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> War destroys progress and is incredibly inefficient. Please explain the monumental advancements of technology witnessed during both world wars. Even if they
by pharke 6y ago
> War destroys progress and is incredibly inefficient.
Please explain the monumental advancements of technology witnessed during both world wars. Even if they were not a direct result of the war effort, they still succeeded in spite of all technically and scientifically advanced nations being on a war footing during those time periods.
> The mere threat of war creates an endless arms race resulting in half of discretionary spending going to defense.
Please explain why we have not seen a significant drop in defense spending during the periods when the threat of war has lessened. Especially after the fall of the Soviet Union when the world was decidedly unipolar for more than a decade.
> The reason for submitting to government authority is for protection of life and liberty.
I would argue that ceding some liberty to government is necessary for peaceful defense of life and property (backed up by the threat of collective force) but I don't believe that a government inherently defends liberty. To the contrary I think that liberty must be actively defended from the excesses of government, preferably by building those protections in to the legal foundation of the governments power so that if they are violated it invalidates the mandate granted and provides legal recourse against the government in favour of those wronged by it.
To be clear, I don't support war and I think that there are much better and less destructive ways to stimulate technological and societal growth but I don't hold with weak arguments either.
- zimpenfish 6y ago> Please explain the monumental advancements of technology witnessed during both world wars The problem is that you can't counter this by showing the monumental advancements that may have happened without the destructive nature of those wars on lives, economies, etc. because, well, we have no idea. > Please explain why we have not seen a significant drop in defense spending during the periods when the threat of war has lessened. Because "the mere threat of war" still exists - except instead of Russia, it's now terrorists, Middle Eastern countries, North Korea, etc. Also because the military industrial complex has an ungodly hold over governments.
- jamie_ca 6y ago> Please explain why we have not seen a significant drop in defense spending during the periods when the threat of war has lessened. Especially after the fall of the Soviet Union when the world was decidedly unipolar for more than a decade. But we have. See the second chart, covering Defence spending of the United Kingdom from 1900-2020. https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/past_spending https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/past_spending Spiked over 45% of GDP during WWI, and over 50% during WWII. Took a small bump over 10% that I believe was the Korean War, and has been fairly consistently drifting downward since, and is roughly comparable to 1900s pre-war spending. The United States has a similar graph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Defense_Spending_as_a_Percent_of_GDP.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... and while it's still nowhere near pre-war spending, there's been a similar downward trend over the last 50 years.