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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. You'd get conquered and your conqu

> 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.
      - z9znz 4y ago
        If I were going to drink any politician's kool-aid, it would have been Bernie's. Hillary Clinton was part of the problem, just as most other sitting politicians are part of the problem.
  - myko 4y ago
    This is revisionist/wrong. Obama also pushed for more spending in NATO - and got commitments to do so as % of GDP. Growth was generally higher but spending was moving towards the % committed to. What the last guy did was tried to piss out allies off and destroy NATO. Even then most in the US generally agreed w.r.t defense spending, just thought he was going about getting our allies to do it counter productively and not recognizing the fact that they were spending more (mostly from commitments made during Obama's 2 terms). Folks who worked with trump claim he was planning on pulling the US out of NATO in his second term: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-nato-pay-fair-share-231405 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-nato-pay-fair-s... https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/obama-warns-nato-allies-to-share-defense-burden-we-can-t-do-it-alone/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/obama-warns... https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-trump-to-withdraw-from-nato-in-2nd-term-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-tru... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-nato-south-korea-book-b1883457.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
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- epicureanideal 4y ago
  There’s a paper I read recently that adjusts for specifically military related purchasing power parity, in which case China was spending about 50% and Russia about 30% of the US. And of course in their region that might mean a locally more capable military, or the inability of the US to fight multiple wars simultaneously while maintaining global freedom of navigation for shipping, etc.
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    At the point that you're talking about being able to simultaneously fight the next two military powers right in their respective backyards, you're no longer talking about defense. As for freedom of navigation, China is also in favor of that. It's their lifeblood.
    - deepdriver 4y ago
      >As for freedom of navigation, China is also in favor of that. Sorta-kinda. It’s complicated. Vietnam, the US, the Philippines and others have clashed with China over the “Nine Dash Line.” China— and Taiwan, oddly enough— refuses to respect the ruling of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Tribunal on this matter. They’ve harassed other countries’ fishing vessels and maritime police in the region, sinking at least one. There are ongoing tensions in the area between China and other countries’ navies. China asserts sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, while other countries and the UNCLOS disagree and assert their right to freedom of navigation for military vessels. This has implications for customs and maritime law enforcement. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/07/chinese-vietnamese-vessels-clash-south-china-sea https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/07/chinese-vietna... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line
      - SllX 4y ago
        Not so odd in the case of Taiwan: I like them, they’re the China as far as I’m concerned the UN and State Department be damned on this front, but it’s worth remembering that Taiwan officially does not see themselves as just an island nation off the coast of China. They claim the mainland, and all the island territories held by the mainland, and even Mongolia and some other land that the PRC has given up its claims to to settle border disputes. They’re not likely to back down on any of their claims no matter how small. Some people in Taiwan might be willing to give that up in exchange for a guarantee of independence but as far as I know this is not at all a settled matter for them. It’s very much like North Korea/South Korea.
- tablespoon 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. I don't think it's that simple: stuff costs more in the US vs other big military spenders, large != effective, etc. If the US cut its military budget, it would have to give up capabilities, and that will have bitter consequences (e.g. the liberal order will shrink even further (e.g. goodbye Ukraine, Taiwan, Baltics), China owns the seas, etc.).
- willhslade 4y ago
  Can I just sidetrack this conversation? I've seen this new neologism "2 times less", which I infer from context means "half as much", and I don't like it.
  - Jaruzel 4y ago
    Surely '2 times less' is minus 100% less, if the amount originally spent is '1 times'? It's an illogical phrase to be sure.
    - nodespace 4y ago
      I think its like saying: "2 times (but instead of mutiplying do the oposite thing that makes it smaller)" Is where the "logic" comes from. Hm, I bet this parses as well: "An hour is .5 times more then a half hour." Although not quite as well.
  - elpatoisthebest 4y ago
    Unfortunately this is far from new. I tried fighting it for years and just gave up. Save yourself the grief. We already lost.
  - 867-5309 4y ago
    it is bad grammar: you cannot use comparative adjectives on uncountable nouns that said, when I read it I did not notice. my brain automagically converted the phrase to half. the context was not lost but it is murky territory
- minhazm 4y ago
  I wonder if this is actually true in practice. I think many of these countries, especially China & India are incentivized to understate how much they actually spend on their defense. Another factor is the cost of labor and goods is so different that even though the US is spending far more actual dollars, the actual output might not be as big of a difference as these articles might have you believe.
  - akiselev 4y ago
    Historically, countries almost never understate the strength of their armed forces because that would invite pointless conflicts with weaker adversaries. Unless the former is looking for some casus belli to invade the latter, it leads to the most pointless loss of life where the latter never stood a chance anyway but the former has to waste resources on the defense. I don't know how that calculus changes in the context of modern superpowers or China's ambitions for Taiwan but that's the reasoning historically.
    - signatoremo 4y ago
      How can you possibly know how much a country spent on military to conclude they almost never understate their funding? A perfect reason a country may understate their military spending is to hide their capabilities. For that matter, they may overstate their spending as well.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
        You have to ask yourself why a country would want to hide (as in demote) their capabilities. Overstating their capabilities is perfectly understandable.
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- kbenson 4y ago
  Given how some think the lessening of US Navy projection of power and securing shipping lanes around the world is what's leading to global instability, and global stability has been very good for US economics the last 50+ years, a case can probably be made that at least some of that military spending in the past was extremely effective and useful. The theory is new to me, so I don't know enough about it to know how much I buy into it, but it's an interesting one.
  - magicalist 4y ago
    > lessening of US Navy projection of power While they continue to have more money allocated to them, operational mishaps occur more often, and navies look increasingly vulnerable in a real fight (see for instance the Moskva). Clearly "at least some of that military spending in the past was extremely effective and useful" isn't sufficient guidance on how to continue spending money.
redblacktree 4y ago
> While comfortable employed geeks may sit in awe of the pretty space pictures, most people have more quotidian concerns they care far more about. As the great Gil Scott-Heron once said: "A rat done bit my sister, Nell with whitey on the moon."
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > As the great Gil Scott-Heron once said: "A rat done bit my sister, Nell with whitey on the moon." I didn't know the reference, but I found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoPopQ7V0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoPopQ7V0 (2 min)
  - m12k 4y ago
    As William Gibson put it "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed"
    - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      Probably the best application of that quote I've ever seen :-)
adriand 4y ago
> You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to spend on their military? [...] So the fantasy is really one about a science-enthusiast world-dictator securely protected by his secret police. I think that's a failure of imagination, and that vision isn't one that history necessarily supports. Humans used to exist in small roving bands. Now we are organized into nation-states. I don't see a truly compelling reason why that trend towards greater organization can't continue. I am also certainly capable of imagining a world government that is responsive to the needs of people, maintains global peace and security, and focuses the vast majority of its budget towards constructive, not destructive, ends. I recognize that this doesn't look likely in the immediate future, but: - An alternative consisting of warring nations equipped with civilization-ending weapons is surely not the only path forward (it better not be, if we hope to stick around). - We are increasingly faced with existential problems that require a globally coordinated response. - Change often happens a lot faster than we think possible. The order of things is set in stone until suddenly it's washed away and everything is different.
- qclibre22 4y ago
  "We haven't tried real pacifism before"
- iratewizard 4y ago
  Imagining a world government as anything but dystopian is a failure of imagination
  - uoaei 4y ago
    Pretty much the opposite is true, by definition of the word "imagination".
- no-dr-onboard 4y ago
  > Humans used to exist in small roving bands. Now we are organized into nation-states. I don't see a truly compelling reason why that trend towards greater organization can't continue. The former is the answer to the latter here. Humanity is trending to a more unified, globalized, monolithic series of structures. Smaller cultures, countries and people groups have been conquered, dimmed, and "globalized". You can easily observe this in art and architecture. To be clear: you need both. Ironically, thinking that you can exist without a defensive military response is the real failure of imagination :/.
moomin 4y ago
Less true than you’d think. America outspends the rest of the world by an incredible margin and could probably happily halve its budget without being invaded by Canada or Mexico. Many European countries have spectacularly (too) low levels of defence spending and are still doing Ok, because they’re free-riding on NATO. Ukraine spent quite a lot, and spent it well, but Russia’s so much larger it doesn’t make enough of a difference. But yeah, there are many things we could better be spending the defence budget on than galaxy formation research.
- stuff4ben 4y ago
  You almost had it. The US spend a good portion of the defense budget propping up NATO which is why European countries can get by with spending less. Love him or hate him, what Trump was trying to do in getting NATO to pull its fair share in defense spending was a good idea. Sure the US could spend waaay less and still ensure it won't get invaded (they'd have to come by sea or from Canada or Mexico). But Europe would piecemeal become part of a new Russian or Chinese Union.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    You almost had it. Obama during his two terms pushed other NATO members to increase their spending to the 2% GDP target. They agreed and set long term goals to increase their spending and started to do so. Trump stupidly described other NATO members as "owing" the US. Not only had several countries met their spending goals by the end of the Obama admin most of the alliance was on track with increased spending including targeted equipment upgrade spending. Trump's complaints were that other NATO members hadn't met their goals ahead of the agreed upon schedule. This was going to be used for a pretext for withdrawing the US from NATO. NATO funding is not a simple issue. There's direct and indirect expenditures that "fund" NATO. It's not some protection racket. Funding can be direct funding I.e. military units/equipment maintained as a rapid response force or indirect funding I.e. spending to upgrade or buy equipment to keep up with the overall norms of the alliance.
marricks 4y ago
Just a few thousand years ago we didn't spend huge parts of our useful resources and lives on militaries. I really don't see how our imagination has shrunk so far that we all participant and perpetuate this fantasy that a world full of violence, much of which is created by the US, is the world we must continue to live in.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  Ancient Romans spent as much as 80% of their state budget on the military. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_the_Roman_army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_the_Roman_army The military was the “the largest item of state expenditure” during much of China’s Tang Dynasty. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-chinese-history/article/reach-of-the-military-tang/ECFE9C64AE6E73EC4319B165A606F88C https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-chinese-h... Compared to this, 4% of the US GDP or 12% of annual US federal spending seems like a bargain, especially if you’re Germany.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    comparing percent of federal spending is an odd way of doing things since the scope of government has noticably broadened.
    - deepdriver 4y ago
      Yes and no. The total economic pie was much smaller in antiquity, limiting the potential maximum scope of government. Even so, entitlement spending still took up its share of ancient budgets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    They extracted a return on that investment, at least in the early days of the empire. A lot of land, gold, and slaves were returned to Rome by their military.
- swamp40 4y ago
ericmcer 4y ago
I less agree that we would get conquered without a huge military. Hard agree about the social stuff though, in order to satisfy us we require exactly more than whatever we have at that moment, so spending on social well-being is limitless.
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swarnie 4y ago
> You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to spend on their military? I think this stop being true in 1945.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > I think this stop being true in 1945. Huh? Russia (nee the Soviet Union) and the US are neighbors, if you've forgotten. They had a big ideological rivalry that started to get intense around that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait
  - nabogh 4y ago
    I think they're referring to the nukes
  - swarnie 4y ago
    And how many invasions have you noted across the Bering Straits since 1945? The world changed.... You dont need an 800bn standing army any more.
runarberg 4y ago
> You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to spend on their military? There is no proof of that, not historic or otherwise. In fact there is evidence to the contrary, as previous times of less military spending seem to correlate with more peaceful times. Your claim on who lives in a fantasy world is entirely unfounded, and one can just as easily state that your description is the fantacy one.
- signatoremo 4y ago
  > In fact there is evidence to the contrary, as previous times of less military spending seem to correlate with more peaceful times. What is the evidence? My impression has been militarily weak countries got invaded by stronger ones. Smaller countries were snapped up by bigger ones. I’m curious to see the evidence to the contrary.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    Just look at a graph of global military spending interlaced with time-periods of relative global peace. You will find a remarkable—but ultimately unsurprising—correlation. You will find for example that after the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century, global conflicts reduced dramatically along with less military spending. Pre-industrialization, governments used to spend upwards to 90% GDP on their military, and tiny countries existed back then as they do today. Today there are quite a few smaller countries (and a handful of medium sized ones) that don’t even have military at all. I think your narrative of smaller countries being snapped up by bigger ones is not a historic pattern at all.
asdff 4y ago
So why isn't michigan conquering ohio or vice versa right now? Why aren't the canadians from the hinterland coming in to take over vancouver? Because they are "on the same side" which is ultimately a meaningless political device. It's still humans versus humans in michigan or ohio or the U.S. or anywhere else. It stands to reason that one day we could possibly be all on the same side, and we could have no fear of conquest from our fellow humans, just like those humans who are in michigan have no fear of conquest by ohioans today. In that world, having an advanced military would be about as useless as an ohio police department having ICBMs.
- z9znz 4y ago
  There are so many parallels and analogies to this idea, but there's a reoccuring pattern where some system becomes dominant and then seems to lose the characteristics which made it successful, ultimately becoming doomed. You see this in business, where companies climb to the top through aggression and innovation, but then become laggards and protectionists (and ultimately fall away). You see it in countries. You see it in technologies. Heck, you see it in biological systems. Perhaps that's just a normal part of the greater process, these cycles of growth, innovation, collaboration, etc., followed by stagnation and decay (and then death, or near-death, whereby the system returns to the growth effort). The nice thing about being human is that we theoretically have the capacity to choose what our goals are (assuming our basic needs are currently met). As such, we could be choosing to work on goals such as "everyone always has food, shelter, and physical safety". This surely must be achievable, but maybe it would take virtually everyone working toward this goal. It's not really a sexy way to spend your time if you are already fortunate enough to have those things... such as if you live in a place rich in resources and with relatively few people. You would not be particularly compelled to contribute to the wellbeing of others, especially if you could not see them. But we have the privilege of awareness and knowledge, so we can see that there are still many people without even food or water. We could do something about this if we made it our focus. And it might just turn out that having this collective focus would save our collective lives later. There's a reasonable chance that humanity will face a food crisis due to climate change and population growth. Practicing now at learning how to solve these problems might mean the difference between humans existing into 2100 or not.

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.
    - z9znz 4y ago
      If I were going to drink any politician's kool-aid, it would have been Bernie's. Hillary Clinton was part of the problem, just as most other sitting politicians are part of the problem.
- myko 4y ago
  This is revisionist/wrong. Obama also pushed for more spending in NATO - and got commitments to do so as % of GDP. Growth was generally higher but spending was moving towards the % committed to. What the last guy did was tried to piss out allies off and destroy NATO. Even then most in the US generally agreed w.r.t defense spending, just thought he was going about getting our allies to do it counter productively and not recognizing the fact that they were spending more (mostly from commitments made during Obama's 2 terms). Folks who worked with trump claim he was planning on pulling the US out of NATO in his second term: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-nato-pay-fair-share-231405 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-nato-pay-fair-s... https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/obama-warns-nato-allies-to-share-defense-burden-we-can-t-do-it-alone/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/obama-warns... https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-trump-to-withdraw-from-nato-in-2nd-term-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-tru... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-nato-south-korea-book-b1883457.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
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epicureanideal 4y ago
There’s a paper I read recently that adjusts for specifically military related purchasing power parity, in which case China was spending about 50% and Russia about 30% of the US. And of course in their region that might mean a locally more capable military, or the inability of the US to fight multiple wars simultaneously while maintaining global freedom of navigation for shipping, etc.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  At the point that you're talking about being able to simultaneously fight the next two military powers right in their respective backyards, you're no longer talking about defense. As for freedom of navigation, China is also in favor of that. It's their lifeblood.
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    >As for freedom of navigation, China is also in favor of that. Sorta-kinda. It’s complicated. Vietnam, the US, the Philippines and others have clashed with China over the “Nine Dash Line.” China— and Taiwan, oddly enough— refuses to respect the ruling of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Tribunal on this matter. They’ve harassed other countries’ fishing vessels and maritime police in the region, sinking at least one. There are ongoing tensions in the area between China and other countries’ navies. China asserts sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, while other countries and the UNCLOS disagree and assert their right to freedom of navigation for military vessels. This has implications for customs and maritime law enforcement. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/07/chinese-vietnamese-vessels-clash-south-china-sea https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/07/chinese-vietna... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line
    - SllX 4y ago
      Not so odd in the case of Taiwan: I like them, they’re the China as far as I’m concerned the UN and State Department be damned on this front, but it’s worth remembering that Taiwan officially does not see themselves as just an island nation off the coast of China. They claim the mainland, and all the island territories held by the mainland, and even Mongolia and some other land that the PRC has given up its claims to to settle border disputes. They’re not likely to back down on any of their claims no matter how small. Some people in Taiwan might be willing to give that up in exchange for a guarantee of independence but as far as I know this is not at all a settled matter for them. It’s very much like North Korea/South Korea.
tablespoon 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. I don't think it's that simple: stuff costs more in the US vs other big military spenders, large != effective, etc. If the US cut its military budget, it would have to give up capabilities, and that will have bitter consequences (e.g. the liberal order will shrink even further (e.g. goodbye Ukraine, Taiwan, Baltics), China owns the seas, etc.).
willhslade 4y ago
Can I just sidetrack this conversation? I've seen this new neologism "2 times less", which I infer from context means "half as much", and I don't like it.
- Jaruzel 4y ago
  Surely '2 times less' is minus 100% less, if the amount originally spent is '1 times'? It's an illogical phrase to be sure.
  - nodespace 4y ago
    I think its like saying: "2 times (but instead of mutiplying do the oposite thing that makes it smaller)" Is where the "logic" comes from. Hm, I bet this parses as well: "An hour is .5 times more then a half hour." Although not quite as well.
- elpatoisthebest 4y ago
  Unfortunately this is far from new. I tried fighting it for years and just gave up. Save yourself the grief. We already lost.
- 867-5309 4y ago
  it is bad grammar: you cannot use comparative adjectives on uncountable nouns that said, when I read it I did not notice. my brain automagically converted the phrase to half. the context was not lost but it is murky territory
minhazm 4y ago
I wonder if this is actually true in practice. I think many of these countries, especially China & India are incentivized to understate how much they actually spend on their defense. Another factor is the cost of labor and goods is so different that even though the US is spending far more actual dollars, the actual output might not be as big of a difference as these articles might have you believe.
- akiselev 4y ago
  Historically, countries almost never understate the strength of their armed forces because that would invite pointless conflicts with weaker adversaries. Unless the former is looking for some casus belli to invade the latter, it leads to the most pointless loss of life where the latter never stood a chance anyway but the former has to waste resources on the defense. I don't know how that calculus changes in the context of modern superpowers or China's ambitions for Taiwan but that's the reasoning historically.
  - signatoremo 4y ago
    How can you possibly know how much a country spent on military to conclude they almost never understate their funding? A perfect reason a country may understate their military spending is to hide their capabilities. For that matter, they may overstate their spending as well.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      You have to ask yourself why a country would want to hide (as in demote) their capabilities. Overstating their capabilities is perfectly understandable.
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kbenson 4y ago
Given how some think the lessening of US Navy projection of power and securing shipping lanes around the world is what's leading to global instability, and global stability has been very good for US economics the last 50+ years, a case can probably be made that at least some of that military spending in the past was extremely effective and useful. The theory is new to me, so I don't know enough about it to know how much I buy into it, but it's an interesting one.
- magicalist 4y ago
  > lessening of US Navy projection of power While they continue to have more money allocated to them, operational mishaps occur more often, and navies look increasingly vulnerable in a real fight (see for instance the Moskva). Clearly "at least some of that military spending in the past was extremely effective and useful" isn't sufficient guidance on how to continue spending money.

redblacktree 4y ago

> While comfortable employed geeks may sit in awe of the pretty space pictures, most people have more quotidian concerns they care far more about. As the great Gil Scott-Heron once said: "A rat done bit my sister, Nell with whitey on the moon."

tablespoon 4y ago
> As the great Gil Scott-Heron once said: "A rat done bit my sister, Nell with whitey on the moon." I didn't know the reference, but I found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoPopQ7V0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoPopQ7V0 (2 min)
- m12k 4y ago
  As William Gibson put it "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed"
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    Probably the best application of that quote I've ever seen :-)

adriand 4y ago

> You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to spend on their military? [...] So the fantasy is really one about a science-enthusiast world-dictator securely protected by his secret police. I think that's a failure of imagination, and that vision isn't one that history necessarily supports. Humans used to exist in small roving bands. Now we are organized into nation-states. I don't see a truly compelling reason why that trend towards greater organization can't continue. I am also certainly capable of imagining a world government that is responsive to the needs of people, maintains global peace and security, and focuses the vast majority of its budget towards constructive, not destructive, ends. I recognize that this doesn't look likely in the immediate future, but: - An alternative consisting of warring nations equipped with civilization-ending weapons is surely not the only path forward (it better not be, if we hope to stick around). - We are increasingly faced with existential problems that require a globally coordinated response. - Change often happens a lot faster than we think possible. The order of things is set in stone until suddenly it's washed away and everything is different.

qclibre22 4y ago
"We haven't tried real pacifism before"
iratewizard 4y ago
Imagining a world government as anything but dystopian is a failure of imagination
- uoaei 4y ago
  Pretty much the opposite is true, by definition of the word "imagination".
no-dr-onboard 4y ago
> Humans used to exist in small roving bands. Now we are organized into nation-states. I don't see a truly compelling reason why that trend towards greater organization can't continue. The former is the answer to the latter here. Humanity is trending to a more unified, globalized, monolithic series of structures. Smaller cultures, countries and people groups have been conquered, dimmed, and "globalized". You can easily observe this in art and architecture. To be clear: you need both. Ironically, thinking that you can exist without a defensive military response is the real failure of imagination :/.

moomin 4y ago

Less true than you’d think. America outspends the rest of the world by an incredible margin and could probably happily halve its budget without being invaded by Canada or Mexico. Many European countries have spectacularly (too) low levels of defence spending and are still doing Ok, because they’re free-riding on NATO. Ukraine spent quite a lot, and spent it well, but Russia’s so much larger it doesn’t make enough of a difference. But yeah, there are many things we could better be spending the defence budget on than galaxy formation research.

stuff4ben 4y ago
You almost had it. The US spend a good portion of the defense budget propping up NATO which is why European countries can get by with spending less. Love him or hate him, what Trump was trying to do in getting NATO to pull its fair share in defense spending was a good idea. Sure the US could spend waaay less and still ensure it won't get invaded (they'd have to come by sea or from Canada or Mexico). But Europe would piecemeal become part of a new Russian or Chinese Union.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  You almost had it. Obama during his two terms pushed other NATO members to increase their spending to the 2% GDP target. They agreed and set long term goals to increase their spending and started to do so. Trump stupidly described other NATO members as "owing" the US. Not only had several countries met their spending goals by the end of the Obama admin most of the alliance was on track with increased spending including targeted equipment upgrade spending. Trump's complaints were that other NATO members hadn't met their goals ahead of the agreed upon schedule. This was going to be used for a pretext for withdrawing the US from NATO. NATO funding is not a simple issue. There's direct and indirect expenditures that "fund" NATO. It's not some protection racket. Funding can be direct funding I.e. military units/equipment maintained as a rapid response force or indirect funding I.e. spending to upgrade or buy equipment to keep up with the overall norms of the alliance.

marricks 4y ago

Just a few thousand years ago we didn't spend huge parts of our useful resources and lives on militaries. I really don't see how our imagination has shrunk so far that we all participant and perpetuate this fantasy that a world full of violence, much of which is created by the US, is the world we must continue to live in.

deepdriver 4y ago
Ancient Romans spent as much as 80% of their state budget on the military. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_the_Roman_army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_the_Roman_army The military was the “the largest item of state expenditure” during much of China’s Tang Dynasty. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-chinese-history/article/reach-of-the-military-tang/ECFE9C64AE6E73EC4319B165A606F88C https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-chinese-h... Compared to this, 4% of the US GDP or 12% of annual US federal spending seems like a bargain, especially if you’re Germany.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  comparing percent of federal spending is an odd way of doing things since the scope of government has noticably broadened.
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    Yes and no. The total economic pie was much smaller in antiquity, limiting the potential maximum scope of government. Even so, entitlement spending still took up its share of ancient budgets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
- mr_toad 4y ago
  They extracted a return on that investment, at least in the early days of the empire. A lot of land, gold, and slaves were returned to Rome by their military.
swamp40 4y ago

ericmcer 4y ago

I less agree that we would get conquered without a huge military. Hard agree about the social stuff though, in order to satisfy us we require exactly more than whatever we have at that moment, so spending on social well-being is limitless.

deleted 4y ago
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swarnie 4y ago

> You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to spend on their military? I think this stop being true in 1945.

tablespoon 4y ago
> I think this stop being true in 1945. Huh? Russia (nee the Soviet Union) and the US are neighbors, if you've forgotten. They had a big ideological rivalry that started to get intense around that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait
- nabogh 4y ago
  I think they're referring to the nukes
- swarnie 4y ago
  And how many invasions have you noted across the Bering Straits since 1945? The world changed.... You dont need an 800bn standing army any more.

runarberg 4y ago

> You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to spend on their military? There is no proof of that, not historic or otherwise. In fact there is evidence to the contrary, as previous times of less military spending seem to correlate with more peaceful times. Your claim on who lives in a fantasy world is entirely unfounded, and one can just as easily state that your description is the fantacy one.

signatoremo 4y ago
> In fact there is evidence to the contrary, as previous times of less military spending seem to correlate with more peaceful times. What is the evidence? My impression has been militarily weak countries got invaded by stronger ones. Smaller countries were snapped up by bigger ones. I’m curious to see the evidence to the contrary.
- runarberg 4y ago
  Just look at a graph of global military spending interlaced with time-periods of relative global peace. You will find a remarkable—but ultimately unsurprising—correlation. You will find for example that after the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century, global conflicts reduced dramatically along with less military spending. Pre-industrialization, governments used to spend upwards to 90% GDP on their military, and tiny countries existed back then as they do today. Today there are quite a few smaller countries (and a handful of medium sized ones) that don’t even have military at all. I think your narrative of smaller countries being snapped up by bigger ones is not a historic pattern at all.

asdff 4y ago

So why isn't michigan conquering ohio or vice versa right now? Why aren't the canadians from the hinterland coming in to take over vancouver? Because they are "on the same side" which is ultimately a meaningless political device. It's still humans versus humans in michigan or ohio or the U.S. or anywhere else. It stands to reason that one day we could possibly be all on the same side, and we could have no fear of conquest from our fellow humans, just like those humans who are in michigan have no fear of conquest by ohioans today. In that world, having an advanced military would be about as useless as an ohio police department having ICBMs.

z9znz 4y ago
There are so many parallels and analogies to this idea, but there's a reoccuring pattern where some system becomes dominant and then seems to lose the characteristics which made it successful, ultimately becoming doomed. You see this in business, where companies climb to the top through aggression and innovation, but then become laggards and protectionists (and ultimately fall away). You see it in countries. You see it in technologies. Heck, you see it in biological systems. Perhaps that's just a normal part of the greater process, these cycles of growth, innovation, collaboration, etc., followed by stagnation and decay (and then death, or near-death, whereby the system returns to the growth effort). The nice thing about being human is that we theoretically have the capacity to choose what our goals are (assuming our basic needs are currently met). As such, we could be choosing to work on goals such as "everyone always has food, shelter, and physical safety". This surely must be achievable, but maybe it would take virtually everyone working toward this goal. It's not really a sexy way to spend your time if you are already fortunate enough to have those things... such as if you live in a place rich in resources and with relatively few people. You would not be particularly compelled to contribute to the wellbeing of others, especially if you could not see them. But we have the privilege of awareness and knowledge, so we can see that there are still many people without even food or water. We could do something about this if we made it our focus. And it might just turn out that having this collective focus would save our collective lives later. There's a reasonable chance that humanity will face a food crisis due to climate change and population growth. Practicing now at learning how to solve these problems might mean the difference between humans existing into 2100 or not.