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Despite the tragedy in Ukraine, most people in most countries are living through an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Since 1950, the global populatio
by snordgren 4y ago
Despite the tragedy in Ukraine, most people in most countries are living through an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
Since 1950, the global population has more than tripled, while militaries have shrunk. Since 1960, military spending as a share of global GDP has gone down from over 6% to less than 3%.
The world isn't perfect, but it has become a lot less warlike and more hospitable for nerds in recent decades.
- modo_mario 4y ago>Since 1950, the global population has more than tripled I don't see this as a grand thing tbh. Sure there's more nerds but I feel like they trive most when not having to deal with scarcities.
- dmix 4y agoI don't think he was saying that's a good thing on its own, population relative to military spending was the point...
- kragen 4y ago01960 was in some sense the height of the cold war, and also only 15 years after the end of world war ii (in europe and japan, anyway; in china and some other places war continued longer) the cold war ended in 01991, and since then the us has been pretty much free to invade and conquer and colonize wherever it wanted without any real opposition it's been 77 years since the end of world war ii, so this is probably an atypically peaceful moment in history probably a few years into world war iii military spending will be a much larger fraction of gdp