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I feel this is not as simple as this. It's a nice appeal but very removed from reality. If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might lo

I feel this is not as simple as this. It's a nice appeal but very removed from reality. If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might loose, schools hospitals and what not... Unfortunatly, in a real world a war is not a maybe question but a when question. The question is what amount of defense expenditure is adequate? And that a political question, with no right or wrong answers that for the voters to decide. I hope humanity lives in peace some day and there will be no more need for armies but that is a distant future. Until then, you do need an armed force to protect all the good things the free society has created, how much force you need vs civilian infra? An open question...

SteveNuts 5y ago
What you say is true, but I think people get pissed off when comparing US Military spending vs... basically the entirety of the world https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison This is so far beyond overkill it's sickening.
- handedness 5y ago
  It's not (just) about overkill. Nobody else underwrites global free trade, and that's incredibly expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640
  - rland 5y ago
    This argument dissolves under even the lightest scrutiny. Let's assume for a second that there is a dollar amount to "underwriting global free trade" (spurious to begin with). What actually is that dollar amount? Is it 3x more than what we're spending? 10x less? How could we ever know? As it turns out, whatever we are currently spending, that's the amount required. We could double the number of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, jet fighters, missiles, spy satellites, military bases; we could start another war, another engagement, another "peacekeeping mission," do another few "surgical strikes"... And yep, that would be exactly what's required for freedom.
    - handedness 5y ago
      If I assert that American military spending is wasteful, you implying that I think doubling current spending would still be exactly what's required for freedom is a highly uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote. Setting that aside, to put it in HN terms: imagine nontechnical people at your company comparing the wildly disproportionate relative costs of two IT projects, but without comparing the relative scopes of said projects. That would make for a poor foundation from which to either justify or criticize existing budget allocations. That's what happens on HN every single time the subject arises. 'American military budgets are bigger than everyone else's' ergo 'American military budgets are far too big.' But it doesn't logically follow. Power projection is exponentially more difficult and complex than homeland defense. Yes, there's waste, and yes, it could be run more efficiently and at a lower cost, but it's worth noting that the other points of comparison (other nations) also contain no shortage of waste, and in some cases proportionally more. And slashing overhead to the absolute bare minimum possible is not the kind of risk management one would prioritize first in a system with an incredibly damaging failure state. (Disclaimer so it's more difficult to misstate my position: I believe that waste that is illegal should be punished criminally, and all other bad-faith waste that is political should be punished politically, and we should consider enacting laws to make such bad-faith waste illegal.) Meaningful conclusions can't be reached by virtue of looking at relative costs while wrongly assuming you have a working knowledge of what they respectively achieve. This is what non-technical people do to technical people all the time, HN laments it, and then turns around and does it in many other spheres. The military budgets of most nations are to provide some degree of homeland security, sometimes a little regional policing, and sometimes whatever extra is required to satisfy the political needs of their alliance leader. And tthat's about it. Nobody else comes remotely close to being able to guarantee that an oil tanker can transit the Strait of Hormuz and sell barrels across the globe to multiple nations which have hated each other for centuries (or longer), and worse: to multiple nations which have competing and conflicting geopolitical imperatives. And it's not just oil, this applies to virtually all (non-sanctioned) nations and goods that aren't manufactured in their nation of consumption, using domestically-sourced materials and processes. It simply isn't comparable. It's worth remembering what the world looked like when countries which depended heavily on raw materials and trade developed their military capabilities precisely to secure those things, because without it their survival was in jeopardy. When a nation depends on those things for mere survival, its use of force doctrines eventually evolve resemble those of a cornered animal. With the notable (and now obsolete) exception of securing an oil supply and the thread of the Soviet Union, the US does not depend on anyone else for its survival. I think that we have a lot of people either unaware of how things worked prior to 1944, or holding the mistaken assumption that the underpinnings of our global framework exist either by happenstance or as the result of some kind of global enlightenment, as if human nature has finally changed for once. There's also an implicit assumption made that one merely spends more money to beat other countries at shooting wars, countries which spent less and were therefore ill-equipped to compete. That assumption is reasonable in that it's based on millennia of recorded history, but faulty in that it ignores how the world has worked since 1944. Yes, the United States has required countries to develop their military capacity sufficient to alleviate relatively minor regional issues (e.g., JSDF), or to create a shared purpose (e.g., NATO), but for the last ~77 years the United States has almost single-handedly created the conditions in which global free trade has been achieved for the first time ever, and the military has been central to imposing the conditions necessary to achieve it. And before anyone asserts that pirates are a relic of centuries past, or that nations no longer desire to even engage in such tactics, this kind of thing regularly happens even under trade conditions imposed by the world's only superpower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blockades#Modern_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blockades#Modern_era
- sgregnt 5y ago
  Not sure how this relates to what I wrote? Apparently USA voters do think the spending is adequate... or do you have a better way to decide on this? On a tangential: We can also try to compare the cost of 1 mile of subway in NY vs 1 mile in Shanghai. I didn't check but I would assume NY cost would be more than double. Services in US cost a lot. US innovates and a lot of other countries copy... while it seems that China spending is not that far behind US.
  - smegger001 5y ago
    do they? is there a transparent way to vote against it when both parties big parties support it tacitly if not publicly. I vote third party every election but they never when because they don't have the money that comes from donations of big lobbying industries like military contractors oil pharma etc
    - sgregnt 5y ago
      Lobbying is only so much effective as the benefits outweigh the damage to a politician. In our tight election cycles the marginal differences are important, I would believe that politicians would jump to grab as much votes as possible to tilt the balance only even slightly. Maybe there is actually more support for large military spending than it appears to you?
      - smegger001 5y ago
        Nope its not a wedge issue so they wont fight over it especally as they profit from it. The left will pay lip service to halting forever wars, but will sign the next military procurement bill because it ostensibly brings in vague nonspecific 'jobs' to their district. The right on the other hand, just gets hard at the idea of more and bigger guns and signs it without needing a excuse.
        sgregnt 5y ago
        So to summarize: your are saying on the one hand, for one or the other reason, the voters decide not to punish politicians that support military spending, on the other hand, politician rely onobbist to help them get elected and so don't do much about spending. I think we agree.
- adventured 5y ago
  China already spends approximately as much as the US on its military when you adjust for the difference in income/salaries (which is a large share of US military expenditures). By the end of this decade it'll be well beyond the US. "China Outspends the U.S. on Defense? Here’s the Math." "Factoring in purchasing power and personnel costs leads to a surprising conclusion." https://archive.is/32N1F https://archive.is/32N1F https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-25/china-outspends-the-u-s-on-the-military-here-s-the-math https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-25/china-...
_moof 5y ago
You might want to look at this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_militar...
- sgregnt 5y ago
  One could claim, as USA economy is disproportionately large, we have more things to protect and so less room for error. How about comparison by GDP spending?
ivalm 5y ago
We spend more on the military than the next few biggest spenders combined.
- handedness 5y ago
  None of whom guarantee global free trade, which is awfully expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640
- queuebert 5y ago
  Afghanistan spends 3x as much as the US, relative to the size of their economy. Look where it got them.
epistasis 5y ago
> If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might loose, schools hospitals and what not... Who the hell is going to attack us before we can mount a response?! We lost a mere 3000 people and launched into 20 years of madness and insanity, all because we were unwilling to blame a president and a political party who was asleep at the wheel, who didn't even bother to pay attention to the terrorist attacks just a few years earlier. And then we let them overreact and waste how many more lives, for nothing? For absolute nothing? I'm sorry, but your comment makes me absolute furious. It's so completely thoughtless and ignorant and exists only to service those who get wealthy off the blood of our soldiers. We have lost more than a half million Americans to a pandemic that--given our prior leadership in the area--shouldn't have taken more than a few thousands, where the hell is our response to stop that tragedy again? We need to cut the military to a tiny time fraction of its current level, almost nothing. Certainly no more than any other country. Redirect allll that spending into something productive.
- sgregnt 5y ago
  IMO that's a complicated political question, for a political debate.

SteveNuts 5y ago

What you say is true, but I think people get pissed off when comparing US Military spending vs... basically the entirety of the world https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison This is so far beyond overkill it's sickening.

handedness 5y ago
It's not (just) about overkill. Nobody else underwrites global free trade, and that's incredibly expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640
- rland 5y ago
  This argument dissolves under even the lightest scrutiny. Let's assume for a second that there is a dollar amount to "underwriting global free trade" (spurious to begin with). What actually is that dollar amount? Is it 3x more than what we're spending? 10x less? How could we ever know? As it turns out, whatever we are currently spending, that's the amount required. We could double the number of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, jet fighters, missiles, spy satellites, military bases; we could start another war, another engagement, another "peacekeeping mission," do another few "surgical strikes"... And yep, that would be exactly what's required for freedom.
  - handedness 5y ago
    If I assert that American military spending is wasteful, you implying that I think doubling current spending would still be exactly what's required for freedom is a highly uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote. Setting that aside, to put it in HN terms: imagine nontechnical people at your company comparing the wildly disproportionate relative costs of two IT projects, but without comparing the relative scopes of said projects. That would make for a poor foundation from which to either justify or criticize existing budget allocations. That's what happens on HN every single time the subject arises. 'American military budgets are bigger than everyone else's' ergo 'American military budgets are far too big.' But it doesn't logically follow. Power projection is exponentially more difficult and complex than homeland defense. Yes, there's waste, and yes, it could be run more efficiently and at a lower cost, but it's worth noting that the other points of comparison (other nations) also contain no shortage of waste, and in some cases proportionally more. And slashing overhead to the absolute bare minimum possible is not the kind of risk management one would prioritize first in a system with an incredibly damaging failure state. (Disclaimer so it's more difficult to misstate my position: I believe that waste that is illegal should be punished criminally, and all other bad-faith waste that is political should be punished politically, and we should consider enacting laws to make such bad-faith waste illegal.) Meaningful conclusions can't be reached by virtue of looking at relative costs while wrongly assuming you have a working knowledge of what they respectively achieve. This is what non-technical people do to technical people all the time, HN laments it, and then turns around and does it in many other spheres. The military budgets of most nations are to provide some degree of homeland security, sometimes a little regional policing, and sometimes whatever extra is required to satisfy the political needs of their alliance leader. And tthat's about it. Nobody else comes remotely close to being able to guarantee that an oil tanker can transit the Strait of Hormuz and sell barrels across the globe to multiple nations which have hated each other for centuries (or longer), and worse: to multiple nations which have competing and conflicting geopolitical imperatives. And it's not just oil, this applies to virtually all (non-sanctioned) nations and goods that aren't manufactured in their nation of consumption, using domestically-sourced materials and processes. It simply isn't comparable. It's worth remembering what the world looked like when countries which depended heavily on raw materials and trade developed their military capabilities precisely to secure those things, because without it their survival was in jeopardy. When a nation depends on those things for mere survival, its use of force doctrines eventually evolve resemble those of a cornered animal. With the notable (and now obsolete) exception of securing an oil supply and the thread of the Soviet Union, the US does not depend on anyone else for its survival. I think that we have a lot of people either unaware of how things worked prior to 1944, or holding the mistaken assumption that the underpinnings of our global framework exist either by happenstance or as the result of some kind of global enlightenment, as if human nature has finally changed for once. There's also an implicit assumption made that one merely spends more money to beat other countries at shooting wars, countries which spent less and were therefore ill-equipped to compete. That assumption is reasonable in that it's based on millennia of recorded history, but faulty in that it ignores how the world has worked since 1944. Yes, the United States has required countries to develop their military capacity sufficient to alleviate relatively minor regional issues (e.g., JSDF), or to create a shared purpose (e.g., NATO), but for the last ~77 years the United States has almost single-handedly created the conditions in which global free trade has been achieved for the first time ever, and the military has been central to imposing the conditions necessary to achieve it. And before anyone asserts that pirates are a relic of centuries past, or that nations no longer desire to even engage in such tactics, this kind of thing regularly happens even under trade conditions imposed by the world's only superpower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blockades#Modern_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blockades#Modern_era
sgregnt 5y ago
Not sure how this relates to what I wrote? Apparently USA voters do think the spending is adequate... or do you have a better way to decide on this? On a tangential: We can also try to compare the cost of 1 mile of subway in NY vs 1 mile in Shanghai. I didn't check but I would assume NY cost would be more than double. Services in US cost a lot. US innovates and a lot of other countries copy... while it seems that China spending is not that far behind US.
- smegger001 5y ago
  do they? is there a transparent way to vote against it when both parties big parties support it tacitly if not publicly. I vote third party every election but they never when because they don't have the money that comes from donations of big lobbying industries like military contractors oil pharma etc
  - sgregnt 5y ago
    Lobbying is only so much effective as the benefits outweigh the damage to a politician. In our tight election cycles the marginal differences are important, I would believe that politicians would jump to grab as much votes as possible to tilt the balance only even slightly. Maybe there is actually more support for large military spending than it appears to you?
    - smegger001 5y ago
      Nope its not a wedge issue so they wont fight over it especally as they profit from it. The left will pay lip service to halting forever wars, but will sign the next military procurement bill because it ostensibly brings in vague nonspecific 'jobs' to their district. The right on the other hand, just gets hard at the idea of more and bigger guns and signs it without needing a excuse.
      - sgregnt 5y ago
        So to summarize: your are saying on the one hand, for one or the other reason, the voters decide not to punish politicians that support military spending, on the other hand, politician rely onobbist to help them get elected and so don't do much about spending. I think we agree.
adventured 5y ago
China already spends approximately as much as the US on its military when you adjust for the difference in income/salaries (which is a large share of US military expenditures). By the end of this decade it'll be well beyond the US. "China Outspends the U.S. on Defense? Here’s the Math." "Factoring in purchasing power and personnel costs leads to a surprising conclusion." https://archive.is/32N1F https://archive.is/32N1F https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-25/china-outspends-the-u-s-on-the-military-here-s-the-math https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-25/china-...

_moof 5y ago

You might want to look at this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_militar...

sgregnt 5y ago
One could claim, as USA economy is disproportionately large, we have more things to protect and so less room for error. How about comparison by GDP spending?

ivalm 5y ago

We spend more on the military than the next few biggest spenders combined.

handedness 5y ago
None of whom guarantee global free trade, which is awfully expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640
queuebert 5y ago
Afghanistan spends 3x as much as the US, relative to the size of their economy. Look where it got them.

epistasis 5y ago

> If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might loose, schools hospitals and what not... Who the hell is going to attack us before we can mount a response?! We lost a mere 3000 people and launched into 20 years of madness and insanity, all because we were unwilling to blame a president and a political party who was asleep at the wheel, who didn't even bother to pay attention to the terrorist attacks just a few years earlier. And then we let them overreact and waste how many more lives, for nothing? For absolute nothing? I'm sorry, but your comment makes me absolute furious. It's so completely thoughtless and ignorant and exists only to service those who get wealthy off the blood of our soldiers. We have lost more than a half million Americans to a pandemic that--given our prior leadership in the area--shouldn't have taken more than a few thousands, where the hell is our response to stop that tragedy again? We need to cut the military to a tiny time fraction of its current level, almost nothing. Certainly no more than any other country. Redirect allll that spending into something productive.

sgregnt 5y ago
IMO that's a complicated political question, for a political debate.