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I read this and I think of the courage that it must have taken to write, however, I quickly realize that my thoughts are based on today's mindset where question

• gbog 11y ago
  > "peace doesn't make money" Not so sure about it. Peace and stability is the main driver for civilisation booms. Maybe sometime wars can shake the tree but storms do not help growing big fruits -- long sunny days do. Chinese civilisation is remarkable for its long periods of relative peace and steady wealth increase. That's also when culture develops.
  • awl130 11y ago
    every time china has a prolonged period of peace, the nobility gets corrupt which then opens it up for invasion. culture may be the result of extended peace, but unity is only achieved through conflict. ironically, there is no peace without war. yin and yang.
    • gbog 11y ago
      Yes, that's the second order analysis. But the mantra stating that war brings wealth and competition, that war is "sane and natural" from civilisation point of view, is wrong. Peace is the "sane and natural" state for human civilisation, and while some degradation can occur in an extended period with no major conflict, this is a side effect of peace, not the main effect (which is, again, that people can gather wealth and transmis it to their offsprings)
      • awl130 11y ago
        War is the natural state of man. Therefore peace must be vigilantly enforced through law.
  • ekianjo 11y ago
    Peace brings money to everyone, not just the ones who wage wars. War is a capital appropriation by the few.
  • api 11y ago
    My favorite retort to those who blame the post-WWII tech boom on war: if that's true why wasn't WWI the cause of a similar boom? And why weren't the Aztec or the Mongols much more advanced? War can certainly accelerate and mobilize what's already there but I find the argument that it creates unconvincing.
    • gbog 11y ago
      > was WWI You mean "wasn't" ?
      • api 11y ago
        Yes, fixed. Mobile is the foot rub.
    • nkozyra 11y ago
      I'd say the Mongols and Aztecs were more advanced after their conquests than before. Expecting the radio or flight to have been invented just because there were many centuries of conflict belies the incremental nature of innovation. And WWI certainly drove innovation; I think this always manifests most in military facets, obviously and tends to cascade into commercial sectors more slowly. Not much time separated WWI and WWII and a great deal of it was mired in the largest modern economic depression. I don't support any of this, but it's literally competing with a gun to your head.
      • gbog 11y ago
        > Mongols more advanced after their conquests than before Maybe, but the point is that Mongols, for some reason (maybe geography and weather?), did never stop being fighters. They never "settled down" to grow wealth, which is a very long process with many parameters (cities, knowledge stores, trustable and transmissible commercial bonds, etc.) So they are very good warriors, and have been very successful in their conquest, but compared to their Chinese neighbours (which are not the prototype of the aggressive people, to understate it a bit), they are just much smaller, and grew much less wealth.
      • mcv 11y ago
  • ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    China's sort of a lousy example at some point in time because the Mandarins then intentionally made the culture static. Booms are strongly correlated with increases in trade.
• apawloski 11y ago
  >I read this and I think of the courage that it must have taken to write, however, I quickly realize that my thoughts are based on today's mindset where questioning the government gets you labeled a conspiracy nut or traitor. It's interesting you mention that, as Smedley Butler was the alleger of the Business Plot -- what he claimed to be a planned coup d'etat on FDR by wealthy businessmen. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
  • samstave 11y ago
    And don't forget that Prescott Bush was at the center of that plot.
• ekianjo 11y ago
  And even more ironically Obama got a Nobel peace prize, for free. The Nobel commission is a good joke.
  • griffinmahon 11y ago
    The absurd award of the Peace Prize is not without precedent, though. Consider that Henry Kissinger was a laureate in 1973.
    • ekianjo 11y ago
      Sure. What was especially unusual about Obama is that he had taken absolutely no action as a president and got the prize in a pre-emptive way. Which is, honestly, stupid, there is no other way to put it.
      • ponyfleisch 11y ago
        except that he didn't get it pre-emptively for his presidential achievements. Which makes me think that you don't know what you're talking about.
        • varjag 11y ago
          He formally got it for his nuclear disarmament/non-proliferation effort but come on. Everyone knew it really was for not being another GWB. It's very unlikely he would have gotten this prize as a U.S. senator not involved in presidential campaign.
      • mcv 11y ago
        He had made a nice speech about improving relations between the West and the Arab world. It's a bit thin for a Nobel, though. I like to see that Nobel Prize as having been awarded to the American voter. Electing a black president in a country with such a racist past is a fantastic milestone.
      • vidarh 11y ago
        Consider that the election of Obama is the first time ever I have seen such outpourings of joy at the election of a US president in Europe. Not because it was Obama, but because it represented a return to normality after GWB. The second term election of GWB was so surreal by European eyes that it seemed like some collective insanity had gripped large parts of American voters. In response, when Obama was elected, there were election day parties many places in Europe. Some Americans celebrating always happens, of course, but this time you had Europeans going to parties to celebrate a US president. The relief was the election of Obama brought was immense, and the Nobel prize is a reflection of just how deep felt it was in certain circles.
• streptomycin 11y ago
  To be fair, Obama campaigned on winding down the war in Iraq and scaling up the war in Afghanistan. A lot of people just pretended not to hear that second part. But he by no means campaigned as a pacifist - and if he did, he might have lost.
• api 11y ago
  > questioning the government gets you labeled a conspiracy nut or traitor Happy to see someone else pointing this out. For someone who grew up in the 90s it's weird how conventional and pro establishment the mainstream and especially more educated mindset is today. I think it's partly hidden because it's masked by the social liberalism. But ignore gay marriage and legal pot and this is the 1950s. Any serious and deep questioning of society or the power structure of the world is seen as either nutty or futile, whether it comes in the form of more educated criticism or its rougher more "punk" forms like conspiracy theory and counterculture. Today is like some bohemian version of the Eisenhower era. There is a kind of goofy new age "alt" thing with GMO food scares and such but it really strikes me as not only niche but unserious and toothless. It's almost more a form of entertainment than a serious counterculture. It also strikes me as a distraction with people getting angry at paper tigers like GMO food or nonexistent things like "chemtrails" instead of real issues. Edit: I also realize that this matches the tech cycle. The return of pro establishment thinking after 9/11 coincided with the end of the first PC era and the rebirth of the mainframe rebranded as "cloud." To what extent is cold sober engineering actually art, an expression of who we are at the time?
  • iamcurious 11y ago
    >To what extent is cold sober engineering actually art, an expression of who we are at the time? Beautifully put.
• deleted 11y ago
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• BuckRogers 11y ago
  >I quickly realize that my thoughts are based on today's mindset where questioning the government gets you labeled a conspiracy nut or traitor. I think this was true, pre-Snowden. The Snowden revelations confirmed what a lot of conspiracy theorists had been saying for long time. >Our current president was elected on promises of ending these wars and somehow he will go down in history as the champion of military occupation and perpetuating conflicts in places we don't belong. Yes and no. 1st term promise: to end the war in Iraq which we have removed ourselves. He said he would escalate the war in Afghanistan. He kept all of this. 2nd term promise: remove ourselves from Afghanistan by EOY 2014 which didn't happen. >Truth is that peace doesn't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of industry, the difference is that where is the industry? A better question is who's profiting and who is losing. As a working class American, I've paid out to subsidize these businesses/war (almost one in the same) while literally nothing has come back to me. No job building bombs, no oil money, zilch. So I don't care about the MIC or this (in every way) destructive industry.
• mathattack 11y ago
  Truth is that peace doesn't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of industry, the difference is that where is the industry? I will start by saying that I hate war. And war is VERY anti-capitalist. The only time war makes countries money is when they pick on non-industrialized enemies. People have realized that war is very costly to trade and industrial elites outside the military-industrial complex. [0] But... Can we really say that we can turn a blind eye to the world's most evil people? Perhaps we can say "Let Europe handle itself" in 1915, but can we really say that in 1941? Even if 1941 was caused by 1915, can't we admit that there are some things worth fighting over? This isn't to defend the current war-mongers running for President. It's just to say that a 0 wars policy doesn't seem to stand up to reality. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree
  • mcv 11y ago
    Some wars absolutely do need to be fought. Aggression, genocide, oppression need to be opposed, and sometimes the only way to oppose violence is with violence (though it should be a last resort; always look for an alternative first). But that's different from starting a war. Ultimately the question is: is the real reason for war to help and defend people, or is it for someone to make a profit? The problem is of course that warmongers often try to frame the latter as the former. Like Bush claiming we should invade Iraq to stop Saddam and his WMDs. But Saddam was never a real threat (unlike in the first Gulf War, where he took Kuwait, though maybe the real concern there was still oil dollars, and not the freedom of the people of Kuwait). And even then, even a "good" war can be an excellent opportunity for the arms dealers to make a profit. The best approach should be what we've always known: be very reluctant, and only go to war when to do nothing means to allow the oppression or death of innocents. But we've known this for centuries, and we still keep messing up. We probably get it wrong more than we get it right. That's depressing. I'm not sure if I had a point anymore.
    • ArkyBeagle 11y ago
      War is almost never to "make a profit". There have been "filibusters" that were more like that; South Africa and South America were mostly the location for those. America in WWII might have been better served by simply being the Arsenal of Democracy and selling war materiel. I'd be hard pressed to say that Europe would have been better off. But this is just one of those things about nation-states that we live with. And please realize that Hollywood was overtly pressed into service to sell the War to the American people. I'm not advocating isolationism. but Americans at the time were highly isolationist. Is what's behind all this talk the basic Bismarckian welfare-warfare State concept? It's more subtle than that, IMO.
• rat87 11y ago
  This is a bit reductionist. War is fought for many reasons, many of them bad, not just economic reasons. Before WWI many believed the so called general war would never occur because it would be so terrible for business, no gain could offset the loss. War still happened.
• ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Talking of conspiracies and traitors... The author of this book was approached by George W Bush's grandfather and some other very rich men, to be the leader of the U.S. after their fascist coup overthrew the current president. He said no, and blew the whistle, a government committe investigated and found the claims plausible and then nothing happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot (edit: I see I'm a bit late with this info as it's been linked twice already, still fascinating stuff, and very plausible given the country was certainly exploiting other countries militarily, and still exploiting its own minorities at home with little moral compunction, so it's not exactly a big step).
• eternalban 11y ago
  > the government Not just the government. It is a power complex which has clearly subverted the "government". Huxley/Herbert did warn us, and imo this conflict was/is inevitable.
• jcslzr 11y ago
  >I quickly realize that my thoughts are based on today's mindset where questioning the government gets you labeled a conspiracy nut or traitor. I guess conspiracy theorist are today hippies.