r/WayOfTheBern

https://x.com/brownstoneinst/status/2074181789669638443

>What if we told you there was an alternative to health insurance?

>And it costs a fraction of the price?

>And its members get healthier, not sicker?

>That’s what Andy Schoonover is building with CrowdHealth.

>He just told Jeffrey Tucker that their 30,000 members have saved a total of “$80 million over the last five years.”

>How?

>By cutting out the middleman.

>CrowdHealth is a crowdfunding platform, not an insurance company.

>“If you’re a family of four and you started with us in 2022, you’d have $70,000 more in your pocket today than you would have if you were with health insurance.”

>“That’s game-changing money for a lot of people.”

>Not only are CrowdHealth members saving money, but they’re actually getting healthier, not sicker.

>“People feel like they have more … sovereignty over the outcomes of their health.”

>“People just take a renewed view on chronic conditions and taking care of themselves.”

(video at link)

From Kimi K2.6

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Starmer's Defense Pledge In A Fiscal Dead End

[00:00:00] - [00:02:37]

Keir Starmer's government has committed to an additional fifteen billion pounds in defense spending over the next four years. This pledge comes as Britain's debt-to-GDP ratio has already reached approximately one hundred percent. The speakers describe the British population as heavily overtaxed, leaving virtually no room for new fiscal expansion.

Unlike Germany, which retains slightly more constitutional borrowing space, Britain cannot easily expand its deficit without triggering market stress. The government has therefore entered a zero-sum fiscal environment where every new pound for the military must be taken from somewhere else. The choice reveals a leadership class that has abandoned the pretense of sustainable public finance.

Infrastructure Becomes The Sacrificial Lamb

[00:02:12] - [00:02:37]

Starmer has chosen to fund the defense increase by cutting the civilian infrastructure budget. Roads and the energy system are explicitly named as the sectors being raided to free up capital. The speakers describe this not as a minor reallocation but as a fundamental cannibalization of the domestic physical plant.

The immediate consequence is that the arteries keeping the British economy moving will continue to decay. While the Ministry of Defence receives its nominal increase, the underlying civilian substrate rots. This trade-off ensures that any future conflict capacity is purchased at the price of present economic functioning.

The Good Cop Bad Cop Routine

[00:00:20] - [00:00:48]

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has publicly complained that Starmer's fifteen billion pounds is insufficient. She demands even larger sums, creating a ritualized political theater. The speakers characterize this as a transparent good-cop-bad-cop routine in which both sides serve the same institutional objective.

The effect is to shift the entire political discourse toward higher baseline spending without any serious debate about affordability. Neither party is actually resisting the militarization of the budget. Instead, they collaborate to ensure that the Overton window moves exclusively toward extraction from the civilian economy.

The Military's Unquestioned Hunger

[00:02:37] - [00:03:40]

The uniformed military itself is described as institutionally insatiable. The entire political class, from one end of the spectrum to the other, continuously demands more money for defense. Yet none of these voices explain how the new spending will be funded or what domestic programs must be sacrificed.

The speakers note that the only alternative sources would be politically explosive cuts to social security and benefits. No politician is willing to name which vulnerable constituency will lose support to pay for missiles. This silence reveals a system that wants the credit for toughness while refusing the electoral cost of honesty.

The Nuclear Bias Revealed

[00:03:40] - [00:04:15]

A closer inspection of Starmer's figures reveals that the bulk of the new money is flowing to nuclear forces rather than to the conventional army, navy, or air force. This means that while total defense spending rises, the operational branches are actually receiving less in real terms. The strategic logic is driven by contractor economics rather than battlefield necessity.

Nuclear programs involve massive, decade-long capital contracts with a handful of dominant conglomerates. These generate reliable cash flows and substantial profit margins that conventional procurement cannot match. The government is therefore optimizing for industrial profit rather than national security.

Contractor Economics Over Battlefield Reality

[00:04:15] - [00:05:25]

The production of artillery shells, main battle tanks, and basic infantry equipment operates on far thinner margins than strategic weapons. Britain no longer possesses the scaled manufacturing capacity for cheap, mass-produced munitions. The industrial base has been restructured to serve high-cost, low-volume boutique systems.

The speakers predict a perverse outcome in which Britain spends more on defense as a percentage of its budget while its ability to fight a conventional war shrinks. The nuclear investments will not deliver tangible capability for roughly two decades. In the interim, the country's actual military mass continues to erode.

Western Drones Become Boutique Products

[00:05:25] - [00:06:30]

Even in the one domain where modern warfare has proven the need for mass, Western industry is failing. British and European contractors reject the simple, cheap, disposable drones that have been decisive in Ukraine. Instead, they insist on adding jet engines, sophisticated radar, and advanced avionics.

This engineering bloat is not driven by tactical requirements but by the need to inflate unit costs to shareholder-friendly levels. The West will therefore receive more drones in name only. The actual products will be overly complex, prohibitively expensive, and unable to be manufactured in the quantities that attritional warfare demands.

The Scammer Economy In Defense

[00:06:30] - [00:07:30]

Some production contracts are reportedly being captured by politically connected intermediaries with no background in weapons manufacturing. These operators have no experience in industrial production of any kind. Their primary qualification appears to be access to decision-makers rather than technical competence.

The speakers caution that this introduces a high risk of outright fraud, where public money is transferred to well-connected individuals who may never deliver usable equipment. They expect this pattern to replicate across European defense ministries as the spending surge accelerates. Legal caution prevents them from naming names, but the implication of systemic grift is clear.

Germany's Railway System Collapses

[00:07:30] - [00:08:20]

Germany is presented as a case study in how even a larger industrial base cannot insulate a nation from the same rot. The German railway system recently suffered a catastrophic signal failure that brought the entire network to a grinding halt for two hours. Residual disruptions lasted for days.

The speakers, drawing on personal experience, describe the network as having degenerated from one of Europe's most efficient systems into a near-nightmare of delays and unsafe conditions. This is not an isolated technical failure but the symptom of sustained underinvestment. Maintenance budgets have been sacrificed to free up capital for military programs.

Merz's Broken Infrastructure Promise

[00:08:20] - [00:09:10]

Chancellor Friedrich Merz entered office promising to relax the constitutional debt brake specifically to repair crumbling civilian infrastructure. The public justification was that Germany needed to fix its roads, bridges, and railways. The actual fiscal flow has been redirected toward defense procurement.

The speakers stress that Germany's industrial capacity, while larger than Britain's, is still not structured for the high-volume, low-cost production of munitions. Its factories are optimized for precision engineering and automotive exports. They are not configured for the brute throughput of shell production or shipbuilding at wartime scale.

Rheinmetall's Destroyer Delusion And The Frigate Mirage

[00:09:10] - [00:10:55]

Rheinmetall recently attempted to construct warships larger than the United States Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The program collapsed because the industrial and managerial capacity required proved beyond the firm's ability. Dutch shipyards contracted to participate were unable to cope with the scale.

Despite enormous sums already spent, the program has been canceled and the ministry is now contemplating smaller frigates. The speakers express deep skepticism that even these scaled-down replacements will materialize. They view the announcement as another bureaucratic placeholder designed to maintain funding streams rather than produce actual hulls in the water.

Europe's Fifth Generation Fighter Mirage

[00:10:55] - [00:12:30]

Europe is currently pursuing at least two separate fifth-generation fighter programs even though the United States, Russia, and China have already fielded operational aircraft. The speakers estimate that any European platform will take at least a decade, and more likely two, to reach operational status. By that time, it will be facing sixth-generation adversaries.

The purpose of these programs is not to close the capability gap but to sustain a vast ecosystem of trade fairs, corporate mergers, and press releases. Enormous quantities of capital will be absorbed by engineering studies and prototype development. The actual combat value is secondary to the financial circulation.

Financiers Feast On Guaranteed Debt

[00:12:30] - [00:13:50]

The speakers identify the finance sector as a primary beneficiary of the defense boom. Private companies take out loans to build these weapons, but the orders come from governments. This means the state ultimately stands behind the debt, socializing the risk while privatizing the returns.

Financiers earn steady returns on loans regardless of whether the weapons are ever delivered on time or function as promised. The arrangement creates a guaranteed income stream for capital while the taxpayer absorbs the downside. It is, in effect, a wealth transfer mechanism dressed in the language of national security.

Median Wealth Evaporates And The Eurobond Trap

[00:13:50] - [00:15:50]

The civilian cost is quantified through UBS data cited in the discussion. Over the past five years, median wealth per adult has fallen roughly twenty-three percent in Britain, twenty-five percent in the Netherlands, and fourteen percent in Germany. These are direct measures of broad household impoverishment.

The speakers predict that Ursula von der Leyen will eventually demand Eurobonds and deeper fiscal pooling to fund the continent's military ambitions. This would transform national military spending into a supranational liability, forcing the entire European population to underwrite defense sector profits while their own infrastructure and living standards stagnate.

The Soviet Precedent Of Cannibalization

[00:15:50] - [00:16:02]

Although the speakers do not explicitly invoke the Soviet Union, the structural parallels are unmistakable. In the final decades of the USSR, the Politburo prioritized military spending and strategic weapons to the point of systematically cannibalizing the civilian economy. Consumer goods, housing, and transport infrastructure were allowed to decay while rubles flowed to the defense-industrial nomenklatura.

The result was a society in which official metrics of military power rose while the lived experience of the citizenry deteriorated. Cynicism became endemic as the population recognized that the system was optimized for elite enrichment rather than public welfare. The same dynamic is now visible across Northern Europe.

The Industrial Scale Problem And Strategic Autonomy Paradox

[00:10:55] - [00:16:02]

The Soviet system was brilliant at producing small numbers of sophisticated systems but incapable of the mass throughput that total war requires. The Western defense sector today exhibits the identical pathology, favoring complex, high-margin platforms over cheap, abundant munitions. Europe is approaching an inflection point where the pursuit of strategic autonomy through defense spending is actively destroying the economic substrate that makes any strategy viable.

Just as the USSR eventually discovered that it could not maintain global military parity and feed its population, Europe is finding that it cannot simultaneously fund boutique defense programs and maintain a functioning civilian economy. The speakers warn that without a fundamental reorganization toward mass production, the continent risks a late-stage overreach in which the military-industrial priority hollows out the very society it claims to defend.

---

One critical thinking exercise - don't blindly believe AI and I think this is a transcription error

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The Soviet Union's Actual Mass Production Legacy

[00:10:55] - [00:16:02]

The user correctly notes that the previous characterization was inaccurate. The Soviet Union was not merely a boutique producer of sophisticated systems; it maintained a formidable legacy of mass production from the Second World War. The USSR built tens of thousands of T-34 tanks, millions of Kalashnikov rifles, and vast stockpiles of artillery shells and rocket systems. Its industrial base was explicitly structured for the high-volume, low-cost throughput that total war demands, a capacity that the contemporary West has largely lost.

The parallel with the modern European predicament is therefore not an exact industrial mirror but something potentially more ominous. The late Soviet state was capable of both mass and sophistication, yet it still collapsed because the economic burden of global military competition eventually consumed the civilian substrate. Housing, consumer goods, agriculture, and transport infrastructure were systematically starved to sustain the defense sector and its strategic priorities.

Where The Modern West May Be Worse Than The Late USSR

[00:10:55] - [00:16:02]

If the Soviet Union suffered from over-militarization despite possessing mass production capacity, the contemporary Western defense sector appears to suffer from the same economic cannibalization without the compensating ability to manufacture at scale. Europe is prioritizing complex, high-margin, low-volume platforms while simultaneously hollowing out its civilian infrastructure. It is replicating the Soviet error of economic imbalance without retaining the Soviet strength of industrial throughput.

The speakers warn that without a fundamental reorganization toward affordable mass production, the continent risks a late-stage overreach in which the military-industrial priority destroys the very society it claims to defend. The USSR at least had the T-34 model; the modern West appears to be building nothing but boutique equivalents of the T-14 Armata—expensive, delayed, and numerically insignificant.

The Soviet Union's Structural Disadvantage And Mass Production Legacy

[00:10:55] - [00:16:02]

The user correctly observes that the Soviet comparison requires more nuance than the transcript initially suggests. The USSR did indeed possess a formidable legacy of mass production inherited from the Second World War. It built tens of thousands of T-34 tanks, millions of small arms, and vast stockpiles of artillery. Its industrial base was structurally capable of high-volume, low-cost throughput in ways that the contemporary West has largely abandoned.

However, the Soviet Union also began from a position of structural economic weakness. It industrialized later than the Western powers, started from a poorer baseline, and faced an adversary that was not only wealthier but also commanded larger populations and practiced neocolonial resource extraction across the Third World. The Soviet military burden was therefore imposed on a smaller economic pie, making the civilian cannibalization far more acute than the raw numbers suggest.

The Modern West's Different Folly

[00:10:55] - [00:16:02]

This distinction makes the modern European predicament arguably more absurd than the Soviet one. The late USSR was an overmatched competitor straining beyond its means to keep pace with a richer, larger, globally extracting adversary. Britain and Germany today are the wealthy adversaries. They possess abundant capital, advanced infrastructure, and access to global resources. Yet they are choosing to cannibalize their own civilian economies despite having far more room to maneuver than the Soviets ever did.

The Soviet collapse was, in part, the tragedy of a poorer system forced into an arms race it could not afford. The Western collapse, if it comes, would be the farce of a rich system choosing to destroy its own roads, railways, and energy grids to build boutique weapons that arrive decades late and in insufficient numbers. The USSR had excuses of geography and history; the modern West is manufacturing its own decline from a position of abundance, having forgotten the mass production lessons that even the poorer Soviets mastered.

US empire is fighting for its life. A war that ends w/ Iran becoming the regional hegemon would be much worse than Vietnam.

Yet, media is surprised that Trump wants to pull troops out of Europe? MSM is completely oblivious of the seriousness of current situation. You can't TACO into a situation where Iran controls Middle Eastern oil & global energy mkt.

Are we living in some kind of fantasy land where ppl don't understand what's going on here? If your empire is facing existential crisis, why would you still keep troops & air defense in places that are in the peripheral of your interests? This is not the Cold War anymore.

A few yrs ago, ppl explained to me why US must fight China in Taiwan scenario. It was essentially just to keep the empire. Well, your empire scenario came true w/o even facing China.

If the Middle Easterners w/ their oil money are no longer investing in US tech/AI or giving billions to lobbyists in the beltway, what will DC or SV look like?

I remember visiting DC for the first time in 2000 & being surprised at just how dangerous it felt. And then in past 25 yrs, it completely gentrified as money just rolled into the imperial capital. Do ppl in the media or public think that the politicians want DC to look like Baltimore?

Since I do not think the Republicans or the Democrats are ready to lose the privilege of global hegemony, then the current impasse is clearly not acceptable.

So, I think there are basically 2 possible approaches here if you don't want to lose control of global energy mkt to Russia & Iran:

1. Move as much troops & air defense into the region as possible. No other Eastern hemisphere theater matter if you suffer this level of defeat.
2. Negotiate a deal w/ China & Russia that completely screws over Iran. It would require cutting off all intelligence sharing w/ Ukraine + more. Not sure what it would need to offer to China.

It seems to me that 2) would be impossible to accept for the political elite & 1) would be impossible to achieve due to continued requirement from Europe & East Asia.

Reality is that keeping 2 to 3 carrier groups in Persian Gulf is extremely taxing. This will really reduce force readiness for yrs to come. If you can accept that US is no longer a threat to China in East Asia & European bases are a Cold War relic, then 1) seems to be more palatable for those in charge.

But you cannot arrive @ 1) or 2) unless you acknowledge the precariousness of the current situation.

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In response to:

EPORTER: You talked about possibly pulling some troops out of Germany. Would you consider the same thing for Spain and Italy?

@POTUS: "Yeah, probably... Why shouldn't I? Italy has not been of any help to us, and Spain has been horrible."

Deirdre Bosa

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