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I wish humanity didn't need a military but saying the world's largest military doesn't give anything back is a bit misleading. Some would argue the world's larg

I wish humanity didn't need a military but saying the world's largest military doesn't give anything back is a bit misleading. Some would argue the world's largest military enable the post WW2 order and with it the free trade that most of the world depends on. So in a very concrete way, the American tax payer subsidizes much of the world's economy. Now in a post cold war with the growing isolationist tendencies of Americans, this may require most of the world, namely western europe to start paying for their own physical security.

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
I think the point is that you can choose to go live somewhere that is not the USA and you continue reap the benefits you describe, all the while paying a different countries taxes and personally benefitting much much more. If I was an American, I wouldn't want to be footing the bill for Global Security either.
- siavosh 6y ago
  That's a valid strategy, akin to geo-politicial arbitrage. But with trends as they are arbitrages don't last forever.
  - geofft 6y ago
    Yes, but I won't last forever either. I have, if I try very hard, 40 years of useful employment left in me. It's possible that the Holy Karelian Empire will displace US hegemony in the next 40 years, but it's not that likely. It's also possible - and much more likely - that Finland will end up on the wrong side of the US and maybe be a site of a hot proxy war between the US and some upstart superpower within the next 40 years, but that also seems fairly unlikely. Forty years ago the world was not too different - the USSR and East Germany existed and China was not so strong, but the shape of the rest of it was otherwise broadly similar. There are very few countries that were prosperous and peaceful and lightly-armed in 1980 that are bad choices today.
- fourstar 6y ago
  >If I was an American, I wouldn't want to be footing the bill for Global Security either. I think if you transact in dollars or any economy on Earth, you probably do.
- timsally 6y ago
  > If I was an American, I wouldn't want to be footing the bill for Global Security either. There is a deep and nuanced conversation to be had here, though I will say fourstar already made one important point very succinctly. [1] I will point out that it has been the position of the American people since WWII that we are happy to foot the bill for global security. So while you might not feel that way, Americans feel differently. I'll give a bit of background on how that came to be. While Hitler was cutting through Europe there was a extensive internal debate in the US whether just focusing on defending the Pacific would be sufficient. During the time leading up the Battle of Britain, we decided the US view of security needed to be global-- if Hitler overran Britain the threat was just too large. It would turn out that the Brits won one of the most significant military victories in history [2], but prior that fact emerging American policy had come to the firm conclusion that we had to defend east as well as west. The Brits handled it, but it was tough to know that at the time. Since WWII we have not really reevaluated this policy. Some in the US believe it is time to do so and the current election will decide much of this. But in the last 10 years we have witnessed the biggest land grab in Europe since World War II [3], so now might not be the time to dissolve the world order. This may be more detail than you were expecting, but I hope you found it interesting. The world is a much more fragile place that I wish and at the end of the day we all need to chip in for global security. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25004863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25004863 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain#Aftermath [3] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/17/crimea-six-years-after-illegal-annexation/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/17/c...
  - mapgrep 6y ago
    Ww2 in Europe was largely won by the USSR. Britain and the US opened a western front quite belatedly after years of begging by the USSR, after the Soviets sacrificed 15+ million lives to turn the tide, and after a lot of wasted time focusing on minor gains in North Africa (at Churchill’s insistence). Combined US and UK military’s deaths were less than a tenth those for USSR. We love to pat ourselves on the back with movies about D Day though. (They should be about Stalingrad.) Finland incidentally was a key ally for Hitler in his attack on the USSR.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > footing the bill for Global Security either. It is way too generous towards the USA to describe its military as "Global Security". The U.S. military main job overseas consists in defending north-american economic interests by military means. If this implies overthrowing democratic governments or supporting dictatorships, or the inverse, so be it. It is more a like a mafia (that protects the economic interests of the people who support them) than a police force (that is supposed to protect everybody).
egsmi 6y ago
Also there’s this argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_to_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_to_War
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
Also it was the defense spending that created the conditions for Silicon Valley.
triceratops 6y ago
> Some would argue the world's largest military enable the post WW2 order I thought nukes and MAD did that.
justatdotin 6y ago
That the rest of the world lives under the 'order' and 'free' trade imposed by the usa's overwhelming military power, goes beyond benefit or dependence: it's imposition.
trevyn 6y ago
Frankly, it it not a coincidence that Silicon Valley and companies like SpaceX are in the US. They are direct results of the military ecosystem that has developed there. The classic reference is Steve Blank's "Secret History of Silicon Valley": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
- timsally 6y ago
  > Frankly, it it not a coincidence that Silicon Valley and companies like SpaceX are in the US. They are direct results of the military ecosystem that has developed there. SpaceX is the direct result of a South African who studied in Canada and came to the US because that's what he wanted to do. The idea that the US "military ecosystem" could claim "direct" responsibility for what Elon has achieved is an insult to him.
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    I think the GP is trying to say that because of the military ecosystem in the US, it was easier for him to 1. find a large customer and 2. get r&d funding. Note that he says "They are direct results of the military ecosystem that has developed there." Why do you think Elon Musk chose to start SpaceX in the US?
    - timsally 6y ago
      > Why do you think Elon Musk chose to start SpaceX in the US? Should we ask the founder in South Africa who was able to recruit the right technical talent and hold a majority share of a private rocket/satellite company while remaining in South Africa?
  - Teever 6y ago
    Why didn't Elon start SpaceX in Canada or South Africa?
    - timsally 6y ago
      > Why didn't Elon start SpaceX in Canada or South Africa? Exactly my point. If you want to start a company as ambitious as SpaceX, the US is the only place to do it. If you do it somewhere else, you incur serious risk of getting a large chunk of the company seized/taxed, even if you are successful.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Yes but...a very large fraction of US military expenditures are based less on the need for defense than on the "need" to keep defense contractors in business absent a realistic threat model. Thus those taxes essentially fund make-work jobs that keep people employed but the fruits of their labor often have more to do with defense theater than defense. The F35 comes to mind [0]. Note I didn't say the whole DoD budget is a waste, but a huge portion of it is only justified by politics cosplaying defense. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_development#Concerns_over_performance_and_safety https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightni...

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago

I think the point is that you can choose to go live somewhere that is not the USA and you continue reap the benefits you describe, all the while paying a different countries taxes and personally benefitting much much more. If I was an American, I wouldn't want to be footing the bill for Global Security either.

siavosh 6y ago
That's a valid strategy, akin to geo-politicial arbitrage. But with trends as they are arbitrages don't last forever.
- geofft 6y ago
  Yes, but I won't last forever either. I have, if I try very hard, 40 years of useful employment left in me. It's possible that the Holy Karelian Empire will displace US hegemony in the next 40 years, but it's not that likely. It's also possible - and much more likely - that Finland will end up on the wrong side of the US and maybe be a site of a hot proxy war between the US and some upstart superpower within the next 40 years, but that also seems fairly unlikely. Forty years ago the world was not too different - the USSR and East Germany existed and China was not so strong, but the shape of the rest of it was otherwise broadly similar. There are very few countries that were prosperous and peaceful and lightly-armed in 1980 that are bad choices today.
fourstar 6y ago
>If I was an American, I wouldn't want to be footing the bill for Global Security either. I think if you transact in dollars or any economy on Earth, you probably do.
timsally 6y ago
> If I was an American, I wouldn't want to be footing the bill for Global Security either. There is a deep and nuanced conversation to be had here, though I will say fourstar already made one important point very succinctly. [1] I will point out that it has been the position of the American people since WWII that we are happy to foot the bill for global security. So while you might not feel that way, Americans feel differently. I'll give a bit of background on how that came to be. While Hitler was cutting through Europe there was a extensive internal debate in the US whether just focusing on defending the Pacific would be sufficient. During the time leading up the Battle of Britain, we decided the US view of security needed to be global-- if Hitler overran Britain the threat was just too large. It would turn out that the Brits won one of the most significant military victories in history [2], but prior that fact emerging American policy had come to the firm conclusion that we had to defend east as well as west. The Brits handled it, but it was tough to know that at the time. Since WWII we have not really reevaluated this policy. Some in the US believe it is time to do so and the current election will decide much of this. But in the last 10 years we have witnessed the biggest land grab in Europe since World War II [3], so now might not be the time to dissolve the world order. This may be more detail than you were expecting, but I hope you found it interesting. The world is a much more fragile place that I wish and at the end of the day we all need to chip in for global security. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25004863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25004863 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain#Aftermath [3] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/17/crimea-six-years-after-illegal-annexation/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/17/c...
- mapgrep 6y ago
  Ww2 in Europe was largely won by the USSR. Britain and the US opened a western front quite belatedly after years of begging by the USSR, after the Soviets sacrificed 15+ million lives to turn the tide, and after a lot of wasted time focusing on minor gains in North Africa (at Churchill’s insistence). Combined US and UK military’s deaths were less than a tenth those for USSR. We love to pat ourselves on the back with movies about D Day though. (They should be about Stalingrad.) Finland incidentally was a key ally for Hitler in his attack on the USSR.
enriquto 6y ago
> footing the bill for Global Security either. It is way too generous towards the USA to describe its military as "Global Security". The U.S. military main job overseas consists in defending north-american economic interests by military means. If this implies overthrowing democratic governments or supporting dictatorships, or the inverse, so be it. It is more a like a mafia (that protects the economic interests of the people who support them) than a police force (that is supposed to protect everybody).

egsmi 6y ago

Also there’s this argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_to_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_to_War

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

Also it was the defense spending that created the conditions for Silicon Valley.

triceratops 6y ago

> Some would argue the world's largest military enable the post WW2 order I thought nukes and MAD did that.

justatdotin 6y ago

That the rest of the world lives under the 'order' and 'free' trade imposed by the usa's overwhelming military power, goes beyond benefit or dependence: it's imposition.

trevyn 6y ago

Frankly, it it not a coincidence that Silicon Valley and companies like SpaceX are in the US. They are direct results of the military ecosystem that has developed there. The classic reference is Steve Blank's "Secret History of Silicon Valley": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

timsally 6y ago
> Frankly, it it not a coincidence that Silicon Valley and companies like SpaceX are in the US. They are direct results of the military ecosystem that has developed there. SpaceX is the direct result of a South African who studied in Canada and came to the US because that's what he wanted to do. The idea that the US "military ecosystem" could claim "direct" responsibility for what Elon has achieved is an insult to him.
- vulcan01 6y ago
  I think the GP is trying to say that because of the military ecosystem in the US, it was easier for him to 1. find a large customer and 2. get r&d funding. Note that he says "They are direct results of the military ecosystem that has developed there." Why do you think Elon Musk chose to start SpaceX in the US?
  - timsally 6y ago
    > Why do you think Elon Musk chose to start SpaceX in the US? Should we ask the founder in South Africa who was able to recruit the right technical talent and hold a majority share of a private rocket/satellite company while remaining in South Africa?
- Teever 6y ago
  Why didn't Elon start SpaceX in Canada or South Africa?
  - timsally 6y ago
    > Why didn't Elon start SpaceX in Canada or South Africa? Exactly my point. If you want to start a company as ambitious as SpaceX, the US is the only place to do it. If you do it somewhere else, you incur serious risk of getting a large chunk of the company seized/taxed, even if you are successful.

dreamcompiler 6y ago

Yes but...a very large fraction of US military expenditures are based less on the need for defense than on the "need" to keep defense contractors in business absent a realistic threat model. Thus those taxes essentially fund make-work jobs that keep people employed but the fruits of their labor often have more to do with defense theater than defense. The F35 comes to mind [0]. Note I didn't say the whole DoD budget is a waste, but a huge portion of it is only justified by politics cosplaying defense. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_development#Concerns_over_performance_and_safety https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightni...