Hazard Yet Forward

Phrase analysis

After the fall out of the 2008 market crash I heard a retired economist and sociology professor state “We are going through a process of Global Economic Reshuffling. All of the systems and processes we have grown accustom and counted on for decades aren’t working anymore and everyone is scrambling to find the new path to prosperity. There is going to be economic equalization until we dump the old failed methods and systems and develop and adopt new and reliable solutions”. This made me think about Social Security and the over use of NPK in agriculture. Now recently I have heard the phrase “Root Cause Failure Analysis” applied to data collection, storage and distribution. I was just listing to the challenges with ISIS or ISIL and Iran. ISIS/ISIL are Sunni and Iran is Shiite, mortal enemies. But Saudi Arabia is Sunni, why should they have a concern of ISIS/ISIL? For the same reason the Assad regime is at war with them, those regimes are monarchies with their origins from figured heads propped up by the West, USA and Great Brittan. To find the Root Cause of this issue you need to go back before Muhammad and Ishmael. The current challenge with ISIS/ISIL goes back to the rise of Saddam Hussain a Sunni who being the minority is Iraq but maintaining control through a brutal dictator. With the ouster of Saddam and the election of Nouri al-Maliki a Shiite who bullied the Sunnis. They sided with Al-Qaida to fight against Assad and now we have ISIS/ISIL. The result of a failed system.

Going back to Social Security and the economy, the Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has chosen to keep the Fad rate less than 1%. This is the rate banks use to lend each other money overnight. It also effect the rates on your bank accounts (Checking, savings and CDs). In 2009 an advisor to the Fed explained to a group of advisors in San Diego that this was to push investment into the stock market and when investor money grew enough they would start hiring. I was explaining to my 17 year old son Collin that in November 2011 the DOW hit a record 14,000 and now it is 17,279.74. I asked him if he could understand “Why the economy seems to be lagging so much”? In asking him that question it occurred to me that with all of the baby-boomers reaching retirement age and more people will be taking money out of Social Security than those who will be working and putting in to it. I explained to him that the government is going to want those who are still working to make more money and have their savings grow so they can afford to pay enough in taxes to support those who are no longer working. A doomed solution to solve another failed system.

Now when I apply this “Root Cause Failure Analysis” to the UAS/Drone industry I see the FAA seems to be beholden to the established defense contractors. Which are protecting their bottom line by limiting the technology for commercial use by anyone other than what these companies are manufacturing? As Brendan Schulman would say on an interview “It is problematic” for the FAA to grant a COA for the systems developed by these manufactures strictly because they were flown by the military in combat when there are new commercial systems with the same capabilities for payload and duration of flight from 277% to 7,000% less cost. These failed models cannot stand up to economic pressure. It didn’t work in the financial markets when Charles Schwab introduced the discount brokerage idea. It isn’t working in agriculture with algae blooms and dead zones around the world causing water shortages due to the over use of chemical based fertilizers like NPK and herbicides like Atrazine, it is not going to work with the UAS/Drone industry with thousands of jobs that can be created for baby-boomers, gen-X and Millennials.

Congressmen and Senators will be hearing from this industry just like the silent majority was heard from in the early 1980s which pulled us out of a similar economic time. I will end with a cry that has been passed through my family for ages “Hazard Yet Forward”!