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I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on research and science. [edit - perhaps this is misunderstoo

by z9znz 4y ago

I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on research and science. [edit - perhaps this is misunderstood as me suggesting money spent on the telecope is wasted; quite the contrary, I'm arguing that we should be spending MORE on efforts like this!] Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military research, being generous that would still amount to a small fraction of what we could be discovering and improving if the goals were different. And honestly, we should be spending $$$$ on food development research. We're going to need to know how to grow food in new ways soon, as the old ways have reached their limits. Food seems kind of important...

prox 4y ago
A nice dream is to think what would happen when the budget of the environmental agencies would switch with the military globally. Imagine having 800 billion a year to fix things!
- dmichulke 4y ago
  800bn just for the US, that is
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    More than everybody else combined. Not that we get that much for the money: probably most of it is simple (wholly-legal!) graft, as with NASA's SLS rocket.
    - simonh 4y ago
      What we get for the money is a whole lot of aggressive expansionist wars, all over the world, that never happen. Unfortunately some still manage to slip through the net, like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but if the west generally didn't spend a whole ton on military preparation I believe we'd see an awful lot more of those sorts of conflicts everywhere. Here's a historical graph of deaths from warfare. https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-years https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-yea... You can see that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, deaths per population from warfare dropped off a cliff. Unfortunately deterrence is hard to quantify because it's about making things not happen.
      - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        We also get all sorts of aggressive wars and foreign interventions from the US and its allies. Iraq, Libya and Yemen come to mind.
        simonh 4y ago
        When what you have is a hammer... but that isn't an argument for not having a hammer in your toolbox.
      - Nevermark 4y ago
        Unfortunately, the spending also provided a huge military comfortably capable of over-responses and misdirection in the context of small but dramatic threats. A vast amount of US "defense" spending since 9/11 has been a "war on money" in the form of massive unending offensive plays against countries that had/have undesirable aspects, but that didn't declare war on the US.
- haupt 4y ago
  It's certainly a dream. It would require some type of worldwide disarmament agreement since any power that had a military could ostensibly bully the ones that did not (and just take what they wanted).
colechristensen 4y ago
>And honestly, we should be spending $$$$ on food development research. We're going to need to know how to grow food in new ways soon, as the old ways have reached their limits. Food seems kind of important... Eh, not really. A whole lot of the world's agriculture is done far from optimally. Funding agriculture university programs in Africa with extension programs like the land grant universities in the US would do great things. Disseminating information, tools, and capital for "third world" farms is the best thing that can be done for global food supplies.
- z9znz 4y ago
  Being a bit selfish here, I'm talking about _my food_. And given what we've seen in the last few years involving supply chain disruptions (even the local ones in NL when the angry farmers try to block the grocery store distribution centers), it's clear to me that the best way to ensure food availability is to grow it locally. Every region that is currently dependent upon remotely grown food must learn how to grow more of their food locally. Maybe these will be high efficiency vertical farms, or maybe something else. But "merely" improving the efficiency of farming half a world away isn't going to be enough. And further, our current "efficient" farming is unsustainable. Our high output methods are causing many negative effects, not the least of which is soil quality degredation. Our soils are near barren and require immense additives (fertilizers) to enable us to continue high yield farming. And returning to the supply chain topic, fertilizer availability is on that list.
  - fritztastic 4y ago
    I agree, decentralization of food production is critical to sustainable and reliable food production. Some places even have community compost centers where people bring their scraps and can get compost for their gardens. A shift in growing crops more adapted to the local climate reality is also an important shift. A lot of places grow staple crops brought by colonizers centuries ago, which are ill suited to the local soil and require additional resources to grow, whereas less known types of grain and fruit/veg could be grown to produce higher yields with less effort and be more hardy in the area's temp/precipitation/soil. Initial costs of setting up local food growth might seem exorbitant, but would bring a lot of long-term cost reduction for people. Added bonus to this is reducing pollution caused by worldwide shipments of produce, and improving food taste as things grown nearby don't need to be harvested early and ripened in route, refrigerated, treated for pests. Another thing that would be beneficial, and this is the idealist in me speaking, is giving people the empowerment to control their own food supply, boosting communities, giving people the means to have more autonomy over their basic needs so they're not reliant on a global market currently dealing with a variety of issues, mitigating the risk that food imported will be scarce or too expensive for families to feed their members.
gopalv 4y ago
> Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military research Nobody knew at the time that Hubble was literally a KH-11 class telescope, but one pointed the other way. The mirror size and the ability to be carried in the shuttle was probably to get some synergies out of those two projects. "Accessory to War" is a pretty deep take on this topic.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I figured that was the case for a lot of things we have developed, but it must surely be more efficient to not also have the military goals as part of the effort. Actually, I think the best thing we can learn from the military would be how to organize and mobilize large numbers of people toward some goal. The same could be said for religion. Then it's down to choosing a good goal... I've pondered what would happen if we could dedicate one weekend per month of sports to community improvement instead. Where I grew up, sports were a big part of life. Every weekend the many fields and venues were full of people working together (and competing). Just imagine if they could all be organized to put their energy (just one weekend per month) into goals that would benefit everyone in the area. Perhaps military command structures and communication processes could be of value here...
  - allendoerfer 4y ago
    You have just discovered collectivism. Individualism sounds worse, but to my understanding is ultimately just an excess of enlightment, which is the better philosophy™.
  - EUROCARE 4y ago
    I hope you're not thinking about forcing people into this - and if not, what's stopping you from just starting the initiative right now?
    - z9znz 4y ago
      > I hope you're not thinking about forcing people into this Of course not. Forcing people to volunteer is... not effective long term. Anyway, I long since left that Texas city which gave me the idea. I know amateur and professional sporting happens all around, but I don't encounter it much (so I forgot about the idea until now). I'm onto other things, although I still think this is a good idea. I know some churches organize their members to do good community services periodically, so I don't think it's a stretch to imagine sporting communities to make a routine of doing the same.
tablespoon 4y ago
> I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on research and science. You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to spend on their military? And even if you did manage to zero out the military budget without getting conquered, it's completely unreasonable to think that money would be reallocated to "research and science" in a democratic society. Almost all of it would go into stuff like basic infrastructure, social programs, and maybe culture war stuff. While comfortably employed geeks may sit in awe of the pretty space pictures, most people have more quotidian concerns they care far more about. So the fantasy is really one about a science-enthusiast world-dictator securely protected by his secret police.
- jylam 4y ago
  The US could spend 2 times less on military and still be the biggest one in the world. And it as allies everywhere.
  - worker_person 4y ago
    Last president pushed hard for NATO counties to up their military spending to agreed levels. Everyone laughed. Russia has been an excellent motivator for our allies to get serious on defense spending. Our absurdly oversized military has prevented a lot of serious wars.
    - z9znz 4y ago
      The same guy who thinks NATO should have been abolished and who fawned over Putin? The guys like him and Putin are ignorant little boys who will thankfully die off soon. We must try to find a different path.
      - worker_person 4y ago
        Just drinking the Hillary kool-aid I see.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
> Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military research Like the Internet that you are using right now.
- simonh 4y ago
  Sure, but that doesn't mean it would not be possible to develop such technologies without military research. There's nothing about people with guns that is necessary for communications research. Having said that, I just posted across thread on why I think we still need the people with guns, so if that's the case we might as well take the incidental benefits where they come.
  - mulmen 4y ago
    Saying we should eliminate the military is the geopolitical equivalent of rewriting your service from scratch. The military-industrial complex is the system we have and know. Another system might work but there is no reason to believe the costs of developing it would be less than fixing bugs in our current implementation.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  15 Core smart phone technologies with military origins [0]: 1. AI – Artificial intelligence 2. Cellular Communication Technology 3. Computers 4. CPU – Central Processing Units – Microprocessors 5. DRAM – Dynamic Random-Access Memory 6. DSP – Digital Signal Processing 7. GMR – Giant Magnetoresistance – Spintronics 8. GPS – Global Positioning Systems 9. HDD – Micro Hard Drive Storage or Hard Drive Disks 10. HTML Hypertext Markup Language and HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol 11. IC-Integrated Circuits 12. Internet 13. LCDs – Liquid-Crystal Displays 14. Li-ion – Lithium-Ion Batteries 15. Multi-Touch Screens Probably a good time to reprise the fascinating Steve Blank presentation on "The Secret History of Silicon Valley" [1] [0] https://www.techevaluate.com/your-cell-phone-was-born-in-the-u-s-military/ https://www.techevaluate.com/your-cell-phone-was-born-in-the... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
  - 4y ago
lven 4y ago
Great idea! US DOD budget: 700B. We only really need nukes to keep the peace and maintain our interests. Nukes cost 20B/yr to maintain (both stockpile and delivery methods). The rest of the military budget is a bunch of garbage whose availability and global deployment makes it more likely USA engages in needless conflicts. A nukes only military is so cheap and effective. USA could do a yearly nuclear readiness demo on July 4th, like detonating a ICBM on the moon or in space for the whole world to see.
- sph 4y ago
  > detonating a ICBM on the moon or in space for the whole world to see No. Outer space is not an American property. Please detonate it in your backyard.
- vanattab 4y ago
  How would a nuke only army be effective? Your going responded to 911 by just nukeing Afghanistan? Or by saying 911 was not worth any response?
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    With hindsight, either of those look like better options than what we ended up doing (20 years, 2 trillion dollars, nothing to show for it).
    - mulmen 4y ago
      I agree the outcome of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could have been better. In fact I would even agree they were disastrous. But: If we had nuked Afghanistan we (probably) would have kicked off WWIII. If we had done nothing further attacks may have occurred. Both of those seem at least worse than what actually happened.
      - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
        imo, there's no possible world where not invading Afghanistan causes 2 trillion dollars of attacks. (especially because 9/11 had only very weak links to Afghanistan)
theplumber 4y ago
Unfortunately we live in a world with countries such Russia so we have to invest in millitary too.
- zo1 4y ago
  Or America. Matter of perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Invasions_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Invasions_by_the_Unit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involving_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involv... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... I honestly didn't think I'd find that many Wikipedia pages listing the different "types" of thing America has been involved with. Wow.
- asdff 4y ago
  We already more than outspend both russia and china on defense.
  - theplumber 4y ago
    And that seems to not be enough as deterrence.
slowmovintarget 4y ago
Sadly, we can look at Europe to see what happens. You end up open to someone like Putin, looking to flatter their legacy. We need to do things like Elon is doing with SpaceX to fundamentally change the economics of scientific efforts like JWST. I think I disagree on food development research though. That money goes straight to Monsanto and Bill Gates on making copyrighted crops and pseudo-meat. How about we break up food production monopolies and spend our money figuring out how to have farmers compete. Put an end to subsidizing fuel crops. Support food diversity to avoid monoculture vulnerabilities (where a single disease can wipe out giant swaths of food sources). We need less "progress" on agriculture, and more restoration to healthy foods. Research on food distribution, yes. Research on fresh water supply, yes. The old ways for growing food aren't currently being used. We don't rotate crops anymore. We do stupid things like growing almonds in water-poor regions. We need to get back to growing food for people to eat, instead of for giant monopolies to "optimize."
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Every thread on JWST starts this flamewar.
njharman 4y ago
A large portion, 23%, of military budget is paychecks, healthcare, retirement for veterans. Tons more counting employees of all the industries that make up the industry portion of the military-industrial complex. A huge amount of the military budget is research and science. > some breakthroughs that come from military research rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR, internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction - that's just things I know from being in tech (and knowing some history). I'm sure if I was a chemist, materials scientist, engineer, or doctor I'd be able to name tons more from those fields.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > A large portion, 23%, of military budget is paychecks, healthcare, retirement for veterans. Does it? I'm no military nor budgeting expert, but quick search seems to say it's closer to ~5% of the total military budget that goes to veterans, see https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget/veterans https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget/ve... for one example Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for the military? Some of those things are also borderline not invented by the military at all, but lets disregard that for now.
  - hguant 4y ago
    I believe you're misreading the breakdown - I read that as "23% of budget goes to personnel costs, which include paychecks (for active duty), healthcare (for military and their dependents until 26), and retirement for vets" I fully believe that only 5% of the budget goes to Veterans Affairs, at least in the US. The system is not very good at taking care of vets/ >Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for the military? Some of those things are also borderline not invented by the military at all, but lets disregard that for now. The list: >>rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR, internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction * Rockets are an entirely military invention - the Hargrave rocket invented for the British Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, the chinese pseudo-rockets used as artillery, the V2 rocket used in WW2 Germany, etc. I think one of the only non-military rocket scientists known to history is Goddard. * Jets - also an entirely military invention. I'm assuming you mean "jet air craft" here - WW2 was the first use of jets to power an airplane. The Soviets and Americans quickly followed suit. * Encryption - encryption has been in use in militaries since at least the roman era; another name for a substitution cypher is a "Ceaser Cypher." To be fair, this isn't exclusive to military use, as states have an interest in keeping their communications secure, as do banks, but in terms of "money invested in development of cryptography as we know it," the field was effectively invented whole hog during WW2 (again), as (military led and funded) analysis of how codes could be broken lead to the need for new encryption methods that were more secure. See also: the NSA. (note - I'm being sloppy with codes/cyphers/encryption here) * RADAR/SONAR - literally developed during WW2 by the British using US funds in order to detect submarines and the Luftwaffe terror attacks. The germans had a very sophisticated RADAR tech at the beginning of the war (directed radar for night defense), but failed to develop it any further. * Internets - the internet, as a system of interconnected computer networks, was funded by ARPA/DARPA, the DEFENSE Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPA-net was first used by the Pentagon. Pretty much the entire US software and hardware industry was built off of US defense contracting, and this is no exception. * Canning/Food preservation - the biggest advances in canning/food preservation were the result of studies/competitions funded by the British Royal Navy in the 18/19th centuries. The British defense industry funded the development of canned goods as we understand them today. Interestingly, this is where a lot of our understanding about vitamins started to be learned by (heavy) trial and error, as the RN tried to figure out how to combat scurvy. * Weather prediction - meteorology as a science got tons of money from (you guessed it) the British Royal Navy, who understandable wanted to better predict conditions for their large navy that was made of wood and canvas. in the 20th century, meteorology got huge infusions of cash from the USAF, because planes care about weather and storms to a huge degree. This was a scientific field outside of the military, but even then, it was a matter of State security to predict the weather so you could understand crop growth patterns etc. So, to answer your question, no, I don't believe any of those technologies would have developed organically.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Or say, didn't have a massive amount of wealth owned by the rich, who really don't do much. But then again, if wealth was better distributed, there'd be far more consumption, and that is generally bad for the environment. But back to the point, I think napkin math for the military budget for one year is (if there was supply) solar and wind for the whole grid. It is close to a trillion dollars, and that is such a crazy number. The Iraq War #2 was such a tragedy of wasted treasure. That is the budget for mitigation/heading off climate change. It was the right time, the right amount of money.
- ericmcer 4y ago
  I don’t totally know how wealth distribution would fix this. It isn’t like Elon Musk is hoarding millions of used cars, food and medical supplies. If we distributed all his wealth it would basically just be flipping some bits in computers to make the average persons number bigger. How does that correlate to actual wealth?
  - asdff 4y ago
    Well if you taxed people like Elon sufficiently maybe we would be able to use that to afford everyone in the country food, medical supplies and care, and more robust public transport. That quality of life increase to the public is certainly an example of an increase in wealth. You go from having no food to having it, having no healthcare to being covered, having less options for mobility to having more. These are valuable things that are now in greater abundance for you, that by definition is an increase in wealth.
    - ericmcer 4y ago
      No I am saying if you take 100% of Elon's money and redistribute it that would really only free up the things Elon consumes but can no longer afford. We can't turn money (which is just numbers in a computer) into doctors and food, it is just a lever for incentivizing production. What would happen if you gave everyone in the country money to get medical care but didn't increase the number of hospitals and doctors we have?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JohnBooty 4y ago
This sounds like the folks who say, "What if we stopped paying for NASA and spent that money on our citizens instead?" I'm not saying it's wrong, but I think it often lacks nuance/insight. Money spent on NASA does stay in our economy. It provides jobs, funds research, etc. There are pros and cons to doing it this way as opposed to giving it to our people directly. I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on Money spent on the military is not removed from the economy. It stays in the economy. Some of that money directly goes right back into science via taxes. Other bits of it fund companies that do both research and military development. Other bits of that money fund college educations for tomorrow's science-doers. Etc.
_8j50 4y ago
> I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on research and science. [edit - perhaps this is misunderstood as me suggesting money spent on the telecope is wasted; quite the contrary, I'm arguing that we should be spending MORE on efforts like this!] Stopped? Then you get invaded and there is no more space program? We live in a world and when you are a country capable if launching JWST you are also a country that needs defending from other humans/countries. I do agree with making defense less of a jobs program making middlemen criminally rich. You know, even if we could stop defense spending as a whole I would say solving homelessness, health care and food security is a higher priority. But still, space programs should get their funding just not more than or taking away from helping your own suffering citizens. I think the federal government competing in the private sector in certain industries makes sense. In this case charging for space based comms and launches and using that money to fund space research makes sense. That aside the money should come from research grants and funding academia is receiving already if they are the ones using it. Of course, instead of reducing defense spending, spending defense in space is better, it was an arms race with russia after all that landed people on the moon.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway64643 4y ago
Ironically, many contractors for this telescope are in military industry.

by z9znz 4y ago

prox 4y ago

A nice dream is to think what would happen when the budget of the environmental agencies would switch with the military globally. Imagine having 800 billion a year to fix things!

dmichulke 4y ago
800bn just for the US, that is
- ncmncm 4y ago
  More than everybody else combined. Not that we get that much for the money: probably most of it is simple (wholly-legal!) graft, as with NASA's SLS rocket.
  - simonh 4y ago
    What we get for the money is a whole lot of aggressive expansionist wars, all over the world, that never happen. Unfortunately some still manage to slip through the net, like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but if the west generally didn't spend a whole ton on military preparation I believe we'd see an awful lot more of those sorts of conflicts everywhere. Here's a historical graph of deaths from warfare. https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-years https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-yea... You can see that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, deaths per population from warfare dropped off a cliff. Unfortunately deterrence is hard to quantify because it's about making things not happen.
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
      We also get all sorts of aggressive wars and foreign interventions from the US and its allies. Iraq, Libya and Yemen come to mind.
      - simonh 4y ago
        When what you have is a hammer... but that isn't an argument for not having a hammer in your toolbox.
    - Nevermark 4y ago
      Unfortunately, the spending also provided a huge military comfortably capable of over-responses and misdirection in the context of small but dramatic threats. A vast amount of US "defense" spending since 9/11 has been a "war on money" in the form of massive unending offensive plays against countries that had/have undesirable aspects, but that didn't declare war on the US.
haupt 4y ago
It's certainly a dream. It would require some type of worldwide disarmament agreement since any power that had a military could ostensibly bully the ones that did not (and just take what they wanted).

colechristensen 4y ago

>And honestly, we should be spending $$$$ on food development research. We're going to need to know how to grow food in new ways soon, as the old ways have reached their limits. Food seems kind of important... Eh, not really. A whole lot of the world's agriculture is done far from optimally. Funding agriculture university programs in Africa with extension programs like the land grant universities in the US would do great things. Disseminating information, tools, and capital for "third world" farms is the best thing that can be done for global food supplies.

z9znz 4y ago
Being a bit selfish here, I'm talking about _my food_. And given what we've seen in the last few years involving supply chain disruptions (even the local ones in NL when the angry farmers try to block the grocery store distribution centers), it's clear to me that the best way to ensure food availability is to grow it locally. Every region that is currently dependent upon remotely grown food must learn how to grow more of their food locally. Maybe these will be high efficiency vertical farms, or maybe something else. But "merely" improving the efficiency of farming half a world away isn't going to be enough. And further, our current "efficient" farming is unsustainable. Our high output methods are causing many negative effects, not the least of which is soil quality degredation. Our soils are near barren and require immense additives (fertilizers) to enable us to continue high yield farming. And returning to the supply chain topic, fertilizer availability is on that list.
- fritztastic 4y ago
  I agree, decentralization of food production is critical to sustainable and reliable food production. Some places even have community compost centers where people bring their scraps and can get compost for their gardens. A shift in growing crops more adapted to the local climate reality is also an important shift. A lot of places grow staple crops brought by colonizers centuries ago, which are ill suited to the local soil and require additional resources to grow, whereas less known types of grain and fruit/veg could be grown to produce higher yields with less effort and be more hardy in the area's temp/precipitation/soil. Initial costs of setting up local food growth might seem exorbitant, but would bring a lot of long-term cost reduction for people. Added bonus to this is reducing pollution caused by worldwide shipments of produce, and improving food taste as things grown nearby don't need to be harvested early and ripened in route, refrigerated, treated for pests. Another thing that would be beneficial, and this is the idealist in me speaking, is giving people the empowerment to control their own food supply, boosting communities, giving people the means to have more autonomy over their basic needs so they're not reliant on a global market currently dealing with a variety of issues, mitigating the risk that food imported will be scarce or too expensive for families to feed their members.

gopalv 4y ago

> Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military research Nobody knew at the time that Hubble was literally a KH-11 class telescope, but one pointed the other way. The mirror size and the ability to be carried in the shuttle was probably to get some synergies out of those two projects. "Accessory to War" is a pretty deep take on this topic.

z9znz 4y ago
I figured that was the case for a lot of things we have developed, but it must surely be more efficient to not also have the military goals as part of the effort. Actually, I think the best thing we can learn from the military would be how to organize and mobilize large numbers of people toward some goal. The same could be said for religion. Then it's down to choosing a good goal... I've pondered what would happen if we could dedicate one weekend per month of sports to community improvement instead. Where I grew up, sports were a big part of life. Every weekend the many fields and venues were full of people working together (and competing). Just imagine if they could all be organized to put their energy (just one weekend per month) into goals that would benefit everyone in the area. Perhaps military command structures and communication processes could be of value here...
- allendoerfer 4y ago
  You have just discovered collectivism. Individualism sounds worse, but to my understanding is ultimately just an excess of enlightment, which is the better philosophy™.
- EUROCARE 4y ago
  I hope you're not thinking about forcing people into this - and if not, what's stopping you from just starting the initiative right now?
  - z9znz 4y ago
    > I hope you're not thinking about forcing people into this Of course not. Forcing people to volunteer is... not effective long term. Anyway, I long since left that Texas city which gave me the idea. I know amateur and professional sporting happens all around, but I don't encounter it much (so I forgot about the idea until now). I'm onto other things, although I still think this is a good idea. I know some churches organize their members to do good community services periodically, so I don't think it's a stretch to imagine sporting communities to make a routine of doing the same.

tablespoon 4y ago

> I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on research and science. You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to spend on their military? And even if you did manage to zero out the military budget without getting conquered, it's completely unreasonable to think that money would be reallocated to "research and science" in a democratic society. Almost all of it would go into stuff like basic infrastructure, social programs, and maybe culture war stuff. While comfortably employed geeks may sit in awe of the pretty space pictures, most people have more quotidian concerns they care far more about. So the fantasy is really one about a science-enthusiast world-dictator securely protected by his secret police.

jylam 4y ago
The US could spend 2 times less on military and still be the biggest one in the world. And it as allies everywhere.
- worker_person 4y ago
  Last president pushed hard for NATO counties to up their military spending to agreed levels. Everyone laughed. Russia has been an excellent motivator for our allies to get serious on defense spending. Our absurdly oversized military has prevented a lot of serious wars.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    The same guy who thinks NATO should have been abolished and who fawned over Putin? The guys like him and Putin are ignorant little boys who will thankfully die off soon. We must try to find a different path.
    - worker_person 4y ago
      Just drinking the Hillary kool-aid I see.

stevenjgarner 4y ago

> Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military research Like the Internet that you are using right now.

simonh 4y ago
Sure, but that doesn't mean it would not be possible to develop such technologies without military research. There's nothing about people with guns that is necessary for communications research. Having said that, I just posted across thread on why I think we still need the people with guns, so if that's the case we might as well take the incidental benefits where they come.
- mulmen 4y ago
  Saying we should eliminate the military is the geopolitical equivalent of rewriting your service from scratch. The military-industrial complex is the system we have and know. Another system might work but there is no reason to believe the costs of developing it would be less than fixing bugs in our current implementation.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
15 Core smart phone technologies with military origins [0]: 1. AI – Artificial intelligence 2. Cellular Communication Technology 3. Computers 4. CPU – Central Processing Units – Microprocessors 5. DRAM – Dynamic Random-Access Memory 6. DSP – Digital Signal Processing 7. GMR – Giant Magnetoresistance – Spintronics 8. GPS – Global Positioning Systems 9. HDD – Micro Hard Drive Storage or Hard Drive Disks 10. HTML Hypertext Markup Language and HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol 11. IC-Integrated Circuits 12. Internet 13. LCDs – Liquid-Crystal Displays 14. Li-ion – Lithium-Ion Batteries 15. Multi-Touch Screens Probably a good time to reprise the fascinating Steve Blank presentation on "The Secret History of Silicon Valley" [1] [0] https://www.techevaluate.com/your-cell-phone-was-born-in-the-u-s-military/ https://www.techevaluate.com/your-cell-phone-was-born-in-the... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
- 4y ago

lven 4y ago

Great idea! US DOD budget: 700B. We only really need nukes to keep the peace and maintain our interests. Nukes cost 20B/yr to maintain (both stockpile and delivery methods). The rest of the military budget is a bunch of garbage whose availability and global deployment makes it more likely USA engages in needless conflicts. A nukes only military is so cheap and effective. USA could do a yearly nuclear readiness demo on July 4th, like detonating a ICBM on the moon or in space for the whole world to see.

sph 4y ago
> detonating a ICBM on the moon or in space for the whole world to see No. Outer space is not an American property. Please detonate it in your backyard.
vanattab 4y ago
How would a nuke only army be effective? Your going responded to 911 by just nukeing Afghanistan? Or by saying 911 was not worth any response?
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  With hindsight, either of those look like better options than what we ended up doing (20 years, 2 trillion dollars, nothing to show for it).
  - mulmen 4y ago
    I agree the outcome of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could have been better. In fact I would even agree they were disastrous. But: If we had nuked Afghanistan we (probably) would have kicked off WWIII. If we had done nothing further attacks may have occurred. Both of those seem at least worse than what actually happened.
    - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      imo, there's no possible world where not invading Afghanistan causes 2 trillion dollars of attacks. (especially because 9/11 had only very weak links to Afghanistan)

theplumber 4y ago

Unfortunately we live in a world with countries such Russia so we have to invest in millitary too.

zo1 4y ago
Or America. Matter of perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Invasions_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Invasions_by_the_Unit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involving_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involv... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... I honestly didn't think I'd find that many Wikipedia pages listing the different "types" of thing America has been involved with. Wow.
asdff 4y ago
We already more than outspend both russia and china on defense.
- theplumber 4y ago
  And that seems to not be enough as deterrence.

slowmovintarget 4y ago

Sadly, we can look at Europe to see what happens. You end up open to someone like Putin, looking to flatter their legacy. We need to do things like Elon is doing with SpaceX to fundamentally change the economics of scientific efforts like JWST. I think I disagree on food development research though. That money goes straight to Monsanto and Bill Gates on making copyrighted crops and pseudo-meat. How about we break up food production monopolies and spend our money figuring out how to have farmers compete. Put an end to subsidizing fuel crops. Support food diversity to avoid monoculture vulnerabilities (where a single disease can wipe out giant swaths of food sources). We need less "progress" on agriculture, and more restoration to healthy foods. Research on food distribution, yes. Research on fresh water supply, yes. The old ways for growing food aren't currently being used. We don't rotate crops anymore. We do stupid things like growing almonds in water-poor regions. We need to get back to growing food for people to eat, instead of for giant monopolies to "optimize."

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Every thread on JWST starts this flamewar.

njharman 4y ago

A large portion, 23%, of military budget is paychecks, healthcare, retirement for veterans. Tons more counting employees of all the industries that make up the industry portion of the military-industrial complex. A huge amount of the military budget is research and science. > some breakthroughs that come from military research rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR, internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction - that's just things I know from being in tech (and knowing some history). I'm sure if I was a chemist, materials scientist, engineer, or doctor I'd be able to name tons more from those fields.

capableweb 4y ago
> A large portion, 23%, of military budget is paychecks, healthcare, retirement for veterans. Does it? I'm no military nor budgeting expert, but quick search seems to say it's closer to ~5% of the total military budget that goes to veterans, see https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget/veterans https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget/ve... for one example Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for the military? Some of those things are also borderline not invented by the military at all, but lets disregard that for now.
- hguant 4y ago
  I believe you're misreading the breakdown - I read that as "23% of budget goes to personnel costs, which include paychecks (for active duty), healthcare (for military and their dependents until 26), and retirement for vets" I fully believe that only 5% of the budget goes to Veterans Affairs, at least in the US. The system is not very good at taking care of vets/ >Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for the military? Some of those things are also borderline not invented by the military at all, but lets disregard that for now. The list: >>rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR, internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction * Rockets are an entirely military invention - the Hargrave rocket invented for the British Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, the chinese pseudo-rockets used as artillery, the V2 rocket used in WW2 Germany, etc. I think one of the only non-military rocket scientists known to history is Goddard. * Jets - also an entirely military invention. I'm assuming you mean "jet air craft" here - WW2 was the first use of jets to power an airplane. The Soviets and Americans quickly followed suit. * Encryption - encryption has been in use in militaries since at least the roman era; another name for a substitution cypher is a "Ceaser Cypher." To be fair, this isn't exclusive to military use, as states have an interest in keeping their communications secure, as do banks, but in terms of "money invested in development of cryptography as we know it," the field was effectively invented whole hog during WW2 (again), as (military led and funded) analysis of how codes could be broken lead to the need for new encryption methods that were more secure. See also: the NSA. (note - I'm being sloppy with codes/cyphers/encryption here) * RADAR/SONAR - literally developed during WW2 by the British using US funds in order to detect submarines and the Luftwaffe terror attacks. The germans had a very sophisticated RADAR tech at the beginning of the war (directed radar for night defense), but failed to develop it any further. * Internets - the internet, as a system of interconnected computer networks, was funded by ARPA/DARPA, the DEFENSE Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPA-net was first used by the Pentagon. Pretty much the entire US software and hardware industry was built off of US defense contracting, and this is no exception. * Canning/Food preservation - the biggest advances in canning/food preservation were the result of studies/competitions funded by the British Royal Navy in the 18/19th centuries. The British defense industry funded the development of canned goods as we understand them today. Interestingly, this is where a lot of our understanding about vitamins started to be learned by (heavy) trial and error, as the RN tried to figure out how to combat scurvy. * Weather prediction - meteorology as a science got tons of money from (you guessed it) the British Royal Navy, who understandable wanted to better predict conditions for their large navy that was made of wood and canvas. in the 20th century, meteorology got huge infusions of cash from the USAF, because planes care about weather and storms to a huge degree. This was a scientific field outside of the military, but even then, it was a matter of State security to predict the weather so you could understand crop growth patterns etc. So, to answer your question, no, I don't believe any of those technologies would have developed organically.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Or say, didn't have a massive amount of wealth owned by the rich, who really don't do much. But then again, if wealth was better distributed, there'd be far more consumption, and that is generally bad for the environment. But back to the point, I think napkin math for the military budget for one year is (if there was supply) solar and wind for the whole grid. It is close to a trillion dollars, and that is such a crazy number. The Iraq War #2 was such a tragedy of wasted treasure. That is the budget for mitigation/heading off climate change. It was the right time, the right amount of money.

ericmcer 4y ago
I don’t totally know how wealth distribution would fix this. It isn’t like Elon Musk is hoarding millions of used cars, food and medical supplies. If we distributed all his wealth it would basically just be flipping some bits in computers to make the average persons number bigger. How does that correlate to actual wealth?
- asdff 4y ago
  Well if you taxed people like Elon sufficiently maybe we would be able to use that to afford everyone in the country food, medical supplies and care, and more robust public transport. That quality of life increase to the public is certainly an example of an increase in wealth. You go from having no food to having it, having no healthcare to being covered, having less options for mobility to having more. These are valuable things that are now in greater abundance for you, that by definition is an increase in wealth.
  - ericmcer 4y ago
    No I am saying if you take 100% of Elon's money and redistribute it that would really only free up the things Elon consumes but can no longer afford. We can't turn money (which is just numbers in a computer) into doctors and food, it is just a lever for incentivizing production. What would happen if you gave everyone in the country money to get medical care but didn't increase the number of hospitals and doctors we have?

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JohnBooty 4y ago

This sounds like the folks who say, "What if we stopped paying for NASA and spent that money on our citizens instead?" I'm not saying it's wrong, but I think it often lacks nuance/insight. Money spent on NASA does stay in our economy. It provides jobs, funds research, etc. There are pros and cons to doing it this way as opposed to giving it to our people directly. I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on Money spent on the military is not removed from the economy. It stays in the economy. Some of that money directly goes right back into science via taxes. Other bits of it fund companies that do both research and military development. Other bits of that money fund college educations for tomorrow's science-doers. Etc.

_8j50 4y ago

> I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on research and science. [edit - perhaps this is misunderstood as me suggesting money spent on the telecope is wasted; quite the contrary, I'm arguing that we should be spending MORE on efforts like this!] Stopped? Then you get invaded and there is no more space program? We live in a world and when you are a country capable if launching JWST you are also a country that needs defending from other humans/countries. I do agree with making defense less of a jobs program making middlemen criminally rich. You know, even if we could stop defense spending as a whole I would say solving homelessness, health care and food security is a higher priority. But still, space programs should get their funding just not more than or taking away from helping your own suffering citizens. I think the federal government competing in the private sector in certain industries makes sense. In this case charging for space based comms and launches and using that money to fund space research makes sense. That aside the money should come from research grants and funding academia is receiving already if they are the ones using it. Of course, instead of reducing defense spending, spending defense in space is better, it was an arms race with russia after all that landed people on the moon.

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throwaway64643 4y ago

Ironically, many contractors for this telescope are in military industry.