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IMO wealth & power comes as much from brains as it does from nature/ground/territory, same as it ever was. One is dependent on the other. Also, wars are absolut

IMO wealth & power comes as much from brains as it does from nature/ground/territory, same as it ever was. One is dependent on the other. Also, wars are absolutely ingrained in how USA became the richest country in the world, undeniably, and lot only back then in WW2. Also this: `A 1910 best-selling book, The Great Illusion, used economic arguments to demonstrate that territorial conquest had become unprofitable, and therefore global capitalism had removed the risk of major wars. This view, broadly analogous to the modern factoid that there has never been a war between two countries with a MacDonald’s outlet, became so well established that, less than a year before the Great War broke out, the Economist reassured its readers with an editorial titled “War Becomes Impossible in Civilized World.”` http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-war-one-first-war-was-impossible-then-inevitable/ http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...

joefourier 7y ago
Was he so wrong in stating that war between the great powers would be economically and socially irrational? WW1 certainly did not lead to long-term prosperity for the victors, and the attempted conquests of WW2 had disastrous consequences. Both conflicts largely ended the era of European supremacy.
- brbrodude 7y ago
  I side with Taleb on the matter, the problem is that economists and economic arguments do not model reality nearly as much as they want it to, it gives an illusion of wisdom because the simple model seems coherent, it fails, they refuse to accept it, but still they enjoy trust and influence even though being wrong, catastrophically wrong, multiple times, and they remain at it, it's a kind of modern astrology, modern sophistry, etc(specially if you link that an illusion of knowledge will stand in front of a real one). Then everybody pays for it. In my mind the class of the economist is of the dark priest. Btw it was economically rational for Germany to want to get strong expansionist & 'warry' since the Versailles Agreement probably meant they'd be made into a 3rd world or colonized country forever wouldn't they act upon it(there's a theory ww1 & 2 were actually the same ww). At the beginning of it too, if I'm not mistaken, their first aggressive actions were done on hoping to be able to keep the war localized as much as possible, that other countries would not want to pay the economic cost of chiming in(think Russia-Crimeia?), they didn't set out to start a World War, it just spun out of control. So obviously the categorization you made of "european supremacy" is void, since in the context it was irrelevant, they just saw themselves independently and seeking their own rational, economic, social, interests.

joefourier 7y ago

Was he so wrong in stating that war between the great powers would be economically and socially irrational? WW1 certainly did not lead to long-term prosperity for the victors, and the attempted conquests of WW2 had disastrous consequences. Both conflicts largely ended the era of European supremacy.

brbrodude 7y ago
I side with Taleb on the matter, the problem is that economists and economic arguments do not model reality nearly as much as they want it to, it gives an illusion of wisdom because the simple model seems coherent, it fails, they refuse to accept it, but still they enjoy trust and influence even though being wrong, catastrophically wrong, multiple times, and they remain at it, it's a kind of modern astrology, modern sophistry, etc(specially if you link that an illusion of knowledge will stand in front of a real one). Then everybody pays for it. In my mind the class of the economist is of the dark priest. Btw it was economically rational for Germany to want to get strong expansionist & 'warry' since the Versailles Agreement probably meant they'd be made into a 3rd world or colonized country forever wouldn't they act upon it(there's a theory ww1 & 2 were actually the same ww). At the beginning of it too, if I'm not mistaken, their first aggressive actions were done on hoping to be able to keep the war localized as much as possible, that other countries would not want to pay the economic cost of chiming in(think Russia-Crimeia?), they didn't set out to start a World War, it just spun out of control. So obviously the categorization you made of "european supremacy" is void, since in the context it was irrelevant, they just saw themselves independently and seeking their own rational, economic, social, interests.