It used to be when I got something boring a person wrote I felt obligated to read it. Now I am not sure what to do.

That you can just assert that as though it is a fact universally known says a lot where your head is at. If the private sector is so efficient, how come US health care is so much more expensive than some public health systems with better outcomes? How come public utilities are sometimes cheaper than private ones? Why do public fire departments exist at all, why not have contractors? Etc.

I agree government is often inefficient. The world is just obviously more complicated then you are considering.

Anecdote, not data: I picked up the habit of eating sardines from my Dad who is 97 years young. It's not that he doesn't eat bad stuff, its just that in my lifetime I see evidence that many of the things he ate were healthier than we thought.

Also, physically attractive people earn more. https://wol.iza.org/press-releases/does-it-pay-to-be-beautif...

If we put your brain in a jar, would you be a person? Would you have normal consciousness? Honestly I don't know and I am not the person to ask.

But the brain is just a computer metaphor has flaws, particularly when you take account how poorly the brain is understood.

Think of it as the difference between the waiter describing dishes with ingredients you don't really understand (or maybe even taste) vs presenting the bill for the meal.

To me "content" means you don't know what you are making or you are very embarrassed about it. We make art or entertainment that people pay for.

In general there are two axis I think about in media. One axis is originality, the other axis is durability. Very unoriginal is a transcription of information everyone already knows. Investigative reporting that reveals new information is very original. A creative story is original.

Durability is how long the thing will have some value. They can put the Wizard of Oz in Sphere today. A Tik Tok video will probably be forgotten in a day or two. You could call that "quality" but that's harder to define and measure.

Value is created in being as original and durable as possible. Platforms want you to be the opposite-- that's the slop they call content.

I am not saying drones are everything. My point is, where is the war in which steel is critical ?

Check out Russia's Black Sea fleet to learn the fate of your navy sitting by your shores.

You aren't going to send your steel navy out when one side can see you from space and you can't, almost regardless of the numbers. Your big army of steel tanks is useless against a bunch of drones directed by distribute satellites.

Yes you need artillery and particularly shells. But you are so much more limited by the capacity of your munition factories that how much steel you have would not be an issue. One of the main things you would need for a new munitions factory is trained workers.

The World Wars were wars of mass mobilization and industrial capacity. People went into the first thinking cavalry was important, the second thinking battleships still mattered. My point is I have no idea what the next great war might be like, but thinking the winner will be who chugs out the most tanks in five years may be looking in the rear view mirror.