neutral, in the case of California it has led to higher rent prices and are folks becoming homeless.

    By the way, we in the US pay more than twice what Europeans pay for bandwidth. Though the providers are private, they behave like monopolist - since we cannot get by without their product and we have few alternatives. The incentives for the providers are to drive prices up (by the way everything is bundled).

    The US has a marvelous internal market that is big, national and that allows for innovation. But we forget that it cannot solve every problem. In the late 1800s through WW2, it was the railroads that could strangle commerce unless there were controls. We went through about 20 years of deregulation on the late 70s. The results did not produce all of the benefits we expected. We need to use regulation wisely.

    Collapse
Load More