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Comment by malchow | Hacker News Reader

Actually, the main objective of the DoD is preserving a general liberal-democratic post-war order, one which persists only because of a balletic balancing of forces. You may have policy or ideological disagreements with particular episodes or theaters, but to condemn the DoD as "620 billion going towards killing people" is. . . dumb. Or unconsidered, to be more charitable.

And there's evidence that these welfare programs you seem to like are far more inhumane than they are helpful. Remember: it isn't manna from heaven. It's money from income earners. (Not "the rich," remember: it's work that is taxed, not wealth.) And economies have overcome many revolutions, from iron to industrial, without these programs. Do you have a principled reason why the information age is any different?

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It's rare to see a more right wing opinion being dictated in a way that is thoughtful or halfway intelligent. Yours is beyond halfway and I'm being serious.. good post.

To answer your question, we need these programs because just 100 years ago some people couldn't read and write. With public education K-12 and public universities, I'm much better off than my own family 100 years ago, before the gov't started these social programs. I'm a product of public education all the way through, and I'm very thankful as it was subsidized by others. I know the program works, and I'm happy to support domestic spending.

I'm in agreement with the parent though that offensive military spending (which standing armies always leads to) is flat out a bad idea and wrong[0]. My great grandfather served in WW1 in the trenches of France, fighting our homeland (Germany). His son-in-law, my grandfather, was shot multiple times over Germany in WW2 by flak as a gunner in a B24 in the Army Air Corp. He flew enough missions that his chance of surviving the war was 10%. The other was a Marine in the Pacific. But we as a family 'serve' no longer. I changed my mind about going to Iraq when one of my grandfathers told me we had 'no business being over there'. And the other said flat out, if the military comes for me, that I'm to go to Canada. I would never disobey those men which I respected so much.

So for me, the principled reason would be just looking at education alone, it makes a better world for all of us. Better quality of life, more opportunities, and an advanced economy.

[0]http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

> the main objective of the DoD is preserving a general liberal-democratic post-war order, one which persists only because of a balletic balancing of forces.

Objectives are one thing - how much effect they have is a quite different question. Historically there's a long-standing decline in violence; the fall of the Soviet Union, the decline of British dominance, or even the end of the Roman empire are barely a blip on the graph. Is the DoD actually helping, or are they just a rock that keeps tigers away?

> to condemn the DoD as "620 billion going towards killing people" is. . . dumb. Or unconsidered, to be more charitable.

Maybe. If the politicians screw up welfare, the worst that happens is some shysters get some money. The DoD is always going to involve killing people. Hopefully they're a tool that we can use to do more good than harm. But if you don't believe they're being effective - or being used effectively - then all that's left is the killing.

> Remember: it isn't manna from heaven. It's money from income earners.

True, but equally applicable to the DoD

> economies have overcome many revolutions, from iron to industrial, without these programs. Do you have a principled reason why the information age is any different?

Economies survived without these programs, and would do so today. But most people's lives were nasty, brutish, and short. It's worth spending money to improve on that.

The state has filled the power vacuum left by the church and thus taken on the role of social welfare provider.

> And economies have overcome many revolutions, from iron to industrial, without these programs. Do you have a principled reason why the information age is any different?

I truly hope you are a billionaire, because once your Randian utopia comes to fruition, you will need private armies to protect you against their Blackwaters and Pinkertons. Because they'll come for your assets. Count on it.

Don't believe me? Look at Russia. See what happens when oligarchs challenge the supreme oligarch? Their assets get "nationalized", and they are imprisoned. That's best case. The less significant ones catch odd diseases strangely similar to polonium poisoning...

I am sorry, but the leap from "Randian utopia" to Russia is quite hard to follow. Could you explain what do both have in common? Russia is, likely, the most regulated economy in the world (e.g. from the recent news http://www.topnews.ru/news_id_83651.html , the government banned a supermarket chain from selling loose candy, tea, nuts etc. where else something like this could possibly happen?) with giant welfare programs and a big chunk of the population employed in the government. I only read digests of Rand's books but they left an impression that a "Randian utopia" would not have any of these things.

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