The Cost of Empire | Hacker News Reader

The Cost of Empire

jtaplin.wordpress.com

Let me attempt to respond to the points in the article in order:

1. As someone born and raised behind the iron curtain, let me tell you the SU would have absolutely expanded if the US hadn't checked it. It then still would have collapsed. But that doesn't mean that holding off the SU was not worth it. Now the way it was done is some specific instances like Vietnam, sure that execution was bad in more ways then one. But the general idea, not all bad.

2. There is room in the market for both durable durables, and disposable durables. When I was a poor student I could only afford the planned obsolescence stuff. Now that I'm a well paid C++ developer, I just spend $50+ on a kitchen knife. The damn thing better last :)

3. The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation didn't turn me into a Libertarian, growing up behind the iron curtain did.

4. Planned obsolescence is not the only thing to be blamed for the US trade deficit. Europe and Japan rebuilt their industries from scratch. The US still had the burden of un-bombed factories.

5. Have you ever tried to join a union? It's a serious question. Not start a union, but join an existing one. Unions are not for immigrants, can you think of why?

6. "... the wholesale deindustrialization of America" Uhm, the US manufacturing is doing pretty well right now, with the cheap $. Could it be that antiquated companies were simply out competed and went bust.

7. It is worth noting that opening trade did dump a HUGE cheap labor force on the global market. That absolutely did cost some high paying jobs in the first world. But wages in China are already rising. Besides, what right do YOU have to a high paying job that someone in India does not?

8. As someone here pointed out, SUVs were very profitable for US car manufactures. One airline, I think SouthWest, saw where oil is going and hedged well. I think they are hedged for the next 10 years of something like that. As I mentioned before, the US car manufacturers should have seen the same trend in oil, but they didn't.

9. It was Gorbachev. Trust me, it was. What he didn't do was crush the protest in the Baltic states, and Poland, and East Germany right quick, not sending in the tanks sealed the SU's faith.

10. Yeah, Russia bounced back in 10 short years after a crushing fall in living standards. Don't worry, the US can do the same. We should hope it does better, but it can surely do at least as good.

11. US inflation hurts the holders of US dept and currency, guess who.

12. I have to agree with you on the neocons, those are some crazy fuckers.

13. Pressure to keep feeding the military machine doesn't just come from generals. Little towns where a military contractor is the biggest employers put a lot more pressure on.

14. Yeah NATO expands, what's a huge international bureaucracy to do, shrink? As if. Also with Russia and its sabre rattling us ex-satellite really did want to join.

15. I agree again, neocons are not only scary, they're dumb too.

16. The Fed lowered rates because of 9/11. True, should they have allowed a terrorist attack to sound the start of a recession? I would say yes, but it is not a black and white issue.

17. The US currency collapses, imports become prohibitively expensive. The standard of living drops, and then the recovery starts. Life goes on.

I am a libertarian, and we are in agreement on most of your economic points. Having said that, I have to say that libertarians don't support the imperial thinking that has permeated Washington in the last 20-30 years.

Take the current wars. Both Osama and Saddam were on US payroll (literally so in Osama's case) for a long time. Osama was a US ally because the US needed him to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Same way, US bankrolls the failed Saudi state. The Saudi state buys off peace with Islamists. And guess who the Islamists are targeting?

Empires don't work.

The roots of American Empire began with President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter World War I "to make the world itself at last free", which set in motion a kind of messianic foreign policy of American Exceptionalism

This is bunk. American Exceptionalism is obviously a 19th century construct (even the term itself was coined by de Tocqueville, as ten seconds on Wikipedia would have informed the author). And if you're going to talk about American Empire, saying that its "roots" began with World War I is like saying the roots of rock and roll began with Bon Jovi. What about the Mexican war? The Spanish war?

If you're going to write a historical article, it might be a good idea not to be historically illiterate.

I sure hope the next president and those in power have a chance to read articles like this. It might not be incontrovertible truth, but I do think that our current military industrial complex is mostly irrational and detrimental. How much progress would $2 trillion dollars have bought if we had spent it on creating and researching, instead of decimating and killing?

Fighting wars directly destroys an enormous amount of economic value, but it's not true that military spending is bad for progress. Jet engines, satellite communications, radar, etc - any one of those alone has probably repaid the defence budget many times over.

You are assuming those things would not have been invented without the military (and with all that money freed up). That's a pretty shaky assumption.

No, I'm just saying that that's what did happen. You can always say "if someone didn't invent something someone else would have eventually".

destroys an enormous amount of economic value, but it's not true that military spending is bad for progress. I don't see how you can say the first part, and still agree with the second part. The logical conclusion is, not only that someone would have invented everything that was invented, but in fact they would have invented more.

I don't think it is. The needs of the military may drive different innovation than the general needs of society.

Perhaps. But then you can argue that the innovation that would have been created would have been "better" for society.

You could argue that. But it's not necessarily true. Neither is what I speculated, of course.

There was a lot of green on that pie chart... let me be first to tell you not much of that is going into our (soldiers') pockets ;)

Although, if Civilization has taught me anything it's that being in a constant state of war really hurts your ability to keep up with the Jones's...

A great article.

Shouldn't we examine military spending as a percentage of GDP? The author only shows absolute numbers, which I think is misleading.

Exactly my thought. What percentage of GDP is taken by entitlement programs, also "new" ideas in the last century, such as medicare, social security, etc. etc. etc.

Interesting charts on these very points at http://perotcharts.com/ (Yes, that Ross Perot).

Someone made a nice graph, which was posted here not so long ago. Military spending added up to about 60% of GDP, spread over several departments.

Taxes aren't 60% of GDP, so it's very unlikely that military spending is 60% of GDP.

Miltary spending might be 60% of discretionary spending, but discretionary spending is a small fraction of govt spending.

That was a superb read. Thanks. Given my lack of more-than-basic economic knowledge, I find most economic analysis of the current predicament rather impenetrable. This one paints a rather distressing picture of a long-term slide that had its roots long before this housing bubble. Those of you who may file this under toread on del.icio.us, you really should take the time out to read it now.

Forgetting for a moment the enormous political and moral implications of whether America does or doesn't use it's military in a way that directly leades to many thousands of deaths or whether it's right or important to push freedom throughout the world, this article alarmed me as a business owner. Taxes and a declining economy here definitely aren't positives for doing business here. Although I have found one bright spot: our US prices are now extremely cheap for European customers and that's lead to increased European sales for us.

True...exports are countercyclical. A falling dollar means that, if you can sell to, say, Latin America, you're in good shape.

Uhhh, politics?

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