Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

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And yet, we have fairly good evidence from the relatively recent past that sometimes you do need to stand up and fight, and it may be for the safety of yourself, your faimily or even for the safety of people across the world.

WWII was a thing, the Nazi party came to power and started pushing their agenda, and the holocaust actually happened. And the farther back in history you go, the more it becomes apparent that it's not really all that much of a statistical outlier except in scale.

That we don't need to continuously make sure we're strong enough to defend ourselves is a fiction that people in countries with strong governments that enforce the rule of law like to tell themselves. That's only possible because the government is there to be the ultimate arbiter, and as libertarians will quickly point out, that's only possible because they have, and ruthlessly enforce, their monopoly on violence (to our collective benefit, IMO).

No such thing exists for nations between themselves, except for pacts like the U.N. or NATO, and that's not a solution, it's just kicking the problem up the chain so we can act like it's not our problem.

If the US is worried about China and Russia it could:

* stop making China rich. All the stuff they're building is built with US money.

* vote for a president that isn't more friendly towars the US's traditional adversary Russia than towards European allies.

Military hardware is useless if the politicians continue to make strategic blunders.

Economic and military strength are related, and one can lead to the other, but it generally seems to be delayed when going from economic strength to military strength (because it's a matter of actually investing in developing new technology or buying it).

Do you think not helping China as much economically (read as: hurt us both economically to suppress them somewhat) would prevent their research of military technology, including both hardware and software/network capabilities?

I disagree with how the current administration is dealing with Russia and China, as I disagree with a great many (most!) the things they do, but I don't think that really affects the calculus of the equation on whether we should continue to invest in our own military technology.

I do not want it to be this way, it's just how I perceive it to be, and as much as people have taken exception with my statements, I'm not seeing a lot of arguments that explain how it's wrong or can be escaped.

> Military hardware is useless if the politicians continue to make strategic blunders.

It's also useless if it doesn't exist. Available but unused when needed is a step up from not available when needed. The ultimate outcome might be the same, but one is a precursor to "available and used when needed" and the other isn't.

> Do you think not helping China as much economically (read as: hurt os both economically to suppress them somewhat) would prevent their research of military technology, including both hardware and software/network capabilities?

Obviously yes. It's absolutely evident that the large majority of the economy of China is based on export towards rich countries. Without US investments China would be extremely poor.

Yet, the US decided to embargo communist Cuba (and Vietnam) and invest heavily in "communist" China. The latter being very capitalistic.

> Obviously yes. It's absolutely evident that the large majority of the economy of China is based on export towards rich countries. Without US investments China would be extremely poor.

You say obviously, yet fail to link why making China poorer would significantly affect military investment and which type. How much money does it take to throw people at software? And people are something China has a LOT of.

Depending on how you measure it, China's economy is between the 1st and 3rd largest in the world (I think first largest is a stretch, but there's apparently some metrics which rank it that way based on purchasing power).

The United states is not the only country that China exports to. It's a large chunk, and it would hurt, but as we're seeing, China is not willing to let the United States dictate everything in the relationship. Why would they let the United States use economics to tell them they can't research what they would describe as technologies used to protect themselves when they aren't willing to do so for lesser reasons, as evidenced by the current tariffs?

At most, we'll cause them to hide their activity. Why would they stop in light of the aggressive stance by other countries to dictate their future? North Korea certainly doesn't seem to like it, and China is in a position of much more power.

> Yet, the US decided to embargo communist Cuba (and Vietnam) and invest heavily in "communist" China. The latter being very capitalistic.

Well, yeah. Because doing otherwise hurts us economically, and economics drives a huge amount of decision making. And barring a concerted world effort to to China to stop investing in any military tech, while the rest of the world would undoubtedly continue, I doubt China would be willing to stop. It's not all that different than if some nations came to the United States and told us to stop researching and building up our military. We'd tell them it's none of their business and they have no say in what we do. Why would we expect China to act any differently?

Have a look at this intro video about history of Nazi: https://youtu.be/RgsaXooC6AE

Full video (3hrs): https://youtu.be/jiHm2S0w3_Q

>> WWII was a thing, the Nazi party came to power and started pushing their agenda, and the holocaust actually happened

Indeed it was, but many people act like the whole thing just sprung up from a vacuum. There was an entire history which went before, and at least libertarians seem to attempt to dig a little deeper. If you don't want to hear out the prologue to these kinds of dastardly events, there isn't much difference between your acceptance of propaganda and your supposed adversary's.

"Because the politics of Europe so clearly had nothing to do with America, it took a massive propaganda campaign to solidify American involvement. This allowed an overwhelming victory for the allies and the disastrous peace agreement that followed. So much of the ensuing horror of the 20th century, Scott and Woods contend, resulted directly from Wilson’s foreign policy."

https://scotthorton.org/interviews/11-12-18-tom-woods-on-wor...

Yes, I am sure someone will come and point out some nutty thing some or the other libertarian said. You don't have to be in complete agreement with someone's viewpoint just to hear out their views.

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