Does Military Budget Cuts Offer New Opportunities?

The world is changing and the military is changing with it. As the heavy trench warfare of WWI and WWII subsides and new forms of guerrilla warfare emerge it becomes important for the U.S. military to maintain its capacity to use both pinpointed and mass insertion strategies. This requires a higher level of knowledge and ability that will likely put pressure on the Army to adapt to higher forms of combat.

General Martin Dempsey announced at the Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing that dwindling resources is a major factor in a reduction from 490,000 to 450,000 troops (1).  There has already been a 13% in civilian and 11% in civilian billets (2). This will mean that current resource levels will need to be used more efficiently and effectively to ensure that they create maximum results.

What happens in government is important for the Army. Overspending in some areas leaves other areas with less. Balancing the national budget ensures that the military has adequate supplies and resources when they are needed. Resources are used as a deterrent and as a capacity builder for our armed forces.

Even though reduction in budgets does come with some tough choices it does offer a few opportunities to adapt the system to do more with less. All systems change the most when under pressure. The Army’s design can be improved to encourage new ideas, technology, learning, and skill sets that can create responsiveness to new threats. It is possible to use the platform of the old to create something even greater.

The military of the future will look less like the past as new levels of functionality are created. Robotics and high technology gear will make their way onto the battlefield and this will require a new type of soldier. Recruits will need to be highly adaptable, fast learners, and high skilled to keep up with new needs.

A few ideas among the thousands:

-Integration of Functions with Other Agencies: ISIS has taught us that lines between insurgent and civilian can be blurred. Integrating certain intelligence and operational functions helps utilize information more effectively.

-Outsourcing Non-Essential Functions:  Entities that focus on their core value propositions often have higher results due to focus of effort. Evaluate which functions are non-essential and whether or not they can be outsourced to save money and improve functionality. For example, some aspects of education and training can be outsourced.

-Actively Recruiting High Performers: Actively recruiting promising young recruits that either have the potential or realized physical and mental skill to engage in modern military practices creates a stronger base to build from. With fewer slots available the basic skill requirements should move upward.

-Using Veterans in Support Functions: Veterans knowledge and skill shouldn’t be wasted once they leave the military. Encouraging veteran’s to work in support functions helps to ensure that these functions get more efficient and effective over time.  

-Developing Innovative Internal Frameworks: Developing mechanisms for the exploration and implementation of new knowledge, ideas, and efficiencies. The same innovative policies and approaches should be encouraged among suppliers.  A flatter organization could be beneficial with a rise in soldier skill and knowledge.

-Raising Active Duty Years: Higher skills will require additional costly training.  Raising the years of service requirements and potential pay/incentives for highly skilled soldiers encourages a higher return on investment from training. Age is more subjective in today’s world.

-Streamline and Cut Fat: Once new ideas are developed and are shown to be effective they should be streamlined to create efficiencies while still allowing for sufficient adaptability. Streamlining allows for less waste and greater effectiveness that saves taxpayer dollars.

San Diego Desalination Plant as a Stepping Stone to a Greener City

The Carlsbad Desalination Project is well on its way to production and it is geared to be a solid contributing factor to San Diego as an ecologically green city. A serious drought has taken the state by storm and a new water source that provides the needs of 300,000 San Diegans is an important step in the right direction of revamping the city for the next generation.

To be certain the desalination comes with a heavy $1 billion dollar price tag that will take some time to pay off. However, it does provide a significant reduction in water consumption for the city somewhere in the 9% range. This means San Diego has a water sources that shaves off another 10% of water usage on top of water conservation efforts.

Considering that it is unlikely that the city will find an untapped source of natural water soon such plants make sense in today’s world. San Diego will stand out as one of the cities in the future that can not only provides water but also contributes to the development of more eco-friendly cities that leave less damaging footprint on the environment.

I believe this to be an important selling point for the city. As local government and stakeholders think about long-term plans they can capitalize on the areas natural beauty, background and resources by engaging in environmentally friendly changes. We can see the tip of the ice berg with new bike lanes. The possibilities are great for other projects.

Someday San Diego may produce another desalination plant. The ocean is plentiful and can potentially provide higher percentages of water as technology improves to reduce household and construction costs that are prohibitive in other communities. Perhaps someday we may be choosing to build another desalination plant if the Chargers decide to move to the scorched earth just to the North.  
What is the economic contribution of a green city?

A Few Ideas on Eating Lean and Low Fat Protein

Protein is a beneficial addition to your diet but often comes with high calories and loads of saturated fat. Despite its downsides, it is necessary to eat enough protein to ensure that your mind, muscle and body are adequately provided with the nutrients needed to stay healthy. If you are a fitness nut and are concerned about the amount of fat in your daily protein intake consider lean and low fat options.

If you like to exercise and improve your fitness level you will need an ample supply of protein to repair your muscles. It is recommended that men consume between .4 and .8g of protein per pound of body mass (1). .4 is an absolute minimum and .8 for an athlete.

-White vs. Dark Mean Chicken: Chicken is a main staple. There is a difference between legs ad breast. Eating white meat chicken with mostly spices versus marinated is the best alternative.

-Lean Beef: Lean beef versus regular beef is best as it substantially reduces the overall amount of saturated fat in your diet. Use it for cooking in any recipe that requires meat.

-Fish: Fish is one of the best sources of protein with very little fat. How you cook it will determine its overall benefits.

-Lentils, Beans and Legumes: If you desire to obtain protein without the burden of high fat check out lentil, beans and legumes as an alternative.

-Nuts: Only a handful is needed to get you a solid portion of protein. It also helps your heart and cardiovascular system.

-Protein Smoothies: Putting protein into smoothies helps find a balanced way of getting your daily intake needs.

Are You Buying Emotionally or Rationally?

Feelings and rationality have been something philosophers debated for centuries. Descartes separated emotion and reason as well as mind and body. The process of making purchasing decisions can be based on emotion, reason, or both depending on the situation in which we make decisions. From a marketing and consumer purchasing approach, emotion or reason are primed by an independent or interdependent self-construal.

According to a study in the Journal of Consumer Research  those with independent self-construal promote reliance on feelings in judgments while interdependent self-construals promote greater reliance on reason (Jiewen & Change, 2015). Decision making is impacted by how we see ourselves in relation to others.

To understand this idea fully it is necessary to comprehend what a self-construal is. Self-construal is the way in which we perceive ourselves in relation to others. Much of our belief is based on our cultural upbringing. Americans are believed to be focused more on an independent self-construal while Asians are more likely to have an interdependent self-construal.

When we have an independent self-construal we often seek to magnify our image and in turn make emotionally based decisions to do so. Most of us can remember a time when we saw something that would make us look better, happier, beautiful, thinner, richer or smarter. We bought a product based on its emotional appeal to our image.

Feelings and rationality are not mutually exclusive and carry with it individual and cultural differences. There are Americans that are more or interdependent than others. The point is that the majority of us make emotional purchases and if we sit back and think about those choices we may be able to enhance still our self-construct while making sound financial decisions. There is little doubt that many Americans are debt rich and cash poor.

Jiewen, H. & Chang, H. (2015). "I" Follow My Heart and "We" Rely on Reasons: The Impact of Self-Construal on Reliance on Feelings versus Reasons in Decision Making. Journal of Consumer Research, 41 (6).

Santee 4th of July Fireworks

I had the pleasure of attending Santee's fireworks this year. Hoping to avoid the crowds and parking chaos in Ocean Beach, La Jolla and Downtown San Diego I decided to try to frequent the Town Center Community Park in Santee. To my suprise it was much easier to navigate and less harassment factor than any of the other locations I have attended.

Plenty of places to sit under the stars considering the multitude of ballpark fields. There was almost no problems finding a place to park, walk in and set up camp. If you want to sit in one of the bleachers you can.

Even better you could have shown up early and went to the fun part with the food, rides, games, and live music. It was a carnival like event that was free to walk around and experience the excitement. You would need to pay for the extras but overall it was a great time.

Should We Expect Greater Innovation in the Future?

Will we see higher levels of innovation and skill development in the future? When entrepreneurship creates new products, it forces human capital upward as companies adapt this technology to create competitive advantages. Today's employment market is filling vacancies quickly and may soon begin to innovate again to find greater competitive strengths.

Spurts of technological advancement are followed by greater demands for market skills that raise human capital formation (Gomes, 2011). As companies adapt to new technology, they will seek to hire and train employees to use this technology. Employment expectation will adjust education and schooling to meet new job needs.

As the labor market moves closer to maximum employment capacity the cost of wages rises and pushes companies to adjust their strategies to focus on new competitive strengths. Technological advancement and integration is one approach that raises productivity and profit margins. The new demands will leave a gap in the employment market that takes time to fill.

The process of entrepreneurship, implementation, and human capital adjustments is a cyclical process where improvements in human capital can lead to greater adaptation. As businesses improve their competitiveness and hire additional skilled employees to fill vacant positions, the market becomes a draw for investment.

The development of society requires thinkers to create new ideas and spread those ideas to others where mass adaptation takes place. Today’s business world is more accustomed to innovation than at any other time in the past and will realign its educational and employment practices to encourage greater innovation. The speed of information transference will make innovation mass consumption faster thereby creating shorter product development times. Society will be in a constant process of change as innovation and skill development grow together.

Gomez, M. (2011). Stages of Economic Development in an Innovation-Education Growth Model. Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, 5 (4).