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A simple proposal to humankind. Global Peace Dividend
- GenerocUsername 5y agoIt's a Nobel effort...
- changoplatanero 5y agoI’m all for reducing our military spending but wouldn’t support giving it to the UN. Why would the UN be better at spending it than congress?
- csee 5y agoThat's my position. I don't want to give the UN money (look how dysfunctional and corrupt the WHO is), but I do want military spending to go down. Why make it more politically difficult than it needs to be. What's the benefit of coupling reductions in military spending with giving more money to the UN... These are totally unrelated things and coupling them needlessly achieves nothing.
- yhoneycomb 5y agoIn what way is the WHO “dysfunctional and corrupt”? Everyone I know with ideas like that seems to have a very questionable world view.
- HideousKojima 5y agohttps://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-health-organization-employees-took-part-congo-sex-abuse-during-n1280315 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-health-organization... Child sex abuse, for starters
- arcticbull 5y agoThat's like throwing away Congress because Matt Gaetz exists. There may or may not be good reasons to abolish Congress, but Matt Gaetz alone ain't it.
- csee 5y agoMatt Gaetz is a single person. The linked article shows that this was an institutional problem at the WHO involving corrupt management. So the analogy is flawed. Also the sex abuse isn't the only thing wrong with the WHO.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- golemotron 5y agoYes. If they are to be decoupled, I'd rather give the peace dividend to Elon Musk.
- arcticbull 5y ago> look how dysfunctional and corrupt the WHO is [citation needed] - but like, an actual one. I know this is a popular conspiracy theory at the moment.
- csee 5y agoOne was provided already by another poster. I don't even need to give more because that should be sufficient. But if you want to dig further, you should look at the timeline of the WHO's actions and see how slow they were to recommend masks, recommend border closures, and declare a pandemic, then ask yourself if they helped or hurt our efforts to contain COVID throughout 2020. No citation is needed for that, it's all in the public domain - their press conferences and their Twitter.
- valtism 5y agoI don't think any of what you are saying here amounts to any sort of corruption.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- csee 5y agoRead the article. The management of WHO covered up sexual abuse, up until an investigative journalist blew it open. Yes, they are a deeply corrupt organization.
- arcticbull 5y agoThat's not corruption as it pertains to their objectives though. That's a crime, one that should be punished, obviously. It doesn't have anything to do with the primary objectives of the WHO, especially not as it pertains to for instance COVID. Corruption would be, hypothetically, taking payoffs or bribes to avoid doing their jobs. You have not, and nor has anyone else here, offered evidence of corruption.
- robbedpeter 5y agoIt's hard to justify any of the un budget. All of its committees and bureaucracies seem compromised, if not outright corrupt. I'll keep my money at home, where there's at least a minimal chance of accountability.
- XorNot 5y agoThe UN exists because the alternative is a series of international crises caused by people having literally no idea how to talk to their counterparts. Let it not be forgotten that some of the finest wires of the Cold War came down to the delays in international diplomatic communications between Washington DC and Moscow due to the need to relay messages via embassies. People have gotten so used to an international power structure with high speed communications and well defined diplomatic channels that they mistake the purpose of these organizations for their effectiveness. The alternative is a lot worse.
- worldsayshi 5y agoYeah and this might be too obvious to spell out but can we really expect the UN to be efficient when its purpose is to coordinate organisations that themselves are neither efficient nor willing to cooperate much of the time. Isn't the only way to make UN more efficient to make nation states more efficient?
- InTheArena 5y agoThe above is not true. It was not speaking to each other that caused world war 2. It was Mr. Chamberlain talking to Mr. Hitler and believing him that caused the problem. It was also the League of Nations failing to live up to it's principles when Japan invaded Manchuria. The UN was a dream to try and resolve things in a multi-laterial world, and sometimes early on was effective (See Korea). after the debacle of the Korean War (Moscow boycotting rather then using their veto), the progress in the cold war was almost always bilateral. (not always though). In it's current form, it's useful - but I think the WTO / World Bank and the Red Hotlines have been far more useful.
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- D-Coder 5y agoBeing worse at spending military dollars could be a good thing.
- lettergram 5y ago> We propose that half of the resources freed up by this agreement are allocated to a global fund, under UN supervision, to address humanity’s grave common problems: pandemics, climate change, and extreme poverty. Hahaha I’m sorry, but the UN? They can’t be serious... So the goal is what, Ukraine gives up a portion of its citizens taxes to fund some famine in a far away land? As opposed to military spending on its defense? I’m sure Russia will agree to this lol I don’t pay taxes to help other people. I pay taxes to protect myself. This is the problem with proposals like this. It’s totally fine for donations, but don’t tax people in one country to help another. It won’t be popular.
- go_elmo 5y agoI agree that many people would perceive it in this way, but the truth is that your country would be paying as one, but receiving from many in a crisis. Thats the whole point of it.
- saurik 5y ago> I don’t pay taxes to help other people. I pay taxes to protect myself. This seems like a very strange model for taxes; maybe it works for military spending? I feel like if this were truly the goal one would not pay taxes at all, as the entire premise of paying taxes is to solve a shared problem--in this case, I am presuming "peace in our time" (I am using the Ultron reference on purpose, btw) as opposed to "a new rail line"--that some people will assuredly benefit from more than others.
- FredPret 5y agoYes it is to solve a shared problem. But it myst be a problem shared by the person paying the taxes, otherwise it’s simple extortion / social engineering
- MauranKilom 5y agoDoes "support disabled people" count as a problem shared by you if you (and your family) are not disabled? Or is that social engineering/extortion?
- trhway 5y ago>World military spending has doubled since 2000. It is approaching 2 trillion US dollars per year, and is increasing in all regions of the world (*). giving that 1/3rd is US, it means that US is supposed to fund the 1/3rd of the new fund. Without any comments on the merits of that specific arrangement, i think that just wouldn't fly with US voters. In general such proposals are built on the "marketing law of big numbers" like a pitch to sell something to China - "even if our market is only 0.1% that immediately makes for 1.5M customers!"
- InTheArena 5y agoThe USA funds 22% of the UN anyways. That's not abnormal. We also fund a order of magnitude more of NATO (once you include the actual costs of soldiers, infrastructure, logistics, etc) then any other participant. But I agree with the point - looking at the "signatories" - this seems to be mostly tax Americans more and give it to the UN, because Europeans think so.
- arcticbull 5y agoAnd that is in America's self-interest.
- jldugger 5y agoThen it would be even more in America's interest if EU citizens participated equally.
- arcticbull 5y agoNot really, no. Their monetary contributions allow them outsized influence. It was originally, intentionally, set up this way after the war. It would be in EU citizens interests to participate equally.
- bigmattystyles 5y agoI keep vacillating back and forth, on one hand, it's good to outline what is possible with a relatively small effort, on the other hand, this comes off as worse than virtue signaling - It's turning a blind eye to the complexities of what makes the world the way it is and whoever signed this is just trying to wash themselves of the human condition.
- Flankk 5y ago[flagged]
- umvi 5y agomilitary spending needs to go down, but social spending needs to go down as well. Last I checked social spending dwarfed military spending and I can only assume a big chunk of it is as wasteful as military spending.
- standardUser 5y agoDo you think social spending needs to go down, or that social spending needs to be fixed so it isn't wasteful?
- umvi 5y agoWhy not both? A more efficient system should be able to operate effectively with a smaller budget
- civilized 5y agoIt would be interesting if this had never occurred to any major world leaders in a budget crunch.
- gus_massa 5y agoWhat happens if one country refuses to follow this idea? Do we invade it?
- late2part 5y ago
- trynumber9 5y agoAdjusted for inflation, has military spending increased since 2000? It seems if it is trending at 2% that is probably beneath inflation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mdorazio 5y agoDepends on the year: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/mili... It's massively outpaced inflation on the total timeframe 2000 - 2021 (2.3x vs 1.6x), but dropped from 2011-2014. Also a % of GDP it's on par with 2002 today.
- standardUser 5y agoMilitary spending has roughly doubled since 2000, both globally and in the US. Globally military spending has been driven by massive increases in Asia. In the US, spending shot way up after 9/11/01 and kept increasing until the end of the Iraq War in 2011. Since then, it's been down then up and overall flat for about 10 years.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago> Military spending has roughly doubled since 2000, both globally and in the US. But is this in nominal or real dollars? Because a large potion of that would have eroded to inflation at this point if nominal.
- Gatsky 5y agoMilitary spending isn’t measurable in a reliable way. Military spending has many other dependencies beyond accumulating destructive force, eg jobs, petrodollar concerns. Disarmament treaties have a clear game theoretic rationale for the most powerful countries. This proposal does not, in fact it disadvantages the biggest militaries.
- DOsinga 5y agoI'm confused about the calculation. They say we are approaching 2T a year on military spending. Over 5 years that's 10T. 2% of that is 200B - a fair sum, but no the 1T advertised. What am I missing?
- jcranmer 5y agoThey're proposing reducing 2% a year each year, so that after 5 years, you will have reached 10% of military spending each year. I missed that the first time I read that, and now that I see they're proposing sustained year-on-year reductions... it makes it even more of a daft proposal than I thought it was.
- DOsinga 5y agoAh, good catch, thanks
- rkk3 5y agoI'm a little confused as well, but 2 things I noticed. 1) It's 2% cut a year, so you save 200B the first year cuts, 160B the second year cuts etc. 2) This calculation is based on happening several years out, with significantly higher military spending. But I still "only" see .65T in savings when they start cutting 2% a year in 2025 from 2.2T budget
- jashper 5y agoSo... basically further encourage a lack of transparency and funnel more resources into black ops at the expense of the altruistic and naïve -- that should be interesting. But meh, simple is simple I suppose :D
- jcranmer 5y agoTo have a hope of working, you'd need to get the blessing of all of the US, Russia, China, and India (and maybe a couple of countries, but those 4 for sure)--without them, there's simply not enough money in the pie otherwise. And why should those countries agree? The appeal is that it mutual agreement has resulted in arms treaties in the past, but the closer you inspect those prior treaties, the less rosy things look. The interwar naval treaties paused battleship construction for a decade--but even at best, countries were only in nominal compliance with many of the terms, and the construction pause was driven in part by the fact that several countries were rather literally bankrupting themselves trying to keep up, so stopping meant they no longer had to spend money they didn't have. Or you can look at SALT/START, which has lasted longer. But New START is currently on rocky roads, and I wouldn't count on it lasting past this decade. The other US/USSR (now Russia) treaties have been failing (e.g., INF). There's a lot less trust between US, Russia, and China now than there was a decade ago, and with that loss of trust, the threat of war looms larger. Wars--the big messy wars between great powers especially--tend to break out because one side miscalculates what the other side's red lines are. It doesn't even necessarily need to be a direct act by one country that breaks the red line: recall that the proximate act instigating World War I was a terrorist group outside the influence of any of the great powers. So in the current environment, anyone suggesting massive cuts to military spending seems woefully naive.
- pc2g4d 5y agoThe general concept seems good (mutually agreed reductions in defense spending) but the massive UN slush fund seems like a minus.