6 ms·

It's interesting -- I would imagine a minority of Americans would support developing killer drones, because it is a terrible slope for the world as a whole to g

by jal278 12y ago

It's interesting -- I would imagine a minority of Americans would support developing killer drones, because it is a terrible slope for the world as a whole to go down, yet our military -- largely because of game theory, will continue to develop them, likely to a poor outcome for the world. Perhaps our belief in game theory is a pretty miserable self-fulfilling promise

PavlovsCat 12y ago
But "your" military is yours mostly in name, and in paying taxes. The profits of offensive wars do not go to you, and I would expect that overall, war destroys more wealth than it creates. Of course, for a robber this doesn't matter, but in the long run it means cutting off the branch one sits on, killing the host one feeds off. "If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as though he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror." -- Hannah Arendt Was there ever an empire which exploited foreigners, but respected its own populace? Among any and all of them you will find classes of the population that profit, but the country as a whole? Can you have injustice on the outside and justice on the inside? While these are not rhetorical questions, you can guess what "my answer so far" is.. I think the poorer the outcome for the rest of the world, the poorer the outcome for inhabitants of the US, too. Including the elites, who are just feeding addictions to gain additional insecurities, if you ask me; "power" is just code for "I am scared and unable to create".
- jal278 12y ago
  I'm no fan of imperialism or the military, but I think it is possible for a self-interested nation to treat its own citizens well while acting immorally abroad. However, I don't think such differential treatment is desirable, and it increasingly makes little sense as technology more deeply interconnects us over the trivial lines we draw in the sand to create discrete countries. I think we think along the same lines in terms of power, although I'd phrase it more in that power is self-perpetuating -- something that (like bureaucracy) ratchets up but is hard to prune. For example, even if most citizens of the world wanted more cooperation between their respective countries, and to dial back military developments such as drone warfare, the self-interested power accumulated in the government institutions of countries would likely resist.
  - PavlovsCat 12y ago
    > I'm no fan of imperialism or the military, but I think it is possible for a self-interested nation to treat its own citizens well while acting immorally abroad. Is there a historical example of it though? I am not exactly a history buff, but so far I am drawing blanks. And I have trouble imagining it in theory, even; I mean sure, a person could theoretically be very dishonest to one group of people, and very honest to another; but at least with people, such stuff generally leaks all over.
    - PavlovsCat 12y ago
      It was a genuine question. I would like a genuine answer.
    - pjc50 12y ago
      Roman Empire? Civis Romanis sum and all that. You have to not use modern standards of "treated well" and note that not every resident was a citizen and some were slaves.
      - PavlovsCat 12y ago
        Yeah, that may have started out with somewhat noble intentions. But still: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empir... The legal fiction of the early Empire (in which the emperor was but the first among equals) was disposed of; the emperors, beginning with Aurelian, openly styled themselves as dominus et deus, lord and god, titles appropriate for a slave towards his master. An elaborate court ceremonial was developed, and obsequious flattery became the order of the day. Under Diocletian, the flow of direct requests to the emperor was rapidly reduced and soon ceased altogether. No other form of direct access replaced them, and the emperor received only information that was filtered through his courtiers. Official cruelty, supporting extortion and corruption, may also have become more commonplace. While the scale, complexity, and violence of government were unmatched, the emperors lost control over their whole realm insofar as that control came increasingly to be wielded by anyone who paid for it. Meanwhile the richest senatorial families, immune from most taxation, engrossed more and more of the available wealth and income, while also becoming divorced from any tradition of military excellence.
- ZenPro 12y ago
  The net cost/benefit of military conflict in economic terms is almost impossible to calculate. Your run the gauntlet of variables from military-industrial production as a constant of GDP, through to the net benefit of conflict related inventions and leaps in medical engineering and hospital care. You would also have to contend with the possible benefits/costs of reduction in the human populace. None of this includes the climate change impact, huge ecological impacts on local terrain and ecosystems. Most modern conflicts also present huge employment opportunities for the local populace. In Camp Bastion/Leatherneck in Helmand Province, combat and support troops are outnumbered 3 to 1 by local recruited workers and locally employed civilians. I am not convinced war destroys more wealth than it creates but it is an interesting question...
  - PavlovsCat 12y ago
    > Most modern conflicts also present huge employment opportunities for the local populace. That is one way to look at it. Another is that they are a way to extract big amounts of money from a population to put it into private hands, and these jobs being breadcrumbs falling off that table. Imagine throwing 20$ in the air, getting 10$ back, and saying it's raining money. Penicillin, plumbing, or washing hands weren't invented for war, and I would guess for every invention made for it, there are many, many more made without war in mind. And for most if not all of the beneficial ones, there is a peaceful path; computers were imagined long before they were built, that WW2 triggered them actually becoming a thing doesn't mean they would not ever have been built without war - we don't know. And there is the question what speeding up inevitable progress a little, so you can have it right now, rather than "just" generations down the line having it, at the expense of the lives of others, makes a person; search on youtube for "kill the poor" by Mitchell & Webb.
    - ZenPro 12y ago
      You listing 3 inventions that came from peaceful times is simply inviting an adversarial response. [1] Penicillin - it was not until 1939 when Dr. Howard Florey’s research was able to prove the effectiveness of penicillin without a shadow of a doubt and with the aid of Andrew J. Moyer he developed the most powerful antibacterial substance in the world. Invented during conflict - >> Hydrogen Peroxide (forerunner to fuel-cell & synthetic fuel technology >> Synthetic Rubber >> Air Traffic Control >> Superglue >> Tampons / Tampax / Sanitary Pads (WW1 Cellulose Bandage) >> Jerry Can >> Pressurised Cabin >> Radio Navigation >> Cryptography / Cryptanalysis >> Radar >> Synthetic Oil >> V-2 Rocket (forerunner to the R7 & Mercury) >> Jet Engine >> Nuclear Power >> Paper Money (greenbacks) >> Canned Food >> Sewing Machine >> Standardized Clothing Sizes >> Telegraph Network I could go, as I am sure could you. The point is that you assumption that the net effect of conflict is simply a loss does not stand up to rigorous academic thinking. The variables are too complex. Also, your comment about $20 / raining money as an analogy is absurd. The majority of the workers on Camp Bastion are unskilled and were earning less than $1 a day in subsistence agriculture prior to the arrival of military forces. Regardless of the war aims etc the median income has risen as an effect of troops being located with the populace. The ffect of war on a western or advanced market economy might be different but for Afghanistan it increased the amount of capital in the country.

by jal278 12y ago

PavlovsCat 12y ago

But "your" military is yours mostly in name, and in paying taxes. The profits of offensive wars do not go to you, and I would expect that overall, war destroys more wealth than it creates. Of course, for a robber this doesn't matter, but in the long run it means cutting off the branch one sits on, killing the host one feeds off. "If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as though he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror." -- Hannah Arendt Was there ever an empire which exploited foreigners, but respected its own populace? Among any and all of them you will find classes of the population that profit, but the country as a whole? Can you have injustice on the outside and justice on the inside? While these are not rhetorical questions, you can guess what "my answer so far" is.. I think the poorer the outcome for the rest of the world, the poorer the outcome for inhabitants of the US, too. Including the elites, who are just feeding addictions to gain additional insecurities, if you ask me; "power" is just code for "I am scared and unable to create".

jal278 12y ago
I'm no fan of imperialism or the military, but I think it is possible for a self-interested nation to treat its own citizens well while acting immorally abroad. However, I don't think such differential treatment is desirable, and it increasingly makes little sense as technology more deeply interconnects us over the trivial lines we draw in the sand to create discrete countries. I think we think along the same lines in terms of power, although I'd phrase it more in that power is self-perpetuating -- something that (like bureaucracy) ratchets up but is hard to prune. For example, even if most citizens of the world wanted more cooperation between their respective countries, and to dial back military developments such as drone warfare, the self-interested power accumulated in the government institutions of countries would likely resist.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  > I'm no fan of imperialism or the military, but I think it is possible for a self-interested nation to treat its own citizens well while acting immorally abroad. Is there a historical example of it though? I am not exactly a history buff, but so far I am drawing blanks. And I have trouble imagining it in theory, even; I mean sure, a person could theoretically be very dishonest to one group of people, and very honest to another; but at least with people, such stuff generally leaks all over.
  - PavlovsCat 12y ago
    It was a genuine question. I would like a genuine answer.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    Roman Empire? Civis Romanis sum and all that. You have to not use modern standards of "treated well" and note that not every resident was a citizen and some were slaves.
    - PavlovsCat 12y ago
      Yeah, that may have started out with somewhat noble intentions. But still: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empir... The legal fiction of the early Empire (in which the emperor was but the first among equals) was disposed of; the emperors, beginning with Aurelian, openly styled themselves as dominus et deus, lord and god, titles appropriate for a slave towards his master. An elaborate court ceremonial was developed, and obsequious flattery became the order of the day. Under Diocletian, the flow of direct requests to the emperor was rapidly reduced and soon ceased altogether. No other form of direct access replaced them, and the emperor received only information that was filtered through his courtiers. Official cruelty, supporting extortion and corruption, may also have become more commonplace. While the scale, complexity, and violence of government were unmatched, the emperors lost control over their whole realm insofar as that control came increasingly to be wielded by anyone who paid for it. Meanwhile the richest senatorial families, immune from most taxation, engrossed more and more of the available wealth and income, while also becoming divorced from any tradition of military excellence.
ZenPro 12y ago
The net cost/benefit of military conflict in economic terms is almost impossible to calculate. Your run the gauntlet of variables from military-industrial production as a constant of GDP, through to the net benefit of conflict related inventions and leaps in medical engineering and hospital care. You would also have to contend with the possible benefits/costs of reduction in the human populace. None of this includes the climate change impact, huge ecological impacts on local terrain and ecosystems. Most modern conflicts also present huge employment opportunities for the local populace. In Camp Bastion/Leatherneck in Helmand Province, combat and support troops are outnumbered 3 to 1 by local recruited workers and locally employed civilians. I am not convinced war destroys more wealth than it creates but it is an interesting question...
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  > Most modern conflicts also present huge employment opportunities for the local populace. That is one way to look at it. Another is that they are a way to extract big amounts of money from a population to put it into private hands, and these jobs being breadcrumbs falling off that table. Imagine throwing 20$ in the air, getting 10$ back, and saying it's raining money. Penicillin, plumbing, or washing hands weren't invented for war, and I would guess for every invention made for it, there are many, many more made without war in mind. And for most if not all of the beneficial ones, there is a peaceful path; computers were imagined long before they were built, that WW2 triggered them actually becoming a thing doesn't mean they would not ever have been built without war - we don't know. And there is the question what speeding up inevitable progress a little, so you can have it right now, rather than "just" generations down the line having it, at the expense of the lives of others, makes a person; search on youtube for "kill the poor" by Mitchell & Webb.
  - ZenPro 12y ago
    You listing 3 inventions that came from peaceful times is simply inviting an adversarial response. [1] Penicillin - it was not until 1939 when Dr. Howard Florey’s research was able to prove the effectiveness of penicillin without a shadow of a doubt and with the aid of Andrew J. Moyer he developed the most powerful antibacterial substance in the world. Invented during conflict - >> Hydrogen Peroxide (forerunner to fuel-cell & synthetic fuel technology >> Synthetic Rubber >> Air Traffic Control >> Superglue >> Tampons / Tampax / Sanitary Pads (WW1 Cellulose Bandage) >> Jerry Can >> Pressurised Cabin >> Radio Navigation >> Cryptography / Cryptanalysis >> Radar >> Synthetic Oil >> V-2 Rocket (forerunner to the R7 & Mercury) >> Jet Engine >> Nuclear Power >> Paper Money (greenbacks) >> Canned Food >> Sewing Machine >> Standardized Clothing Sizes >> Telegraph Network I could go, as I am sure could you. The point is that you assumption that the net effect of conflict is simply a loss does not stand up to rigorous academic thinking. The variables are too complex. Also, your comment about $20 / raining money as an analogy is absurd. The majority of the workers on Camp Bastion are unskilled and were earning less than $1 a day in subsistence agriculture prior to the arrival of military forces. Regardless of the war aims etc the median income has risen as an effect of troops being located with the populace. The ffect of war on a western or advanced market economy might be different but for Afghanistan it increased the amount of capital in the country.