It's interesting -- I would imagine a minority of Americans would support developing killer drones, because it is a terrible slope for the world as a whole to go down, yet our military -- largely because of game theory, will continue to develop them, likely to a poor outcome for the world.
Perhaps our belief in game theory is a pretty miserable self-fulfilling promise
But "your" military is yours mostly in name, and in paying taxes. The profits of offensive wars do not go to you, and I would expect that overall, war destroys more wealth than it creates. Of course, for a robber this doesn't matter, but in the long run it means cutting off the branch one sits on, killing the host one feeds off.
"If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as though he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror." -- Hannah Arendt
Was there ever an empire which exploited foreigners, but respected its own populace? Among any and all of them you will find classes of the population that profit, but the country as a whole? Can you have injustice on the outside and justice on the inside?
While these are not rhetorical questions, you can guess what "my answer so far" is.. I think the poorer the outcome for the rest of the world, the poorer the outcome for inhabitants of the US, too. Including the elites, who are just feeding addictions to gain additional insecurities, if you ask me; "power" is just code for "I am scared and unable to create".
I'm no fan of imperialism or the military, but I think it is possible for a self-interested nation to treat its own citizens well while acting immorally abroad.
However, I don't think such differential treatment is desirable, and it increasingly makes little sense as technology more deeply interconnects us over the trivial lines we draw in the sand to create discrete countries.
I think we think along the same lines in terms of power, although I'd phrase it more in that power is self-perpetuating -- something that (like bureaucracy) ratchets up but is hard to prune.
For example, even if most citizens of the world wanted more cooperation between their respective countries, and to dial back military developments such as drone warfare, the self-interested power accumulated in the government institutions of countries would likely resist.
> I'm no fan of imperialism or the military, but I think it is possible for a self-interested nation to treat its own citizens well while acting immorally abroad.
Is there a historical example of it though? I am not exactly a history buff, but so far I am drawing blanks. And I have trouble imagining it in theory, even; I mean sure, a person could theoretically be very dishonest to one group of people, and very honest to another; but at least with people, such stuff generally leaks all over.
Roman Empire? Civis Romanis sum and all that. You have to not use modern standards of "treated well" and note that not every resident was a citizen and some were slaves.
The legal fiction of the early Empire (in which the emperor was but the first among equals) was disposed of; the emperors, beginning with Aurelian, openly styled themselves as dominus et deus, lord and god, titles appropriate for a slave towards his master. An elaborate court ceremonial was developed, and obsequious flattery became the order of the day. Under Diocletian, the flow of direct requests to the emperor was rapidly reduced and soon ceased altogether. No other form of direct access replaced them, and the emperor received only information that was filtered through his courtiers.
Official cruelty, supporting extortion and corruption, may also have become more commonplace. While the scale, complexity, and violence of government were unmatched, the emperors lost control over their whole realm insofar as that control came increasingly to be wielded by anyone who paid for it. Meanwhile the richest senatorial families, immune from most taxation, engrossed more and more of the available wealth and income, while also becoming divorced from any tradition of military excellence.
The net cost/benefit of military conflict in economic terms is almost impossible to calculate.
Your run the gauntlet of variables from military-industrial production as a constant of GDP, through to the net benefit of conflict related inventions and leaps in medical engineering and hospital care.
You would also have to contend with the possible benefits/costs of reduction in the human populace. None of this includes the climate change impact, huge ecological impacts on local terrain and ecosystems.
Most modern conflicts also present huge employment opportunities for the local populace. In Camp Bastion/Leatherneck in Helmand Province, combat and support troops are outnumbered 3 to 1 by local recruited workers and locally employed civilians.
I am not convinced war destroys more wealth than it creates but it is an interesting question...
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] Is there no other way the world may live?"
> You seem incapable of discussing this issue in it's entirety.
You yourself said it's "too complex", so by your own admission, everyone is.
Also, it's kind of silly to say war against an oppressor, or for independence is good, without realizing that without an oppressor, it would not be necessary in the first place. E.g. while I am glad that the allies defeated Hitler, I am also aware that without his initial atrocities, that would not have been necessary. Same for fighting against the British.
>> Also, it's kind of silly to say war against an oppressor, or for independence is good, without realizing that without an oppressor, it would not be necessary in the first place.
That is patently false. An oppressor may be an oppressor in absence due to resource scarcity and competition. They may not directly oppress the societal group attempting to take action against the perceived oppression.
Also, oppression is not war. War is an organized and often prolonged conflict that is carried out by states or non-state actors. It is generally characterised by extreme violence, social disruption and economic destruction. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities, and therefore is defined as a form of political violence or intervention.
You are wrong to say that war exists because of oppressors. I made the point that not all war is negative because sometimes it challenges oppression.
I did say that the wealth creation issue is too complex. It is you who said it was not - I am waiting for your evidence that war destroys more wealth than it creates.
Er, you're aware he was talking about WW2, widely regarded as the least pointless war of the past 100 years with the most clearly evil enemy?
He's not saying that surrender would have been a better option, rather that war is extraordinarily costly and people should not be misled by the lure of the "quick", "easy" or "just" war; and that the political system should try much, much harder to find nonviolent ways of progressing.
> Most modern conflicts also present huge employment opportunities for the local populace.
That is one way to look at it. Another is that they are a way to extract big amounts of money from a population to put it into private hands, and these jobs being breadcrumbs falling off that table. Imagine throwing 20$ in the air, getting 10$ back, and saying it's raining money.
Penicillin, plumbing, or washing hands weren't invented for war, and I would guess for every invention made for it, there are many, many more made without war in mind. And for most if not all of the beneficial ones, there is a peaceful path; computers were imagined long before they were built, that WW2 triggered them actually becoming a thing doesn't mean they would not ever have been built without war - we don't know.
And there is the question what speeding up inevitable progress a little, so you can have it right now, rather than "just" generations down the line having it, at the expense of the lives of others, makes a person; search on youtube for "kill the poor" by Mitchell & Webb.
You listing 3 inventions that came from peaceful times is simply inviting an adversarial response.
[1] Penicillin - it was not until 1939 when Dr. Howard Florey’s research was able to prove the effectiveness of penicillin without a shadow of a doubt and with the aid of Andrew J. Moyer he developed the most powerful antibacterial substance in the world.
Invented during conflict -
>> Hydrogen Peroxide (forerunner to fuel-cell & synthetic fuel technology
>> Synthetic Rubber
>> Air Traffic Control
>> Superglue
>> Tampons / Tampax / Sanitary Pads (WW1 Cellulose Bandage)
>> Jerry Can
>> Pressurised Cabin
>> Radio Navigation
>> Cryptography / Cryptanalysis
>> Radar
>> Synthetic Oil
>> V-2 Rocket (forerunner to the R7 & Mercury)
>> Jet Engine
>> Nuclear Power
>> Paper Money (greenbacks)
>> Canned Food
>> Sewing Machine
>> Standardized Clothing Sizes
>> Telegraph Network
I could go, as I am sure could you. The point is that you assumption that the net effect of conflict is simply a loss does not stand up to rigorous academic thinking. The variables are too complex.
Also, your comment about $20 / raining money as an analogy is absurd. The majority of the workers on Camp Bastion are unskilled and were earning less than $1 a day in subsistence agriculture prior to the arrival of military forces. Regardless of the war aims etc the median income has risen as an effect of troops being located with the populace. The ffect of war on a western or advanced market economy might be different but for Afghanistan it increased the amount of capital in the country.
You still weren't able to show how medical inventions needed war for anything but acceleration, or how peaceful inventions don't outnumber those made for war. Paper money was invented in China, canned food was invented because of 12k, not because the french military happened to offer them, and the jury is kinda still out on nuclear power since we have no real way of dealing with the garbage it produces yet. But okay.
I think if you focus closely and selectively enough, you can always find benefits. The NSDAP was very useful and positive for a select few Germans at the time, and I am sure the results of medical experiments made in Japanese concentration camps were useful, too. Who knows, there are probably even inventions made by a racist for racist purposes. But whoever can make that calculation with a straight face, I don't want to meet them in a dark alley.
And you have still failed to present any compelling evidence that military conflict is detrimental to society.
I did not make the original hypothesis, you did. I simply said there are too many variables, many of which you fail to accept as evidenced by your comments.
"present any compelling evidence that military conflict is detrimental to society"
What an extraordinary thing to say, something that could only be said by someone who's had the privilege to be very far away from the destruction of war. No sane person is going to stand in the bombed out building looking at the corpses saying, "I don't see any evidence that this is detrimental".
Actually I am a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan - returning from Helmand Province most recently in 2012.
I never said I don't see detrimental effects of war. The original question was Does War destroy more wealth than it creates?
Also, I know of many situations where a sane person may stand in a bombed out building surrounded by corpses and find none if it detrimental. Standing inside the final bunker that housed the last vestiges of the Nazi's for instance.
It is also absolutely ludicrous to think that war is only characterised by munitions destroying buildings resulting in the death of the inhabitants.
For instance - here is the United States Navy USNS Comfort (T-AH-20).
In accordance with the Geneva Conventions, USNS Comfort and her crew do not carry any offensive weapons. Firing upon the Comfort would be considered a war crime as the ship only carries weapons for self-defense.
The Comfort has provided medical aid to literally millions of people around the globe regardless of colour, creed or caste however it remains firmly within the employ the US Navy and is funded by the same pot used for fighting conflicts.
Your understanding of war is childlike at best with no discernment.
Furthermore the question was centered purely on the issue of wealth creation - a purely economic question distinct from ethical or moral concerns.
> And you have still failed to present any compelling evidence that military conflict is detrimental to society.
You mean apart from thousands or millions dead, cities destroyed, children orphaned, starvation, depredation and death?
I don't think I understand your moral system, but I'm going to take a stab that you're thinking in a utilitarian way. Well all the dollars and inventions and stuff you're talking about? Their purpose is to make people happy.
But the economic bead game you're talking about starts looking pretty irrelevant when you compare the relative happiness that some people get from having more beads with the sheer cost of war in human misery and destruction.
Are you arguing that the thousands and millions of dead would not have died without warfare? Are they immortal apart from military conflict?
I am a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan and have been considerably closer to war than, arguably, 99% of the collective posting on Hacker News. My point was not a moral position and most of you seem incapable of grasping the nettle of the original discussion thread.
The gist was the sum total economic impact. Moral, ethical and sentimental values do not matter and, like in most economical discussion, they are to be discarded.
At no point have I stated I agree with war (I do in certain circumstances) - the original question was does war create more wealth than it destroys?
Your emotional appeal about dead children is nothing to do with the original question. Without war however, we would still live under Feudal yokes or Patriarchal societies. War was required in many cases to establish the liberal democracy most of us exist in.
When you talk about moving the beads from one side to the other you look only at beads such as money, dead bodies, widespread crime and the gory side of conflict.
How about those conflicts that resulted in freeing slaves, securing indepdendence and democracy? What about the civil wars fought to ensure that men and women are treated fairly under the law and not at the whim of a Royal Family? Do you make any allowance for the benefits (however callous) to the reduction of the human population?
I expect the storm of downvotes but I attribute them to HN respondents being unable to separate the rational academic question from the emotional impact of warfare.
> Are you arguing that the thousands and millions of dead would not have died without warfare? Are they immortal apart from military conflict?
Are you arguing inventions are made out of greed and chauvinism more often than out of curiosity? Are you arguing they wouldn't have been made anyway, at some point?
> Without war however, we would still live under Feudal yokes or Patriarchal societies. War was required in many cases to establish the liberal democracy most of us exist in.
Same question.
Also, when you talk about "freeing slaves", you are missing that to capture a slave could be considered an act of violence, and therefore war in the widest sense.
Capturing a slave cannot be considered war in any sense.
War is an organized and often prolonged conflict that is carried out by states or non-state actors. It is generally characterised by extreme violence, social disruption and economic destruction. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities, and therefore is defined as a form of political violence or intervention.
Why is war greed and chauvinistic? It did not feel chauvnistic when I was delivering medical aid to children who would have died without military forces being present to administer it.
Aspects of war may be greedy and characterised by chauvinistic values but not the entirety of war which you seem incapable of discussing rationally.
This thread has reached it's conclusion the minute you refused to engage with legitimate questions. Your response reads like a genuine tantrum by a child.
I certainly do not think that the evolution of democratic societies could have occurred without acts of war to take freedom from those that would deny it.
I have answered your question. Now answer mine or at least answer the original aim of the thread with compelling evidence.
In economics, wealth in a commonly applied accounting sense is the net worth of a person, household, or nation, that is, the value of all assets owned net of all liabilities owed at a point in time. For national wealth as measured in the national accounts, the net liabilities are those owed to the rest of the world. The term may also be used more broadly as referring to the productive capacity of a society or as a contrast to poverty.
Perhaps our belief in game theory is a pretty miserable self-fulfilling promise