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> This is the broken window fallacy. No, it's not. With investment in military R&D, there's no "broken window." Claiming that destruction in one place (aka war

> This is the broken window fallacy. No, it's not. With investment in military R&D, there's no "broken window." Claiming that destruction in one place (aka war) spurs growth is the broken window fallacy. It's possible that investment "directly into the economy" might be more effective except for the fact that you have to take the money out of the economy and put it into a few peoples' hands to direct. The fewer hands means the easier it is to corrupt or hijack the process. I'd rather for "the economy" to invest on its own. As Hayek said, I want "plans by the many not by the few."

stale2002 9y ago
But with the military, you are already taking that money out of the economy and putting it into a few people's hands directly. I wasn't suggesting redistributing money from one company to another. I was suggesting having some sort of government agency, that spends trillions of dollars a year on doing all those R&D things that the military does that have nothing to do with blowing people up. Literally just "The military, minus the guns, bombs, fighter jets, and everything else that involves killing people". That wouldn't be perfect, but for the purpose of making the economy/world a better place, such a "not killing people military" seems like it would be strictly better than our current military.
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  Trillions of dollars per year? The entire US Defense Budget for 2016 was $600B while the entire budget was $3.8T.[1] Further, many large scale tech advancements have come from military R&D, originally with the goal of blowing people up, preventing them from getting blown up, or making them recover after the fact. Everything from the Internet to GPS to microwave to many synthetic fabrics to emergency medicine. I agree that investing in things that don't kill people is great and should be encouraged. It's just outside the scope of government. 1 - https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spending-united-states/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spendi...

stale2002 9y ago

But with the military, you are already taking that money out of the economy and putting it into a few people's hands directly. I wasn't suggesting redistributing money from one company to another. I was suggesting having some sort of government agency, that spends trillions of dollars a year on doing all those R&D things that the military does that have nothing to do with blowing people up. Literally just "The military, minus the guns, bombs, fighter jets, and everything else that involves killing people". That wouldn't be perfect, but for the purpose of making the economy/world a better place, such a "not killing people military" seems like it would be strictly better than our current military.

caseysoftware 9y ago
Trillions of dollars per year? The entire US Defense Budget for 2016 was $600B while the entire budget was $3.8T.[1] Further, many large scale tech advancements have come from military R&D, originally with the goal of blowing people up, preventing them from getting blown up, or making them recover after the fact. Everything from the Internet to GPS to microwave to many synthetic fabrics to emergency medicine. I agree that investing in things that don't kill people is great and should be encouraged. It's just outside the scope of government. 1 - https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spending-united-states/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spendi...