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Congratulations! You have discovered the broken-window fallacy! [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wik

Congratulations! You have discovered the broken-window fallacy! [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

hervature 4y ago
"The belief that destruction is good for the economy" That's not at all what GP is saying. Government investment into industries have different return on investment. This is why governments heavily invest into healthcare. But, if we're talking investing in a military vs. university researchers, I think you have to be fairly elitist to say that adding 100,000 academics is better for society than providing a good life for 1M soldiers. At its core, military spending is the greatest experiment of UBI ever done. Now, downvotes from the left and right.
- DaveExeter 4y ago
  I don't believe in downvotes, so I upvoted you instead. :-) I agree with what you see. You see 1M soldiers (freeloaders?) and their salaries, housing, and healthcare provided 'free' by taxpayers. The problem is what you don't see, or as they say in French, ce qu’on ne voit pas!
  - hervature 4y ago
    Why thank you. I know that many believe that militaries can only be used for destruction. Of course, we've had 70 years of peace (for the most part) that was really only possible with the largest military movement (10% of the US) to counteract a true force of destruction. I'm the first one to ream on the US's use of drone strikes and getting involved in the Middle East in the first place, but the GPS system and the US Navy probably contribute $1T each to the functioning of the global economy per year. If that takes a large amount of soldiers to be combat ready (definitely not freeloading) then I'm personally fine with that.
    - forgetfulness 4y ago
      They're freeloading in the sense that they're paid to not meaningfully produce anything, cleaning guns, loading and unloading crates, doing calisthenics and polishing up boots are some fairly unproductive uses of able bodied people, not to speak of the pencilpushers setting up the logistics for this. Paying people to churn butter by hand non stop would probably be more of a contribution, or doing actual UBI.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        You have a cynical view. I have a humanitarian service medal from rendering assistance to Indonesia after their earthquake in 2009. While I was deployed my friends got theirs helping Japan after their devastating tsunami. What about police and firefighters? They don't "produce" anything but you need them.
    - greedo 4y ago
      I'm pretty pro-military, but "70 years of peace" is ridiculously inaccurate. We had the Korean War running until 1953 (which involved the following: USA, USSA, PRC, AU, Canada, the list goes on). Shortly after, the US begins covert assistance and operations in Vietnam (which ended up involving the USA, USSR, PRC etc etc.)This continued until 1975. The US had a brief break from overt warfare until Grenada in the 80s, followed quickly by Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Since then it's been pretty much continuous warfare by US troops to this day. Just because we don't see it on the news every night, US servicemen are fighting in Africa, in the Middle East, and obviously the Navy is present in almost all the oceans in significant levels. Sure the USN enables free trade. And I have no issue with a well-funded navy, with clear goals and objectives. But the rest of the military is bloated beyond reasonable belief, committed to tasks that are undemocratic, and as others have pointed out, when you have a large, expensive military, the temptation to use it irresponsibly is high.
      - hervature 4y ago
        That's my laziness of not couching all my statements with more nuance. There is the famous stat of the US having a pretty small number of years of peace since inception. The "70 years of peace" was meant to be the perception bit you talk about but also more "peace at home". In all the conflicts you mention, the US was doing something it didn't need to do in order to defend itself. People were/are course afraid of nukes, but I think that's a very different sentiment. If my comments are coming across as endorsing the entirety of the US military and that it is infallible, that was not the intent. I mostly just called people elitist for claiming that academic pursuits are more worthy of funding than the equivalent defense expenditure on the sole basis of academic=good and soldier=bad. Based on my other comments, you can see that I even believe that the technological progress spurred by defense needs is greater than throwing the same amount of money at research.
- okasaki 4y ago
  I disagree, and you have a very poor understanding of academic pay if you think 100K academics costs the same as 1M soldiers.
  - hervature 4y ago
    Nope, don't believe that the pay is the same. Just the contribution to society is lower. Even 1M academics for 1M soldiers.

Congratulations! You have discovered the broken-window fallacy! [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

hervature 4y ago

"The belief that destruction is good for the economy" That's not at all what GP is saying. Government investment into industries have different return on investment. This is why governments heavily invest into healthcare. But, if we're talking investing in a military vs. university researchers, I think you have to be fairly elitist to say that adding 100,000 academics is better for society than providing a good life for 1M soldiers. At its core, military spending is the greatest experiment of UBI ever done. Now, downvotes from the left and right.

DaveExeter 4y ago
I don't believe in downvotes, so I upvoted you instead. :-) I agree with what you see. You see 1M soldiers (freeloaders?) and their salaries, housing, and healthcare provided 'free' by taxpayers. The problem is what you don't see, or as they say in French, ce qu’on ne voit pas!
- hervature 4y ago
  Why thank you. I know that many believe that militaries can only be used for destruction. Of course, we've had 70 years of peace (for the most part) that was really only possible with the largest military movement (10% of the US) to counteract a true force of destruction. I'm the first one to ream on the US's use of drone strikes and getting involved in the Middle East in the first place, but the GPS system and the US Navy probably contribute $1T each to the functioning of the global economy per year. If that takes a large amount of soldiers to be combat ready (definitely not freeloading) then I'm personally fine with that.
  - forgetfulness 4y ago
    They're freeloading in the sense that they're paid to not meaningfully produce anything, cleaning guns, loading and unloading crates, doing calisthenics and polishing up boots are some fairly unproductive uses of able bodied people, not to speak of the pencilpushers setting up the logistics for this. Paying people to churn butter by hand non stop would probably be more of a contribution, or doing actual UBI.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      You have a cynical view. I have a humanitarian service medal from rendering assistance to Indonesia after their earthquake in 2009. While I was deployed my friends got theirs helping Japan after their devastating tsunami. What about police and firefighters? They don't "produce" anything but you need them.
  - greedo 4y ago
    I'm pretty pro-military, but "70 years of peace" is ridiculously inaccurate. We had the Korean War running until 1953 (which involved the following: USA, USSA, PRC, AU, Canada, the list goes on). Shortly after, the US begins covert assistance and operations in Vietnam (which ended up involving the USA, USSR, PRC etc etc.)This continued until 1975. The US had a brief break from overt warfare until Grenada in the 80s, followed quickly by Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Since then it's been pretty much continuous warfare by US troops to this day. Just because we don't see it on the news every night, US servicemen are fighting in Africa, in the Middle East, and obviously the Navy is present in almost all the oceans in significant levels. Sure the USN enables free trade. And I have no issue with a well-funded navy, with clear goals and objectives. But the rest of the military is bloated beyond reasonable belief, committed to tasks that are undemocratic, and as others have pointed out, when you have a large, expensive military, the temptation to use it irresponsibly is high.
    - hervature 4y ago
      That's my laziness of not couching all my statements with more nuance. There is the famous stat of the US having a pretty small number of years of peace since inception. The "70 years of peace" was meant to be the perception bit you talk about but also more "peace at home". In all the conflicts you mention, the US was doing something it didn't need to do in order to defend itself. People were/are course afraid of nukes, but I think that's a very different sentiment. If my comments are coming across as endorsing the entirety of the US military and that it is infallible, that was not the intent. I mostly just called people elitist for claiming that academic pursuits are more worthy of funding than the equivalent defense expenditure on the sole basis of academic=good and soldier=bad. Based on my other comments, you can see that I even believe that the technological progress spurred by defense needs is greater than throwing the same amount of money at research.
okasaki 4y ago
I disagree, and you have a very poor understanding of academic pay if you think 100K academics costs the same as 1M soldiers.
- hervature 4y ago
  Nope, don't believe that the pay is the same. Just the contribution to society is lower. Even 1M academics for 1M soldiers.