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> "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 st

by 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
    The Mongols were definitely more advanced after their conquests, but so was everybody else, simply because technology progresses. They did acquire technologies from the countries they conquered, but I don't think they were ever significantly ahead of all their neighbours, other than in their excellent organization, strategy and way of life that allowed them to do this in the first place.
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.

by gbog 11y ago

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
  The Mongols were definitely more advanced after their conquests, but so was everybody else, simply because technology progresses. They did acquire technologies from the countries they conquered, but I don't think they were ever significantly ahead of all their neighbours, other than in their excellent organization, strategy and way of life that allowed them to do this in the first place.

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.