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Comment by kartan | Hacker News Reader

No. War is not progress. War has cost a lot to European countries, being WWII one of the major loses in history in human lives and resources.

I have hear other, more plausible, explanations. Weather is one. The fact that Eurasia is wide means that it has similar conditions in large portions of land, so you can reuse technology for agriculture across all of it.

In Australia and Africa weather is not so good for agriculture. America is rich, but being narrow you need to create new agriculture techniques as you move south or north, as the landscape, weather and other factors are changing.

War is present in all cultures. So some more unique qualities should be looked for. And luck can't be discarded.

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The article didn't specifically say war, just multiple competing states. This drove up trade, but also division.

European history has had more conflict that any other region.

Also, War has undeniably driven technological advances throughout history.

Conflict does not create riches, you are correct. Competition does create riches ( and sometimes conflict)

Yes. I don't think it's a coincidence that the two periods in history that provided much of the foundations of Western civilization (Ancient Greece and the Renaissance) took place amongst intensely competing city-states.

I agree with you on all sentences but one.

> Also, War has undeniably driven technological advances throughout history.

The opportunity cost of a war is huge. It can easily be argued that it is larger than the perceived gain of a war. Objectively measuring those two costs is another matter, but there is nothing undeniable about it.

Let's pick WWII as an example. Rockets came out of it and put people on the moon. What if we had peace instead what would those rocket scientist have done instead? Likely they still would rockets and other vehicles, but their would have been input from more scientists and it would have taken a few extra years while those scientists made other things. The moon would have happened anyway, but probably in a more sustainable way than a postwar "space race". What about Nuclear power? Maybe delaying that a few years might equal the economic output of the two cities it obliterated. Another view, without the specter of nuclear war we could have built more of the cleanest and safest power source we ever devised and redirected all the labor on coal and oil to other areas that nearly limitless energy might provide.

> What if we had peace instead what would those rocket scientist have done instead?

Not gotten funding to build rockets in the first place, in large part.

OTOH, there is at least an argument that the labor involved would have been directed in a manner that would produce more benefit in the civilian economy had it not been centrally allocated to military priorities.

Your response describes the likeliest outcome, IMO. The resources von Braun got were plausible in the 40's only under a dictatorial nationstate waging a war.

You act though smart people like von Braun wouldn't have done something else productive. A no on a funding application is not a death sentence. Look at scientists like Norman Borlaug[1], he revolutionized food production and turned several countries from food importing to food exporting, without a war.

Surely von Braun and other rocket scientists are at least as smart as some kid from Iowa.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

I was not assigning intrinsic value to alternative historical scenarios but estimating the resource cost of a rocket program in the 40's being out of reach in any other situation. US and USSR bootstrapped their programs based on V2 technology and then perfected their engines driven by the need to rain orbital nuclear death on top of each others without the chance of interception.

Functional space propulsion became as a side product of these murderous efforts.

Sure, we all would be probably happier if none of that had ever happened. The original topic was - would we have had rocket engines without ww2. Perhaps, but not as soon.

But this assumes that even without war and the attention it brings, rocket scientists could get access to the materials and manpower needed to further their work. The space-race arguably leveraged national-pride and used it to create demand for rockets. Without it, they probably could never went past small-scale rockets and scaled up to where they are today.

Even if they did, you already admitted there'd be a delay to things without the "war-boost". If it's OK to delay things like this, why are we in such a rush to counter the effects of global warming? Sometimes, the short-term does matter - whether it means obliterating 2 cities or obliterating the fossil fuel industry.

Your argument about short term and long term cuts both ways.

It is quite likely that "Rocket Scientists" wouldn't still be "Rocket Scientists", but they certainly still would have been scientists. They would have worked on something. The Moon only a time sensitive goal because of the cold war, but global warming/climate change is time sensitive, because nature and basic human survival say so. If some of those scientists had been working in meteorology and climatology the state of climate science could easily be 10 years ahead of where it is now.

What about all the scientists that could have been, but were instead blown up by dropped bombs or doomed to mediocrity as they had to work to reconstruct after a war? What about all the people who didn't get education because the war disrupt their city's basic infrastructure?

Can any amount of a soft resource like "leveraged national-pride" measure up to an absolute increase in resources like "More living and productive people"?

"The state makes war and war makes the state." - Charles Tilly

I'd agree that war is not progress, but war (at least a very specific type of war found in Pre-Westphalian Europe) created the conditions for progress. Tilly's predatory or bellicose theory of state building[1] asserts that war was crucial in spurring the development of modern nation-states. A stronger centralized state expanded the rule of law and reduced violence, providing a foundation for positive sum economic activity. Furthermore, this type of proto-state can, more or less, be viewed as a protection racket. The state could extract resources from those under its protection. This encouraged the state to incentive economic activity and innovation as the state captured some of the benefit through taxation.

Violence is present in all cultures. But the type of war that Tilly describes is somewhat unique to Europe. A confluence of geographic factors - arable land enabling higher population densities and a network of rivers that allowed for the projection of force - created the conditions for territorial war. If you look at South America or Africa there is much of a history of territorial wars because the area of these continents is so large that territory wasn't a limiting factor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-building#Application_of_...

'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.'

-Harry Lime, 'the third man'

"In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Well, they also produced switzerland.

Have you been there ?

It's the best place in the world - and not just the scenery.

Best for those who are there. Others with wrong-{skin color, religion, continent etc} must stay away.

That's not true at all.

I suspect that, unlike my own country, they enforce and respect the immigration laws on the books - truly a shock.

However, even outside city centers you run into people of all types. On my last trip I found myself in Gruyere and there were muslim families and east asians touring at the rest stop.

Inside Zurich there's a roughly Minneapolis-level background of racial diversity.

"Minneapolis-level background of racial diversity" Here is what the Minneapolis Fed bank president has to say about that,

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-kashkari-shocked-black...

He's talking about national statistics. He just happened to be working in MPLS at the time:

"Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said Wednesday he was “shocked” that the persistently higher national black unemployment rate relative to the rate for whites was not better understood."

People who live in MPLS know that it has a huge immigrant population of somali and other east africans as well as (I think) the largest Hmong/Cambodian population in the United States. That is, in addition to the inner-city diversity of american blacks. Also, unlike many other cities, there are native americans.

So it's not NYC or LA, but it's not Denver either. In fact, I think my original comparison may be off - MPLS is probably more diverse than Zurich.

(I have lived in MPLS on two different occasions - 6 and 5 years each. I own a business in Zurich.)

I am saying having racial diversity without equity is not a desirable outcome.

You just deviated from the point we are discussing and went to something else completely (racism). It has its merits but the point is: Did Switzerland peace produce more wealth than Italy's war.

If you had the best house in the neighborhood and everyone tried to move from theirs and start living in yours instead of improving their own, wouldn't you be annoyed?

I'm not defending racism and hate. Those are unacceptable. It is however understandable that they might grow annoyed of people profiting of their country without bringing anything good. From what I have heard it's not an issue of {skin color, religion, continent etc} but simply an issue of being foreign.

True, Switzerland is a great (and beautiful) place to live. But I think the OP was talking about civilization advances and of those Switzerland has much less than Italy.

In fact the same goes for WWII. True, it was a bloody, devastating and awful conflict that brought out the worst in mankind... but at the same time created the tools that put the 1st humans in the Moon and gave us atomic power.

The unfortunate truth is that many of the major technological advances of mankind are closely connected to war.

Yes, but it was a backwater (losing a lot to emigration) until ~1850, right?

But to say Switzerland didn't invest in war would be horribly wrong. They are armed to the teeth with fortifications and a large militia force - ever check out the guns per capita in Switzerland?

> But to say Switzerland didn't invest in war would be horribly wrong

What war? They invested in peace, successfully so far. Attacking Switzerland would be a bad idea for most countries.

Switzerland developed the massed pike infantry formation tactics that dominated early-modern Europe before the advent of reliable firearms, crushed a major regional power (Burgundy), and exported mercenaries that formed the backbone of many other European states' standing armies.

They also for a long time produced the most hard core mercenarys

And even the cuckoo clock is from the Black Forrest, Germany, rather than Switzerland.

But seriously, the Swiss have lots to be proud of.

That argument is worthless and is made just to move emotions. Italy produced a lot under war doesn't mean that Italy doesn't produce under war.

Switzerland far outpaces Italy when compared per capita.

And I'm guessing people will prefer peace and prosperity to da Vinci and poverty.

Given that Swiss mercenary pikemen were considered troops of excellent quality in their day I'm not sure if this picture of harmony and tranquility is exactly correct.

>> I have hear other, more plausible, explanations. Weather is one.

LOL, this is exactly what corrupted officials in a Country-I-Woudn't-Call say when they're asked about billions being spent on building of roads that cannot survive a single season (so they have to be rebuilt every year). "That's because of our weather", - they say.

While war itself is destructive and did exact a great cost to Europe (it arguably ended European colonialism as it made Europe unable to maintain presence in their colonies), preparation in the case of war is arguably constructive and lead to innovations.

The Internet for one started as a DARPA project (ARPANET). The Interstate Highway was made for troop transport. Military contracts kept some aerospace companies afloat (basically subsidizing them) and enabled innovation that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

The word war doesn't appear once in the article, what are you talking about ?

Vast areas of Africa are perfect for agriculture... it's a big place.

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